Much of the evidence—literary, historical, documentary, and pictorial—from ancient Athens is urban in authorship, subject matter, and intended audience. The

This book constructs a distinctive view of classical Athens, a view which takes seriously the evidence of archaeology and of art history.

Was the Athenian democracy anarchic, given to domestic violence and hence unstable, as claimed by some scholars, or was it a stable, well-ordered, social system

Civic Rites explores the religious origins of Western democracy by examining the government of fifth-century BCE Athens in the larger context of ancient Greece