Publisher's Synopsis
Do you want to explore the energizing and stunning story of Ancient Greece? This history book will unpack the brilliant people, the astonishing wars, and the enchanting legacy of the ancient Greeks, from the Archaic era through to the Hellenistic period.
Exploring ancient Greece's history is spectacularly inspiring. The Greeks gave us our foundational concepts of geometry, our first astronomical models, the beginnings of modern medicine, and our understanding of democracy. Greek sculptures, paintings, and mosaics captured the human form realistically and movingly - like nothing ever seen before. The ancient Greeks were a powerhouse of all things new!
This book unlocks the door to an ancient past reaching through time to touch all parts of our lives. We will follow the Greeks as they developed democracy and employed innovative tactics in epic wars. We will learn how Alexander the Great conquered a mammoth swathe of the known world. We will discern what Greek philosophers taught about life and how to live it.
This thoroughly researched and compelling narrative vividly presents an extraordinary insight into ancient Greece.
A glimpse of the questions this book will uncover includes:
- What ancient Greek scientist first proposed that a spherical earth rotated around the sun?
- Why was Socrates forced to drink hemlock poison?
- What island was destroyed by one of the greatest volcanic eruptions in human history?
- Did the ancient Greeks believe a great flood destroyed humankind?
- When did the Olympic Games begin, and did the athletes really compete in the nude?
- What battle was won when an entire city got diarrhea?
- How did Anaximander predict an earthquake and get the Spartans to evacuate?
- What happened when the Oracle at Delphi breathed in the fumes from the crevasse?
- Why did the Bacchiadeae family send assassins to kill Labda's baby?
- What made Draco's laws draconian?
- Were tyrants always evil, power-hungry rulers forcing their will on oppressed citizens?
- What brilliant tactics made Sparta a military super-power?
- Who killed his father and married his mother without realizing who they were?
- Why did Greece lose 400 years of recorded history?
- Which disastrous wars led to the term "pyrrhic victory?"
- Did Alexander the Great really name a city after his horse?
- How did Xerxes' Persian engineers bridge the Hellespont?
- What catastrophic plague hit Athens in the middle of the Peloponnesian War against Sparta?
- And much, much more!
