Subject Guides: Classics: Greek History

Bust of Herodotus.
2nd century A.D. Roman copy after a Greek original.
Picture by Giovanni Dall'Orto.
[image source]

Perikles. 2nd century AD Roman copy of a lost Greek original.
Photograph by Mike Peel www.mikepeel.net
[image source]

Alexander the Great
[image source]

Understand Your Topic

The first step is to make sure you understand the topic. Identify the main concepts or keywords in your question to help you develop a search strategy.

Use encyclopedias and dictionaries for Classics to find definitions and background information

Check for High-Demand items by course code (about High Demand )
Find course material on Learn

Find Books

The Library Catalogue lists books held in the Library's collection.

Hints for searching the Library catalogue

Use Keywords or Title searches to find additional material
Use the Author alphabetical search (e.g. Thucydides) to find primary sources
Note that the Library Catalogue does not use abbreviated book titles. If your reading list uses abbreviation like CAH, you will need to type 'Cambridge Ancient History' in full
Click the Subject Headings of useful titles to find books on related subjects. Some relevant subject headings are:
- Greece – History: browse the list for narrower subject headings by time period, etc.
- Greece – Politics and government – To 146 B.C.
- Atlases and Maps: Greece – Maps, Geography, Ancient – Maps
Browse the library shelves in the classification sequences for Greek History

See also:

Citation Chaining

Finding eBooks

Find Journal Articles

The Library Catalogue lists the print and electronic titles of journals held by the Library. Select the Journal title begins with search option and enter the full journal title

Sometimes the titles of journals in lists of Classics references have been abbreviated, making them hard to find on the Library Catalogue. Here is a list of abbreviations along with the full titles that should be used in the Library catalogue

To find articles on your specific topic, use Citation Chaining and search in the recommended Classics databases

Journal:

HISTOS: The On-line Journal of Ancient Historiography
Greek and Roman history and historiography

See also:

Finding Classics Journal Articles

Greek History – Central Library, Level 10

D 51–90	Ancient History (General) – Central Library, Level 11
DE	Greco-Roman world
DF 10–289	Ancient Greece: History
DF 27–41	Ancient Greece: Geography; Travel
DF 75–136	Ancient Greece: Antiquities; Civilisation; Culture; Ethnography
DF 220–241	Ancient Greece: History By Period
DF 220–221	Bronze Age, Minoan and Mycenaean ages
DF 221.2–224	ca. 1125–500 B.C. Age of Tyrants
DF 225–226	Persian wars, 499–479 B.C.
DF 227–228	Athenian supremacy. Age of Pericles. 479–431 B.C.
DF 229–230	Peloponnesian War, 431–404 B.C.
DF 230.9–231.9	Spartan and Theban supremacies, 404–362 B.C.
DF 232.5–233.8	Macedonian epoch. Age of Philip. 359–336 B.C.
DF 234–234.9	Alexander the Great, 336–323 B.C.
DF 235–238.9	Hellenistic period, 323–146 B.C.
DF 239–241	Roman epoch, 140 B.C.–323/476 A.D.
DF 251–289	Ancient Greece: Local history and description
DT 60–61	Egyptian civilisation, culture
DT 92–92.7	Egyptian History: Alexander and Ptolemies, 332–30 B.C.
G 1033	Atlases of the Ancient World
JC 71–75	Greece. Political theory and institutions – Central Library, Level 8

Find Websites: Greek History and Geography

The Ancient City of Athens (Kevin T. Glowacki; Stoa Consortium)
Photographic archive of archaeological and architectural remains
The Ancient Greek World (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)
A virtual gallery of exhibits, categorised into topic areas such as Daily Life, Religion, Death and the Economy
Archaeology in Greece Online
Details of recent archaeological discoveries in Greece and Cyprus. Combines the Chronique published annually in the BCH by the École française d'Athènes/French School at Athens, and Archaeology in Greece, published as part of the annual Archaeological Reports by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and the British School at Athens. Texts are in English or French.
Dēmos: Classical Athenian Democracy (eds. A. Mahoney and R. Scaife; Stoa Consortium)
A digital encyclopedia (in progress) of classical Athenian democracy that describes the history, institutions and people of democratic Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE
Nestor: Bibliography of Aegean and Related Areas
An international bibliography of Aegean studies, Homeric society, Indo-European linguistics, and related fields
An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander (Thomas R. Martin; Perseus Digital Library)
Covers political history and cultural, religious and social aspects of ancient Greece
The International Plutarch Society
Power and Profit: The life and coins of Alexander the Great
An online exhibition for the Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities

