The Hellenistic Age: A Short History

by Peter Green

The Hellenistic era witnessed the overlap of antiquity’s two great Western civilizations, the Greek and the Roman. This was the epoch of Alexander’s vast expansion of the Greco-Macedonian world, the rise and fall of his successors’ major dynasties in Egypt and Asia, and, ultimately, the establishment of Rome as the first Mediterranean superpower.

The Hellenistic Age chronicles the years 336 to 30 BCE, from the days of Philip and Alexander of Macedon to the death of Cleopatra and the final triumph of Caesar’s heir, the young Augustus. Peter Green’s remarkably far-ranging study covers the prevalent themes and events of those centuries: the Hellenization of an immense swath of the known world–from Egypt to India–by Alexander’s conquests; the lengthy and chaotic partition of this empire by rival Macedonian marshals after Alexander’s death; the decline of the polis (city state) as the predominant political institution; and, finally, Rome’s moment of transition from republican to imperial rule.

Predictably, this is a story of war and power-politics, and of the developing fortunes of art, science, and statecraft in the areas where Alexander’s coming disseminated Hellenic culture. It is a rich narrative tapestry of warlords, libertines, philosophers, courtesans and courtiers, dramatists, historians, scientists, merchants, mercenaries, and provocateurs of every stripe, spun by an accomplished classicist with an uncanny knack for infusing life into the distant past, and applying fresh insights that make ancient history seem alarmingly relevant to our own times.

To consider the three centuries prior to the dawn of the common era in a single short volume demands a scholar with a great command of both subject and narrative line. The Hellenistic Age is that rare book that manages to coalesce a broad spectrum of events, persons, and themes into one brief, indispensable, and amazingly accessible survey.

Genres: History, Ancient History, Nonfiction, Greece, Ancient, World History, Classics

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

There is more than one author by this name in the database.

Peter Morris Green was a British classical scholar and novelist noted for his works on the Greco-Persian Wars, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age of ancient history, generally regarded as spanning the era from the death of Alexander in 323 BC up to either the date of the Battle of Actium or the death of Augustus in 14 AD.

Reviews

[John-Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is "a short history" and not "a short introduction," and so Green's style is more of a rushed-review-of-stuff-you-already-know rather than, well, an introduction. I almost threw the book across the room when I read on page 14, "Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenid empire [...] this is a story that has been told well many times already, and I see no need to recount it in detail here." Fine, Prof. Green, I'll read your long-ass full-scale biography of Alexander. In the meantime, I'll finish this "short" book so I can really get a sense of crazy internecine fighting among Alexander's descendants and successors, because the only important thing one really needs to know about Alexander is that he didn't care about proper local administration.

There's good stuff, though. Green wants you to know that the Hellenization of much of what gets called "the ancient world" is (1) an unintended consequence of thoughtless military conquest; (2) more about political theology (i.e., semi-divine hereditary monarchs) with its attendant fratricide, incest, and moral depravity than it's about philosophy or art or "culture"; and (3) that the philosophy that rose in this period did so to accommodate imperial realities and not vice-versa. This last point is Green's big one, I think: Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism are the varied outlooks one has when one has given up on politics, or one thinks that politics is about acclimating oneself to the ugliness of power politics. All of which is to say, as Green does a few times, that this was a totally horrible period for ordinary people, slaves and "free" alike, and that the intellectuals didn't do diddly-squat for them. The priests, meanwhile, just existed to support ruler-cults.

So yeah, thanks to Alexander being a strategic genius (but otherwise a drunken maniac) we all now get to read Plato and Aristotle, and the New Testament is in Greek, but this is incidental because really the period from 336 BCE - 30 AD is pretty much Insane Clowns Fighting for Legitimacy while the Rest of the World Starves and Works to Death, until Octavian finally implements double-entry bookkeeping. PS It was also bad for the Jews. (Judas Maccabeus is mentioned once but not much is made of his story. Jesus is not mentioned at all. And IN NO WAY SHOULD THIS PERIOD BE VIEWED AS "PRE-" ANYTHING, BECAUSE NOTHING IMPORTANT HAPPENED AROUND 30 AD-NO-I-MEAN-CE THAT MIGHT AFFECT THE WAY ONE VIEWS THE PERIOD JUST BEFORE IT. MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.)

