Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction

For a book of such brevity, this is a remarkably full accounting of the Ancient Greeks. As Cartledge observes, ancient mainland and Aegean Greece included over 700 individual city-states (poleis), as well as hundreds more Greek colonies and trading-posts along the rims of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Thus it is salutary that Cartledge chooses to approach ancient Greek history through the technique of considering 11 representative Greek city-states in 11 successive chapters, and an Epilogue. This is appropriate, as the polis remained the fundamental unit in over two millennia of Greek History, even when under the later hegemony of such Great Powers as Macedon, Rome, and Constantinople. The poleis Cartledge chooses are as follows: Prehistory: Cnossos (on Crete) and Mycenae; Dark and Archaic Ages (ca. 1000-500 B.C.):Argos, Miletus, Massalia, and Sparta; Classical Period (500-330 B.C.): Athens, Syracuse (on Sicily), and Thebes; Hellenistic Age (ca. 330-31 B.C.): Alexandria; and, finally, Byzantion (later Constantinople and Istanbul). As Cartledge makes clear, this list of necessity leaves out many other worthy contenders such as a Black Sea settlement (though Byzantion is on the narrows of the Bosporus, which lead into the Black Sea); the significant North African city of Cyrene, on the eastern Libyan coast (though Alexandria is later placed some 400 miles east, on the coast of the western Nile Delta); or a city of Magna Graecia (mainland Italy), maybe Cumae, on the Bay of Naples. Through the cities Cartledge DOES choose, he is well-able to narrate the history of Ancient Greece, including the Minoans on Crete; the Mycenaeans on Crete (after 1400 B.C.) and the mainland (Mycenae, Argos) who used Linear B, (deciphered as the earliest known written form [ca. 1400 B.C.] of Greek by Michael Ventris in 1952) mainly for taxation and inventory purposes; colonization; the rise of tyrants; the Greco-Persian Wars (ca. 500-479 B.C.); the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens (431-404 B.C.); the ascendancy of Thebes (early 4th c. B.C.); the rise of Macedon (ca. 338 B.C.); and the coming of Rome (2nd c. B.C.). Professor Cartledge's mind is clearly brimming with a lifetime's learning, and he ranges with alacrity across this sweep of time and geography. This is the first book by Cartledge that I have read, and I quite enjoyed it. He has an engaging style, often leavened by humor. As the book was published in 2009, Cartledge is able to incorporate the most recent scholarship, often archaeological. We learn that a Linear B tablet was found at Thebes with a word that looks like "Lakedaemon," the southwestern region of the Peloponnese which includes Sparta, and is mentioned frequently in Homer as the home of Menelaos, King of Sparta, original husband of Helen (later "of Troy"). No Mycenaean palace (as would have housed King Menelaos), has yet been found in Lakonia, but recent surface finds of Linear B fragments in the vicinity of Sparta offer tantalizing prospects. Also, in Athens, the recent tunneling for the new subway uncovered mass graves, probably from the plague that swept Athens in 430-29 B.C. and took the life of Pericles (builder [and rebuilder] of the sacred structures on the Athenian acropolis) and countless other Athenians. In his narrative, Cartledge notes some interesting facts. He states that Sparta was by far the largest Greek polis in terms of land area, followed by Syracuse, and Athens/Attica in third place. He mentions that at the height of its "Athenian Empire," (ca. 440 B.C.) Athens was collecting 1,000 talents a year from its "allied" poleis, an huge sum not to be equaled by a Greek power until Alexander the Graet pillaged the seemingly limitless wealth of the Persian Empire after 331 B.C. Cartledge also makes the important point that, to the "Old Greeks" in the eastern homelands, the colonies of Sicily, Italy, and the western Mediterranean, represented the "Golden West:" a region of rich agricultural lands and favorable settlement sites. Indeed Sicily, known as a breadbasket and land of sumptuous local coinages, exerted a powerful pull on the Athenians' imagination; and fantasies of riches led to the Athenians' ill-fated Sicilian naval expedition in 415-13 B.C. This horrific defeat at Syracuse planted the seeds for the Athenians' final defeat by Sparta in 404 B.C. Cartledge brings the narrative full-circle by ending with Byzantion. Originally founded as a colony of Megara (on the eastern coast of the Isthmus of Corinth) in 688 or 657 B.C, Byzantion controlled the trade-routes to the rich grainlands of today's Ukraine and south Russia. Constantine moved his main capital from Rome to Byzantion (renamed "Constantinople") in 324-30 A.D. Here Latin was the official language until the reign of Justinian the Great (527-65 A.D.). Later, as the capital of the "Byzantine Empire," (through 1453 A.D.) the inhabitants spoke Greek, but continued to call themselves "Romans." To me, Cartledge's book is a compact but rewarding read. However, as some other reviewers note, it may not be the ideal introduction to someone who knows very little about Ancient Greece. If you paid attention in a decent college survey of Ancient Greek History, much of the book should be familiar. But if there are too many names and places coming too fast, I would suggest reading Cartledge's "Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities" along with H.D.F. Kitto's "The Greeks" (1951), or Moses Finley's "The Ancient Greeks" (1964), both short treatments that will further flesh out the details. The maps in Cartledge's book are quite good, and there in a helpful Glossary, Who's Who, and suggestions for further reading. All in all, a very good book.

