Thucydides, early in his account of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, expresses his intention to write a book that will reveal the truth about “that which is human” and then remarks that his book will therefore be “a possession for all time.”1 Thucydides’ explicitly philosophic intention in writing this book in order to convey lasting truths about the character and condition of human beings suggests that his book is better understood as a work of philosophy than as a work of history. Yet, while the end of his book is philosophic–to teach the permanent and universal truth about human nature–the means is historical–to give an account of a particular conflict between the alliance of the Peloponnesians, led by the city of Sparta, and the city of Athens.

Thucydides presents the case for Sparta in an appropriately laconic manner.1 There is no Spartan equivalent in his book of the Funeral Oration – the longest and most famous speech – nor of the Athenians’ speech at Sparta – the seventh longest speech and the first to offer an explicit account of “human nature” (1.76.3). We find no speech here in which a Spartan statesman or citizen gives an eloquent, elaborate, and theoretically sophisticated account of the greatness of Sparta, its education and regime, and its understanding of the character and condition of human beings. Of the nineteen longest speeches among the forty-eight in the book, ten are by Athenians but none are by Spartans, and it is a Spartan, Brasidas, who gives the shortest speech in the book.2 Of the nineteen named individuals who give speeches in the book, ten are Athenian and the sum total of their speeches is 13,639 words, whereas five are Spartan and the sum total of their speeches is 3,673 words.3 Of Pericles, the man whom he praises most extensively in the book, Thucydides says that he was “most capable [or most powerful – δυνατώτατος] at both speaking and acting” (1.139.4).4 Of Brasidas, the man to whom Thucydides devotes the second most extensive praise in his book and the Spartan whom Thucydides praises most, he remarks that “he was not without a capacity [οὐδὲ ἀδύνατος] for speaking, for a Spartan” (4.84.2).5 The Spartans are men of few words and therefore, inevitably, in contrast with the case for Athens presented in the book, the case for Sparta here is understated and indirect. But that case is no less powerful for being austere rather than dazzling, pithy rather than eloquent, and implicit rather than explicit.6

Even though Thucydides is the first character to appear in the book, he is extremely reticent in his account of himself in his book as a whole. Although he tells us how he felt at the beginning of the war, when he “hoped” that it would be a great war since Athens and Sparta were, he then believed, both at the peak of their greatness, Thucydides never tells us how he felt at any point later in the war, most notably, when he learned that he was afflicted with the deadly plague; when he failed to defend Amphipolis from Brasidas and was subsequently condemned to exile for twenty years by his fellow Athenians; or when, during his years of exile, his fellow Athenians set out to conquer Sicily.1 However, his book offers glimpses of his character through implicit contrasts with five other characters, all Athenian, whom he resembles: his fellow exile, Alcibiades; the three characters – or groups of characters – who share, in varying ways, his understanding of the fundamental character and condition of human beings – the Athenian ambassadors at Sparta and at Melos, and Diodotus; and the only character in the book who claims to be a lover of wisdom – that is, a philosopher – Pericles (2.40.1). By comparing and contrasting Thucydides with these figures, we may come to see his distinctive nature more clearly.2

Pericles seeks to provide the Athenians with an education that will liberate their natural reason from the constraints of piety and tradition and guide their naturally self-interested passions toward devotion to their community. In this way he hopes to secure for Athens a regime that is based on the natural energy of human beings – the “power of nature” (1.138.3) – rather than on subservience to human and divine law. Thucydides’ account indicates, however, that Pericles’ effort runs afoul of the divisive and violent character of human passion and the abiding power of piety within the human soul and, possibly, beyond it. In this way, Thucydides’ account calls into question whether any political society can be based on the liberation of human nature and hence whether human nature must not be subordinated to a higher power of some kind if political society is to endure and flourish.

Thucydides indicates in a number of ways that the section of his book from its beginning up until the account of the factional strife in Corcyra presents the case for the greatness of Athens over Sparta – of Athens’ regime and its education, and of the understanding of human nature and the human condition on which Athens is based (1.1–3.69). First, as we have seen, in the Archaeology, he presents himself as a partisan of Periclean Athens.1 Second, Thucydides presents a comparison of the two “who had come to be the most illustrious Greeks of their time,” “Pausanias the Spartan and Themistocles the Athenian,” a comparison that highlights the violent, tyrannical, and foolish character of Pausanias but that culminates with Thucydides’ first eulogy of an individual in the book, his eulogy of Themistocles for his outstanding practical wisdom.2 Third, this section of the book presents what is by far Thucydides’ longest eulogy of any individual in the book, of the Athenian statesman Pericles, more than triple the length of Thucydides’ next longest eulogy, that of the Spartan Brasidas.3 Thucydides’ eulogy concludes a discrete, relatively compressed subsection of the book, that is introduced by Thucydides’ praise of Pericles as “a man at that time first of the Athenians, most powerful at both speaking and acting,” a subsection that is 8.1 percent of the book as a whole, and that is entirely dominated by Pericles.4 This subsection contains four unanswered speeches by Pericles – three in direct discourse, and one in indirect discourse – including three of the eight longest speeches in the book and by far the longest speech of all, the Funeral Oration.5 That oration presents Pericles’ eloquent account of the greatness of Athens and specifically its superiority to Sparta in the enjoyment of life and in intelligence.6 Fourth, this section of the book presents the Athenians’ two naval victories over the vastly more numerous Peloponnesian forces, led by Sparta, victories presented by Thucydides as due to the Athenians’ superiority in skill, judgment, and daring.7 Finally, this section presents the Athenians’ thoughtfully compassionate treatment of the rebellious Mytileneans – the greatest act of compassion in this harsh war – in stark contrast with the seemingly thoughtless and cruel treatment by the Spartans of the Plataeans.8 Thucydides in this section of the book portrays Athens as a city with the most sagacious statesmen, the most ingenious and energetic citizenry, and the most thoughtfully humane character.

