CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

List of Maps and Credits

Author’s Note

Preface

1. Of Ledgers and Legends (1500 BCE–c. 1180 BCE)

2. ‘Homer’s World, Not Ours’ (c.

3. Inventing Politics, Discovering the Cosmos (c. 720 BCE–494 BCE)

4. The First World Wars and the ‘Classical’ Age (494 BCE–404 BCE)

5. Cultural Capital (404 BCE–322 BCE)

6. ‘Becoming Greek’ (322 BCE–27 BCE)

7. Rome’s Greek Empire (27 BCE–337 CE)

8. Becoming Christian (337–630)

9. ‘The Eyes of the Universe’ (630–1018)

10. ‘City of the World’s Desire’ (1018–1204)

11. Hopeful Monsters (1204–1453)

12. Between Two Worlds (1453–1669)

13. ‘Greek Revival’ (1669–1833)

14. European State, Global Nation (1833–1974)

15. New Ledgers, New Legends (1974–2021)

Epilogue

Photos

Acknowledgements

Discover More

About the Author

List of Illustrations and Photo Credits

Permissions

Notes

Further Reading

Praise for The Greeks

This book is dedicated to all my Greek friends, acquaintances, former students, and colleagues, wherever they are in the world today, and to the memory of those who are no longer with us.

By so much has our city exceeded all mankind in matters of thought and speech, that her students have become the teachers of others; she has caused the name of Greeks to be understood, not in terms of kinship any more, but of a way of thinking, and people to be called Greeks if they share our educational system, rather than a common ancestry.

—Isocrates, Panegyricus (Athens, 380 BCE)

There one can see a western European acquiring his ABCs, a Russian learning Greek, a Byzantine studying the works of the ancient Greeks, and an unlettered Greek learning to spell the ancient language correctly.

—Anna Komnene, Alexiad (Constantinople, c. 1150)

The language given to me was Greek:

the poor man’s home on Homer’s sandy shores.

My language is my single care on Homer’s sandy shores.

—Odysseus Elytis, The Axion Esti (1959)

I do not say that we are of the same blood—because I have a horror of racial theories—but we still live in the same country and we see the same mountains ending in the sea.

—George Seferis, speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature (1963)