The Greeks by Isaac Asimov

The Greeks: A Great Adventure by Isaac Asimov

You would be indeed very lucky to come across a hardcopy of The Greeks A Great Adventure, published in 1965 and no longer in print. Prices in specialist second-hand bookshop start at US$45 and go up from there. 

My copy was an e-book version that I was lucky enough to be able to read in November 2019. I have read a lot of Greek and Roman histories but this was different, in that it covered the history of Greece from the Mycenean Age (i.e., Bronze Age) down to the present at the time of publication (1964)

It was an eye opening read. I could not critique it any better than G. Branden did on Bookreads in November 2009

I remember this book fondly from reading a copy from the school library some 22 years ago, and now that I at long last have a copy of my own, I found that it held up well.

Asimov entertainingly narrates in 18 chapters the history of Greece from the Mycenean Age (i.e., Bronze Age)--though a brief mention of the still-earlier Minoan Period is made--down to the present at the time of publication (1964). The book, as one might expect and possibly desire, is heavily weighted towards coverage of classical Greece, leaving only the last two chapters to cover the most recent two thousand years.

Everything you would expect to find is here: the rise of the city-states, the Persian War, the shifting alliances between the city-states, the Peloponnesian War, the rise and decline of Sparta, the Achaean League, the fate of Syracuse, the conquests of Alexander the Great and Hellenization of the ancient Near East, the successor kingdoms, and the rise of Rome. Asimov being who he was, all of the famous Greek playwrights, historians, and philosophers are introduced at appropriate points in the narrative, alongside the political and military leaders who drive the conventional historical flow. The author takes particular care to note the scientific observations of the ancient Greeks that have survived the test of time, whether they were retained by later Western civilization, or regrettably forgotten only to be recovered later, sometimes after an interim of a thousand years or more.

Asimov was an admitted classical Hellenophile and his enthusiasm for his subject suffuses practically every page. Nevertheless his survey is far from an uncritical one, even when it comes to his beloved Athenians, and he does not hesitate to remind the reader that this foundation of Western culture was built, propagated, and sustained on the backs of slaves. His disdain for the Spartans--the most slavery-dependent and anti-democratic of all the Greek city-states--is sufficiently overt that it is amusing rather than insidious, and a welcome counterweight to the recent(?) fetishization of the Spartans in popular culture. But Asimov is careful to give Sparta its due.

(The parenthetical question mark is because one will note that "Spartans" has for decades been occasionally used for the name of a sports team, but neither "Athenians" nor "Macedonians" are, despite the comparable military achievements of Athens and the superior ones of Macedonia. I suspect the Spartans have long been admired by reactionaries.)

While targeted at older schoolchildren under the publisher's "juvenile" imprint, the book can profitably be read by adults--particularly those who lament the erosion of classical education. Especially helpful is Asimov's offer of a phonetic pronunciation (with accent marks) of nearly every proper noun or proper adjective used, on its first occurrence. Because of the tortuous manner in which Greek names have made it into English--explained by Asimov on page 5 in the only footnote in the book--this is terribly useful. I noted with interest that his pronunciation of "Leonidas" (the famous Spartan king who fought at Thermopylae, recently portrayed in film by Gerard Butler) differs from that currently used, instead placing stress on the second syllable ("lee-on'ih-das", as he renders it). This pronunciation agrees with the only one offered in my copy of the American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition, as it happens. This may thus serve as a shibboleth identifying people who didn't get their ancient Greek history from 300.

I couldn't agree more. The thing that amazes me is that so much information was captured by writers at the time (and we are talking over 2000 years ago for so much of it) and that this information has survived all that time, with all the calamities that have overtaken the world during that time. This includes not only the historical writings but also includes their poetry and literature and their scientific writings. So many comparable societies have disappeared with little to show from a historical perspective.

Isaac Asimov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov) was indeed a polymath, ranging prolifically over the fields of science fiction, popular science, history, mystery and fantasy. The huge field of written work left by him is almost impossible to comprehend, especially since he held down the position of professor of biochemistry at Boston University.

I recently worked my way through his Robot, Galactic Empire and Foundations series, 14 interlinked books that are truly monumental in scale and scope.

He has to be amongst my favourite science fiction writers of all time - and I can now add classical history to that.