Tom Holland's 'stirring new translation' (Telegraph) of Herodotus' Histories, one of the great books in Western history - now in paperback The Histories of Herodotus, completed in the second half of the 5th century BC, is generally regarded as the first work of history and the first great masterpiece of non-fiction writing. Joined here are the sheer drama of Herodotus' narrative of the Persian invasions of Greece, and the endless curiosity - turning now to cannabis, now to the Pyramids - which make his book the source of so much of our knowledge of the ancient world. This absorbing new translation, by one of Britain's most admired young historians, allows all the drama and mysteriousness of this great book to be fully appreciated by modern readers. TOM HOLLAND is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Persian Fire, his history of the Graeco-Persian wars, won the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award in 2006. His most recent book, In the Shadow of the Sword, describes the collapse of Roman and Persian power in the Near East, and the emergence of Islam. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC, and is the presenter of BBC Radio 4's Making History. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association Prize awarded to 'the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome'. He served two years as the Chair of the Society of Authors 2009-11. PAUL CARTLEDGE is the inaugural A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. His numerous books include Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300-362 BC; The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others; Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World; Ancient Greece. A Very Short Introduction; and After Thermopylae: The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars. He is an Honorary Citizen of Sparta, Greece and holds the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour conferred by the President of the Hellenic Republic. 'Unquestionably the best English translation of Herodotus to have appeared in the last half-century, and there have been quite a few . . . fast, funny, opinionated, clear and erudite . . . I am in awe of Tom Holland's achievement' Edith Hall, TLS 'A labour of love . . . full of rattling good yarns . . . the minister for education should present each of his cabinet colleagues with a copy of Holland's admirable translation' Economist 'Tom Holland has been captivated by Herodotus since he was a child. His pleasure shines through his relaxed, idiomatic, expansive and often dramatic translation ... He, like Herodotus, is a storyteller par excellence' Peter Jones, New Statesman

Grote's History of Greece is one of the classic works of historical interpretation and scholarship. George Grote - banker, MP and a founder of London University - was the first historian to give a high value to the Greek creation of democracy, and this aspect of his work is closely relevant to current debates about democracy in our times. This abridgement of the original twelve volume work, which was made in the early years of the century and published by George Routledge and sons, is now available again and makes accessible the essential Grote. In a new and original introduction, based on the latest research into Grote and into Greek history, Paul Cartledge places Grote's history in its intellectual context, discusses its salient features and traces its subsequent reception over the past century and a half.

Sparta is one of the best-documented states of ancient Greece. Its political and social systems have fascinated and perplexed generations of classical scholars, as well as having a powerful influence on European civilization to this day. In this fully revised and updated edition of his groundbreaking study, Paul Cartledge uncovers the realities behind the potent myth of Sparta.
The book explores both the city-state of Sparta and the territory of Lakonia which it unified and exploited. Combining the more traditional written sources with archaeological and environmental perspectives, its coverage extends from the apogee of Mycenaean culture, to Sparta's crucial defeat at the battle of Mantinea in 362 BC.

'George Grote was one of the most remarkable minds of the early Victorian age Routledge's reissue prefaced with an illuminating new introduction by Paul Cartledge, provides the best chance that there is likely to be of bringing him to a modern readership.' - Richard Jenkins, London Review of Books

Ancient Monuments and Modern Identities sets out to examine the role of archaeology in the creation of ethnic, national and social identities in 19th and 20th century Greece. The essays included in this volume examine the development of interpretative and methodological principles guiding the recovery, protection and interpretation of material remains and their presentation to the public. The role of archaeology is examined alongside prevailing perceptions of the past, and is thereby situated in its political and ideological context. The book is organized chronologically and follows the changing attitudes to the past during the formation, expansion and consolidation of the Modern Greek State. The aim of this volume is to examine the premises of the archaeological discipline, and to apply reflection and critique to contemporary archaeological theory and practice. The past, however, is not a domain exclusive to archaeologists. The contributors to this volume include prehistoric and classical archaeologists, but also modern historians, museum specialists, architectural historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars who have all been invited to discuss the impact of the material traces of the past on the Modern Greek social imaginary.

In this fully revised and updated edition of his groundbreaking study, Paul Cartledge uncovers the realities behind the potent myth of Sparta. The book explores both the city-state of Sparta and the territory of Lakonia which it unified and exploited. Combining the more traditional written sources with archaeological and environmental perspectives, its coverage extends from the apogee of Mycenaean culture, to Sparta's crucial defeat at the battle of Mantinea in 362 BC.

