Robert Garland

The Piraeus was one of the largest and most impressive ancient ports in the Mediterranean. During the fifth century BC it was laid out on a grid pattern by the urban planner Hippodamos and linked by the Long Walls with the city of Athens, some 8km away. It served as headquarters for the Athenian navy during the time of Athens' Aegean empire. Its emporion or commercial sector handled the bulk of Athenian imports, especially the grain on which the Athenians were wholly dependent. In conventional histories the story of the Piraeus is mostly hidden amidst material centred almost exclusively on Athens herself. Here Garland treats the Piraeus in its own right as an integral yet idiosyncratic component of Attika - one which exercised a decisive influence on Athenian history: its demographic profile linked it indissolubly with radical democracy; its Long Walls enabled Athenian leaders to pursue a policy which abandoned the Attic countryside in favour of a predominantly maritime strategy; later its Macedonian garrison could exercise control over Athens by threatening to cut off her essential imports. Garland analyses the demography of the Piraeus, its separate administrative organisation, its crucial economic and commercial importance, its key strategic and naval role, and its distinctive religious identity. He also traces the layout of the ancient town which lies largely buried beneath its no less vital modern successor.

No area of Greek life was wholly untouched by religion, and a basic knowledge of this aspect of life is essential to anyone seeking a proper understanding of the classical world. In this engaging survey Robert Garland brings out the unique quality of Greek religion - its practical and worldly approach to man's relationship with the divine - and shows how religious ritual was integral to the daily routine of both public and private life.

The Greek Way of Life is a survey of the major life experiences which constituted the social reality of classical Greece, broken down into the general topics of conception and pregnancy, birth, childhood, coming of age, early adulthood, and elders and the elderly. What emerges is a conception of the human being as a social animal par excellence whose nature was largely realised in the attainment of paradigmatic social roles: military service for men and childbearing for women. Among the subtopics are Greek medical ideas, the roles of women and children, marriage, care of the elderly, and the role of religious ideas. An engaging narrative and a useful sourcebook, this will appeal to both general readers and scholars.

The religious imagination of the Greeks, Robert Garland observes, was populated by divine beings whose goodwill could not be counted upon, and worshipers faced a heavy burden of choice among innumerable deities to whom they might offer their devotion. These deities—and Athenian polytheism itself—remained in constant flux as cults successively came into favor and waned. Examining the means through which the Athenians established and marketed cults, this handsomely illustrated book is the first to illuminate the full range of motives—political and economic, as well as spiritual—that prompted them to introduce new gods.