Product Description: In this careful and compelling study, Ryan K. Balot brings together political theory, classical history, and ancient philosophy in order to reinterpret courage as a specifically democratic virtue. Ranging from Thucydides and Aristophanes to the Greek tragedians and Plato, Balot shows that the ancient Athenians constructed a novel vision of courage that linked this virtue to fundamental democratic ideals such as freedom, equality, and practical rationality...read more

A study of the concept and practice of democracy examines how the democratic impulse first came to life in ancient Athens, as well as the seven conditions that are necessary to democracy.

Product Description: Offering fresh and provocative explorations of the ancient theorists, this book aims to clarify and stimulate discussion of the role Athenian democracy can play in the understanding of democratic institutions.

Product Description: In the Archaic Era of Greek history the aristocratic control of government was undermined by the increasing wealth and internal security of the city-states. Democracy was one of many new forms of government to emerge, and until the fifth century a wide variety of models of democratic government were tried, before the form of democracy found in Athens became the model on which newly established democracies founded their constitutions...read more