A.H.M. Jones
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1998 (reprint of 1940 edition).
cloth, dj. 404 pp.
Book Number 19193
One of the finest works by a great historian of late antiquity, this book tackles a tremendous span of time - from Augustus to the Late Empire - and covers a huge geographical area. "Greek city" here means any community organized on the Greek model and using Greek for the official language. Jones first describes the movement whereby Greek institutions swept over the Near Eastern lands conquered by Alexander. He goes on to deal with the relations of the central government to the cities, to describe the development of their internal political life and the services rendered by civic governments to their citizens and, finally, he assesses the contribution of the cities to ancient civilization.