Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. No notes or highlighting. Dustcover missing. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Not that Greece was the beginning of everything. There were brilliant and advanced societies in Mesopotamia and Egypt more than 1000 years before the awakening of Greece. In Crete under the influence of these older cultures a civilization blossomed the charm and atility of which the Greeks were never to equal. It was in Asia Minor that civilization flourished. Today archaeologists are able to establish that in the Neolithic period certain of the great cities of Anatolia enjoyed a harmonious and peaceable existence. Even the Persians were not as bar- barous as their enemies liked to pretend; it seems that they were conscientious and just administrators who were often less cruel in their ways than the Greeks. It must not be forgotten that the Greeks were Indo-European conquerors who had come from the north the Achaeans around the eighteenth century BC the Dorians around the thirteenth century and that it took several centuries of contact with the inhabitants of the Aegean to mellow and civilize these primitive tribes. The Greek people with its mixed ancestry always retained the spirit of these warrior tribes. Proud vindictive and quarrelsome the Greeks were eventually responsible for their own misfortunes and their cities tore each other to pieces until they were sub- jugated first by Philip of Macedon then by the Romans. In vain did Aristophanes astute like many of his com- patriots exclaim indignantly: ‘While your enemies the Barbarians are approaching under arms you are killing Hellenes and destroying their cities! (SP)