First posted on Amazon.co.uk on 12 December 2011 I got this book a while ago. I read it, liked it, adn have turned to it again as a starting point (but not a reference) when wanting to know more about one of the cities that it mentions. This book is however somewhat hard to rate. I found the concept great and rather original: summarize the history of Greece (about twlve centuties of it) through the presentation and history of 11 cities (not all of which can be termed as "greek"). However, the execution was rather problematic and the author, having been limited to less than 200 pages, was always going to face a major problem when dealing with so much content in so little space. To some, this book might seem to be too little and sometimes superficial because a whole book (or several, bearing in mind what Cartledge himself has done for Sparta) could probably have been written for each city. For others, this might be too much, not because of the size, but because the author mixes up a high level summary with quite a lot of details and some explanations that you might not expect to find in such a small book. This problem has, to some extent, already been alluded to by another reviewer when mentioning that the target audience seemed to be undefined. I am not quite sure about that because the book, given its size, clearly does not attempt to be comprehensive and, because it is very accessible, well written, easy to read and portable, clearly seems to have been targeted at the general reader. If I am correct in my assumption, then it is worth four stars. I am, however, among the ones who would have wanted to learn more (much more!) on each of the cities and their specifics so I hesitated and almost rated it three stars. Having said that, the book does include a lot of useful information, despite it small size, such as explaining how Sparta could afford to (and had to, to a large extent) transform itself into a militaristic state permanently geared for war and how this was both its main strength and its main weakness. A very interesting and easy read which I have been going through, once again, when going to work and during my luchtime. I hope that you will also enjoy it, despite its problems...

Reescribir la historia de Grecia desde el punto de vista de varias ciudades es un ejercicio necesario para recordarnos de que se trataba de polis y no de una pugna entre Atenas y Sparta. Esta estructurado en doce capitulos, cada uno dedicado a una ciudad griega (Atenas, Sparta, Siracusa, Bizancio...). La seleccion es buena, pero en el desarrollo se pierde un hilo conductor para cada ciudad y en muchas queda la sensacion de que se ha perdido la oportunidad de hacerlas interesantes por si mismas, aunque fuera por contraste con las mas conocidas. Al ser corto todavia merece la pena leerlo a pesar de suponer un poco de esfuerzo.

Good intro to ancient Greece. Cartledge divides this short book into chapters each covering a particular city-state because ancient Greece was not a homogeneous society, even though they hade a common language and shared pantheon, which is why Cartledge divides up the book into chapters focusing on particular city states from different periods of time. A great book, it illustrates the diverse nature of ancient life and how our modern conception of nationality and culture are in many ways alien to the more independent Greeks.

A conspectus for the classical studies bookshelf, the size of 'Ancient Greece: a History in Eleven Cities' gives the lie to its contents: its concise succinctness makes it a genuine 'breviarium', (p. 1). By no means 'classics-lite', it compresses a broad sweep of history into the dimensions of a portable volume, particularly for students. Like 'The Greeks: a Portrait of the Self & Others' (OUP: 1993, 2002) this inspired account of the 'polis' - the city-state as place and the city-state as concept - is written in a clear and simple English: lucid but never simplistic. In addition, Prof. Cartledge provides clarification of essential Greek language terms, and his indisputable position as 'our man on Sparta' informs the narrative throughout with regard to the convoluted internecine wranglings of the Greek world.

Different approach but interesting.

If you are looking for an overview of ancient greece this book is not helpful. It is a book for greek society scholars not for general reading