Imagine being able to book a spot on a time machine and travel back to fifth-century BC Greece. In Athens alone, you could meet Aeschylus, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Plato, Socrates, Sophocles, Thucydides, and Xenophon (to name just a few), who contributed to the immense energy unleashed by this greenhouse of culture and politics, from which emerged the political, artistic, cultural, educational, philosophical, and scientific foundations that greatly underpin Western civilization and culture.

The impact of Ancient Greece was particularly felt from the early democrats to the first proposer of atomic theory (about 2,500 years ago). But what exactly did participation in "the glorious past of Greece" mean for the ordinary person? What did it mean for him to witness the construction of the Parthenon? What were mining, trade, and construction like?

The Illustrated History of Ancient Greece from Cambridge does not merely look at the grandeur but explores what it meant to be a fully free citizen of a democracy or his unliberated wife, farmer, or entrepreneur. What was the impact of the environment on lifestyle and politics? What shaped Greece? And what activates its long legacy, justifying Shelley's claim that "we are all Greeks"?