Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition. Unlike nearly all of Plato's philosophical contemporaries, Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. The works which are most often assigned to Plato's early years are all considered to be Socratic dialogues, written from 399 to 387. Plato's Middle dialogues were writtten from 387 to 361 and Plato's latter dialogues were written in the period between 361 and his death in 347. This anthology volume includes Five Dialogues of Plato; Euthyphro - Apology - Crito - Phaedo - Meno. Apology, Crito, and Phaedo are dialogues in which Plato details the Philosopher Socrates' last days. Meno is a Socratic dialogue that attempts to determine the definition of virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. Plato's Euthyphro is set in the weeks leading up to Socrate's trial, it features Socrates and Euthyphro, a religious expert who attempts to define piety or holiness. Plato's works are often textbook required reading for courses in politics & social sciences, philosophy, humanities, and Greek & Roman studies. This anthology volume includes many of Plato's most popular and studied works.

A sweeping global history of the birth of modern Greece

In 1821, a diverse territory in the southern Balkans on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire was thrust into a decade of astounding mass violence. The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism traces how something new emerged from an imperial mosaic of myriad languages, religions, cultures, and localisms--the world's first ethnic nation-state, one that was born from the destruction and the creation of whole peoples, and which set the stage for the modern age of nationalism that was to come.

Yanni Kotsonis exposes the everyday chaos and brutality in the Balkan peninsula as the Ottoman regime unraveled. He follows the future Greeks on the seaways to Odesa, Alexandria, Livorno, and the Caribbean, and recovers the stories of peasants, merchants, warriors, aristocrats, and intellectuals who navigated the great empires that crisscrossed the region. Kotsonis recounts the experiences of the villagers and sailors who joined the armed battalions of the Napoleonic Wars and learned a new kind of warfare and a new practice of mass mobilization, lessons that served them well during the revolutionary decade. He describes how, as the bloody 1820s came to a close, the region's Muslims were no more and Greece was an Orthodox Christian nation united by a shared language and a claim to an ancient past.

This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler. Drawing on Ottoman sources together with archival evidence from Greece, Britain, France, Russia, and Switzerland, the book reframes the birth of modern Greece within the imperial history of the global nineteenth century.

Philosophy, art, democracy, language, even computers--the glories of Greek civilization have shaped our world even more profoundly than we realize. Pericles and the Parthenon may be familiar, but what of Epaminondas, the Theban general who saved the Greek world from Spartan tyranny? Alexander the Great's fame has rolled down the centuries, but the golden Hellenistic Age that followed is largely forgotten. Byzantine conjures decadence and deadly intrigue, yet the thousand-year empire that ruled from Constantinople and saved Europe twice from invasion was, in fact, Greek.

Greece's modern chapter, too, tells of triumph and calamity--from liberation and expansion to schism, homegrown dictatorship, Nazi occupation, and civil war. Today's nation is battered by austerity, encroaching climate change, and a refugee crisis--yet unwavering in its ancient values.

James Heneage captures the full Grecian drama in this riveting, short history, revealing Greece as the wellspring of Western civilization--and a model that may yet save modern democracy.

For many, Greece is synonymous with ancient Greece, the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization--sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas.

Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece's contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation?

A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.

The Business of Transition examines how the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigated the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. In this social and cultural history, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Jewish and Greek merchants of Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki) skillfully managed the tumultuous shift from Ottoman to Greek rule amidst revolution and war, rising ethnic tensions, and heightened class conflict. Bringing their once powerful voices back into the historical narrative, he traces their entangled trajectories as businessmen, community members, and civic leaders to illustrate how the self-reinvention of a Jewish-led bourgeoisie made a city Greek.

Papamichos Chronakis draws on previously untapped local archival material to weave a rich narrative of individual portraits, introducing us to revered philanthropists and committed patriots as well as vilified profiteers and victimized Salonicans. Offering a kaleidoscopic view of a city in transition, this book reveals how the collapse of empire shook all the constitutive elements of Jewish and Greek identities, and how Jews and Greeks reinvented themselves amidst these larger political and economic disruptions.

Throughout history, every power that has aspired to dominate the Balkans, a crucial crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa, has sought to control Macedonia. But although Macedonia has figured prominently in history, its name was largely absent from the historical stage, representing only a disputed territory of indeterminate boundaries, until the nineteenth century. Successive invaders-- Roman, Gothic, Hun, Slav, Ottoman-- passed through or subjugated the area and incorporated it into their respective dynastic or territorial empires. This detailed volume surveys the history of Macedonia from 600 BC to the present day, with an emphasis on the past two centuries. It reveals how the Macedonian question has long dominated Balkan politics and how, for nearly two centuries, it was the central issue dividing Balkan peoples, as neighboring nations struggled for possession of Macedonia and denied any distinct Macedonian identity-- territorial, political, ethnic, or national. The author concludes that Balkan acceptance of a Macedonian identity, nation, and state has become a necessity for stability in the Balkans and in a united Europe.

