This course book is intended to accompany the third edition of D.'s and G.'s Ancient Greece: Social and Historical Documents from Archaic Times to the Death of Alexander the Great (2010) by providing the necessary background to the translated texts. The fifteen chapters introduce students to the major historical developments and cultural aspects of Archaic and Classical Greece: the rise of the polis and colonisation, the major Greek political reformers, the Persian Wars, Athenian imperialism, the Peloponnesian War, and the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great. Its historical survey is not limited to mainland Greece, but considers developments in neighbouring Mediterranean regions including Italy, Egypt, Asia Minor and Persia. Political history is integrated with chapters on Greek religion, gender and sexuality, slaves and citizens, democracy and other institutional forms, thus offering a balanced introduction to key political, social and cultural aspects.
Though intended to be used along with the sourcebook, this volume can also be used on its own, since references to primary sources are clearly given in the main text along with their document numbers, which are easily coordinated with the sourcebook. Students will encounter a wide range of evidence from prose texts to Greek poetry and drama, archaeology of cult, Greek art and iconography, monuments and inscribed documents. The book is richly illustrated with maps, photographs, drawings and other illustrations, along with extremely useful tables providing at-a-glance information, a glossary of common Greek terms and an extensive bibliography arranged topic by topic for further reading at the end.
If read independently as a narrative, its numerous subheadings in each chapter (in order to match the topics covered by the translated texts) break up the main text into small disparate sections that at times lack coherence. The breadth of coverage, despite its advantage of introducing students to a wide range of topics, is inevitably achieved at the expense of depth of analysis. The book would have benefited from more cross-referencing to help students make the maximum use of it: for example, Chapter 2's section on the Delphic oracle (pp. 45–6) can be correlated with that on divination in the following chapter (pp. 80–5); Athenian democracy in Chapter 1 (pp. 14ff.) can be cross-referenced with Cleisthenes' reforms in Chapter 10. Given the book's source-based approach, one would have expected an introductory chapter with an overview of the different kinds of evidence to be encountered (and perhaps the existing collections of sources, if any, in each category) before further comments on the kind of sources specific to a particular topic later on. A chapter on sources is currently placed at the end of the accompanying sourcebook (not the textbook itself), focussing primarily on the literary genres and not the less familiar (to undergraduates) epigraphic, visual, archaeological and numismatic materials. The book would have benefited from an account of the conventional chronological divisions in Greek history: Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods all feature on p. 1, but are left unexplained. Also helpful would have been a more detailed Greek map than those provided, and/or an interactive map on the companion website. To help students make better use of the final bibliography, more references to modern scholarship and discussions of scholarly debates could have been integrated into the main text.
There are occasional inaccuracies or imprecisions in this voluminous work. For example, it is slightly misleading to describe the Eleusinian first-fruits (aparchai) as ‘a tithe (dekate) or 10 per cent of the first of the harvest’ (p. 92); the portion specified is much smaller, as D. and G. go on to say. On p. 114, doc. 4.4 is an error for doc. 4.46, ‘see Fig. 4.6’ is irrelevant. The primary source for Friedländer 126 cannot be traced by looking up its corresponding doc. 3.69; instead of Friedländer, one feels that references to the original inscription (Lindos II, no. 2.C.16–18) should be given when cited in parenthesis in the main text. IG I3 1014: doc. 3.70 suggests a comparison with Kallimachos' offering in doc. 7.12, but 7.12 appears to be a wrong document number (the correct reference seems to be doc. 11.14). The tremendously useful chapter bibliographies (pp. 578–626), though ‘not intended to be exhaustive’ (p. 580), may be further updated. For example, see now OCD 4 instead of OCD 3, R. Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200–479 BC 2 (2009) instead of the first edition (1996), J.D. Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion 2 (2010) instead of the 2005 version. Other textbooks useful for undergraduates, and which can supplement this volume, at least deserve to be mentioned: J.M. Hall, A History of the Archaic Greek World: ca. 1200–479 bce (2007), S. Hornblower, The Greek World, 479–323 b.c. 4 (2011), E. Kearns, Ancient Greek Religion: a Sourcebook (2010), P.J. Rhodes, A History of the Classical Greek World 2 (2010).
The volume is a very well thought out and user-friendly textbook suitable for undergraduates at all levels, though more advanced undergraduates may want to supplement it with books with more in-depth analyses. Together with the sourcebook, it provides teachers with an excellent resource and an exemplary model of how to introduce students to the basics without taking things for granted. I will certainly consider using it when designing my next introductory Greek history course.
