HELLAS

The full story of Greece in one illustrated volume, from myth to modern nation.HELLAS begins with the land between three seas and the first farmers and island traders, then follows the Minoans of Crete, the Mycenaean warriors and the world behind Homer, and the Bronze Age collapse. It tells how Sparta became a war machine and how Athens went from kings to citizens, then follows the Persian Wars at Thermopylae and Salamis, the age of Pericles, the Peloponnesian War, and the thinkers and historians who still shape how we read the past.The story continues with Philip II and Alexander the Great, the successor kingdoms, and Greece under Rome. It follows the Byzantine world from Constantine and Justinian to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the centuries under Ottoman rule, and the War of Independence. The modern chapters cover the new kingdom, Venizelos and the Balkan Wars, the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Second World War and Civil War, the military dictatorship, and Greece since 1974.Final chapters cover how the Greeks built their cities and monuments, the Parthenon, daily life, colonization, coinage, warfare, royal families, famous places and mythology. Every chapter ends with The Historian’s Verdict, which separates what is firm, what is probable and what is unknown. With 55 chapters, three cultural interludes, five appendices, a glossary, a note on sources, and more than 130 illustrations of homes, ships, temples, workshops and battlefields.