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This highly original introduction to ancient Greece uses the history of eleven major Greek cities to illuminate the most important and informative aspects of Greek culture. Cartledge highlights the role of such renowned cities as Athens (birthplace of democracy) and Sparta, but he also examines Argos, Thebes, Syracuse in Sicily, and Alexandria in Egypt, as well as lesser known locales such as Miletus (home of the West's first intellectual, Thales) and Massalia (Marseilles today), where the Greeks introduced the wine grape to the French. The author uses these cities to illuminate major themes, from economics, religion, and social relations, to gender and sexuality, slavery and freedom, and politics.
Paul Cartledge
Paul Cartledge is Reader in Greek History, University of Cambridge. He is the coauthor, with A.J.S. Spawforth, of Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities (1989) and The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (revised edition, 1997). Peter Garnsey is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge. His works include Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis (1988) and Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (1996). Erich Gruen is Professor of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (California, 1984), and Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (California).
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