Author Description

This book tries to describe what an intelligent person would have witnessed in ancient Athens if by some legerdemain he were translated to the fourth century B.C. and conducted about the city under competent guidance. The year 360 B.C. has been selected as the hypothetical time of this visit, not because of any special virtue in that date, but because Athens was then architecturally almost perfect, her civic and her social life seemed at their best, the democratic constitution held its vigor, and there were few outward signs of the general decadence which was to set in after the triumph of Macedon. At the time of original publication in 1925, William Stearns Davis was Professor of Ancient History, University of Minnesota.