The book of the ancient Greeks An introduction to the history and civilization of Greece from the coming of the Greeks to the conquest of Corinth by Rome in 146 B.C.

To the people of the ancient world the Mediterranean was "The Sea"; they knew almost nothing of the great ocean that lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules. A few of the more daring...

The long narrow island of Crete lies at what might be called the entrance to the Aegean Sea. This sea is dotted with islands which form stepping stones from the mainland of Euro...

An ancient tradition told the story of how Helen, the beautiful wife of Menelaus King of Sparta, had been carried off by Paris, son of the King of Troy, and of how the Greeks co...

The land to which people belong always helps to form their character and to influence their history, and the land of Greece, its mountains and plains, its sea and sky, was of gr...

The city-dwellers in Greece lived in the plains separated from their neighbours by mountains, and this caused the development of a large number of separate communities, quite in...

The Greeks were bound together by their language, by their religion, and also by their great national games. The origin of these games is still somewhat in doubt. They probably...

Whenever men live together in communities, no matter how small they may be, some form of law has to be observed, in order to maintain order, and that there may be justice betwee...

Of all the city-states in Greece, two stand out from the others as having played the leading part in Greek history. These two are Athens, which most nearly approached the ideal...

Athens was the most beautiful city in Greece. It grew up at the foot of the high rock known as the Acropolis, which in the earliest times was the citadel that defended the city....

The Greeks were a sea-faring people, and they were an adventurous people. Their own land was small, but the islands of the Aegean formed stepping-stones, as it were, to the coas...

The rule of the Lydian Kings over the Ionian cities in Asia Minor had not been a hard one, but that of the Persians was different, for they established tyrants in all the Greek...

The Persians came again. When the report came to Darius of the battle which was fought at Marathon, the King, who even before this had been greatly exasperated with the Athenian...

The Persian had been defeated, and Greece was free. The Athenians had suffered more than any other state, for they had been forced to leave their city to be occupied by the enem...

Almost in the centre of Attica lies a plain surrounded in the distance by hills: towards the East, Mount Hymettus, the home of goats, purple with thyme and filled with the murmu...

The day began early in Athens, and as soon as the sun was up everyone was stirring: the workman was off to his work, the schoolboy to school, and every booth and stall in the Ag...

The chief aim of Athenian education was the building of character. The Athenians were more concerned that their sons should grow up to be good citizens, loving what was beautifu...

The Greek drama began as a religious observance in honour of Dionysus. To the Greeks this god personified both the spring and the vintage, the latter a very important time of ye...

A Greek temple was not a place where people met to worship, and it was never intended to hold a very large number of people. The religious ceremonies were carried on in the grea...

Athens in the middle of the fifth century B.C. was in very truth as Pericles had said, the "school of Hellas." For half a century after the Barbarian had been driven out of Gree...

Up to the end of the Peloponnesian War, the history of Greece had been chiefly the history of Athens and Sparta. The end of the war left Sparta supreme, but she did not know how...

History is the story of the way in which man has learned how to live, and in learning this, man has come from time to time to periods of great change: periods when the old order...

What man achieves is, in regard to its permanent value, of less importance than the spirit in which he achieves it; what one learns is of less importance than how one learns; le...

Alexander was a great conqueror and he won for himself a mighty empire. But that empire did not last, for his successors were unable to hold it together. It would almost seem as...