Books like The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens — picked by fans

If, like me, when you read a history book, you want to learn something new both about a crucial period or personage in history and about how they reflect more generally on the human condition, then look no further than Jennifer T. Roberts’ magisterial study of the ancient Greek world between the Persian Wars and the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War (490-360 BCE).

It thrilled me and informed me alike from its first page to the last. At the start of her chosen timeframe, the Greek world was at risk of being overwhelmed by the Persian Empire. Had the Persians won… no Greek democracy, no Athenian theatre or philosophy, no Hippocratic medicine? Possibly. But did the Greeks make the most of their freedom from foreign conquest and control? Possibly not.

War between Greeks—of Greek state against Greek state, and between Greek citizens of the same state—was a plague, a metaphorical… show more.

I loved this book, by a brilliant younger French scholar, because it’s simply one of the best books around on the life and times of the Athenian democratic leader and, no less, his fluctuating reputation in and after antiquity right up to the early 21st century.

Being a prominent politician in a direct democracy that lacked political parties and any means of mass communication except face-to-face interaction meant a precarious, topsy-turvy life for would-be ‘demagogues’, leaders of the people, like the great Pericles.

I loved how Dr. Azoulay explored all the facets of Pericles’ multiple interactions during his generally brilliant career, including the more scandalous ones such as his eccentric love life. I loved, too, how he traced all the ups and downs of Pericles’ reputation over 24 centuries, showing expertly just how foreign a country the past can be—our past no less than that of the ancient Greeks.

You have heard of the ‘Thucydides trap’ but have little or no idea what it is, or why it might be interesting or even important? I can think of no other acceptable substitute for reading the work of the man himself.

Thucydides was born into an elite Athenian family about 460 BCE (when Pericles was about 35). His firsthand contemporary history of the Peloponnesian War (431-404) is an all-time classic, a possession forever, drawn on heavily by both Roberts and Azoulay—and by me.

I happen to be able to read him in the original Athenian Greek (which I started learning at age 11), but most of us will need a translation. For us anglophones, I can’t recommend any other as highly as Dr Waterfield’s. Which is not only the most recent but also accurate, clear, and perfectly suited in tone and register to the gravity of the original, as well… show more.

In case it hasn’t yet become rather obvious, I love the history of ancient Greece and especially the city of democratic Athens during the 5th century BCE and the lifetime of Pericles (c. 495-429).

To help explain why, I could just reel off a list of famous names—famous not only in their own time but also still in our own day: playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, philosopher Socrates, historian Thucydides, architects Callicrates and Ictinus, and, not least, master sculptor Pheidias, Athenians all.

The last three were united together with Pericles by their involvement in, indeed, the creation of, one of the greatest buildings of the entire Western tradition: the Parthenon, a temple of Athena the Virgin unique in its aesthetic adornment and refinement.

History, however, should not only celebrate but also educate and even warn, as does independent scholar David Stuttard in his totally gripping cultural history. Hubris has become… show more.

Athens is where I lived as a student in the 1970s, and I’ve loved the place ever since! People who visit Greece often miss out on the capital or find the modern city ugly and noisy. But this book explains the magic effect that Athens has exercised on natives and visitors for at least two thousand years – all the way from the legendary wisdom of Solon the lawgiver to the gritty problems of a decade of enforced austerity (only recently overcome), and of a new multi-culturalism that comes with mass migration across Europe’s front line into Greece.

This book has the best illustrations of the two main cities of antiquity that l have ever seen. Besides superb photographs (all in colour) of the ruins today, they include Peter Connolly’s brilliant reconstructions of buildings of all sorts: houses, palaces, baths, temples, forums, hippodromes, theatres, amphitheaters, insulae (blocks of flats), bars and aqueducts, plus styles in furniture, clothing, and hair. All are shown in colourful detail, many with cutaway illustrations that recreate city life of 2000 years ago with wonderful vividness. They are complemented by Dr. Hazel Dodge’s lucid, informative text. The first part covers Athens at its democratic peak under Pericles around 434BC, the second Rome at its imperial zenith some 500 years later, when it was the greatest city on earth.

Rome appropriated many aspects of Athenian (and Greek) culture for its political and cultural needs – so much so that the poet Horace spoke of ‘captured Greece capturing the rude conqueror’. This book discusses the ‘Romanization’ of Greece and the impact that Greek culture or Hellenism had on the Romans, and by extension, how the Romans (or at least educated ones) came to view the Greeks. In this cultural interaction, Athens played a key role, as the author shows. This book is an important balance to the ‘usual’ political and military approach to the period, and shows the importance of Athens beyond the terminating Hellenistic era date of 30 BC.

This book is about eighty years old. I’m probably not far wrong in saying almost every other page is obsolete thanks to archaeological finds and interpretations of existing material, epigraphical, and literary evidence since it appeared. But it’s a wonderful book to read and appreciate how the author uses the evidence available to him to paint a brilliant image of Athenian and indeed Greek economic and commercial life in this period with many fascinating insights. The subject matter might seem unexciting, yet the author brings it alive and makes it really interesting!

Davidson demonstrates that sexual relationships with courtesans and youths in ancient Athens paralleled the markets in other luxuries such as fish and wine rather more than resembling the modern ideal of romantic love. In a society where marriages were mainly business arrangements made between families to ensure the production of legitimate heirs to their estates, such formal relationships were frequently loveless. This led the male partners and those as yet unmarried to resort to employing mistresses, courtesans, and youths as luxurious distractions from the mundane matter of marital maintenance of the bloodline.

Another book getting on in years, but which remains an essential resource for the history and topography of the Agora, the economic and social heart of Athens. Here people came to shop, trade, chit-chat, discuss political affairs, attend some public institutions including the law courts, and ‘hang out’. The time period covered is very wide, from 600 BC to AD 267. The authors’ discussion of the buildings and monuments in the Agora with copious and detailed drawings brings alive what this vital area was like and what its architecture tells us about the Athenians.