| The Birth of Greece | |
| Border: | yes |
| Author: | Pierre Lévêque |
| Title Orig: | La Naissance de la Grèce |
| Orig Lang Code: | fr |
| Translator: | Anthony Zielonka |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Release Number: | in collection |
| Subject: | History of ancient Greece |
| Genre: | Nonfiction monograph |
| Pub Date: | 26 September 1990 |
| English Pub Date: | 1994 |
| Media Type: | Print (paperback) |
| Pages: | 176 pp |
| Isbn: | 978-2-0705-3110-3 |
| Isbn Note: | (first edition) |
| Oclc: | 1248941847 |
| Preceded By: | French: Nouvelle-Calédonie : Un paradis dans la tourmente |
| Followed By: | French: Ni empereur ni roi, chef d'orchestre |
The Birth of Greece (UK title: Ancient Greece: Utopia and Reality; French: '''La Naissance de la Grèce : Des Rois aux Cités'''|translation=The Birth of Greece: From Kings to Cities [City-States]) is a 1990 illustrated monograph on the history of ancient Greece. Written by French historian Pierre Lévêque, and published by Éditions Gallimard as the 86th volume in the "Découvertes" collection.
The Birth of Greece covers ancient Greek history from roughly 2000 BC to the conquest of Greece by Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great's empire. The book comprises three chapters: the first covers the Greek Bronze Age and the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations; the second the archaic period; and the third the classical period, starting from the Greco-Persian wars and ending with Alexander the Great. This is followed by an appendix of "documents", made up of both extracts from ancient sources, and from other writings about ancient Greece.
Body text
Documents
In its book review section, the archaeology magazine Minerva gave a positive review to the book: "There can be no better French: livre de poche introduction to the many aspects of ancient Greece."[1]
Peter Walcot's review for Greece & Rome felt that the pictures were wonderful, but the text he found disappointing: "[The book], like its predecessors in the 'New Horizons' series, is a translation from the French and, more importantly, most imaginatively illustrated and inexpensively priced. It is the text which I find disappointing: earlier titles had a particular theme whereas this volume just sketches the story of the Greeks and their achievement from Minoans to Macedonians. [...] Still, who is going to bother overmuch with the text when the pictures are so wonderful?"[2]
The Belgian historian wrote in the journal : "The reading of this book is warmly recommended to students and to any Greek history lover, from the Bronze Age to the 4th century BC. Remarkable synthesis, which goes to the essential; here is finally, one would be tempted to write, a work of popularization which does not content itself with presenting a succession of historical facts. The reader discovers, with enormous intellectual satisfaction, a coherent thought, which makes us experience the birth of the city and highlights the fruitful originality of Greek society. This fruitfulness is emphasized not only by the text, which concludes with the debt of our system of thought to this ancient civilization, but also by the illustration, the side-by-side arrangement of Classical and Neoclassical artworks, as if to remind us also of Greece's place in the imagination of later centuries."[3]