Ancient Greece, at its height a huge empire that formed the first European civilisation, has left many marks on world history.
From the sauna to the Olympic Games, Alexander the Great to Zeus and Hercules, Homer's Iliad to Socrates' philosophical theories and even political debate, the ancient Greeks strode the worlds of architecture, art, war and peace and left behind a rich culture on which ours is built.
Now, from the amphitheatre to the gymnasium, the urban conurbation to the colosseum, our living environment and the English language are peppered with links to that history.
Yet, says the foreword of Splendours of Ancient Greece by Italian archaeologist and university academic Furio Durando: '. . . no book intended for the general reader and no textbook for students has yet succeeded in approaching this fascinating and complex subject in a way that combines the wealth of topics, with concise coverage of each, matching informative text with dazzling illustrations.
'Our objective is therefore to take readers on an amazing journey in search of ancient Greece and its civilisation and to offer them new insights into the Classical world through outstanding pictures, many of them never previously published,' it says.
An example is shown above, of a bronze head dated to about 460-440 BC and called by art historians the 'Philosopher of Porticello' in honour of the remarkable development of philosophy in fifth-century Greece. Some experts consider it the earliest example of a Greek portrait: the bronzesmith has clearly studied facial features in detail.
Even as early as 45,000 BC, there is evidence of human population in Greece, but agricultural communities did not develop until about 6,500 BC, in Crete and nearby islands of the Mediterranean that formed the Cyclades. The islands' position - 'like stepping stones across the Aegean Sea between Greece and Anatolia [Asia Minor, now part of Turkey]' - made them ideal trading posts. Crete, the largest island, became most important, leading to the Minoan period, named after the legendary King Minos of Crete, and triumphs of architecture such as the Knossos palace, built in about 1,900 BC.
