Millett - From Solon to Socrates: Greek history and civilization during the 6th and 5th centuries B.C

London and New York

In this book I am dealing with a period which has often been covered and is generally regarded as the most important in Greek history. That alone would not justify another attempt. Apart from the fact that there have been new discoveries, archaeological and otherwise, that could not have been dealt with in earlier works, I had two reasons of my own, or rather two aims, in undertaking to write this book. The first was to show the unity of Greek history in every phase, a unity of political, economic, religious, and cultural aspects. Even though in my view political, military, and social history must be the framework, indeed the centre, of any general history, it ought to be shown that this cannot be separated from the world of the mind. In all, however, that I have to say on works of literature, philosophy, science, or art, I beg to point out that I am not writing as an expert on any of these subjects, nor indeed do I attempt to cover the whole ground, but only to show the multifarious picture of Greek life at any given moment. It goes without saying that a severe, and perhaps not always fair, selection is inevitable. I make no apologies for things left out.

The other aim was, not simply to give a narrative, but to reveal the uncertainties of modern scholarship on many important questions; it ought to be clear that a mere enumeration of (alleged) facts is misleading. Thus, the book is not a general textbook, though it may still show traces of that earlier plan, and I hope that it will be useful for the younger student of history no less than for the scholar.

Writing today on even comparatively well-known periods of ancient history is, in fact, like entering a jungle a jungle of ancient traditions and modern conjectures, with very few undisputed facts. We have long ago lost the beautiful innocence of those whose love for Greece was combined with an unperturbed belief in the truth of at least the chief traditions of the Greeks themselves. We may be less critical than our immediate predecessors in our search for absolute historical truth, not least because we no longer believe in the possibility of discovering that truth. We are a generation in between, no longer sure of critical positivism, nor, on the other hand, of the rationalist intuition now so much in vogue. I myself cannot claim that my love for the ancient Greeks has found a safe route through the jungle, much as I have tried.