Anciente Greece

Covering the major periods of Greek history,Ancient Greece:An Illustrated History brings the past alive to a new generation of students and gives them the background needed to interpret current circumstances. Such background is sorely needed, for the past has always served as the prologue to the future.Beginning with a survey of Stone Age culture from the Paleolithic era and a study of the life of the island peoples inhabiting Crete and the Cyclades, this book then introduces its readers to the Bronze Age warrior culture populated by the men and women who were made immortal by the poet Homer in the Iliad:Agamemnon, Helen, Hector, and Achilles, among others.When the Mycenaean hegemony fell apart, there followed a prolonged period of decline,from whose ruins rose a system of citystates such as those of Sparta, Corinth,Thebes, and Athens. These cities in turn created economic engines, forms of art and architecture, structures of government, techniques of diplomacy,methods of warfare,and systems of philosophy, religion, and law that are now applied worldwide. The successes, failures, biases, and shortcomings of these systems remain of great consequence to us.The warning made by the Greek historian Herodotus to his audience in the fifth century BCE still pertains:the divinities who sanction prosperity will just as frequently destroy it.

História Geral