The book has some really useful timelines and genealogical charts at the end. I dare you to look at the genealogy of the Ptolemies without vomiting.

[Clayton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seleucus II has his eye on taking Cilicia but his mother Cleopatra's second stepson Eumenes is moving a detachment across Syria to engage with Ptolemy IV who is currently putting down a rebellion by his second wife Cleopatra's uncle's cousin Antipater, who is about to corner the Bactrian wheat market, which will be a disaster for Craterus' army that's trying to take Thracia back from Ptolemy II's sister-wife Cleopatra, who is ruling the city in tandem with Meleager's father's cousin Perdiccas, who has struck a deal with the Tigran of Armenia because Arrhidaeus V is going to marry his brother's son's cousin's daughter Cleopatra, even though she was betrothed to Seleucus III after he killed his wife Cleopatra during a battle in the Hellespont because her friend's secretary's assistant wrote a mocking verse about Ptolemy MMCII and his sister-wife Cleopatra in Athens, which was read to Eumenes III by his general Lysimachus while encamped at Thermopylae in order to intercept a detachment led by Antipater IV, who is going to Macedonia...

[Christina Baehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great read, but full of gems of information. For instance, the Greeks knew about a lot of technology that they didn’t bother to pursue or develop - including, amazingly, steam power! Why? Because they lived in a constant state of fear of their massive slave populations. Think about it, a water wheel could grind 150kg of wheat per day, as per against your slave grinding 7 kg. But what is that slave going to do all day if you get a water wheel?

[Coyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hellenistic Age: A Short History is basically the, well, short version of Green's longer work (and magnum opus) Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Even more, this book has the benefit of being the result of 20 more years of scholarship and reflection on Green's part.

In the Introduction, Green discusses both terms, and the state of Hellenistic scholarship. In addition to the standing-Classical-world problem of lack of sources, Hellenistic scholarship also suffers from over-specialization. That is, there are all sorts of focused studies on coins, inscriptions, papyri, politics, and so on, but few comprehensive narrative studies. This book is an attempt to correct that lack.

Unfortunately, the Hellenistic Age (roughly from the death of Alexander through death of Mark Antony and Cleopatra) is one of the least understood and studied eras of the Classical period. This is unfortunate, because it is an era so much like our own. Huge nation states are regularly at war with each other, the poor are trampled by the rich, massive mechanized armies march across the landscape, and arts and sciences have functionally died. Even more, the politics of the day are a tangled nightmare of dynastic intrigue, backstabbing, and calling on powerful outsiders to solve local problems. Dr. Green untangles this mess in a way that makes this three hundred year stretch a delight to learn about. Not that the period itself is particularly delightful- all the nasty stuff that goes on today (extermination of minorities, persecution of the Jews, destruction of the environment) was going on then too, but without the softening influence of 2000 years of Christian history.

Recommended for those interested in Ancient history.

[Myke Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding, highly accessible history of a greatly underserved period. There's a real dearth of strong scholarship on the time from Alexander the Great's death to Cleopatra VI's suicide, which is a shame, because this is some Game of Thrones shit right here. We're talking levels of intrigue, scheming, battles and romance that would make the Supranos look like a shitty, half-baked epic. Somebody desperately needs to make a TV series about this.

Anyway, Green manages to convey all this excitement with real ability, in language that is colloquial and resonant without being populist. The book is even more valuable as a sourcebook for amateur historians like myself. Green has done a fabulous job of illuminating his sources, and provides invaluable maps and genealogies that help the reader keep abreast of the incredibly complex dynastic relationships as they evolve over the years.

I'd recommend ensuring that you have a good grasp on Alexander's legacy before attempting this book, but once you do, it's the first book I recommend you read. You'll come away with an excellent grasp of the basic political, military, social, economic and religio-cultural history of the epoch. Highly recommended.

