Ancient Greek History Gift Guide (Part 5): A Brief History of Ancient Greece
Seeing as though we are nearing the Christmas period, a time when many of our readers will likely be giving gifts to their families and friends, I thought I would offer a kind of guide to some books about ancient Greek history that are available.
Buying books can be very difficult. You must account for the recipient’s personal taste and, in this case, their level of familiarity with the subject matter. In order to properly offer readers a gift guide, these reviews examine these books not just through a historical lens but also through a consumer’s lens, looking at the price and quality of the book, so you can tailor your choice to fit whoever it is you’re getting a gift for, whether that is for someone on their way to study it at university or an enthusiast. In this installment of the Ancient Greek History Gift Guide, we will be taking a look at A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture by Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, David W. Tandy, and Georgia Tsouvala.
I had not intended to review this book, since it is the most textbook-like of the books reviewed in this short blog series. However, after seeing earlier editions of the book appear on various reading lists, both from universities and general readers, and that a new edition was published this year, I decided to include it.
Like Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, the book reviewed in the previous entry in this blog series, A Brief History of Ancient Greece follows the typical format of introductory books on ancient Greece, offering readers a general historical narrative interspersed with regional and topical discussions. While the book covers Greek history from 3000 BC to AD 212, with Caracalla’s granting of citizenship to all inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the focus is very much on the Archaic and Classical periods, with Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman Greece each receiving a single chapter. Indeed, the chapters on Hellenistic and Roman Greece feel very much like an extended conclusion, especially after two more focused chapters on Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. Given the ever-growing interest in Hellenistic history, and considering Stanley M. Burstein, one of the authors, is a specialist in Hellenistic history, the relatively shallow discussion of the Hellenistic world (compared to that of the Archaic and Classical periods) feels like a significant oversight. What’s more, as with most other general narrative histories of ancient Greece, the focus is very much on the major political powers of the period, such as Athens, Sparta, and Macedon. More liminal parts of the Greek world, such as the western Greeks, Cyrene, and the Black Sea colonies (the latter of which Burstein has also written about), as well as the minor poleis in the Aegean, are only briefly mentioned, if at all. The hegemony of Thebes, one of the major political players in Classical Greek history, is covered in a few pages, and the brief ascendancy of Thessaly in the first half of the fourth century BC under Jason of Pherae — arguably a harbinger of Macedon’s rise — is not mentioned at all.
Much like the overall structure of the book, the main content also followed the typical pattern of introductory books on ancient Greece, with sections of political history punctuated by sections discussing cultural developments. However, A Brief History of Ancient Greece has a greater emphasis on these cultural elements than on the political, with long sections (although, still relatively brief) devoted to the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides, and Plato and Aristotle, among others, while the political narrative focused on the major events and players. Despite this overall brevity, the authors noted areas of academic debate and even included many pieces of information that do not frequently appear in introductory or specialist books. When discussing sexuality in ancient Greece, for example, the focus tends to be on pederasty, but in A Brief History of Ancient Greece, the authors noted that age-peers in school groups might also have had relationships with one another, something that does not normally come up in such discussions (p. 234; citing Xenophon, Symposium 4.23–24). However, at the same time, there were plenty of instances where the general brevity of the book was also potentially misleading for the reader. For instance, when narrating Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the authors write how “Darius I had incorporated India into the Persian Empire” (p. 352). The issue with this statement is what is precisely meant by India. Today, India refers to the Republic of India, which encompasses the entire subcontinent, but India had a variety of meanings in antiquity, with the Greco-Romans using India to refer to the Indus Valley, which roughly corresponds to modern Afghanistan and Pakistan (Ruffing, 2021, p. 711). Without specifying what is here referred to by India, a reader unfamiliar with Achaemenid history — the target audience of this book — might imagine Achaemenid encompassing the entire subcontinent.
Moreover, as with the other books reviewed in this blog series, A Brief History of Ancient Greece fails to do justice to modern research into Classical Sparta. For starters, the Spartans are said to be, prior to the fourth century BC, “the only real professional soldiers” in ancient Greece and that they were “trained to the highest degree of skill possible” (p. 118). These statements are woefully misleading, using terminology that will evoke modern military drills and weapons training to the unfamiliar reader. Further elaboration on what training was like for Spartans — simply following the man in front
and listening to officers — would have avoided this. The authors also perpetuate the outdated and mistaken notion that, in the Classical period, Spartans were assigned one of 9000 lots of land in Messenia upon birth, which reverted to state control upon their death and was, subsequently, given to another Spartan (p. 133), which has been demonstrated to have been an invention of the reforms of Agis and Cleomenes in the Hellenistic period and not a practice in Classical Sparta (however, see Figueira, 2016 on an alternative argument about Sparta's relationship to Hellenistic and later authors). Readers are, unfortunately, presented with an image of Sparta that is wholly outdated. Yet the entries in the suggested readings for Sparta — each chapter ends with a list of suggested reading — have mostly been published since 2000. That said, the list is woefully incomplete, lacking some essential reading one would expect, such as Stephen Hodkinson’s Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta or Michael Flower’s article on the invention of tradition in Sparta (see also, Schütrumpf, 1987). These works really are essential reading for understanding Classical Sparta, and I did not exaggerate in my review here on the blog when I said that Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta is the foundation upon which modern Spartan studies are built. Readers, whether students or professors using A Brief History of Ancient Greece as a textbook, are not offered the proper modern academic understanding of Classical Sparta. However, as far as I could tell, this was an isolated issue, with the other chapters of the book largely offering readers a modern perspective on different topics and recent works with which to pursue further study.
Around the middle-mark of the book, there were some printing issues. Groups of pages were printed out of order, with pp. 179–186 appearing after p. 194 and pp. 195–202 appearing after p. 210. This is potentially an issue with my own copy of the book, but it is also possibly present in other copies. However, no content was missed, as far as I can tell, so it only offered a brief interruption to the reading experience.
A Brief History of Ancient Greece has the same pitfalls of most, if not all, other introductory works on ancient Greece. It is brief, sometimes even shallow, with limited room to expand upon areas of debate, and its information on Sparta is outdated and plays into modern stereotypes. Yet despite these pitfalls, the book is well written and engaging, largely informing readers of the basic modern understanding of Greek history and society — especially that of Athens — with a liberal inclusion of maps and both black-and-white and colour images. It is a shame that readers are not provided with a broader look at the Greek world, such as the Bosporan Greeks in the Black Sea or the Massaliotes in southern Gaul, but only so much can be covered in 400 or so pages. That said, at £62.99, this is an expensive book, and I am not sure it is worth that for a general reader. A student, especially one for whom this is their textbook, may benefit from this as a gift, but there is nothing to raise this book above the others favourably reviewed in this series.
References:
Figueira, T.J. “Politeia and Lakōnika in Spartan Historiography.” In Myth, Text and History at Sparta edited by T.J. Figueira, 7–104. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2016.
Flower, M. “The invention of tradition in classical and hellenistic Sparta.” In Sparta: Beyond the Mirage, edited by A. Powell and S. Hodkinson, 191–219. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2002.
Hodkinson, S. Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2000.
Ruffing, K. “India.” In A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, edited by B. Jacobs and R. Rollinger, 711–715. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2021.
Schütrumpf, E. “The Rhetra of Epitadeus: A Platonist Fiction.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 28 (1987), 441–457.
A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture by Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, David W. Tandy, and Georgia Tsouvala. (ISBN: 9780197783481) is available from Oxford University Press.