Thousands of documents surviving on stone and papyrus help us to understand the complex society that took shape after the death of Alexander the Great. This book presents some of the most revealing of these documents in translation, allowing readers to form a direct impression of life in the Hellenistic world.
The book contains 175 documents capturing the political, social, economic, and religious dynamism of the Hellenistic kingdoms and cities. It covers the entire Hellenistic world and draws extensively on the papyrus remains of the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt, which allow an unequalled depth of insight into daily life at every level of society.