[Joseph Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph-core to start 2024 and it's good. 5 Stars

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book whose existence is a case of recognized irony. The Hellenistic Age became notorious for the proliferation of short extract histories whose ease of reading kept many larger histories with much more information in them from surviving. This practice became so notorious that the writing of short and straightforward histories has often been viewed at best apologetically (as is the case here) and at worst as some sort of offense against scholarship. This author is wise enough to apologize and self-aware enough to note at least some similarities between the Hellenistic age and our own, not least the fact that Hellenism itself and the term Hellenistic spring from biblical commentary that is at least somewhat harsh towards Jews who sought to behave like Gentiles and adopt their heathenish culture, a tendency that has been marked in our own age, and viewed in a no less hostile fashion by believers. It should be noted, though, that in this age, just as our own, it is not really the believers who write much in the way of history, and this book does not really deal with the biblical aspects of the history of the age so much as it does the narrative history of the age.

In terms of the contents of this book, this work is less than 200 pages long, but it covers the area from 336-30BC nonetheless, despite its small size. The book begins with a preface and acknowledgements and then moves to a discussion of background and sources in an introduction. This leads to an opening chapter on Alexander and his legacy (1), where the author deals with the example that Alexander set for later imitators through his conquests. This is followed by a discussion of the brutal decades of conflict waged by his successors to determine who was the strongest, a contest in which almost none of the successors, not even those who survived into old age, died peacefully in their beds, instead waging eternal warfare to expand themselves at the expense of rivals (2). This is followed by a look at kings, cities, and cultures, and a look at the mythic past as the future (3). After that the author discusses the rising importance of Rome and the cloud it (should have) caused in the West (4), the dynastic troubles of the Seleucids and Ptolemeic dynasties (5), and Rome's final solution to the Hellenistic empire as a whole (6), after which the book ends with a selective chronology, maps and genealogies, a guide to further reading, a bibliography, abbreviations, notes, and an index.

The author's goals are, I think, largely met. This is a short history that does not distort the larger historiography of the age, and it deals thoughtfully with the complexities of the period, interspersing narrative history with a look at issues of politics and culture as well as artistic and scientific matters. Those readers who enjoy what they see here are also given a look at other works that have been written about the Hellenistic Age and so the author's goal of being an entrance into a fascinating area of study rather than a replacement for longer and more nuanced and more complete histories is, I think, handled very thoughtfully. The author has somewhat of a pattern in writing concise histories, and so it would not be at all surprising if the author was highly sensitive to being compared to the writers of condensed histories whose brevity made it difficult for larger histories to survive in manuscript since there was little interest in them when shorter and simpler works were available. This is not a surprising tendency in our own time as well, though at least for the moment there are still institutional favors provided to larger books, even if they have small print runs.

[Tim Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A blow-by-blow history of the murders, usurpations, incests and other crimes of the successors of Alexander the Great. But weak on the economic and intellectual accomplishments of the age. I am left with a sense that these 300 years are merely a chaotic interlude between classical Athens and the Roman Empire. This is a shame, because the author explicitly sets out to prove the opposite.

[Ben Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

In just 130 pages of text, Peter Green seeks to cover the 300 years or history between Alexander the Great’s death and the takeover of the Greek kingdoms by Rome. He does so admirably, but be prepared for a very dense reading. Many times I had to reread paragraphs to really understand who was doing what, and the tortured, winding, incestual family tree of the Ptolemies was a nightmare to understand.

And yet, despite it all, I’ve come away with a decent grasp of the major players and events that colored this period of history, along with its cultural development as well. Green’s digressions on slavery and Hellenistic culture were an especially interesting part of the book, as he postulated that the lack of technological advancement was a direct side effect of trying to prevent slave rebellions. Why try to harness the power of a steam engine if it gives more free time for slaves to get up to trouble?

Overall, this was a good history that tackles a very difficult period that does not lend itself to a unifying narrative.

[Conner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Packs an insane amount of information into a little over 125 pages. Great introduction to the slightly unknown era in between Alexander and Rome's rise to superpower status. Will certainly be getting around to the author's thousand page version in the future.

[Lucy Barnhouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richly erudite, massively entertaining, and gleefully opinionated, often snide, about the extraordinary, extravagant personalities and politics of the world shaped (indirectly) by the reign of Alexander the Great. It's a thought-provoking and deliberately provocative look at both the theory and concept of empire in the kingdoms of the Hellenistic world.