Maps and Placenames

Ancient World Mapping Center (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
    ○  Antiquity À-la-carte
        To find places, choose the Interactive Map Gazetteer (top menu) and Static Labels (right menu, Map Layers)
    ○  Free Maps – various free downloadable maps of the ancient world
Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean
Volume 1 of The History of Cartography, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward.
Also held at UC Library in print format.
Mapping History: European History (University of Oregon)
Numerous good-quality thematic maps covering Classical Greece, the Hellensitc World and Roman Republic, Principate and Empire and Late Antiquity
Maps, GIS Data, and Archaeological Data for Corinth and Greece
A collection of modern and historical maps, GIS data and resource links for archaeologists, novice cartographers and experienced GIS users – provided by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Pleiades
Historical geographic information about the ancient world in digital form – extensive coverage for the Greek and Roman world, expanding into Ancient Near Eastern, Byzantine, Celtic and Early Medieval geography
POLIS (Stanford University)
“This site allows scholars and students of classical Greek (and to some extent Roman) history to visualize data about Places (especially archaic and classical Greek city-states) and People (those famous enough to be included in a standard Classical dictionary) from two large data-sets, and to generate maps and simple statistical information from them.”
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Perseus Digital Library)
Articles on 5,000+ Greco-Roman sites
Roundup of Resources on Ancient Geography (AWOL – The Ancient World Online)
Links to digital projects dealing with ancient geography. “It has no pretensions of being complete or comprehensive, but is offered to give readers a sense of the range of materials currently accessible.”

Sources

Athenian Onomasticon
Up-to-date onomastic data for the population of ancient Athens
Attalus: Sources for Greek & Roman History (322–30 B.C.; Andrew Smith)
Detailed lists of events and sources for the history of the Hellenistic world and the Roman republic, with links to online translations of many of the sources
Greco-Roman Prosopographies (Digital Classicist Wiki)
“The beginnings of a collation of prosopographies of Greco-Roman and other Ancient persons/names, both digital and in print.”
Greek and Roman Materials (Perseus Digital Library)
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
(ed. Paul Halsall) – quick access to the full text of many primary sources
Scaife Viewer (Perseus 5.0)
“A reading environment for pre-modern text collections in both their original languages and in translation. It is the first phase of work towards the next version of the Perseus Digital Library, Perseus 5.0” A brief user guide: Help with Ancient Texts: Perseus 5.0 Viewer Overview (The Library of Antiquity)

Greek History and Geography

Alexander's Greatest Battle (ETV; 60 mins; BBC)
more... less...

Michael Wood travels through Syria and Iraq to uncover the story of Alexander the Great's decisive battle against the might of the Persian Empire in 331 BCE. Ancient writers agreed that it was fought somewhere near the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, but the exact location has never been discovered. Using dramatic new finds in the UK, a cuneiform clay tablet in the British Museum and a papyrus dug up in Egypt, Michael sheds new light on the course of events.

Then to reconstruct the campaign, he follows Alexander's route through Damascus and Alleppo to the river Euphrates in Syria and travels into Northern Iraq with the British and US military. Exploring a landscape long barred to outsiders by Saddam Hussein, he carries out a detailed reconnaissance on the ground with US forces on patrol between Mosul and Kurdistan.
Alexander the Great (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
Ancient Discoveries – Siege of Troy (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
Ancient Warriors – The Macedonians (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

Philip of Macedonia created one of the most effective and successful armies of antiquity based on the phalanx, a compact body of infantry armed with long spikes. His even more illustrious son, Alexander the Great, defeated and conquered the great Persian Empire.
Ancient Warriors – The Spartans (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
Ancient Worlds. 4, Return of the King (ETV; 55 mins; BBC)
more... less...

