In this original new approach to telling the Greek story, David Stuttard weaves together the lives of fifty movers and shakers of the Greek world into a continuous, chronologically organized narrative, from the early tyrant rulers Peisistratus and Polycrates, through the stirrings of democracy under Cleisthenes to the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great and the eventual decline of the Greek world as Rome rose. The political leaders, writers, artists and philosophers of ancient Greece turned a small group of city states into a pan-Mediterranean civilization, whose legacy can be found everywhere today. But who were these people, what do we know of their lives and how did they interact with one another?

Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction
History and Identity in the Ancient Greek World

Chapter 1
Of Gods and Heroes
Hesiod and Homer: The Birth of the Gods and the Ages of Man
Homer and the Beginnings of Biography
The Logographoi and the Stirrings of Historiography
Chapter 2
The Age of Tyrants
PEISISTRATUS / POLYCRATES / SAPPHO / PYTHAGORAS / MILO / HIPPIAS / CLEISTHENES / HISTIAEUS / MILTIADES
Chapter 3
Greece in Peril
CIMON / THEMISTOCLES / LEONIDAS / GELON / HIERON / PINDAR / AESCHYLUS
Chapter 4
The Age of Pericles
PERICLES / HERODOTUS / SOPHOCLES / EMPEDOCLES / PROTAGORAS / PHEIDIAS / ASPASIA
Chapter 5
World War
ALCIBIADES / CLEON / THUCYDIDES / ARISTOPHANES / EURIPIDES / ZEUXIS / GORGIAS / SOCRATES Chapter 6
Fall Out
XENOPHON / LYSANDER / EPAMINONDAS / LYSIAS / DEMOSTHENES / PLATO / ARISTOTLE
Chapter 7
The Age of the Dynasts
ALEXANDER III / PTOLEMY I / DEMETRIUS OF PHALERUM / MENANDER / APELLES / EPICURUS
Chapter 8
In the Shadow of Rome
PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS / APOLLONIUS OF RHODES / ARCHIMEDES / ATTALUS / PHILOPOEMEN / POLYBIUS
Chapter 9
Lives in a Mirror

Maps
Glossary
Timeline
Whos Who
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Sources of Illustrations
Index