In this challenging book Michael Grant sets out to discover the extraordinary epoch between 1000 and 494 BC, a period which he shows was one of the most creative in history. He takes the reader on an intriguing detective trail to understand the world of the early Greeks, a people who are to be found not only within the boundaries of modern Greece, but also in parts of Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily and Russia, scattered in hundreds of independent city-states, united by common blood, customs, language and religion. Michael Grant discusses the economic and social roles of slaves and women, often seen as mysterious, polluting elements in these male-dominated societies, in curious contrast to their powerful role in mythology and literature. In a civilization where leisure was thought to be 'more desirable and more fully an end than business', there was time for outstanding artistic and intellectual developments, notably the pottery of Protogeometric and subsequent epochs and the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet (after half a millenium of illiteracy) which enabled Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to be recorded.