This volume assembles fourteen highly influential articles written by Michael H. Jameson over a period of nearly fifty years, edited and updated by the author himself. They represent both the scope and the signature style of Jameson's engagement with the subject of ancient Greek religion. The collection complements the original publications in two ways: firstly, it makes the articles more accessible; and secondly, the volume offers readers a unique opportunity to observe that over almost five decades of scholarship Jameson developed a distinctive method, a signature style, a particular perspective, a way of looking that could perhaps be fittingly called a 'Jamesonian approach' to the study of Greek religion. This approach, recognizable in each article individually, becomes unmistakable through the concentration of papers collected here. The particulars of the Jamesonian approach are insightfully discussed in the five introductory essays written for this volume by leading world authorities on polis religion.

Full Contributors:
Susan E. Alcock, Jean Andreau, Paul Carledge, Edward E. Cohen, John K. Davies, Lin Foxhall, Edward M. Harris, Michael H. Jameson, Julie Velissaropoulos-Karakostas, H. S. Kim, Dimitris J. Kyrtatas, Ian Morris, Sitta von Reden and Walter Scheidel

Ancient Monuments and Modern Identities sets out to examine the role of archaeology in the creation of ethnic, national and social identities in 19th and 20th century Greece. The essays included in this volume examine the development of interpretative and methodological principles guiding the recovery, protection and interpretation of material remains and their presentation to the public. The role of archaeology is examined alongside prevailing perceptions of the past, and is thereby situated in its political and ideological context. The book is organized chronologically and follows the changing attitudes to the past during the formation, expansion and consolidation of the Modern Greek State. The aim of this volume is to examine the premises of the archaeological discipline, and to apply reflection and critique to contemporary archaeological theory and practice. The past, however, is not a domain exclusive to archaeologists. The contributors to this volume include prehistoric and classical archaeologists, but also modern historians, museum specialists, architectural historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars who have all been invited to discuss the impact of the material traces of the past on the Modern Greek social imaginary.

In this new edition, Paul Cartledge and Antony Spawforth have taken account of recent finds and scholarship to revise and update their authoritative overview of later Spartan history, and of the social, political, economic and cultural changes in the Spartan community. This original and compelling account is especially significant in challenging the conventional misperception of Spartan 'decline' after the loss of her status as a great power on the battlefield in 371 BC. The book's focus on a frequently overlooked period makes it important not only for those interested specifically in Sparta, but also for all those concerned with Hellenistic Greece, and with the life of Greece and other Greek-speaking provinces under non-Roman rule.

This investigation relies on a rash bet: to write the biography of two of the most famous statues in Antiquity, the Tyrannicides. Representing the murderers of the tyrant Hipparchus in full action, these statues erected on the Agora of Athens have been in turn worshipped, outraged, and imitated. They have known hours of glory and moments of hardships, which have transformed them into true icons of Athenian democracy. The subject of this book is the remarkable story of this group statue and the ever-changing significance of its tyrant-slaying subjects. The first part of this book, in six chapters, tells the story of the murder of Hipparchus and of the statues of the two tyrannicides from the end of the sixth century to the aftermath of the restoration of democracy in 403. The second part, in three chapters, chronicles the fate and influence of the statues from the fourth century to the end of the Roman Empire. These chapters are followed by an epilogue that reveals new life for the statues in modern art and culture, including how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made use of their iconography. By tracing the long trajectory of the tyrannicides - in deed and art - Azoulay provides a rich and fascinating microhistory that will be of interest to readers of classical art and history.

Democracy is either aspired to as a goal or cherished as a birthright by billions of people throughout the world today - and has been been for over a century. But what does it mean? And how has its meaning changed since it was first coined in ancient Greece? Democracy: A Life is a biography of the concept, looking at its many different manifestations and showing how it has changed over its long life, from ancient times right through to the present. For instance, how did the 'people power' of the Athenians emerge in the first place? Once it had emerged, what enabled it to survive? And how did the Athenian version of democracy differ from the many other forms that developed among the myriad cities of the Greek world? Paul Cartledge answers all these questions and more, following the development of ancient political thinking about democracy from the sixth century BC onwards, not least the many arguments that were advanced against it over the centuries. As Cartledge shows, after a golden age in the fourth century BC, there was a long, slow degradation of the original Greek conception and practice of democracy, from the Hellenistic era, through late Republican and early Imperial Rome, down to early Byzantium in the sixth century CE. For many centuries after that, from late Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance, democracy was effectively eclipsed by other forms of government, in both theory and practice. But as we know, this was by no means the end of the story. For democracy was eventually to enjoy a re-florescence, over two thousand years after its first flowering in the ancient world: initially revived in seventeenth-century England, it was to undergo a further renaissance in the revolutionary climate of late-eighteenth-century North America and France - and has been constantly reconstituted and reinvented ever since.