[Howard Cincotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his celebrated “history” poems, the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy drew heavily on Hellenistic Age (330-30 BCE), making references to rulers and events in a time largely unknown or forgotten in the Western imagination. The reason is an obvious one: the era is bracketed by the brief but extraordinary exploits of Alexander the Great on one side; and Rome’s final triumph on the other, with the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium.

From Cavafy, I found my way to Peter Green’s short book, a distillation of his definitive history, From Alexander to Actium. It is brief but dense: the number of royal conspiracies, sibling murders, incestuous marriages, and phalanx battles packed into a single paragraph can be staggering. How many rulers, aspiring and actual, were named Antiochus? At least thirteen by my count —followed by innumerable warlords and generals named Alexander, Antigonus, Demetrius, and Seleucus. Among the women: many many Cleopatras, some of whom became what Green calls “sister-wives” to kings in Ptolemaic Egypt.

The era begins, of course, with the ragged division of Alexander the Great’s European and Asian empires after his death. With the passing of Alexander’s generals — the “Successors” — a rough tripartite division took place, with the Antigonid dynasty ruling Macedonia and Greece, the Ptolemies in Egypt, and the Seleucids based largely in Baghdad.

But the entire system was unstable and subject to dynastic infighting as well as constant warfare and invasions. First, the restive Greek city states, such as Athens and Thebes, never reconciled themselves to Macedonian rule, and rebelled at regular intervals. More often than not, the Macedonians retaliated by sacking the rebel cities. The Ptolemies and Seleucids fought constantly over territories in Asia Minor and present-day Syria. Everyone seems to have conquered or contested Mediterranean islands like Crete.

Enter Rome, the rising “barbarian” power from the west that, by the second and first centuries BCE, used diplomacy, threats, and conquest to turn the Greek kingdoms into pliant client states, and eventually, Roman provinces. At several climatic battles such as Pydna in 168 BCE, as Green points out, the Roman legion prevailed over the Macedonian phalanx. The last to fall was Cleopatra’s Egypt in 30 BCE.

Yet Greek art and philosophy enjoyed unprecedented prestige, albeit enveloped in a haze of nostalgia for the golden era of Periclean Athens in the distant 5th century. Greek thought may have flourished under Roman tutelage, but Rome also looted Greek ceramics, painting, and sculptures in massive numbers and shipped them to Italy, where they graced the villas of Greece’s conquerors.

Culturally, Green depicts the Hellenistic Age as a profoundly conservative one, lacking any energy to innovate technologically or artistically — with the exception of such purely aristocratic activities as philosophy and theoretical mathematics. There were several reasons for this. One is the pervasiveness of slavery, which provided the raw energy to run the ancient world. Constant warfare ensured a steady supply of slaves and wealth to be earned from slave trading. The idea of “labor-saving” devices would have been bizarre, even threatening.

The veneration of all things Greek meant a society that in many respects looked backward and not forward. Finally, the instability and threat of warfare meant a search for security and protection, not an impulse to innovate or explore. Of course, profound change did come to the region, notably in the dispersal of Greek culture and language among non-Greek peoples in Asia Minor and the Middle East. Perhaps the greatest single cultural accomplishment of the time was the founding of the city of Alexandria and its legendary library.

Still, for those who enjoy history’s arcane and exotic pathways, the exploration of the classical world’s Hellenistic Age can be highly rewarding, especially with the poems of Cavafy as your guide — and Peter Green for fact checking and sorting out all those rulers named Antiochus.

[Mmetevelis · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a great deal packed into this little book. First, it's a true chronicle - a narrative history of the classical world between the years of Alexander the Great to the battle of Actium. Green focuses on political history which can be incredibly daunting. Names are so similar and so many events are embroiled together in the dynastic history that covers this period after the fall of Alexander until the intervention of Rome. In hands less adept than his this would be daunting to read compressed into such a format but Green is a really good writer and guide and his incisive analysis and wit keep you following (as well as maps and geneologies in the back). Second, it serves as an enticement to read a little more fully in this fascinating period of history and has great comments about available primary and secondary sources. I'm hooked on this period now. Going to tackle Mary Renault's novels on this time period and then read some more histories of the period by Ian Worthington.

