"Within the space of three centuries leading up to the great Persian invasion of 480 B.C., Greece was transformed from a simple peasant society into a sophisticated civilization which dominated the shores of the Mediterranean from Spain to Syria and from the Crimea to Egypt -- a culture whose achievements in the fields of art, science, philosophy and politics were to establish the canons of the Western world. The author places this remarkable development in the context of Mediterranean civilization. He shows how contact with the East acted as a catalyst to transform art and religion, analyzes the invention of the alphabet and the conceptual changes it brought, describes the expansion of Greece in trade and colonization and investigates the relationship between military technology and political progress in the overthrow of aristocratic governments." [Back cover].