Greek Lands and Letters

A travel-literary companion that interprets Greek places through their literary associations and, conversely, reads ancient and modern texts against the physical landscape. Focused on the mainland and adjacent islands easily reached from Athens, it provides chaptered tours of Piræus, the Acropolis and Athenian neighborhoods, Attica, Eleusis, Ægina, Corinth, Delphi, Thebes, Bœotia, Thermopylæ, Argolis, Arcadia, Olympia, Messenia, and Sparta. Selections and fresh translations of classical authors are set beside maps, illustrations, and local commentary; emphasis falls on myth, religion, historical narrative, and artistic context, while archaeological detail is kept subsidiary to literary and topographical interpretation.