[Penny Wright]

Soft DNF @ around 50%. This is a VERY surface-level look at the Hellenistic Age, starting with Alexander the Great. It actually works better as a refresher than a book you'd read to learn something. If I hadn't had prior knowledge of some of the topics Peter Green discusses, I would have been lost.

[Daniel Stepke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best part will always be the story of Antigonus being asked why he did not declare himself a god: "the bearer of my piss-pot knows better."

[Jim Swike]

It is a good history book that takes us through this Age—an excellent resource for term papers or research. Enjoy!

[Elizabeth Sulzby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best and most well documented book on the Hellenistic Age, starting with Alexander the Great (and his father, Philip) of Macedonia and through the many "successors." This book goes through the first century "CE" without getting sidetracked into the life of Jesus. Green does reference beyond 30 CE into the limited contemporary books, documents, and historical writings looking back from the first 3 centuries CE. This very short book (130 pp. running text, plus 69 pages of maps, ancestry trees, readings used and those useful for beginners and advanced readers, glossaries, indices, etc.). The pages are tightly packed with information but still engaged me throughout. Since so many documents from the centuries covered have come available in the 205h and 21st Centuries CE, Green's book should be standard for texts or references for interested readers. It's a slow read because of the tightly packed text and documentation, but it's also possible to read it rapidly as a "story."

The era after Alexander through Augustus is a period during which oral, written, and political/empire building has been missing. I really needed an overview such as this promised to be, but I found it much more, due to Green's careful documentation. It is a source book that I expect to return to often. I also read historical novels of this period and was glad to find out some events used in them were at least partially historically based. I was disappointed in Green's lack of tying the historical sources to what was in the Alexandria libraries. Strong points of his documentation materials that are referenced by contemporaries, where old manuscripts (mostly on papyrus), or exist only as fragments, and even how actively libraries and circles of scholars operated. I want to know all the documents that were in the main library of Alexandria, how many are available from other sources, and how many are still missing.

[Anatolikon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Green has crafted a very readable and well-rounded history of the Hellenistic Age in the eastern Mediterranean, from the death of Alexander to Rome's conquest of the squabbling Greek kingdoms. It is nice to see such an accessible, cheap volume put out by a major historian in the field. The reason that I don't give it 5 stars is because at times it feels extremely rushed. A lot of detail is sacrificed, and trying to follow some events is mind boggling.

While the book itself is good, the real reason to own this volume is for the appendices. There are some excellent tables depicting the very convoluted family trees of the various Hellenistic dynasties. The Ptolemy tree is an especially welcome addition. The maps are nothing terribly special, but there are a number of them and they're crisp, clear and easy to read. (The Aegean one is a little squished, but it is well-labeled.) The chronological table is also wonderful for making sense of this fast-paced era.

This book is more than worth its price tag for an introduction into the era. More advanced students will want to look at Dr. Green's 'Alexander to Actium', but this little book has a lot of good stuff inside.

[Ryan Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. I suppose the title page warned me, but just because something is a 'short history' doesn't mean that you can just assume background knowledge in your reader. Too often, Green refers to people, literary works, or even archaeological artifacts as if we the reader would just know what those are. At the very least, I think he's misunderstood his audience--if I already knew who or what these things were, I wouldn't need to read a 'short history' of the period.

In the introduction, Green says that he will take on a chronological narrative approach rather than the more traditional thematic approach to the Hellenistic World. I was interested to see how that went, as I do prefer to see the 'story' put into 'history'. I think it was a failure, though. The constantly shifting dynastic politics of the age just doesn't lend itself to a clear narrative, especially in a 'short history' where the characters appear, get married, have kids, and then disappear in the matter of a sentence or two. And lost along the way was a larger sense of the significance of the cultural developments of the age.

So, I cannot recommend this book to anyone who doesn't already know quite a bit about the period, and if you already know that much, then you don't need this book.

