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Michael Grant, eminent author, historian and classical scholar,
illuminates a world only recently unveiled by archaeologists and scholars. Focusing
on the years c. 1000-490 B.C., following the collapse of the Mycenaean
palace regimes and before the Peloponnesian Wars, Grant shows an age that is not
only a wellspring to the brilliant classical period but one of the most creative
in world history. Divided by geography and politically
separated into hundreds of independent city-states throughout Asia Minor, Italy,
Sicily and Russia, the early Greeks were nonetheless united by common blood, customs,
language and religion. Grant innovatively traces the Greeks by region, concentrating
not only on Athens but on the far-flung provinces that were responsible for much
of the growth and development of the Greeks. And with his historian's vision Grant
places the early Greeks in context with other civilizations of the same period. The
everyday life of the citizens and the policies and government of these states
are focal points of the book, as are the lives of the leading personalities of
the age. Grant also discusses the Greeks as a slave-owning society and one in
which women, often seen as a mysterious, polluting element in this male-dominated
world, play a contrasting role as powerful figures in mythology and literature. In
a civilization in which leisure was thought to be "more desirable and more
fully an end than business," there was time for outstanding artistic and
intellectual developments, notably the pottery of the Protogeometric and subsequent
epochs, and the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet (after half a millennium
of illiteracy), which enabled Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to be recorded. With
fluency and scholarship, Michael Grant explores an overlooked period of mankind's
history, affirming the remarkable developments of an early age that led to the
glory of the classical fifth century. The Rise of the Greeks further confirms
its author's brilliant reputation as one of the premier historians of our day. Michael
Grant is formerly a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; Professor of Humanity
at Edinburgh University; President and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University,
Belfast; and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Khartoum. His many books include
From Alexander to Cleopatra, The History of Ancient Israel, The
Etruscans, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels and The History
of Rome. He lives in Italy. |
