Ancient Greece (1913) — H.B. Cotterill

Harrap | ISBN: None (because 1913 laughed at such things) | Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Long before glossy coffee-table histories with colour plates and QR codes, there was H.B. Cotterill, bravely attempting in 1913 to distil the entirety of Greek civilisation into one stout volume. Ancient Greece is his love letter to a world of marble temples, toga-clad philosophers, and the occasional Spartan reminding everyone that life really is better with less furniture.

This is the Greece of Homeric epics and Olympic games, of democracy still figuring out what “democracy” actually meant, and of gods who meddled so frequently in mortal affairs they might as well have been elected to the Athenian council. Cotterill’s style mixes Edwardian earnestness with a schoolmaster’s relish for detail—expect a sweep of history told in the kind of prose that makes you want to declaim while wearing a laurel wreath.

Why this copy?

• Condition: Good. A century old and still striding like a hoplite: the binding is intact, the pages bear the gentle patina of time, and there may even be that delicious whiff of library dust and empire-era printing ink.

• No ISBN. Of course not. This book predates the barcode revolution; it was catalogued by librarians armed with nib pens and stern looks.

• From Crappy Old Books. We rescue venerable tomes like this from the abyss of neglect, dust them down, and offer them up with a wink. After all, “crappy” is relative—this is as glorious a slice of antiquarian earnestness as you’ll find.

Specs at a glance

• Author: H.B. Cotterill

• Title: Ancient Greece

• Publisher: Harrap, 1913

• ISBN: None

• Condition: Good

This isn’t a breezy introduction with bullet points and illustrations of Doric columns in full colour. It’s a solid Edwardian block of scholarship, infused with admiration for the Greeks and a certain imperial confidence that the Parthenon could be explained in a chapter or two. Reading it is like sitting in on an Oxford tutorial where the don occasionally digresses into Herodotus with barely a pause for breath.

Warning: prolonged contact may lead to spontaneous quoting of Pericles, an irresistible urge to holiday in Attica, and the suspicion that you could probably run a city-state if only someone handed you a chiton.

Keep browsing: See more Ancient Classics books Other books by HB Cotterill