Contents of Volume I: A HISTORY OF GREECE is the thrilling story of the rise to power and influence of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. As Cyril Robinson's exquisite narrative unfolds, we find ourselves plunged into mankind's greatest and most magnificent adventure. The story begins in Minoan Crete, but quickly shifts to a dimly understood mainland culture. We follow the heroic deeds of the Mycenians and the Trojan war, the glorious artistic and intellectual triumphs of the Ionians, the turmoil of the Doric invasion and resultant dark age, the slow recovery culminating in the epic Persian wars and the renewed splendor of Periclean Athens. In the fifth century B.C., philosophy, literature, art and architecture reach a pinnacle in Athens which no civilization has ever equaled. But civil strife soon follows and eventually embroils all of Greece.

Contents of Volume II: A HISTORY OF GREECE continues with the bitter struggle between Sparta and Athens for mastery of the Hellenic world. Though Sparta finally emerges victorious, her victory soon turns to ashes with the ascendancy of Thebes and the still greater power of Philip of Macedon. Philip unites an unwilling Greece with his iron policy. Athens gives up her independence, but maintains an aloof intellectual and artistic leadership in the Greek world. Across this magnificent fabric of history strides Alexander the Great, who takes the banner of Hellenic culture all the way across the Persian Empire and into India itself, a stunning event that altered the course of human history. This is followed by the Hellenistic age and the final subjugation of Greece by Rome. An incredible epic, indeed.