Nicholas G. L. Hammond Boeken

This textbook presents a modern interpretation of Greek ideas, culture, and actions. Changes in the new edition concern mainly the spread and significance of tumulus-burial in Albania and the Mycenaean world, the dating of early coinage, the decree of Themistocles, and some aspects of Alexander the Great.

Volume V of the new edition of The Cambridge Ancient History encompasses the first classic age of European civilization—the fifth century B.C. This was the first and last period before the Romans in which great political and military power was located in the same place as cultural importance. This volume, therefore, is more narrowly focused geographically than its predecessors and successors, and hardly strays beyond Greece. Athens is at the center of the picture, both politically and culturally, but events and achievements elsewhere are assessed as carefully as the nature of our sources allows. Two series of narrative chapters, one on the growth of the Athenian empire and the development of Athenian democracy, the other on the Peloponnesian War that brought them down, are divided by a series of studies in which the artistic and literary achievements of the fifth century are described.

This fourth volume in the Cambridge Ancient History centres on events in Greece and Persia in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, from the creation of the Persian empire to the defeat of the empire's invasion of Greece.The first section of the volume examines the Persian empire, its territories, and its expansion under Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. Second, in this era, Sparta attained maturity as the leader of a military coalition and Athens passed through a period of enlightened tyranny to a moderate democracy of dynamic energy and intelligence. Given the contrast between Greek idealism and Persian absolutism a clash between the two empires was inevitable. Important chapters deal with the revolt of Ionian Greeks against the Persians, and the two Persian invasions of Greece, including the epic battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis. The third division of the volume turns to the Western Mediterranean: Italy has now become a significant factor in the area's historical development and is explored in terms of its peoples and languages from the Bronze to the Iron Ages.

Alessandro Magno, il grande condottiero e stratega capace di cambiare il volto dell'Oriente e dell'Occidente così come erano allora conosciuti, ha da sempre affascinato storici e studiosi. Questo volume ne ripercorre imprese e gesta leggendarie.