The cultural wealth of the classical Greek world was matched by its material wealth, and there is abundant textual and archaeological evidence for both. However, radically different theoretical and methodological approaches have been used to interpret this evidence, and conflicts continue to rage as these different starting points produce clashing views on the significance and distribution of money, labour and land. Money, Labour and Land reflects the current explosion in ideas and research by assembling case-studies from an international selection of renowned US, British and European scholars. Drawing on comparative historical and anthropological approaches, sociological, economic and cultural theory, and developments in epigraphy, legal history, numismatics and spatial archaeology, this volume will be of interest to all students and scholars of ancient economies.

Continuously inhabited for five millennia, and at one point the most powerful city in Ancient Greece, Thebes has been overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta.

According to myth, the city was founded when Kadmos sowed dragon’s teeth into the ground and warriors sprang forth, ready not only to build the fledgling city but to defend it from all-comers. It was Hercules’ birthplace and the home of the Sphinx, whose riddle Oedipus solved, winning the Theban crown and the king’s widow in marriage, little knowing that the widow was his mother, Jocasta.

The city’s history is every bit as rich as its mythic origins, from siding with the Persian invaders when their emperor, Xerxes, set out to conquer Aegean Greece, to siding with Sparta – like Thebes an oligarchy – to defeat Pericles’ democratic Athens, to being utterly destroyed on the orders of Alexander the Great.

In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, the acclaimed classical historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life, and argues that it is central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks’ achievements – whether politically or culturally – and thus to our own culture and civilization.

Sparta is one of the best-documented states of ancient Greece. Its political and social systems have fascinated and perplexed generations of classical scholars, as well as having a powerful influence on European civilization to this day. In this fully revised and updated edition of his groundbreaking study, Paul Cartledge uncovers the realities behind the potent myth of Sparta.
The book explores both the city-state of Sparta and the territory of Lakonia which it unified and exploited. Combining the more traditional written sources with archaeological and environmental perspectives, its coverage extends from the apogee of Mycenaean culture, to Sparta's crucial defeat at the battle of Mantinea in 362 BC.

Greeks - in later times - saw Athens as 'the Hellas of Hellas', but in the classical period many Athenians thought otherwise. Athens might be a school of Hellas, but the school of Hellas was Sparta. Militarily and morally, Sparta was supreme. This book explores how Athenians - ordinary citizens as well as writers and politicians - thought about Sparta's superiority. Nine new studies from an international cast examine how Athenians might revere Sparta even as they fought her. This respect led to Plato's literary creation of fantasy cities (in the Republic and Laws) to imitate Spartan methods. And, after its military surrender in 404 BC, ruling Athenian politicians claimed that their city was to be remodelled as itself a New Sparta.

'Kosmos' is the word the ancient Greeks used for human social order. It has therefore a special application to the Greeks' peculiar social and political unit of communal life that they called the 'polis'. Of the many hundreds of such units in classical Greece the best documented and the most complex was democratic Athens. The purpose of this collective 1998 volume is to re-evaluate the foundations of classical Athens' highly successful experiment in communal social existence. Topics addressed include religion and ritualization, political friendship and enmity, gender and sexuality, sports and litigation, and economic and symbolic exchange. The book aims to make a major contribution, theoretical as well as empirical, towards understanding how the social order of community life may be sustained and enhanced.

This volume surveys democracy broadly as a cultural phenomenon operating in different ways across a very wide range of ancient societies throughout Antiquity. It examines the experiences of those living in democratic communities and considers how ancient practices of democracy differ from our own. The origins of democracy can be traced in a general way to the earliest civilizations, beginning with the early urban societies of the Middle East, and can be seen in cities and communities across the Mediterranean world and Asia. In classical Athens, male citizens enjoyed full participation in the political life of the city and a flourishing democratic culture, as explored in detail in this volume. In other times and places democratic features were absent from the formal structures of regimes, but could still be found in the participatory structures of local social institutions. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: sovereignty; liberty and the rule of law; the “common good”; economic and social democracy; religion and the principles of political obligation; citizenship and gender; ethnicity, race, and nationalism; democratic crises, revolutions, and civil resistance; international relations; and beyond the polis. These ten different approaches to democracy in Antiquity add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.

