Book700 BCE
Theogony
Hesiod
The first attempt to systematise Greek myth into a coherent genealogy of the gods, from primordial Chaos down to the reign of Zeus.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Ancient Greece
The source of most Western political and philosophical vocabulary.
13 topics · 14 curated works
Topics
- 01Foundations & Overviews2
- 02Minoan & Mycenaean Civilisation1
- 03The Greek Dark Ages1
- 04Archaic Greece1
- 05The Polis & City-States1
- 06Athenian Democracy1
- 07Sparta1
- 08The Persian Wars1
- 09The Peloponnesian War1
- 10Classical Athens1
- 11Alexander the Great1
- 12The Hellenistic World1
- 13Greek Religion & Myth1
Reading in Ancient Greece
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Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
Theogony
Hesiod · 700 BCE
The first attempt to systematise Greek myth into a coherent genealogy of the gods, from primordial Chaos down to the reign of Zeus.
+1 more at this level
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Athenian Constitution
Aristotle · 330 BCE
A history and analysis of Athens's changing constitutional forms from Solon to the restored democracy, combining institutional description with an…
+6 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides · 400 BCE
The first account of war written as analysis rather than myth, including the still-cited claim about fear driving conflict.
+4 more at this level
12 of 14 works
Book430 BCE
The Histories
Herodotus
The founding work of Western historical writing, arguing the Greco-Persian Wars were the record-worthy climax of a long cycle of cultural collision between Greece and Asia.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Book330 BCE
The Athenian Constitution
Aristotle
A history and analysis of Athens's changing constitutional forms from Solon to the restored democracy, combining institutional description with an argument about which arrangements produced stability.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Book100
The Life of Solon
Plutarch
Plutarch's biography of the Athenian lawgiver who cancelled debts, freed debt-slaves and rewrote the constitution — reforms later Greeks credited with saving Athens from civil war.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Book100
The Life of Pericles
Plutarch
A biography crediting Pericles's building programme and radical democracy with turning Athens into the cultural centre of Greece, while conceding that the same populism helped drag the city into the Peloponnesian War.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Book150
Anabasis of Alexander
Arrian
A military history of Alexander's campaigns based on the now-lost eyewitness accounts of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, which Arrian judged more reliable than the more sensational tradition he set out to correct.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Book150
The Anabasis of Alexander
Arrian
Reconstructs Alexander's campaigns from the eyewitness accounts of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and is explicit about preferring participants' testimony to the more colourful tradition.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Book1878
Mycenae
Heinrich Schliemann
Schliemann's own excavation report from Mycenae, arguing the shaft-grave gold he uncovered belonged to the figures of Homer's Iliad — a claim since abandoned, though the find is what opened Bronze Age Greece to archaeology.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Series2008
Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Donald Kagan
Donald Kagan (YaleCourses)
Traces the Greek polis from the Dark Ages to the Hellenistic period, arguing that the city-state produced a form of political life that had no precedent and left no straightforward successor.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Book400 BCE
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides
The first account of war written as analysis rather than myth, including the still-cited claim about fear driving conflict.
about 14 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Book362 BCE
Hellenica
Xenophon
Picks up mid-sentence where Thucydides breaks off and carries the story through Sparta's victory and its collapse, showing how the winning coalition dissolved into the wars that exhausted all of Greece.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Book1864
The Ancient City
Fustel de Coulanges
Argues that the Greek and Roman polis grew out of household and ancestor-worship religion rather than politics or economics, with the city-state emerging as private family cults fused into a shared civic religion.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
In order written
700 BCE – 2008- 700 BCETheogonyHesiod
- 430 BCEThe HistoriesHerodotus
- 400 BCEHistory of the Peloponnesian WarThucydides
- 362 BCEHellenicaXenophon
- 330 BCEThe Athenian ConstitutionAristotle
- 100The Life of SolonPlutarch
- 100The Life of PericlesPlutarch
- 150Anabasis of AlexanderArrian
- 150The Anabasis of AlexanderArrian
- 1864The Ancient CityFustel de Coulanges
- 1878MycenaeHeinrich Schliemann
- 1900A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the GreatJ. B. Bury
- 1907The Rise of the Greek EpicGilbert Murray
- 2008Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Donald KaganDonald Kagan (YaleCourses)