The human race is all too pre-disposed to think in terms of us and
them. Europeans have always laid claim to the Ancient Greeks they
are our Greeks, our ancestors but their legacy reaches further than
we could ever imagine. Their influence stretches from the Japanese
to the Cossacks, from Ancient Rome to Indonesia.

In this path-breaking new volume, the great French historian
Marcel Detienne focuses on Eurocentric approaches which have
trumpeted the Greeks and their democratic practices as our
ancestors and the superiority of the Western tradition to which
they gave rise. He argues that such approaches can be seen as
narrow-minded and often covertly nationalistic. Detienne advocates
what he calls comparative anthropology which sets out to illuminate
the comparisons and contrasts between the beliefs, practices and
institutions of different ancient and modern societies. Detienne
aims to put the Greeks in perspective among other civilisations and
also to look afresh at questions of political structure, literacy,
nationhood, intellect and mythology.

The work of Marcel Detienne has made an enormous impact on our
thinking about the Greeks in areas such as rationality, literacy
and mythology, and in this new volume he challenges once again our
conception of the Greeks and their impact on the modern world.