Classical Athenian democracy is rightly famous but democracy flourished in other parts of the Greek world as well. In this clear and fascinating book, Matthew Simonton traces the emergence, growth, consolidation and decline of democratic city-states over...

The first fruits of Greek botany.Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like...

A miscellany of minor works.Xenophon (ca. 430 to ca. 354 BC) was a wealthy Athenian and friend of Socrates. He left Athens in 401 and joined an expedition including ten thousand Greeks led by the Persian governor Cyrus against the Persian king. After the...

Scholars at dinner.In The Learned Banqueters, Athenaeus describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature. The work (which dates to the very end of the second century AD) is amusing reading and of...

The fragments and testimonia of the early Greek philosophers (often labeled the Presocratics) have always been not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and ancient philosophy but also a perennially fresh resource that has...

Dramatis personae.This volume collects important examples of Greek literary portraiture. The Characters of Theophrastus consists of thirty fictional sketches of men who are each dominated by a single fault, such as arrogance, boorishness, or superstition...

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION. This volume collects some of the liveliest examples of Greek literary portraiture. The Characters of Theophrastus sketches thirty hypothetical men, each dominated by a single fault, such as rudeness,...

The ecumene in prose. Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various...

The sophisticated schoolmaster. The importance of Isocrates for the study of Greek civilization of the fourth century BC is indisputable. From 403 to 393 he wrote speeches for Athenian law courts, and then became a teacher of composition for would-be...