In Richard Miles’s epic story of civilization, there have been plenty of examples of the great men of history, but none came close to the legend of Alexander of Macedon, known to us as ‘the Great’. Uniting the fractious Greek city-states, he led them on a crusade against the old enemy, Persia, and in little more than a decade created an empire that stretched from Egypt in the west to Afghanistan in the east.

But it was Alexander’s successors, the Hellenistic Kings, who had to make sense of the legacy of this charismatic adventurer. By knuckling down to the hard graft of politics, taxation and public works, they created something far more enduring than a mere legend – they built a civilization.

Richard traces Alexander’s battle-scarred route through Turkey, Syria and Lebanon to Egypt and ultimately to the western Punjab, Pakistan, where he discovers fascinating traces of a city where Greek west and Buddhist east were united in an intriguing new way.
Battles B.C. – Alexander the Great (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

This episode focuses on the Indian campaigns of Alexander the Great. It goes into great detail of Battle of the Hydaspes.
British School at Athens (YouTube channel)
Engineering an Empire – Greece: Age of Alexander (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization. Part 3, Empire of the Mind (DVD; 55 mins)
more... less...

Describes how Athens, at the height of her glory, engaged in a suicidal conflict with her greatest rival, Sparta. Through the eyes of Socrates, Athens' first philosopher, viewers see the tragic descent of Athenian democracy into mob rule. As defeat piles on defeat, the Athenians, shattered and stripped of their empire, take revenge on their most vocal critic and condemn Socrates to death before a people's court.
Hellenic Society (YouTube channel)
History of Warfare – The Greek and Persian Wars (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
History of Warfare – The Peloponnesian War (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (set of 2 DVDs; ca. 234 mins)
more... less...

Michael Wood travels from Europe to India on a 20,000-mile journey in search of the truth behind one of history's greatest stories. Travelling by bus, steam train, ancient sail boat and camel train, Michael follows the tracks of Alexander the Great into the heart of Asia.
Legacy of Ancient Civilizations (Kanopy; 6 videos each 26 mins.)
more... less...

“Voyage back in time to the world of six ancient peoples whose contributions to art, culture, and literature had a great effect on civilization. These are the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, Ancient Arabia, the Phoenicians, and the inhabitants of Thera and Troy. Discover their legendary past from the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, to the Trojan War, and to the lost continent of Atlantis.”
Lost Treasures of the Ancient World – Greece (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

Looks at the Acropolis and the Parthenon – now and as they once were – and the remains at Delphi, including the temple of Zeus
Secrets of Archaeology – Greek Legacy in Sicily (ETV; 30 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

Join a Corinthian settler on a tour of 4th Century BC Sicily, the "new Greece" of its day, and visit cultural centers such as Syracuse, Agrigento and the exquisite Valley of the Temples.
Secrets of Archaeology – Mycenaeans: The Civilization of Heroes (ETV; 25 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

Examines the pre-Hellenic cities and the legendary city of Troy.
Timelines of Ancient Civilizations: Greek (Kanopy; 2 videos each 17 mins.)
The Truth of Troy (ETV; 56 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

Since Homer's Iliad was written 3,000 years ago, generations have been enchanted by the tale of the beautiful Helen, impetuous Achilles and mighty Agamemnon - and, of course the horse. But could there be truth in the legend? Since 1988, Professor Manfred Korfmann has been excavating the site of Troy. He has discovered how large the city was, how well it was defended and, crucially, that there was once a great battle there at precisely the time experts believe the Trojan War occurred. But who attacked the city, and why?
Warriors – Spartan Vengeance (ETV; 60 mins; History Channel)
more... less...

Greece, 479, BC: At the Battle of Plataea, brilliant tactics and battlefield discipline help the Spartans defeat the Persians, avenging the devastating defeat of the 300 at Thermopylae.

Library Subject Guides

Classics: Greek History