Jacob Burckhardt, one of the most outstanding historians of classical and Renaissance art, architecture and culture, was also the inventor of a new approach to history ? 'cultural history'. His famous lectures are here available in English for the first time, translated by Sheila Stern and introduced by Oswyn Murray's long essay which places his ideas in their historical context. In 'The Greeks and Greek Civilization', Burckhardt rejects idealized descriptions of Greek culture, revealing instead a tyrannous state with minimal personal freedom; that Athenian democracy provided a forum for demagogues and the individual was powerless against decisions of the 'demos'. A brilliant account is also given of Greek pessimism, despair and attraction to suicide. 'The Greeks and Greek Civilization' is the greatest work of nineteenth-century cultural history and the most convincing portrait of the Greeks in the modern age.