Until quite recently, it has been the accepted view that the
Archaic period of Greek history was by definition merely a prelude
to the Oassical period, an era regarded as unsurpassed in its
literary, intellectual, artistic, and political achievements.
Lately, however, ancient historians and Classical archaeologists
have undertaken a major reappraisal of their subject, one result of
which has been a broadening view of the Archaic period and its
importance to the history of Greece. In this first major book on
Archaic Greece to be written by an archaeologist, Professor
Snodgrass shows how the supremacy of Classical Greece would have
been impossible without the preceding centuries of the Archaic
period. The intellectual revolution which divided the Archaic
period from the Oassical transformed something remarkable into
something unique. But there was an earlier revolution, a
"structural revolution," which took place not merely within the
Archaic period, but at its beginning. It had far-reaching effects:
it established the economic basis of Greek society, as well as the
main outlines of its social framework; it drew the political map of
the Greek world in a form that was to endure for four centuries; it
set up, with even greater permanence, the forms of state that were
to determine Greek political history; it provided the interests and
goals, not merely for Greek but for Western art as a whole, which
were to be pursued over the next two and a half millennia; it gave
Greece in the Homeric epics an ideal of behavior and a memento of
past glory to sustain it; it provided much of the basis of Greek
religion; and it furnished many lesser things, among them the means
for Greek society to defend its independence militarily. It is
doubtful whether, before or since, all these features have ever
come about in one conn try with such concertedness and such speed.
Archaic Greece gives a broader cultural history of the period than
has hitherto been attempted, and Professor Snodgrass shows that it
can be seen, for perhaps the first time, as a complete episode in
its own right. His fresh and personal approach to his subject,
together with the book's superb illustrations, will ensure a wide
audience.
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