The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C.

This book shows how, in barely the space of a generation, Athens was transformed from a relatively conventional city-state into a very new kind of polity, a region-state on a previously unthinkable scale. This bold experiment in political community laid the foundations for the world's first complex, stable democracy and, ultimately, allowed the Athenians to shape the political and cultural destiny of the Greek world. The author sets out to answer a simple question. How and when did the Athe...