Early Greek history as found in the textbooks leaves spurious OC dark ageOC gaps where the evidence fails to match historians'' fixed ideas. Dramatic claims regarding everything from the Trojan War to the OC Mask of AgamemnonOC are argued in detail from both an archaeological and a literary perspective, unraveling historical conundrums that have stumped classicists for generations."

**** A reprint, without changes, of the Knopf edition, 1961 (which is cited in BCL3). Like the original (undoubtedly), this, too, is printed on acidic paper. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The rise and decline of great powers remains a fascinating topic of vigorous debate. This book brings together leading scholars to explore the historical evolution of world systems through examining the ebb and flow of great powers over time, with particular emphasis on early time periods. The book advances understanding of the regularities in the dynamics of empire and the expansion of political, social and economic interaction networks, from the Bronze Age forward. The authors analyze the expansion and contraction of cross-cultural trade networks and systems of competing and allying political groupings. In premodern times, theses ranged from small local trading networks (even the very small ones of hunting-gathering peoples) to the vast Mongol world-system. Within such systems, there is usually one, or a very few, hegemonic powers. How they achieve dominance and how transitions lead to systems change are important topics, particularly at a time when the United States' position is in flux. The chapters in this book review several recent approaches and present a wealth of new findings.

Combining impeccable scholarship with accessible, straightforward prose, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece argues that institutionalized pederasty began after 650 B.C., far later than previous authors have thought, and was initiated as a means of stemming overpopulation in the upper class. William Armstrong Percy III maintains that Cretan sages established a system under which a young warrior in his early twenties took a teenager of his own aristocratic background as a beloved until the age of thirty, when service to the state required the older partner to marry. The practice spread with significant variants to other Greek-speaking areas. In some places it emphasized development of the athletic, warrior individual, while in others both intellectual and civic achievement were its goals. In Athens it became a vehicle of cultural transmission, so that the best of each older cohort selected, loved, and trained the best of the younger. Pederasty was from the beginning both physical and emotional, the highest and most intense type of male bonding. These pederastic bonds, Percy believes, were responsible for the rise of Hellas and the "Greek miracle": in two centuries the population of Attica, a mere 45,000 adult males in six generations, produced an astounding number of great men who laid the enduring foundations of Western thought and civilization.

The first detailed history of one of the most prosperous and important Greek cities of the pre-classical period.

This book challenges the current view of the Homeric epics, according to which they reflect only the institutions and ideas of their own time, telling us nothing about the Mycenaean Age preceding it. Using a comparative analysis of evidence from the Near East and the Homeric corpus, Peter Karavites comes to the bold conclusion that the epics actually contain much that harks back to the Mycenaean Age, and that the two eras may not be completely discontinuous after all. Most contemporary scholars maintain that the mighty Mycenaean period was almost completely separated from the Dark Ages and that virtually no evidence of the former remains, with the exception of the archeological finds and the meager testimony of the Linear B tablets. However, the Near Eastern evidence about treaties and other forms of promising suggests that the Iliad and Odyssey may indeed provide historical pictures of the Mycenaean times featured in their narratives.