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize - Named a top history book of the year by The Economist

From one of our leading historians, the definitive history of the Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence was an unlikely cause, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get. And they got it, as Europeans and Americans embraced the idea that the heirs to ancient Greece, the wellspring of Western civilization, were fighting for their freedom against the proverbial Eastern despot, the Turkish sultan.

Mazower does full justice to the more complicated reality on the ground, as a revolutionary conspiracy triggered outright rebellion. By the time the dust settled, Greece was free, and Europe was changed forever. It was a victory fora completely new kind of politics--international in its range and affiliations, popular in its origins, romantic in its sentiments, and radical in its goals. The Greek War of Independence was the first war in which a people claimed liberty for themselves and overthrew an entire empire to attain it, inaugurating a new world of nation-states, the world in which we still live.

Now reissued in a fourth, updated edition, this book provides a concise, illustrated introduction to the modern history of Greece, from the first stirrings of the national movement in the late eighteenth century to the present day. As Greece emerges from a devastating economic crisis, this fourth edition offers analyses of contemporary political, economic and social developments. It includes additional illustrations, together with updated tables and suggestions for further reading. A new concluding chapter considers the trajectory of Greek history over the two hundred years since the beginning of the War of Independence in 1821. Designed to provide a basic introduction, the first edition of this hugely successful Concise History won the Runciman Award for a best book on an Hellenic topic in 1992 and has been translated into thirteen languages, including all the languages of the Balkans.

A sweeping history of the Greeks, from the Bronze Age to today

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek city-states, led by Athens and Sparta, laid the foundation for much of modern science, the arts, politics, and law. But the influence of the Greeks did not end with the rise and fall of this classical civilization. As historian Roderick Beaton illustrates, over three millennia Greek speakers produced a series of civilizations that were rooted in southeastern Europe but again and again ranged widely across the globe.

In The Greeks, Beaton traces this history from the Bronze Age Mycenaeans who built powerful fortresses at home and strong trade routes abroad, to the dramatic Eurasian conquests of Alexander the Great, to the pious Byzantines who sought to export Christianity worldwide, to today's Greek diaspora, which flourishes on five continents. The product of decades of research, this is the story of the Greeks and their global impact told as never before. 

The Greek Alexandrian poet C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) has been recognized as a central figure in European modernism and world literature. His poetry explored the conditions for animating the past and making lost worlds or people haunt the present. Yet he also described himself as a poet of the future generations. Indeed, his writings address concerns and desires that permeate the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How does poetry concerned with the past, memory, loss, and death, carry futurity? How does it haunt, and how is it haunted by, future presents?

Specters of Cavafy broaches these questions by proposing spectral poetics as a novel approach to Cavafy's work. Drawing from theorizations of specters and haunting, it develops spectrality as a lens for revisiting Cavafy's poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, as well as his poetry's bearing on our present. By examining Cavafy's spectral poetics, the book's first part shows how conjurations work in his writings, and how the spectral permeates the entanglement of modernity and haunting, and of irony and affect. The second part traces the afterlives of specific poems in the Western imagination since the 1990s, in Egypt's history of debt and colonization, and in Greece during the country's recent debt crisis. Beyond its original contribution to Cavafy studies, the book proposes tools and modes of reading that are broadly applicable in literary and cultural studies.

In this extraordinary personal account of childhood and survival during the Holocaust, Professor Tony (Antony) Molho recounts his adventures in 1940s Greece from ages four to six, as his parents risked everything to hide him from the German occupiers. In doing so he pays homage to the many ordinary people who selflessly protected his family, demonstrating that even in the darkest times the self-sacrifice and kindness of modest people can still prevail. Delving into the power of memory, and exploring questions of personal identity, and the weight of the Shoah, Courage and Compassion goes beyond the bounds of conventional memoir, as Tony Molho also reflects on the nature of Jewish identity in the aftermath of the Holocaust and on how his personal awareness of this trauma has helped him to understand the course of his own life.

The Histories of Herodotus is considered the founding work of history in Western literature. Written in 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Western Asia, Northern Africa and Greece at that time. Although not a fully impartial record, it remains one of the West's most important sources regarding the genre and study of history in the Western world.

The Histories also stands as one of the earliest accounts of the rise of the Persian Empire, as well as the events and causes of the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greek city-states in the 5th century BC. Herodotus portrays the conflict as one between the forces of slavery (the Persians) on the one hand, and freedom (the Athenians and the confederacy of Greek city-states which united against the invaders) on the other.

This case laminate collector's edition includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket.