Herodotus’ comparative inquiry leads him to decree that isegoria, or equal right of speech, is best in all things. The example that he gives is Athens, although his treatment has often been regarded as unclear. I argue that Athens has to be taken as a whole – that to see the effects of one particular custom, isegoria, one has to trace its consequences throughout the city as a whole. Herodotus’ account of Athens thus grants his readers vicarious experience of isegoria, thereby allowing them to feel the underappreciated virtues of democratic life. His treatment of Athens, however, is nuanced – highlighting both its virtues and its vices as well as the connections between these. This chapter explores these nuances, arguing that Herodotus’ careful account of Athenian political life reveals the way his inquiry into human flourishing avoids both relativism and simplistic universalism, instead offering a textured and nonideal account of the good.

This chapter starts with a discussion of Thucydides’ famous description of wartime stasis in 3.82, including his account of transvaluations in 3.82.4. It then reassesses the historical context of Thucydides’ reflections on language and stasis; after that, it looks at several key passages where Thucydides shows the effect of the war on discourse, including the Melian Dialogue. Thucydides emerges as a writer who is overwhelmingly concerned with the way that war warps both evaluative language and practices of listening, but who sets out to rectify these effects through his own text. The chapter finishes with a revisionary treatment of Thomas Hobbes’ understanding of Thucydides.

Chapter 7: Pausanias in Athens. Here we see what statues stood in Athens during the second century AD – those that Pausanias saw on his walk through the city, from the Piraeus to the Agora to the Akropolis. We can picture those portraits that he mentions that are today well-known types. But we can only imagine the appearance of many of the gods and heroes whose images he mentions. Sometimes his narrative matches reports by other writers. Sometimes surviving inscriptions can be linked to texts or to actual sculptures. Even where material evidence parallels what Pausanias remarks upon, almost no freestanding sculptures are visible in Athens today.

Chapter 2 examines such conflicts in the ancient Mediterranean to elaborate on the theme that, in the absence of contrary ideas, variations on Mercantilism are the default stance for most policymakers in most states at most times. And while commercial great powers such as Athens, Carthage, and the Byzantine empire had only a practical and rudimentary understanding of how markets work, being millennia away from devising anything like modern economic science, they did adopt aims and instruments that set them apart from disengaged great powers such as Sparta or political great powers such as Rome.

This chapter analyzes historical declamation as an advanced stage of fiction training in the Roman rhetorical curriculum. It argues that rhetorical exercises, especially controversiae and suasoriae, fostered the skills of fictionalization through revisionist reimaginings of the Greek past. Exploring a wide corpus of exercises about Alexander the Great, the chapter demonstrates how students were trained to compose plausible fictions within recognizable historical frameworks. Drawing on rhetorical handbooks, school papyri, and declamations, it reconstructs four dominant themes: impersonations of Alexander and his circle; inter-polis disputes in the shadow of Macedonian conquest; “travel advisories” debating the limits of Alexander’s empire; and “postmortem” scenarios reflecting Alexander’s legacy. These exercises strengthened students’ command over the techniques of impersonation, pseudo-documentarism, and meta-exemplarity. The chapter also shows how historical declamations modelled indirect reflection on imperial power. Rather than transmitting historical truth, revisionist fictions taught students how to manipulate exempla and construct immersive alternatives to the Roman present.

The chapter begins with the basic nomenclature of our periodization and asks the question: what is Protogeometric? From there it tackles the issue of where were mechanically drawn circles first invented – which is now clearly somewhere in the north Aegean – but stresses that determining the place where circles were first invented probably does not matter a great deal when formulating broader conclusions of political, social, economic, or ethnic importance, and it leaves open the possibility that although Athens was not the first place to invent mechanically drawn circles, it may have been the place that gave rise to the Protogeometric style of pottery. The conventional periodization of Protogeometric is reviewed, as is the issue of regional styles of Protogeometric pottery in the Greek world, before the thorny issue of the relative and absolute chronology of Protogeometric is tackled. The chapter ends by asking whether we can speak of a Protogemetric Aegean, and the conclusion is that this is not really possible. A coda discusses doing away with the highly problematic notion of a “dark age.”

