Review by Choice Review
Hanson's scholarship combines the analytical skills of an ancient historian fully engaged with his primary sources and the practical experience of a farmer. His previous studies (Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece, Pisa, 1983, and The Western Way of War, CH, Sep'89) have focused on the impact of infantry warfare in classical Greece. This new study explains in accessible prose the fundamental relationship between ancient Greek military activities and rural populations. The study is welcome because students (and their instructors) need to be reminded that although high culture manifested itself primarily in urban centers, many productive aspects of ancient society were located in the country. Drawn from a firm basis of textual and physical evidence, Hanson's explication of the life and exigencies of the classical Greek farm population evokes vividly the circumstances and consequences of a life often little understood or ignored in modern treatments. In particular, Hanson stresses rural life as source of military manpower, preparation for military activity, and frequent victim of that same activity. Hanson's work confirms the solid foundation of, for example, Jefferson's vision of the yeoman farmer as mainstay of the (preindustrial) polity. All levels. P. B. Harvey; Pennsylvania State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
