This compact, comprehensive and illustrated history of ancient Greece takes us from the Stone Age roots of Greek civilisation to the early Hellenistic period following the death of Alexander the Great. Thomas Martin begins with a prehistory of late Stone Age activity that provides background for the conditions of later Greek life. He then describes the civilizations of the Minoans on the island of Crete and of their successors, the Mycanaeans, on the mainland; the Greek Dark Age and the Archaic Age; the Classical Age of Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.; the transformation of the kingdom of Macedonia into the greatest power in the Greek world; and the period after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., when monarchies emerging from Alexander's fragmented empire once again came to dominate Greek history. The narrative integrates political, military, social and cultural history, with a focus on the development of the Greek city-state in the eighth to fourth centuries B.C. and on the society, literature and architecture of Athens in its Golden Age.