What marks out Athens in the Early Iron Age (EIA) is not only clear continuity from the Bronze Age but a steady rise of population through the EIA into the Archaic period. Following a brief topographical overview and a summary of Athens before 1200 BCE, this chapter focuses on the evidence of tombs, including an account of five and a half Athenians: a putative warrior aged 35–45 years at death, an old man aged 70, a young woman in her early 20s accompanied by terracotta model boots, a slightly older woman with her unborn child, and a social outcast. This is followed by what evidence there exists for the settlement of Athens. A major theme is the resilience of the population from the Bronze Age into the EIA and Archaic period. Whether it is cast as a village or town, the urban nucleus of the settlement was the Athenian Acropolis. What played out in the EIA in Athens was the formation of what was to become one of the largest and most successful city-states of the ancient Greek world.

After defeating Licinius in 324, Constantine ruled as senior emperor with his sons and a nephew as junior emperors. In the eastern provinces dedications honored the emperors. At Orcistus in Phrygia a famous set of inscriptions commemorated Constantine’s patronage. Dedications celebrated the emperor’s support in the new capital of Constantinople, as well as at Ephesus, Antioch, and Athens. At Aksum in Ethiopia inscriptions celebrated the victories of king Ezana.

An overview of what is known about the life and times of Hipparchus. Ancient testimony shows that he was born in Nicaea in Asia Minor, and worked latterly in Rhodes, but other details of his life can only be inferred from considerations of the intellectual milieu of his time, together with an examination of his astronomical observations, as detailed by Ptolemy. From these a possible timeline of his life is sketched out.

Book 1 of the CPAE. Introduction. Aratus and Eudoxus compared. The northern constellations. The constellations of the tropics and the equator. Aratus and Attalus compared. The axial tilt of the Earth. The northern constellations 1. The northern constellations 2. The northern constellations 3. Aspects of the zodiac. The southern constellations. The circles of the sky. The constellations of the tropics and the equator. The constellations of the ‘arctic circle’. Analysis by colures.

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 celebrated the centennial of Tennessee’s admission to the United States. This chapter argues that the use of Greek and Grecian architecture at Nashville was connected to Nashville’s reputation as a city of learning and culture. During the nineteenth century, Nashville was known as the Athens of the South and of the West. A life-sized replica of the Parthenon was the fair’s premier building. Archaeological accuracy and color were also essential to creating the fair’s Parthenon. Other buildings incorporated classical motifs from different periods, demonstrating the flexibility and fluidity of ancient architecture and embodying the neo-antique. This classical architecture embodied Nashville’s arrival as a city, but it also celebrated the New South and reflected the codification of the racist Jim Crow laws. Thus, the appropriation of classical architecture to justify institutional racism is examined. Egyptian architecture played a prominent role here. Shelby County erected a pyramid for its pavilion, which was an exceptional use of Egyptian architecture at United States fairs. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the enduring importance of the rebuilt Nashville Parthenon (and its Athena statue) as a symbol of culture and democracy for the city.

Focusing on Plato’s literary craft and philosophical method, this chapter explores the Republic and especially the Allegory of the Cave to elucidate Plato’s vision of education, truth, and reality. Rather than isolating arguments in abstraction, it emphasizes the dialogical form of Plato’s works and the exemplary character of Socrates as a model of philosophical life. Set against the backdrop of Athenian democratic decline and the execution of Socrates, the chapter interprets the cave allegory as a meditation on the soul’s ascent from illusion to truth – a journey of intellectual habituation requiring ethical transformation. The analysis shows how Plato fused literary beauty with metaphysical depth, presenting philosophy as both a rational and existential undertaking. The chapter further demonstrates how Socratic inquiry – marked by aporia and dialectic – encourages readers to examine their assumptions, seek truth, and reflect on their moral formation. Plato’s theory of Forms is introduced not as a rigid metaphysical doctrine but as part of a broader vision in which education, justice, and contemplation all point toward transcendent reality. In this framing, philosophy becomes a way of life rooted in example, narrative, and spiritual aspiration.

The long-lasting impact of Pheidias, antiquity’s master of religious art, especially his Zeus at Olympia, is considered in the context of the theme of personal religion. The chapter adopts a broad chronological perspective and explores how the great master was perceived during the centuries following his lifetime, with a focus on his chryselephantine masterpiece, which he completed in the later decades of the fifth century BCE. It considers how later generations have conceived of his personal religious life, its relation to his famed artwork, and the position his figure has come to occupy within broader cult practices and devotional experiences. Close analysis of Pausanias’ Description of Greece alongside other evidentiary materials shows that by the second century CE, Pheidias was a figure of religious significance in his own right. Greco-Roman authors ascribed to him the qualities of a visionary endowed with unparallel access to Zeus. He left his detectable trademarks in his masterpiece, and his presence was felt in communal cult practices. Centuries after his departure from Olympia, his artmaking has come to be understood as a form of devotional practice.