Spanning 700 years, Creators, Conquerors & Citizens is classical scholar Robin Waterfield’s complete, commanding history of Ancient Greece, augmented with vibrant colour illustrations in this large-format Folio Society edition.
‘Authoritative and measured ... wide-ranging, enlivened by its detail’
- Sunday Times
Covering more than seven centuries, from the emergence of the first Greek city-states to the Roman conquest in 30-BCE, Creators, Conquerors & Citizens is an all-embracing history of an extraordinary civilisation. Renowned scholar Robin Waterfield explains how and why a mosaic of skirmishing city-states became the cradle of Western civilisation, imprinting their common culture on vast swathes of Europe and the Middle East. In part, it is a story of empires, statecraft and war, peopled by such figures as Pericles, Alexander the Great, Plato, Aristophanes and Cleopatra. But Waterfield is also an accomplished social historian, exploring ideas on social class, public morality, slavery and the rights of women. This lavish Folio Society edition incorporates 42 black-and-white integrated illustrations and 32 pages of full-colour images. With 17 maps and a comprehensive chronology and glossary, Waterfield’s acclaimed history is as accessible as it is authoritative.
‘The scholarship is impeccable and Waterfield touches on a staggering array of topics, succinctly reviewing the evidence and summarising the most recent scholarly work. A great success’
- Classical Review
Bound in blocked cloth
Set in Bembo Book with Stockholm display
568 pages
Black & white title-page spread, plus a further 42 integrated images
32 pages of colour plates
17 maps
Blocked slipcase
10″ x 6¾″
Creators, Conquerors & Citizens is a work of scholarship rooted in a firm command of the original historical sources. Robin Waterfield has won acclaim for his many translations of classical texts, including works of Plato, Aristotle, Euripides and Plutarch; his version of Herodotus’ Histories has been published in a Folio Society limited edition. This handsome edition comes in a blocked slipcase housing a lavish cloth-bound volume adorned with a representation of the goddess Athena. The 32 pages of vivid colour illustrations feature artworks, treasures and artefacts from every era of Greek civilisation. Highlights of the images include a mask of Agamemnon in beaten gold, an ornate amphora of Achilles and Ajax casting dice, and a detail from a lion-hunting mosaic in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia.
‘Compendious and based on immense research … Waterfield’s fresh new history of Ancient Greece will be the go-to resource for those seeking a panoptic vision of one of the past’s most fertile cultures.’
- Paul Cartledge
In this commanding work, Robin Waterfield pays equal heed to the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic eras of Greek history. He freely shifts his focus between the political and the personal – from the Macedonian conquest of Greece and the establishment of Athenian democracy to gymnasium etiquette and the rights of women. There are lively, learned digressions into every aspect of Greek civilisation. We learn about the founding myths of the city-states, the rival schools of philosophy that fought over adherents, the contents of a typical meal, and what really happened among the elite guests at the drunken, licentious soirées known as symposia. Throughout the journey, Waterfield returns to the great paradox of Greece: why were peoples who shared a language, culture, religion and social values so often at war with each other?
Robin Waterfield was born in 1952. He studied Classics at Manchester University and later went to King’s College, Cambridge to research ancient Greek philosophy. He worked as a lecturer and then as an editor for a publishing company before becoming an independent scholar and translator. Waterfield now lives on a small olive farm in southern Greece where he both writes and produces organic olive oil.
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