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a fascinating history of the Hellenistic kingdoms from Alexander to Rome. The book is a fast-paced run through the soap opera of dynastic politics, the cultural developments of the post classical era, and the relationship between the Hellenistic States and Rome. I really enjoyed reading this book, because now I understand how all of the different cities, Kings, philosophers, and ancient cultural movements fit together. is writing flows well, the transitions are so smooth that I barely notice them, and the author is very witty!

My only complaint is that sometimes the author uses obscure language. He makes references to Kipling poems, includes untranslated French sayings, and paraphrases old idioms. If you aren't already familiar with what he is referencing, the allusions will serve to confuse rather than help the reader make connections. Also, this is a minor complaint but the author uses the romanized versions of Greek words rather than the transliterated Greek and this bothers me.

If you are at all interested in a Game of Thrones style political history, the Hellenistic age, Alexander and Macedonia,or the rise of Rome, I would recommend reading this book.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes this book is a bit overloaded with names and dates, but it is still interesting, and tells a coherent story: between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire, Alexander's various commanders split up his empire, murdered all of the decreased emperor's family, and then created dynasties that busily murdered their own family members until the Romans cleaned up the mess. Ordinary people were not heavily affected by this except during when they were being enslaved during wars (which happened quite often, since the ever-shifting rivalries among the kings led to lots of wars).

Green believes that for people who weren't kings or slaves, this was a profoundly conservative age: intellectuals tended to believe that everything worth doing had been said during the Golden Age of Athens a century or two earlier, and so were not overly creative. Economic thought was backwards because intellectuals and kings disdained trade (however, I wonder whether attitudes would have made a difference in a low-tech, pre-Industrial Revolution world).

[Bruce Reiter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great little book that covers the time period from Alexander to the fall of Egypt as the last Macedonian dynasty. It is only 130 pages with some good maps and an ancestral chart to keep track of the dynastic players. The author includes philosophic insights to include the scientific reasoning of the day and why those of us lower on the food chain are always concerned with ethics. The book is very readable. I was surprised at the wealth of the ancient world and have less good feeling about our republican form of government. Plunder has been and I guess continues to be the name of the game. I used to think Renaissance Italy was a bad place to be a leader or his/her offspring. Can't hold a candle to the machinations of the 300 years after Alexander.

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book may be a "Short History" of the 300 or so years between the epic conquests of Alexander and the final elimination of Ptolemaic Egypt, but Green's work is no light saunter through the topic. This one's rich in detail and deserves a slow, careful read. But the benefits are manifold: a decent understanding of how the Hellenistic world shook out after Alexander, how it ultimately collapsed, and lots of Green's wonderful, academically puckish language. This one is probably for a serious student, but it is worth the read.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good choice for a history text for one of my classes this semester. It was a great supplement to classwork; I enjoyed this one. Although I would have liked for many things to be explained with more detail, I understand that this was a book meant to be brief--and, thus, I've already purchased the much more comprehensive "From Alexander to Actium."

[Jenine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good bedtime book. After a few minutes trying to keep the Seleucid leaders straight I was usually ready to sleep. But given some daylight reading and a bit of concentration I found it rewarding. The author writes with great confidence. How can he know the motivations of these schemers? I often wondered. But I believed his version.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An short and approachable but satisfying overview. Not simply a chronology, it doesn't lack for analysis and has a "take," which is refreshing in a book of this size. Outstanding supplementary material, including an excellent discussion of sources, maps, and genealogies of the various Successor dynasties.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly substantive for such a short book, and really appealingly written too. He focuses on the major geopolitical events but also covers some economic, literary, social and philosophical history, all thoughtfully and concisely.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good view of the period between the rise of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest of Ancient Greece.Though it is very short (130 pages) it is just loaded with information.Recommend to anyone who wants to get a general overview of this time period.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A whirlwind tour of over 300 years. The story from Alexander's last words.."to the strongest..." Until the stillbirth of the Romano-Hellenic dynasty of Antony & Cleopatra and subsequent rise of Augustus to princeps.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wry and often humorous jaunt through the title era. Normally when an author makes present-day analogies to such historic topic matter I roll my eyes, but this was generally funny when it did so. Probably the best era-summary of this time period I have yet come across.