For the ancient Greeks, self-knowledge and identity were the basics of their civilization, and the sources were to be found in their identification with their local territory and in their social groups. Here Ingrid Rossellini surveys the major ideas that, from Greek and Roman antiquity through the Christian medieval era up to the dawn of modernity in the Renaissance, have guided the Western project of self-knowledge. Along the way, Rossellini surveys the contributions of Pythagoras, Plato, Augustus, Charlemagne, Dante, and Petrarch, while mapping out the enduring ways our civilization has framed the issues of self and society, in the process helping us rediscover the very building blocks of our personality.