Readers are offered a book by the outstanding Russian historian-medievalist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences D.M. Petrushevsky (1863-1942), in which he examines society and the state in ancient Greece during the time of Homer. What is the composition and nature of the Homeric society, to what extent it has developed a state organization and what is this organization - these are the questions to which the author seeks and finds answers, believing that this information will be interesting for a later time, including modern reality.