The art of classical Greece, and its political and philosophical ideas, have had a profound influence on Western civilization. It was in the fifth and fourth centuries BC that this Greek culture―material, political and intellectual―reached its zenith. At the same time, the Greek states were at their most powerful and quarrelsome.
J. K. Davies traces the flowering of this extraordinary society, drawing on a wealth of documentary material: houses and graves, extant sculpture and vases, as well as the writings of historians, orators, biographers, dramatists, and philosophers.
Much of the material from these, the best-documented centuries in Greel history, presents a formidable challenge to the interpreter. J.K. Davies builds, chapter by chapter, a coherent narrative of events from often inconsistent or sketchy sources, and shows how sometimes the same evidence can throw up quite different interpretations. He uses the material to create a rich and vivid picture of a changing society whose values and achievements have so influenced our own.