A Culture of Freedom Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

by Meier, Christian; Raaflaub, Kurt

• ISBN13: 9780199747405
• ISBN10: 0199747407
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Christian Meier is one of Europe's preeminent authorities on the classical world.A Culture of Freedommarks the apex of his lifelong research on ancient Greek culture. Beginning with a section on medieval and modern Europe's enormous inheritance of Greek institutions and ideas, the book moves on to chronicle the rise of Greek civilization from the Bronze Age to the Greco-Persian wars. Throughout, the author provides fresh insight into the "Greek miracle," as he illuminates the well-known features of Greek culture--from epic and lyric poetry to warfare, athletics, philosophy, religion, and democracy. What made these achievements possible and so enduring? Meier argues that across the whole range of human experience--in politics and philosophy no less than in war, sport, and religion--there was one common denominator among the ancient Greeks: an attempt to find compromise, balance, and understanding in the face of problems others usually solved by means of power.A Culture of Freedomis an original and learned portrait of a civilization that still captivates and inspires.

Author Biography

Christian Meier, Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Munich, is the author of Caesar: A Biography, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age, and From Athens to Auschwitz: The Uses of History.

Table of Contents

List of Maps	p. xvii
List of Figures	p. xviii
The Question of Beginnings
Introduction	p. 3
A Most Unusual Case I: The Appropriation of Antiquity by Medieval and Modern Europe	p. 6
The Challenge of Freedom	p. 9
A Most Unusual Case II: The Early Conditions of the Formation of Medieval and Early Modern Culture	p. 16
The Constitution of Europe as a Continent	p. 21
Greeks and Persians I: Freedom and Rule-Atossa's Dream	p. 27
Europe and Asia in Antiquity	p. 37
Antiquity as European Prehistory or Early History	p. 44
The Rise of the World of Poleis
A Post-Mycenaean New Beginning: Origins of Greek Particularity	p. 51
The Dawn of an Era: The Eighth Century BC	p. 61
The Greeks and the Orient	p. 68
Colonization	p. 75
Homer and Hesiod	p. 85
Gods and Priests	p. 105
Crisis and Consolidation: The Seventh and Sixth Centuries BC	p. 112
Polis Individualism and the Pan-Hellenic Context: The Agonistic Impulse	p. 127
The Diversity of the Poleis: Sparta and Other Cities	p. 139
The Wars	p. 150
Polis Structure: Public Sphere and Institutions	p. 161
Crisis: Aristocratic Rivalries, Social Conflicts, Tyranny	p. 180
Lyric Poetry, the Symposium, and a Reorientation towards Virtue	p. 196
The Beginnings of Political Thought: The 'Middling Class'	p. 214
The Beginnings of Philosophy and Science	p. 226
Athens's Path towards Isonomy and its Rise to Power	p. 240
The Aegean World around 500 BC: Greeks and Persians II	p. 266
Outlook	p. 276
Epilogue	p. 286
Glossary of Greek terms	p. 290
Sources and Further Reading	p. 291
Picture Acknowledgements	p. 303
Index	p. 304
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