Creators, Conquerors & Citizens

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.’

1. 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.