Asimov Isaac. The Greeks: A Great Adventure

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1965. — 320 p. — ISBN 978-0395065747, 0395065747.No nation in history has left the world such a heritage as the Creeks. It seems scarcely credible that so sparse a people, settled on the rocky islands and peninsulas of the Aegean Sea, could have accomplished so much; but they excelled at whatever they set their hands to, warfare or politics, art or athletics, literature or philosophy. They added a new dimension to the human spirit; their ideals, their heroes have become our own.
This book begins more than four thousand years ago when semi-civilized tribes from the Balkan Peninsula came into contact with the high culture of ancient Minoan Crete and embarked on the great adventure that was to send Creek armies on campaigns from the pillars of Hercules to the Himalayas and put Greek rulers on the thrones of Persia, Egypt, and Sicily: an adventure that was to make Athens the very symbol of civilization and Sparta of selfless heroism.
The triumphant climax came in the Golden Age of Athens; but that is far from the end of the story, for Greece continued as tutor to the Roman Empire and finally, at Constantinople, as the last preserver of the Ancient World. Not until 1453 was that great center of wisdom and learning finally destroyed.
Rich in detail and bold in its sense of the sweep of history, this hook can’t help hut infect the reader with the author’s own enthusiasm and admiration for the glory that was Greece.The Mycenaean age
Knossos
Mycenae and Troy
Argives and Achaeans
The Iron age
The Greek language
The peoples of the sea
The Dorian invasion
The islands and Asia Minor
The city-state
The bonds of union
The age of colonization
Advance to the East
Advance to the West
Egypt
Phoenicia
The rise of Sparta
Laconia
Argos and Messenia
The spartan way of life
The Peloponnesus
The age of Tyrants
From farming to commerce
Tyrants in Ionia
Tyrants on the mainland
Samos
The rise of Athens
The beginnings
Draco and Solon
Pisistratus
Cleisthenes
Asia Minor
Phrygia
Lydia
Media and Chaldea
Persia
The Persian war
The Ionian revolt
The battle of Marathon
After Marathon
Invasion from East and West
Thermopylae and Salamis
The battle of Himera
Victory
9 The Golden age
The troubles of Sparta
The confederacy of Delos
Athens at its height
The troubles of Athens
10 The Peloponnesian war
The beginning of the war
Sphacteria and Amphipolis
The Sicilian expedition
The fall of Athens
Sparta in control
Athens after Aegospotami
The ten thousand
Sparta and Persia
The fall of Sparta
Decline
The silver age
Syracuse at its height
The moment of Thessaly
The moment of Caria
Macedonia
The coming of Philip
The orators of Athens
The fall of Thebes
The coming of Alexander
The fall of Persia
The end of Alexander
The Successors
Alexander
Antipater in Greece
The Diadochi
Hellenistic Sicily
The moment of Epirus
The Gauls
The twilight of freedom
The Achaean league
The fall of Syracuse
The fall of Macedonia
The end of the Achaean league
The Hellenistic
Monarchies
Helenistic Asia Minor
The Seleucid Empire
Alexandria
The Ptolemies
Rome and Constantinople
The Roman Peace
The triumph of Christianity
The coming of Islam
The Crusades
The Ottoman Empire
The fall of Constantinople
The Turkish night
Modern Greece
After World War I
Table of dates
Index