ABSTRACT
Greece H.J.S.Maine believed that ‘except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin’.1 His adulation of Greece is typical of the nineteenth century. Historians now believe that Greek civilisation flourished in the context of Mediterranean-wide flows of trade and civilisation. The Minoans, from Crete, established a maritime kingdom which functioned as a stepping-stone between the already-ancient civilisations of West Asia and the emergent civilisation of mainland Europe. By 600 BC the Greeks had acquired a phonetic alphabet, from the Phoenicians, and were familiar with the Egyptian use of stone for sculpture and for building temples. The defeat of the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC led to a surge of confidence, and Pericles’ leadership, from 444 to 429 BC, saw Greek civilisation reach a climax.
