Customer Reviews

Ancient Greece: State and Society

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This is a short lively book on two centuries in one city - 5th and 4th century Athens. The first 50 pages give quick context on the Greek world from 6500 BC. This is very helpful towards understanding the great stories of the past that Athenians all knew, and explaining the origin of the Athenian city plan and political order. Jones's vivid account of Mycenean palaces gave me a whole new sense of Homer and the characters in Greek tragedy.

Then the book settles into the city. Jones describes its physical arrangement, government and religion, the main political and economic groups, family structure, and the life patterns of typical occupations: farmers, laborers, craftsmen. Jones has a great way of picking lively details. My favorite is his account of archaeological finds on a street that Socrates used to frequent. It is a very good balance of overview and detail, for a quick look at Athens.

One striking feature of the book is how clearly Jones describes other interpretations competing with his own, and how he uses that to make the book more lively and attractive. It does not come across as bickering, but as exploring possibilities. He is generous enough to give sympathetic accounts of many other views (though I suppose the people he disagrees with may not agree with me!). Much of this material is necessarily conjectural, as the sources are quite sparse. Jones makes a few very helpful remarks on the the extent of existing archaeological evidence.

And of course the book gives good suggestions for further reading on many topics.

This book is a short (214 pages) introductory textbook on ancient Greece generally and ancient Athens specifically. The reason that the text focuses mostly on ancient Athens is not Professor Jones's fault, rather, there simply is not much documentary evidence from any other city-state in ancient Greece vis-a-vis that of Athens (and the surrounding Attica). The book begins with a few introductory chapters covering the ancient Minoans and Myceneans, the palace-state, the "Dark Age" of Greek civilization then transitioning into the "Archaic Age" and the birth of the city-state. From hereon Jones fixes his pen almost exclusively on Athens (there is a short summary of life in Sparta in chapter 5).

Since "State and Society" is the subtitle of this book Jones provides an overview of social life and government and shows how social life and government were almost always intertwined. Included are surveys of Athenian political systems, urban and rural life, economics and economic life, social classes, women, and domestic/ family life. These surveys are well done and detailed for an introductory text; Jones covers the growth and development of Athenian politics and democracy particularly well, as this is one of his academic specialties.

Historical narrative is not this book's strength. The reader has almost to dig through the discussions of state and society to find any real historical development, and since this is an introductory text I think that this is an error, and it results in a less engaging read. In this vein there is little discussion about the Persian or Peloponnesian wars, nor is there a chapter on the Hellenistic era of any real substance. There is also no index at the end of this book. Moreover, there is no index (you get my point). Important statistical information is left uncited, and the reader is left to guess which book in the suggested reading list the author used for the information. (For example, in the chapter on economic life Jones presents a list of everyday items (pottery, building materials, shoes, lambs, etc.) and their prices in ancient Athenian currency, but he does not explain his methodology or explain the source of this interesting information.) The writing style is stale at times, and there are no pictures and few helpful graphics.

In short, this is a pretty average introduction to Ancient Greece. The discussions on social and political life are valuable but do not justify the price of the book (but it looks like you can buy it used for cheap). I recommend Thomas Martin's introductory history (Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times (Yale Nota Bene)) as an alternative.