Greece is fascinating – it is nearly impossible to
completely avoid Greek influence in various things you read, watch or do – if
you are a sports enthusiast, there is the Olympic Games influenced by Greek
tradition, mathematics is full of Greek symbols owing to the early discoveries
by Greeks in the subject, literature has a lot of ancient Greek influences,
among various other things as the list goes on. This is a short compilation of
some of the important aspects of Ancient Greece by Hourly history.
The first thing that the book started with was describing
the various characters of the Greek mythology and their importance to the
locals. The next the book tried and established was that Greece back then was
no a homogenous unit as it is today, and the city states (Athens, Sparta, etc.)
were often hostile to each other and united only in case of facing a common
enemy – Darius and Xerxes of Persia. Followed by that, there were elaborate
descriptions of the two most famous cities, being Athens and Sparta, followed
by Literature, philosophy, art and architecture and science, in Ancient Greece.
I liked how the book was structured, that it had a short
five page focus on all the major aspects. It also established how ancient
Greece was run and the various types of Governments that were present
throughout – some with tyrants and some being democracies (a word whose
etymology has Greek origins). I am also glad that the focus was not entirely on
mythology, for that has been highly popularised by Hollywood and in my case, by
games (Age of Mythology was my first encounter with Ancient Greece). The book
touches upon most of the famous aspects of ancient Greece, being the Colossus
of Rhodes, Archimedes, the war against Persia, etc and thus, they chose the
right topics.
I don’t have any major flaws to pick, with this book, maybe
they could have made a passing mention of Alexander of Macedonia, perhaps the
most famous emperor of Ancient Greece but then, that would probably be a
biography of its own from Hourly History.
I would award the book a rating of eight on ten.
Rating – 8/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
Andy
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