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First besieged in 305 BC, the island of Rhodes became part of the Roman Empire and was later fortified in the Byzantine style. Due to its strategic position in the Mediterranean, Rhodes was also attacked and besieged for over a century by Islamic forces. This title details the development of these fascinating fortifications, as well as the sieges that sought to reduce them.

Mount Athos, a spectacularly beautiful rocky peninsula jutting out from the coast of northeastern Greece, has been a monastic preserve since the ninth century. Known as the Holy Mountain, it serves as the centre of monasticism for all the Eastern Orthodox churches and remains fundamentally unchanged despite the storms of political and religious conflict that have raged over the centuries. This is an illustrated history of Mount Athos. It encompasses the entire story of Athos from the first ancho...

The complicated and dramatic course of the Civil War in Greece had, for lack of parties interested in reconstructing the truth of its events, never been narrated prior to the appearance of this volume. It closed a gap in the history of our times, and did so with thoroughness and vivid journalistic immediacy. In addition to the known sources and unpublished documents, the author relied on testimony painstakingly collected from survivors of the tragedy who were scattered throughout the world. It r...

This title presents an original portrayal of Justinian's reign, its politics and theological disputes, focusing on the lives of two extraordinary women who wielded power and influence. A fascinating exploration of the corridors of power in Byzantium of the time of Justinian (527-565), the book reveals how Empress Theodora and Antonina, both alumnae of the theatre, were remarkable examples of social mobility, moving into positions of power and influence, becoming wives of key figures. Theodora ha...

The legacy of the late Roman western empire laid the foundations for relationships that developed and continued during the 5th to 7th century. Harris considers the role and influence of the Byzantine east in the west, following the fragmentation of the Roman Empire, to be both significant and purposeful. In this book, she discusses aspects of political diplomacy, trade and exchange, the role of the church, and the influence of the east as seen in royal tombs, textiles, and gold coins.

In this book, acclaimed historian David Brewer investigates explores 1940s Greece -- one of the most tumultuous decades in Greece's modern history. Beginning in 1941, the occupation of Greece by Germany was intensely brutal: children starved on the streets of Athens; the Jewish population was decimated in the Holocaust; heroic acts of resistance were met with vicious reprisals. When Greece was finally freed from Nazi rule in 1944, the fractured and embittered nation became engulfed in civil w...

Four peoples, each with its own culture, language and faith, shared a small Mediterranean town and experienced, each in its own way, the upheavals of war, modernity, emigration and occupation. With the German takeover in 1943, the Holocaust in 1944 and the beginning of Greek rule in 1947, this multiethnic world perished forever. At the centre of this book stands the Sephardi community -- Spanish-speaking Jews who arrived in Rhodes sometime after the Spanish expulsion edict of 1492 and who remain...

A Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the YearA vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world.When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years befo...

In October 1945 at the age of 19, John Freely passed the southernmost tip of Crete on his way home from the war in China, just as Odysseus did on his homeward voyage from the battle of Troy. He has been bewitched by Homer and the lands of Homer's epics ever since. As the culmination of a life spent exploring both these lands and the stories by, and connected to, Homer, Freely has created a captivating traveller's guide to Homer's lost world and to his epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, investiga...

This beautifully illustrated book takes the reader on a visually stunning visit to the countryside around the Byzantine town of Mistra, Greece. It contains a series of exquisite photographs and illustrations of the many varieties of flower that bloom in the Mistra Estates, accompanied by informative text on their properties and evocative extracts from writers such as Hesiod, Xenophon and Sappho.

The ideal travel companion, full of insider advice on what to see and do, plus detailed itineraries and comprehensive maps for exploring these beautiful islands. Explore Corfu's atmospheric Old Town, admire Santorini's brilliant white-and-blue-washed houses, explore archaeological sites on Delos, wander round the Street of the Knights in Rhodes Old Town or marvel at the kalyvia farmhouses set in rural Skopelos: everything you need to know is clearly laid out within colour-coded chapters. Discov...

Architecture, art, sculpture, economics, mathematics, science, metaphysics, comedy, tragedy, drama and epic poetry were all devised and perfected by the Greeks. Of the four classical orders of architecture, three were invented by the Greeks and the fourth, the only one the Romans could come up with, was a combination of two of the former.The powerful ghost of ancient Greece still lingers on in the popular mind as the first great civilization and one of the most influential in the creation of mod...