Sounds interesting. Might be a good gift for my brother—he is a serious ancient Greece hound (more Sparta than Athens though).
After watching some of the riots in Greece, it makes me wonder how far they have fallen. They went from independent city-states that could take on a world superpower to people who need the government to coddle them cradle to grave.
Greece wasn’t a unified country in Mycenaean times, or in classical times, until united by foreign rule, beginning with Phillip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. The successor kingdom was around a hundred or two years, conquered by Rome, and eventually ruled from Constantinople by the eastern Roman emperors. The last of those worthy of the name was Boris “the Bulgar Slayer”, but they managed to totter on until the Turks blasted in. The Turks ruled Greece for centuries (1453-1829); the British, French, and Germans brought in a Bavarian to rule, didn’t like him, replaced him, various attempts at democratic self-rule followed, and in the 20th century a civil war of sorts broke out between factions that supported the opposing sides of WWI; in WWII Italy and Germany invaded and occupied Greece. As in Spain, Communist forces tried to take over and were defeated by patriotic (and royalist) Greek forces. Some other stuff followed. The second Greek republic was established in 1973, as a consequence of a coup d’etat that removed the king; the officers involved in the coup ushered in democracy, then were removed by it. :’)