A Smaller History of Greece: From the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest

Smith, William, 1813-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7

Word count: 561K words
Chapters: 57

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Smaller History of Greece: from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest by SmithAuthor: Smith, William, 1813-1893,Language: English, Class: DF: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Greece, Release Date: Mar 1, 2000

Editor's review

This concise history of Greece by the nineteenth-century British classicist William Smith traces the Greek story in a clear chronological line from prehistoric legend to the Roman conquest, covering political institutions, military conflict, and social culture along the way. Written as an introduction for general readers, it does not pile up scholarly apparatus but advances by narrative to explain the rise and fall of city-states and the key figures involved, moderate in length and complete in structure. This free electronic edition from Project Gutenberg is easy to search and carry, making it a sound first step into Western classical civilization. Read it alongside maps and a chronological table, and stay mindful of the book's nineteenth-century perspective: it offers a reliable basic framework, but some judgments and wording bear the mark of their era. Overall, it is an excellent-value general survey, worth using as a starting point for systematic study or as classroom supplementary material.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Beginning readers interested in ancient Greek history who want a complete general framework
Lower-division humanities students who need background knowledge of Western classical civilization
Self-learners who want Greek history as a starting point for reading in Western cultural literacy
Learners who want to practice reading historical texts in the original English

Not a good fit for

Specialist researchers seeking the latest archaeological findings and cutting-edge academic discussion
Advanced readers expecting in-depth analysis of institutional or social history
Readers who prefer light, story-driven narration and dislike dense information on people and places

Reading tips

First read the table of contents and the opening and closing of each chapter to build an overall timeline from Aegean civilization to the Roman conquest.
Keep a map of ancient Greece and a chronological table at hand while reading, to locate city-states and battle sites at any time.
After each chapter, retell the main points in three to five sentences to check your grasp of cause and effect.
Mark judgments in the book that carry a nineteenth-century flavor, and return to reflect on them after finishing the whole book.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers with no background?

Yes. The book proceeds chronologically in narrative form, keeps technical terms relatively restrained, and lets readers with no background gain a complete framework of Greek history. Names of people and places are fairly dense, however, so reading with maps and a chronological table is recommended; mark unfamiliar city-states simply rather than trying to memorize them all.

Is the electronic edition in Chinese or English?

According to the information, the book is the original English edition, a free e-book from Project Gutenberg. Reading it requires some English proficiency; historical texts have fairly regular sentence patterns, making it suitable as practice material for reading a general history in the original English.

Up to what point does the book's content cover?

The title states from the earliest times to the Roman conquest, so the narrative ends with the Greek conquest by Rome. Readers can thus understand the time span the author covers, but the specific chapter divisions and relative detail should be based on the actual e-book content.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Smith, William, 1813-1893 Author · British · 1813–1893

William Smith (1813–1893) was a British lexicographer and classical scholar. He compiled A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities and wrote works of ancient history for general readers, including A Smaller History of Rome and A Smaller History of Greece: from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest. His works are known for their clear organization and concise narrative, condensing the institutions, customs, and historical development of the classical world into volumes suited both to reference and to continuous reading, and they circulated widely in the popularization of classical knowledge in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world. Public information on the details of his life is limited, and his contribution is currently understood mainly through his dictionaries and historical writings.