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Volume VI of the new edition of The Cambridge Ancient History begins with Sparta attempting to consolidate its leadership of mainland Greece and ends with the death of Alexander the Great after he had conquered the Persian Empire and marched far into India. It is correspondingly wide-ranging in its treatment of the politics and economy, not only of old Greece, but of the Near East and the western Mediterranean. The century also saw the continued development of Classical Greek art and the moulding of Greek prose as an uniquely flexible means of expression. The formation of the great philosophical schools assured to Athens in her political decline a long future as a cultural centre, and established patterns of thought which dominated western civilization for two thousand years.