P.J. Rhodes - Böcker

This volume presents studies of military commemorative practices in Western culture, from 5th-century BC Greece, through two World Wars, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This new comparative approach reveals that the distant past has had a lasting influence on commemorative practice in modern times.

The Greek polis has been arousing interest as a subject for study for a long time, but recent approaches have shown that it is a subject on which there are still important questions to be asked and worthwhile things to be said.This book contains a selection of essays which embody the results of the latest research, yet are presented so as to be accessible to non-specialist readers. Beyond the historical development of the Greek polis, the authors ask questions about the civic institutions of ancient Greece as a whole, and their relationships to each other. Questions of power, or the significance of a written code of law are discussed as well as the nature of Greek overseas settlements.The Development of the Greek Polis presents up-to-date research and asks up-to-date questions on various aspects of an important topic. It will be essential reading for all students and teachers of early Greek history and of the institutions of the ancient world.

The Greek polis has been arousing interest as a subject for study for a long time, but recent approaches have shown that it is a subject on which there are still important questions to be asked and worthwhile things to be said.This book contains a selection of essays which embody the results of the latest research, yet are presented so as to be accessible to non-specialist readers. Beyond the historical development of the Greek polis, the authors ask questions about the civic institutions of ancient Greece as a whole, and their relationships to each other. Questions of power, or the significance of a written code of law are discussed as well as the nature of Greek overseas settlements.The Development of the Greek Polis presents up-to-date research and asks up-to-date questions on various aspects of an important topic. It will be essential reading for all students and teachers of early Greek history and of the institutions of the ancient world.

In the second and third quarters of the fifth century BC, when Athens became both politically and culturally dominant in the Greek world, Pericles was the leading figure in the city’s public life. At this time Athens developed an empire of a kind which no Greek city had had before, and its politics were reshaped by the new institution of democracy.These changes inspired religious developments, while the sophists revolutionised philosophy, analysed human affairs in human terms, and Athenian tragedy became the principal Greek poetic form. This volume's illustrations further show the numerous artistic and sculptural developments in Pericles’ time, as the building programmes attracted architects, builders and sculptors to Athens, and Athenian red-figure pottery reached new heights of skill in the scenes painted on it.This concise and accessible introduction guides students through the key aspects of this most-studied period of ancient Greek history, focusing on the major developments, political and cultural, that took place in Pericles’ time.

Classical Greece and its legacy have long inspired a powerful and passionate fascination. The civilization that bequeathed to later ages drama and democracy, Homer and heroism, myth and Mycenae and the Delphic Oracle and the Olympic Games has, perhaps more than any other, helped shape the intellectual contours of the modern world. P J Rhodes is among the most distinguished historians of antiquity. In this elegant, zesty new survey he explores the archaic (8th - early 5th centuries BCE), classical (5th and 4th centuries BCE) and Hellenistic (late 4th - mid-2nd centuries BCE) periods up to the beginning of Roman hegemony. His scope is that of the people who originated on the Greek mainland and Aegean islands who later migrated to the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and then (following the conquests of Alexander) to the Near East and beyond. Exploring topics such as the epic struggle with Persia; the bitter rivalry of Athens and Sparta; slaves and ethnicity; religion and philosophy; and literature and the visual arts, this authoritative book will attract students and non-specialists in equal measure.

Thucydides was labelled the 'greatest historian that ever lived' by Macauley and no study of Classical Greece is complete without encountering his history of the Peloponnesian War, the greatest war of Greeks against Greeks in the late fifth century BCE, which ended in the fall of Athens.This concise introductory guide sets Thucydides in context as a Greek historian writing about the Peloponnesian War; as an intellectual in the era of the 'sophists', who were willing to question a variety of traditional assumptions; and as an upper-class Athenian who lived through and was actively involved in the Peloponnesian War as a general. Including a survey and summary of Thucydides' work, P. J. Rhodes explores the principles and practices of historiography which Thucydides originated and implemented throughout his History: his narrative insight, an almost scientific judgment and exposition of sources and prejudices, and a strictly defined and authoritative view of what was required in a history of a war. In addition to examining Thucydides' work, the volume provides an overview of the social, political and intellectual contexts Thucydides was writing in, and looks at his impact in antiquity and beyond, from forming modern concepts of impartial history to his effect on popular culture.