Book review: A Short History of Ancient Greece

In an effort, to broaden my education, I want to read more non-fiction. P.J. Rhodes’ book A short History of Ancient Greece seems like a good starting point to get insights in a field, I know next to nothing about. I will start by giving a summary of the content and then give my opinion on it.

Our story begins amid the mists of prehistory around the year 800 BC. The Greek Dark Ages, which had come after the collapse of the Mycenaean bronze age civilization, ended and the age of city-states began. These early, isolated communities had no coinage, no common calendars and limited writing, but still managed to grow quickly and began to set up colonies around the Mediterranean, especially in Italy and Asia Minor. In the beginning, these societies were autarkic but quickly learned to focus on their strengths (which happened to be mostly wine and olive oil). Soon, two major powers emerged: Athens and Sparta, which should determine the fate of the Greek peninsula for centuries to come. The Athenians, who believed themselves to be the original settlers of the Attic peninsula, had no shortage of men and distributed land freely. The Spartans were made of a ruling warrior class and a large number of heilotai, meaning ‘captives’ or ‘slaves’, who kept the city running. The intertwined history of these two states makes for some amusing anecdotes. The author tells a story about the Alcmaeonid family, who, after being exiled from Athens, convinced the Oracle of Delphi to tell the Spartans to liberate (e.g. conquer) the city. Their bickering briefly got paused while they teamed up to fight off the invading Persians under their king Xerxes around 480 BC. Unlike told in the movie 300, it seems to be the Athenians who saved Greece by abandoning their city instead of submitting themselves to Xerxes. An earthquake hit Sparta in 464 BC and decimated the ruling class, which let Athens rise further amid the Greek states. They founded the Delian league, officially to keep the Persians on their toes, but soon used the money they got from the other cities to fund their private endeavors. An invention that started to separate them from the rest of Greek is democracy. Until then, most cities were ruled by an oligarchy. Athens expanded this to include all free, adult men.

Open war broke out between Sparta and Athens after a fragile peace agreement is breached and we see the wealthy Athenians go to battle with the poorer, but hardier Spartans in the Peloponnesian war. An effort by Athens to build influence in Syracuse, on Sicily, which cost them resources, failed and they capitulated shortly afterwards. Even though it has won the war, Sparta’s decline continued and soon there were some new kids on the block. Macedon, a kingdom on the northern fringes of Greece, whose inhabitants were neither considered barbarians nor full Greeks, started to build influence in the north under its king Philip II. Before he was murdered by his bodyguard, he formed a league containing the whole of Greece, except Sparta, who was isolated. His son, Alexander III took over and immediately continued to expand his empire towards the east and along the Levant until he reached Egypt. He then marcheed through Babylon and Persia to the Indus river. On the way back, he died and the conquered lands soon break apart. The following years until the Roman conquest consisted of various alliances between the cities, who had lost almost all control over their foreign policy. Rome conquered the Greek satellite cities on Sicily first and finally brought all of Greece under its control in 146 BC.

This book managed to live up to its assignment of providing a short history of ancient Greece. However, it happened to be mainly for the people, who had already read the long history of ancient Greece, learned the dates and names by heart and travelled back in time to explore the geography personally. Below, an especially stark, but not untypical example from the text is given.

At the same time [Athens] challenged Lesbos for control of Sigeum, near the Hellespont, a sign of growing interest in trade with the Black Sea; at one stage Periander of Corinth arbitrated in favour of Athens, but Sigeum had to be reconquered by Pisistratus. In the First Sacred War, in the 590s, Athens (represented by Alcmeon, son of the Megacles who opposed Cylon) was one of the cities supporting Thessaly on the winning side. Pisistratus in this third coup had backing from Greeks in various places, including Argos, Eretria, Thebes and Thessaly, and Lygdamis of Naxos, whom he afterwards helped to become tyrant there. Miltiades, from one of Athens’ leading families, accepted an invitation to preside over a settlement of Thracians in the Chersonese (Gallipoli), on the northern side of the Hellespont, thus reinforcing Athens’ acquisition of Sigeum. Athens broke with Thebes in 519 by supporting Plataea against it.

Before reading the book, I knew that the Athenians were the ones with the stone tablets and the Spartans were the ones with the spears and I was completely overwhelmed by the number of places and persons mentioned. I appreciate the author’s intent to make his book precise and thorough, but it turned out to be too much for a layman like me. Some maps are included, but they are not detailed enough to easily follow the proceedings.  In the Further Reading section, two topic-focused books are mentioned: Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction and The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece. In hindsight, I would have probably chosen one of these as an introduction to the topic.