Athens in its Golden Age: the Time of Pericles

>  To request A Sourcebook on Ancient Athens: a Selection of Readings to Accompany Athens in its Golden Age: The Time of Pericles, compiled by Humanities West for attendees of this program, please . Suggested reading and resources Note: Titles which are underlined may be purchased at  Amazon.com by clicking on the title. A percentage of each purchase (or any other purchase made through these links) helps fund Humanities West programs. Many of these books are also available at local bookstores including Cody's Books and Keplers, or at your local library. Compiled by Susan Petrakis, PhD, January 2008 > Recommended Short List For those who would like a quick and painless overview of ancient Athens, the two-hour PBS documentary Athens: Dawn of Democracy is a good place to start. It is readily available from Amazon or Netflix. The well-known historian, Donald Kagan, has written the best modern biography of our central figure, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (Free Press, 1998), available in paperback from Amazon. A more in-depth treatment of the history and culture of ancient Athens can be found in The World of Athens: An Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture, put together by the Joint Association of Classical Teachers. A new, heavily revised edition will be available on April 30, 2008 (just in time for our program), but the well-received 1984 edition is also available on Amazon at a greatly reduced price. If you are interested in the enduring cultural legacy of ancient Greece, you might want to read the modern translation of Euripides’ three great war plays: James Morwood (translator), Euripides: The Trojan Women and Other Plays (Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001), or Charles H. Kahn’s short book about Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett. 2001). Another recent PBS show, Secrets of the Parthenon(Nova series), presents new discoveries about the building techniques used by the Greeks. It can also be ordered from Amazon, but will not be released for sale until April 29, 2008, just a few days before our program. If you are particularly interested in the architecture of the Acropolis, Jeffrey Hurwit’s The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004) offers a richly illustrated history, including a CD-ROM with 180 color images. > Extended Reading List Aeschylus. The Oresteia . W.B. Stanford (ed.), Robert Fagles (transl.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1977. Bastea, Eleni. The Creation of Modern Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Beard, Mary. The Parthenon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2003. Boedeker. Deborah and Kurt Raaflaub (eds.). Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2003. Camp, John. The Archaeology of Athens. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. 2001. Flower, Michael. “Herodotus and Persia, ” in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The  Cambridge Companion to Herodotus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2006. 274-289. Griffith, Mark. “Slaves of Dionysos: Satyrs, Audience, and the Ends of the Oresteia. ” Classical Antiquity 22 (2002): 195-258. ________. “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the Oresteia. ” Classical Antiquity  14.1 (1995): 62-129. Griffith, Mark (ed.). Sophocles: Antigone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Gruen, Erich. “Persia through the Looking-Glass, ” in E. Gruen, Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity. Stuttgart. 2005. _________. Foreword, in F. Frost, Essays on Athenian History and Historiography. Cambellville, ON: Edgar Ken Publishers. 2005. Hall, Edith. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1989. Hansen, Mogens H. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press. 1999. Harrison, Thomas. The Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus’ “Persians ” and the History of the Fifth Century. London: Duckworth. 2000. McCann, David R., and Barry S. Strauss (eds.). War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. 2001. Neils, Jennifer (ed.). The Parthenon, from Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Ober, Josiah. Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going On Together. Princeton:  Princeton University Press. 2005. _______. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1998. Pelling, Christopher. “Aeschylus’ Persae and History, ” in C. Pelling, Greek Tragedy and the  Historian. Oxford, 1997: 1-19. Raaflaub, Kurt A. The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece. Chicago: University of  Chicago Press. 2004. Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober, Robert W. Wallace, Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (with chapters by Paul Cartledge and Cynthia Farrar.) Berkeley: University of California Press. 2007. Riedweg, Christoph. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. Ithaca: Cornell  University Press. 2005. Samons, Loren J. II (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. 2007. Tuplin, C. “Greek Racism? Observations on the Character and Limits of Greek Ethnic  Prejudice, ” in G.R. Tsetskhladze, Ancient Greeks, West and East. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1999: 47-75. Warner, Rex (transl.). Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1954.

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