Young Theras, born an Athenian, is taken to Sparta by a relative when his father is lost at war. He is forced to live like a Spartan, a brutal life with no pity for those who are not physically perfect and totally obedient to Spartan control. After enduring rigorous training and repeated cruel incidents, he escapes with a Perioikoi boy and heads for his beloved Athens. This captures the authentic flavor of ancient Greek culture in a story of adventure and excitement that fully illustrates the differences between the Athenian and Spartan cultures.

Young Theras, born in Ancient Athens, loves his city. He goes to school where he learns to sing and tell the great Greek stories. He walks proudly through the town with his pedagogue to the athletic field and their exercises led by the gymnasiarch. He marvels at the bustling outdoor market, full of life and color. He is in love with Athens and its freedom, open air, and friendliness-and its goddess Athena. Trouble comes to Theras, though, when his father's merchant ship is attacked in a battle with Samos, and he is presumed dead. Promising to take care of Theras and leave him an inheritance, a Spartan relative takes him to Sparta. He is forced to live like a Spartan, a brutal life with no pity for those who are not physically perfect and totally obedient to Spartan control. After enduring rigorous training and repeated cruel incidents, he escapes with a Perioikoi boy and heads for his beloved Athens. It's a hard and dangerous journey including an escape from slavers. Caroline Dale Snedeker, twice a Newbery Honor winner, captures the authentic flavor of ancient Greek culture in a story of adventure and excitement that fully illustrates the differences between the Athenian and Spartan cultures.

100th Anniversary Edition. Theras was a young boy of Athens, who led an idyllic life as he began school at age seven. Several years later, under dire circumstances, Theras was left with no other choice than to leave his beloved Athens and live under the protection of a distant relative in the rival city of Sparta. While lodging in the Spartan barracks, Theras honed his athletic and military skills alongside the other boys. But after seeing the Spartans' callous disregard for human life, he made plans to leave with his new friend Abas, a Perioikoi shepherd boy. Together they fought their way toward Athens, across many dangerous miles of rugged Greek terrain, constantly on the run from Spartan soldiers and those who would sell them into slavery. Unabridged.

How an impulsive little Quaker girl threw a stone at a friendless boy and the troubles she had before she was fully forgiven. Told in the spirit of the time and place--Nantucket, over a hundred years ago.

For weeks, Lysis had been counting on going to the play-the new play by Euripides that everyone in Athens is talking about. It was to be performed for the first time at the theater of Dionysius on the Acropolis, and Father had promised to take him to see it. And then, the day before they were to go, one of Father's ships is wrecked at Samos. And since shipwrecked goods were claimed be whoever found them first, Father has to leave immediately to try to save some of his cargo. "Of course I can't take you to the play now," he says to Lysis. But because his sister, Callisto, sympathizes with Lysis and cares so much when she hears of his disappointment, she sacrifices her most precious possession to the goddess Athena, and Lysis sees the play after all. But Lysis finds a way for Callisto to go, too, breaking the norms of Greek society. This gentle and timeless story, motivated by sibling loyalty, explores the roles of boys and girls, children and adults in pagan Athens. Athenian slaves and citizens come into focus. The pantheon of Greek gods, goddesses and heroes are seen through the eyes of these children.

The White Isle is Britain - a barbaric land to the patrician Claudian family exiled from Hardrian's Rome, but an island of strange enchantment and stirring adventures to Lavinia, their daughter, whose story Caroline Dale Snedeker tells in one of her finest books. The Story of Lavinia and her family, of their long, arduous and constantly exciting trip through Gaul to the farthest province of the empire, begins in Rome and comes to a romantic climax in the new home. It is one of the first books to bring to young people a spirited picture of Roman life in Gaul and Britain during the earliest days of Christianity.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: he could remember. This was her Lacedaemon. At last they stood upon its sacred soil. All that afternoon, as they followed the road south down the bed of the river Oinous, Makaria seemed in a dream. No roughness of the way, no pools left by the rain through which they waded ankle deep, no tangle of fallen trees across the path ? nothing could stay her. She put the branches away with a mighty hand. She strode the loose, slippery stones unpausing. Her long ten years of married exile were drawing to a close, and she would fain have crushed the last few hours into moments of time. At last the road emerged. They clambered up a little hillside, and there, before them in the sunset light, lay the whole circle of hollow Lacedaemon, and Sparta in the midst, Sparta, breeder of men. Makaria gave a little sharp cry, then stood in seeming quiet. .It was indeed a view to contemplate. Beyond the narrow plain Taygetos rose. First, lesser hills with shadow-purple gorges and Sash of leaping streams, then the mighty slope, soft with its forest multitudes. Above, on the vast, bare cliffs hung the tired battalions of the storm, heavily purple in the golden light, casting shadows broad as counties over uplands and ravines. And above the clouds, at the sheer zenith edge, gleamed the perennial snows, peak upon peak, billowing away and away in upper air like a visible god-place unsullied by mortal tread. In such fashion do the awful hills o'ershadow Lacedaemon, and close her in from the world. But it was not at the hills that the Spartan woman looked, not even at the plain with golden harvest breasthigh, where olives here and there flung lengthened shadows across the grain. She saw only the town itself. It looked to Aristodemos small and mean enough. But to her eyes its every roof was dear. ...