This is an expanded version of a lecture given in the Departments of History and Classics at Harvard in 1998. Starting from a methodological point of view, this book show the evolution of the idea of world history through the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Ctesias, Ephorus, Polybius and others up to the historians of the Augustan epoch.

In more than 60 essays by an international team of scholars, this volume explores the full breadth and reach of Greek thought, investigating what the Greeks knew as well as what they thought they knew, and what they believed, invented, and understood about the possibilities of knowing. 65 color illustrations. Maps.