A renowned scholarly text on ancient Greek history authored by the Welsh University scholar and lecturer Kathleen Freeman, this book deals with 9 of the hundreds of great and small Greek city-states (polis in Greek word, from which the word "politics" is derived) which occupied sites from the western Mediterranean to the coast of the Levant, from the Black Sea to North Africa at a time when Greek civilization was at its zenith. As Freeman explains in her Preface, "[i]f the Greek world is really to be understood we must know not only about Athens and Sparta, but about the islands of the Aegean Sea, the Greek cities of Sicily and Italy and Asia Minor, and the other cities of mainland Greece," and she thus casts this fascinating book in the form of a series of individual city-studies. A must-read for every Ancient Greek historian, scholar and enthusiast.