The Rise and Fall of Athens

This selection from Plutarch's Parallel Lives, written around the turn of the second century, gathers Greek biographies that follow Athens from the legendary Theseus through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, and Alcibiades to the Spartan Lysander, who pulls down the walls. Each life mixes public deeds - laws, sea battles, the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War - with anecdotes meant to show character. Comparisons and moral asides sit beside the narrative. The volume is a set of character histories of one city's leaders, not a continuous chronicle and not a constitutional treatise.

Bound in green cloth with a design in gold. Map endleaves in red-brown. Red-brown and green slipcase.