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comprehensive history for post-404 to ~360-338
#1
I recently finished reading Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War - that is to say the smaller, single-volume comprehensive history and not the earlier, multivolume series - and was quite thoroughly impressed with it. Though perhaps a bit slow to start, the book lives up to its goal to give the general reader a comprehensive history of the war in a single, easy-to-read volume, but without falling into the trap of making it feel "dumbed down" which most comprehensive histories tend towards. Having completed that book, I found myself interested in the period immediately following the war down. At university I had studied the "Classical Period" (that is to say down to the conclusion of the aforementioned war) and had also studied the period from the death of Phillip to the death of Alexander, but had only been introduced to the intervening period in brief without much detail, and yet the period seems absolutely fascinating! Aside from the obvious political turmoil and fallout following the Peloponnesian War, we also see the rise and fall of Thebean hegemony, the "return" of Atheninan power (albeit much reduced), the Anabasis of Xenophon, and such great battles as Leuctra and Mantinea, and yet I seem unable to find a single or even dual volume history for the period aside from the ancient, namely Xenophon's Hellenica.

So my question is: Can anybody point me to or at least in the direction of a modern, comprehensive history that covers, roughly, from the end of the Peloponnesian War to roughly the battle of Chaeronea in 338? This is rough, of course, and histories which cover a smaller portions of said period are certainly welcome! I am thinking of something somewhat in the spirit of the aforementioned book by Kagan, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Fall of Carthage, or even Robert Syme's The Roman Revolution - basically, something I can read on the subway on the way to work. 8)
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comprehensive history for post-404 to ~360-338 - by SOCL - 03-01-2010, 02:34 PM

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