It is the editor’s hope that this volume will offer, by its structure, organization and concept, an inspiring perspective, and will serve that audience well which Blackwell had in mind when they embarked on this enterprise: as ‘a personal reference source for specialist historians, particularly those operating in adjacent fields of history, and as a ‘‘vade mecum’’ for undergraduate and graduate students’.
It is hoped that readers will in particular find much assembled here between the covers of one volume which they could otherwise locate only in a widely scattered variety of scholarly publications; and which they will not find in other volumes on this difficult period of ancient Greek History: chapters on government, the environment, art, philosophy, rhetoric, religion, society; on far distant regions to which ancient Greek civilization had spread or by which it was influenced, from the ‘Pillars of Hercules’ to Persia and India, and from the Crimea to North Africa. The historical narrative, while in many ways the backbone of any historical investigation, has been placed at the end of the volume in order to allow attention to be drawn to the many other aspects - not to negate its essential function.
As for maps, attention must be drawn first and foremost to R. J. A. Talbert (2000) (ed.) Barrington Atlas of the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Excellent maps are available on the Internet from the related resource Ancient World Mapping Center (Access: Http://www. unc. edu/awmc/). With the exception on one map on page xix, Blackwell Publishing therefore decided not to include additional maps in this edition.
The history of this volume, like that of many a book, is a somewhat complex and varied one. My own original plan for this volume constitutes the conceptual backbone. For a period, at my request and until he was compelled, for personal reasons, to withdraw from the project, Professor Lawrence A. Tritle of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, served as co-editor, especially by recruiting a number of important contributors whilst I was on a year of sabbatical leave in Athens during 2001-2.
A special and personal debt of gratitude is owed by me to Al Bertrand, without whose untiring support I would not have been able to rescue and complete the volume; to Angela Cohen for her most effective work; to all others who worked at or for Blackwell Publishing on this volume; and last but not least to Dr Thomas Elliott for generously creating the original blank map for use in this book. The most deeply felt expression of gratitude, however, must go to the contributors of the chapters, who collectively are the authors of this book.
Konrad H. Kinzl
World History