Democracy is either aspired to as a goal or cherished as a birthright by billions of people throughout the world today - and has been for over a century. But what does it mean? And how has its meaning changed since it was first coined in ancient Greece? Democracy: A Life is a biography of the concept, looking at its many different manifestations and showing how it has changed over its long life, from ancient times right through to the present. For instance, how did the 'people power' of the Athenians emerge in the first place? Once it had emerged, what enabled it to survive? And how did the Athenian version of democracy differ from the many other forms that developed among the myriad cities of the Greek world? Paul Cartledge answers all these questions and more, following the development of ancient political thinking about democracy from the sixth century BC onwards, not least the many arguments that were advanced against it over the centuries. As Cartledge shows, after a golden age in the fourth century BC, there was a long, slow degradation of the original Greek conception and practice of democracy, from the Hellenistic era, through late Republican and early Imperial Rome, down to early Byzantium in the sixth century CE. For many centuries after that, from late Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance, democracy was effectively eclipsed by other forms of government, in both theory and practice. But as we know, this was by no means the end of the story. For democracy was eventually to enjoy a re-florescence, over two thousand years after its first flowering in the ancient world: initially revived in seventeenth century England, it was to undergo a further renaissance in the revolutionary climate of late eighteenth century North America and France - and has been constantly reconstituted and reinvented ever since.

In classical Athens, a funeral speech was delivered for dead combatants almost every year, the most famous being that by Pericles in 430 BC. In 1981, Nicole Loraux transformed our understanding of this genre. Her The Invention of Athens showed how it reminded the Athenians who they were as a people. Loraux demonstrated how each speech helped them to maintain the same self-identity for two centuries. But The Invention of Athens was far from complete. This volume brings together top-ranked experts to finish Loraux's book. It answers the important questions about the numerous surviving funeral speeches that she ignored. It also undertakes the comparison of the funeral oration and other genres that is missing in her famous book. What emerges is a speech that had a much greater political impact than Loraux thought. The volume puts the study of war in Athenian culture on a completely new footing.

In this new edition, Paul Cartledge and Antony Spawforth have taken account of recent finds and scholarship to revise and update their authoritative overview of later Spartan history, and of the social, political, economic and cultural changes in the Spartan community.
This original and compelling account is especially significant in challenging the conventional misperception of Spartan 'decline' after the loss of her status as a great power on the battlefield in 371 BC.
The book's focus on a frequently overlooked period makes it important not only for those interested specifically in Sparta, but also for all those concerned with Hellenistic Greece, and with the life of Greece and other Greek-speaking provinces under non-Roman rule.

In 480 B.C., the mighty Persian king Xerxes led a massive force to the narrow mountain pass called Thermopylae, anticipating no significant resistance in his bid to conquer Greece. But the Greeks, led by Leonidas and a small army of Spartan warriors, took the battle to the Persians and nearly halted their advance.
Paul Cartledge's riveting, authoritative account of King Leonidas and the legendary 300 illuminates this valiant endeavor that changed the way future generations would think about combat, courage, and death.

Pericles has the rare distinction of giving his name to an entire period of history, embodying what has often been taken as the golden age of the ancient Greek world. "Periclean" Athens witnessed tumultuous political and military events, and achievements of the highest order in philosophy, drama, poetry, oratory, and architecture. Pericles of Athens is the first book in decades to reassess the life and legacy of one of the greatest generals, orators, and statesmen of the classical world. In this compelling critical biography, Vincent Azoulay takes a fresh look at both the classical and modern reception of Pericles, recognizing his achievements as well as his failings. From Thucydides and Plutarch to Voltaire and Hegel, ancient and modern authors have questioned Pericles's relationship with democracy and Athenian society. This is the enigma that Azoulay investigates in this groundbreaking book. Pericles of Athens offers a balanced look at the complex life and afterlife of the legendary "first citizen of Athens."

The text of this inaugural lecture proposes that the newly established A. G. Leventis Professorship of Greek Culture is a new kind of chair: a chair not only for research but also for outreach, for the advancement of the public understanding of ancient Greek culture. After explaining its origins, and pondering the possible meanings of the Professorship's title, it seeks to explore four 'myths' about the ancient Greeks and their culture (or cultures), myths deliberately chosen to illustrate the huge range of the Hellenic tradition that is still actively at work in our own culture. These are: i. that there was an entity called 'Ancient Greece'; ii. that the ancient Greeks were technologically backward; iii. that the ancient Greeks really were (or looked) anything like they are depicted in such movies as 300; and iv. that the Greeks invented democracy in anything like the form in which we understand it today.