This is a rediscovery of a people who for centuries were thought to have known best how to live. In art, science, medicine, politics, philosophy, sport, drama and history the Greeks invented new ideas and set standards of beauty and excellence which have influenced and inspired the world and which in many cases have never been surpassed. Peter France opens up our eyes and our minds to the best of classical Greece and makes the great writers and thinkers - men like Homer, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Heraclitus - human and relevant for us today.