Miletos, the ornament of Ionia : a history of the city to 400 B.C.E. /

Miletos was founded c. 1700 BCE on a peninsula in the southwest of what is now Turkey. Endowed with excellent harbors, it soon became a rich and powerful Greek city, "the ornament of Ionia." Then it lost its independence in 404 BCE, its harbors silted up, its wealth and power vanished, and eventually even its name and site were abandoned. In 1899, however, the Berlin Museum began excavations there and continued to 1914; the project was renewed in 1955 and continues to this day. The results of 62 campaigns have been duly recorded in periodic Berichte, and it is this vast archive of archaeological data that Gorman (history, Univ. of Nebraska) has analyzed and summarized, supplemented by scrupulous attention to all extant historical and epigraphic sources. She began work on the material in 1988, and every page shows the effects of careful revision and polishing. Her explanations of complex documents such as the Molpoi Decree and the Athenian Tribute Lists are models of lucidity. When comparative aspects of Greek urbanism are explored, one of the essential guides will be this exemplary study. Graduate students and faculty. R. I. Frank University of California, Irvine