This book presents in translation 175 of the most revealing documents that have survived on stone and papyrus from the Hellenistic period.

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• Presents over 150 sources in translation.
  
• Captures the political, social, economic and religious dynamism of the Hellenistic kingdoms and cities.
  
• Covers the entire Hellenistic world, with extensive coverage of the Ptolemaic kingdom.

Roger S. Bagnall is Professor of Classics and History at Columbia University. He has edited numerous papyri and ostraka and his previous publications include Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (1995), The Demography of Roman Egypt (1994) and Egypt in Late Antiquity (1993).

Peter Derow is Hody Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Wadham College, Oxford and Lecturer in Ancient History in the University of Oxford. He has published on Hellenistic history and epigraphy and Roman republican history, and has a special interest in Polybius and dealings between Rome and the Greeks. He is co-editor with Robert Parker of Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (2003).