Archaeologists have added greatly to our knowledge. Nearly two hundred Athenian state decrees between 478 and 336 and several hundred other administrative documents (for example, building accounts for the Parthenon and records of religious cult activities) have been unearthed, usually inscribed on stone. Ostracism potsherds have been found on which the names of candidates for exile are scratched. Ceramic vessels of great artistry display every kind of interpersonal activity.
For readers who want direct access to the main original materials, the Loeb Classical Library offers the original Greek (or Latin) with translations on the facing page. Modern translations of most of the main texts can be found in Penguin Classics.
Most of the translations are mine. A few are by other hands, usually poetry, of which the most important is E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Iliad in Penguin Classics. It is my favorite version and for all its flaws it captures the spirit of its great original.
The endnotes that follow identify quotations and particularly important, telling, or controversial scholarly developments. The main sources for each chapter are mentioned, but no further details are given of the authority for specific incidents.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SELECTED MODERN STUDIES
Barnes, Jonathan. Early Greek Philosophy. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.
Behistun (Bisitun) Inscription, trans. Herbert Cushing Tolman, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 1908.
Bicknell, Peter J. “Axiochus Alkibiadou, Aspasia and Aspasios.” L’Antiquité Classique, T 52 (1982), pp. 240–50.
Bloch, Enid. “Hemlock Poisoning and the Death of Socrates: Did Plato Tell the Truth?” Issue 1, Journal of the International Plato Society, University of Notre Dame, 2001.
Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.
Burn, A. R. Persia and the Greeks, 2nd ed., D. M. Lewis, Postscript. London: Duckworth, 1984.
Bury, J. B. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, 3rd. ed., rev. by R. Meiggs. London: Macmillan, 1951. Still the best narrative history of the period.
Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 2, part 1, to Vol. 6. Various editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971–1994.
Camp, John M. The Archaeology of Athens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Cohn-Haft, L. “Divorce in Ancient Athens.” Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 115, pp. 1–14, 1995, London.
Connolly, Peter, and Hazel Dodge. The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Crowther, N. B. “Male ‘Beauty’ Contests in Greece: The Euandria and Euexia.” L’Antiquité Classique, Vol. 54, 1985, Brussels, Ghent, Liège, and Louvain.
Curtis, John, and Nigel Tallis. Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia. London: British Museum Press, 2005.
Daiva Inscription XPh, Archaeological Museum, Tehran.
Davies, J. K., Democracy and Classical Greece, Fontana History of the Ancient World. Fontana: 1993.
Diels, Hermann. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Berlin, 1903, 6th ed., rev. by Walther Kranz. Berlin: Weidmann, 1952 (the editions after the 6th are mainly reprints with little or no change).
Dillon, Matthew, and Linda Garland. Ancient Greece: Social and Historical Documents from Archaic Times to the Death of Alexander the Great, 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2000.
Fornara, Charles W. Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (Translated Documents of Greece and Rome), 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Forrest, W. G. A History of Sparta, 950–192 B.C. London: Hutchinson, 1968.
Forsdyke, Sara. Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy: The Politics of Expulsion in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
French, A. The Growth of the Athenian Economy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964.
Garland, Robert. Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Goldhill, Simon. “The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology,” eds. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin. Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Green, Peter. Alexander of Macedon. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
———. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Hall, Edith. Greek Tragedy: Suffering Under the Sun. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Hallock, R. T. Persepolis Fortifications Tablets. Oriental Institute Publications 92, Chicago, 1969.
Hammond, N. G. L. History of Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Honor, Hugh, and John Fleming. A World History of Art, 7th ed. London: Lawrence King, 2009.
Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. rev. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Jacoby, F. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden 1923–64 (for Jacoby online, see Brill.com).
Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003.
———. Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy. Guild Publishing by arrangement with Secker and Warburg, Suffolk, UK, 1990.
Littman, Robert J. “The Loves of Alcibiades.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 101, 1970, Johns Hopkins University.
Meiggs, R., and D. M. Lewis. A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions: To the End of the Fifth Century B.C., 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Migeotte, L., trans. Janet Lloyd. The Economy of the Greek Cities, from the Archaic Period to the Early Roman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Morrison, J. S., J. F. Coates, and N. B. Rankov. The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Murray, Oswyn. Early Greece, Fontana History of the Ancient World, 2nd ed. London: Fontana, 1993.
Overbeck, J., ed. Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen. Leipzig, 1868.
Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. R. Stillwell and others. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Pritchard, James B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 3rd ed. rev. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Raubitschek, A. E. “The Case Against Alcibiades (Andocides IV).” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 79, 1948, pp. 191–210, Johns Hopkins University.
Rhodes, P. J., and Robin Osborne. Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Rubel, Alexander. Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens: Religion and Politics During the Peloponnesian War. London: Routledge, 2000.
Scott, Michael. Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Sellars, John. “Simon the Shoemaker and the Problem of Socrates.” Classical Philology, Vol. 98, pp. 207–16 (July 2003), University of Chicago Press.
Sommerstein, Alan H., and David Barrett, trans. Aristophanes, The Birds and Other Plays. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.