This provocative and wide-ranging collection of M I Finley's essays contains illuminating discussions of some major issues: the nature of the Spartan state, the development of Greek law, mythological thinking in the Greek historians, utopian ideas old and new.
Finley's immense and detailed knowledge of ancient societies is matched by his equally challenging insights into far larger topics of historical technique. The final chapter considers a bold question: what the classical tradition still has to offer us and why it is still worth studying history and the ancient world.
