Greek History

This review commences with three very important recent works that raise an important question: how is it possible that we should have to wait until 2021 to have works devoted to these fundamental subjects? First, Athens is, for better or worse, at the very centre of what we understand and practise as Greek history; yet there are hardly any books that attempt to give an overview of Athenian political, social, economic, and religious history alongside its material and visual culture. It is probably no longer possible for a single scholar to write such a book; but the fact that, despite the surge of companions and handbooks of all sorts over the last fifteen years, there has been no Companion to Athens until now, raises some very interesting questions. Second, Greek economic history has experienced an explosion of publications over the last fifteen years, which have constructed new approaches, examined new questions, and utilized new forms of evidence in innovative ways. How is it possible that there has been no systematic attention paid to the most fundamental institution of Greek economies, that of the household? Finally, the Hellenistic period is one of the most vibrant fields of Greek history, but why are there almost no volumes devoted to Hellenistic social history, in particular given the substantial number of available sources? I will comment below on the contribution of these three works, but pondering on these questions, and trying to identify other huge black holes in the study of Greek history, has a value of its own.