Ancient Athens On 5 Drachmas A Day

A time-traveler's guide to sightseeing, shopping, and survival in the city of gods and geniuses. Welcome to Athens in 431 BC! This entertaining guide provides all the information a tourist needs for a journey back in time to ancient Athens at its pinnacle of greatness more than 2000 years ago. Travel via Thermopylae, the Oracle at Delphi, and the site of the epic Battle of Marathon to the city of Athena, goddess of wisdom. Meet Socrates, Thucydides, Phidias, and others who are among the greatest philosophers, writers, and artists who ever lived. Encounter ordinary Athenians in the marketplace and at the theater and learn the true character of one of the most extraordinary cities of any age. Of course, ancient Athens was not all art, intellect, and politics. This well-researched yet irreverently unacademic guide also plunges gleefully into the hedonistic side of Athenian life with wine-sodden symposiums, brothels, and brawls, advising the reader to avoid slatternly prostitutes and inns where the beds are infested with bugs, and warning that both torches and an escort are needed to avoid muggers after an evening on the town. Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day takes you through the raucous city crowds to the serene heights of the Parthenon and evokes the wonder of a city where the monuments and ideas that form the bedrock of Western culture are as fresh and new as the garlands of flowers on Athena's altar.

Tourist's guide to the city of Rome as it was in ca. 200 AD.

During the course of a day we meet 24 ancient Athenians from all levels of society - from the slave-girl to the councilman, the fish-seller to the naval commander, the housewife to the hoplite - and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their company.

Presents a tourist's guide to the city of Rome as it was around 200 CE.

This book is a portrait of Ancient Greece—but not as we know it. Few people today appreciate that Greek civilization was spread across the Middle East, or that there were Greek cities in the foothills of the Himalayas. Philip Matyszak tells the lost stories of the Greeks outside Greece, compatriots of luminaries like Sappho, the poet from Lesbos; Archimedes, a native of Syracuse; and Herodotus, who was born in Asia Minor as a subject of the Persian Empire. Stretching from the earliest prehistoric Greek colonies around the Black Sea to Greek settlements in Spain and Italy, through the conquests of Alexander and the glories of the Hellenistic era, to the fall of Byzantium, The Greeks illuminates the lives of the Greek soldiers, statesmen, scientists, and philosophers who laid the foundations of what we call “Greek culture” today—though they seldom, if ever, set foot on the Greek mainland. Instead of following the well-worn path of examining the rise of Athenian democracy and Spartan militarism, this book offers a fresh look at what it meant to be Greek by instead telling the story of the Greeks abroad, from modern-day India to Spain.

Full of intriguing facts and diverting stories—the ideal introduction to the myths and tales that lie at the heart of Western culture. Who was Pandora and what was in her famous box? How did Achilles get his Achilles heel? What exactly is a Titan? And why is one computer virus known as a Trojan horse? The myths of ancient Greece and Rome can seem bewilderingly complex, yet they are so much a part of modern life and discourse that most of us know fragments of them. This comprehensive companion takes these fragments and weaves them into an accessible and enjoyable narrative, guiding the reader through the basic stories of classical myth. Philip Matyszak explains the sequences of events and introduces the major plots and characters, from the origins of the world and the labors of Hercules to the Trojan War and the voyages of Odysseus and Aeneas. He brings to life an exotic cast of heroes and monsters, wronged women and frighteningly arbitrary yet powerful gods. He also shows how the stories have survived and greatly influenced later art and culture, from Renaissance painting and sculpture to modern opera, literature, movies, and everyday products.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to ancient Athens, its topography, monuments, inhabitants, cultural institutions, religious rituals, and politics. Drawing from the newest scholarship on the city, this volume examines how the city was planned, how it functioned, and how it was transformed from a democratic polis into a Roman urbs.

Rise & Decline is a political science work that examines the history of six republics to identify common elements in their rise, decline and extinction. Ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Third Republic of France have all passed from the world scene. The United Kingdom and the United States of America still exist, but are in decline. While many things can cause the end of a nation, these studies show that the normal life cycle of a nation - its birth, rise, maturity, decline, expiration - is determined by the degree to which its citizens accept the principles upon which it was founded - its raison d'être. Nations in ascendance are characterized by a critical mass of citizens attuned to their founding principle. As they decline, nations are characterized by growing numbers of citizens who are indifferent to or disdainful of founding principles. History is clear: All nations end. The existential question for Americans is not whether we can prevent it.