The Alexiad, a compelling, dramatic account of the Emperor Alexios of the Byzantine Empire (about 1050-1118), was written by Alexios' highly educated and articulate daughter, Anna Komnene. A princess raised in the royal court, Komnene (latinized as Comnena) is generally regarded as the first woman historian. She wrote the book from a convent during the last years of her life. This epic book covers the First Crusade, daily life at the court, internal plots and intrigues, wars and invasions, and religious heresies--all from the perspective of one who was there. It is the only primary source of the First Crusade from the Byzantine point of view. The translation from Greek to English by Elizabeth A. S. Dawes has been praised both for its readability and its accuracy.

Modern Greece is an updated and enhanced edition of a classic survey of Greek history since the beginning of the 19th century. Giving equal weighting to social, political and diplomatic aspects, it offers detailed coverage of the formation of the Greek nation state, the global Greek diaspora, the country's relationships with Europe and the United States and a range of other topics, including women, rural areas, nationalism and the Civil War, woven together in a nuanced and highly readable narrative. Fresh material and new pedagogical features have been added throughout, most notably:

- new chapters on 19th-century nationalism and 'Boom to Bust in the Age of Globalization, 1989-2013';
- greater discussion of the late Ottoman context, Greeks outside of Greece and the international background to the Greek state formation;
- revisions to take account of recent scholarship, Greekscholarship;
- new timelines, maps, illustrations, charts, figures and primary source boxes;
- an updated further reading section and bibliography.

Modern Greece is a crucial text for anyone looking to understand the complex history of this now troubled nation and its place in the Balkans, Europe and the modern globalized world.

For the Aegean island of Syros, the Greek Revolution (1821-1832) marked a significant turning point. Known as the island of the Pope, due to its Catholic majority, Syros transformed into a major commercial hub, seemingly triggering the withdrawal of its indigenous Latin community. Juxtaposing the view from the Archipelago with that from Istanbul, the Peloponnese, Rome, Paris and Vienna, this volume revisits the island's history. From early encounters between native inhabitants and groups from across the Ottoman Levant, to how the Latin community navigated conflict and change during the Greek War of Independence, this book offers new insights into the political, cultural and social history of the region.

This book presents the following: the facts and myths concerning Minoa; the catastrophic earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea; Greece before and after its Dark Ages; and their historical connection with Japan's ancient society. Some historical developments of civilization are deeply rooted in the awful apocalyptic events of nature which were metamorphosed or personified later by mythologies. That being the case, there is an undeniable mythological similarity between Greece and Japan.

Worlds of Byzantium offers a new understanding of what it means to study the history and visual culture of the Byzantine empire during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Arguing that linguistic and cultural frontiers do not always coincide with political ones, it suggests that Byzantine studies should look not only within but also beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire and include the history of Christian populations in the Muslim-ruled Middle East and neighbouring states like Ethiopia and Armenia and integrate more closely with Judaic and Islamic studies. With essays by leading scholars in a wide range of fields, it offers a vision of a richly interconnected eastern Mediterranean and Near East that will be of interest to anyone who studies the premodern world.

History's Spoiled Children is the story of a small Ottoman province and its transformation into a modern European state. In some respects, the challenges to the formation of the Greek state could be likened to those encountered by the Western world in its efforts to impose its politico-cultural model on societies foreign to it. Though the Greeks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were Christians whereas the societies subject to Western experimentation today are Muslim, the political venture known as modernization has treated both as civilizing projects and in no way as equal partners. However, there is one distinction that cannot be ignored. Western Europeans regard Greece and Greeks as foundational in their own history. With this in mind, one may better understand the West's (more or less) particular treatment of these populations, which not only rebelled against the Ottoman Empire in the name of Christianity but also invoked connections to an ancient past in which Europe sees the roots of its own identity. Kostas Kostis explores this perception and traces the formation of this favored modern nation, dubbed in nineteenth-century Europe the ''spoiled children of history'.

When you enter Greece's mountainous peninsula, with its long coastline and unique archipelago, you are returning to the cradle of Western civilization. And while the ancient Greeks fashioned our political, ethical, aesthetic, and scientific values, their descendants down the ages have continued to set trends and shape world events. The Greek character is a product of the landscape. Surrounded by sea on three sides, the physical features of the land forged the pronounced individuality and strong local patriotism of the warring city-states of antiquity. Their shared history and language formed the basis of a powerful world culture. Today it is coming to terms with its recent economic and political upheavals. The Greeks have repeatedly proved they can adjust and shift their expectations--the new generation knows the old ways have gone and is bracing itself for unpredictable challenges. Culture Smart Greece will equip you with essential information about the background, values, and attitudes of the people you will meet and give practical advice on how to deal with unfamiliar situations. Life in Greece operates on many criss-crossing levels, offering plenty of possibilities and a variety of lifestyles. Visitors emerge from their Greek experience enriched for life, with an enduring affection for this beautiful land and its gifted people.