2nd Edition

Greece in the Making 1200-479 BC

By Robin Osborne Copyright 2009
    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    Greece in the Making 1200–479 BC is an accessible and comprehensive account of Greek history from the end of the Bronze Age to the Classical Period. The first edition of this book broke new ground by acknowledging that, barring a small number of archaic poems and inscriptions, the majority of our literary evidence for archaic Greece reported only what later writers wanted to tell, and so was subject to systematic selection and distortion. This book offers a narrative which acknowledges the later traditions, as traditions, but insists that we must primarily confront the contemporary evidence, which is in large part archaeological and art historical, and must make sense of it in its own terms.

    In this second edition, as well as updating the text to take account of recent scholarship and re-ordering, Robin Osborne has addressed more explicitly the weaknesses and unsustainable interpretations which the first edition chose merely to pass over. He now spells out why this book features no ‘rise of the polis’ and no ‘colonization’, and why the treatment of Greek settlement abroad is necessarily spread over various chapters. Students and teachers alike will particularly appreciate the enhanced discussion of economic history and the more systematic treatment of issues of gender and sexuality.

    1. The Traditions of History  2. Setting the Stage  3. The Problem of Beginnings  4. Forming Communities: The Eighth Century BC  5. The World of Hesiod and of Homer  6. Reforming Communities: The Seventh Century BC  7. The Greek World in 600BC  8. Inter-Relating Cities: The Short Sixth Century (600–520 BC)  9. The Transformation of Archaic Greece 520–479 BC

    Biography

    Robin Osborne

    'The present second edition...is perhaps the most up-dated and the most systematic of all such syntheses currently available in English.' - Palamedes