Cover; The Ancient World: Comparative Histories; Title page; Copyright page; Series Editor's Preface; The Ancient World: Comparative Histories; Contributors; Introduction; Acknowledgments; PART I: The Greek Experience in Long-term Perspective; 1 Exploring the Greek Needle's Eye:; Intercivilizational Connections; Aspects of the Polis; Cultural Extensions of the Political; Between Monarchy and Community; The Transformation of the Political: with Meier against Meier; Politics and the Political; Religion and the Political; Greece in the Axial World; 2 Transformations of Democracy.

Ancient Athens and Our Present: From Evolution Towards DiscontinuityA Democratic Revolution Around 1800?; "Democracy" After the Democratic Revolution; Democratic Thought at the Time of "Democratization"; Action and Representation: Size and Self-understanding of Ancient and Modern Democracy; The Instituting and the Instituted: Stability and Change in Democracy; Exclusion and Inclusion: The Relation Between Political Citizenship and Economic Involvement; Conclusion: the Greeks and Us; PART II: Ways of Polis-making: Grasping the Novelty of the Political; 3 To Act with Good Advice.

The "Political Sphere," the Risk of Acting, and TragedyOrigin and Political Function of Tragedy; Acting Too Quickly; Ill-advised Action: Creon and Oedipus; The Riddle and the Oracle; Antigone and Orestes: Personal Autonomy, the Climax of Aboulia, and the Recognition of Human Fallibility; No Certainty Anywhere: The Fragility of euboulia; Abbreviation; 4 Democracy and Dissent: the Case of Comedy; Freedom of the Ancients and Freedom of the Moderns; Comedy and the "Company of Athenian Critics" of Democracy; Criticism of Democracy on Stage: from Cratinus to Aristophanes.

A Closer Look at AristophanesConclusion; Abbreviations; 5 Democracy, Oratory, and the Rise of Historiography in Fifth-century Greece; I; II; III; Abbreviations; 6 Political Uses of Rhetoric in Democratic Athens; Rhetoric and Politics in Democratic Athens(Fifth to Fourth Century BCE); Rhetoric of Crisis; Rhetoric of Democratic Characterization; Literary Rhetoric and New Perspectives on Politics; Conclusion; 7 Law and Democracy in Classical Athens; Amateurism and the Athenian Legal System; The Athenian Popular Courts and Public Order; 8 Democracy and Political Philosophy.

Solonian Legislation, Political Thinking, and Institutional EvolutionThe "Sophists," especially Protagoras; Democratic "Accounts" and Socratic Self-examination10; Democracy, Philosophy, Eudaimonism; Perfecting Nature, Living with Self-respect: Lysias on the Athenian Past; The Political Eudaimonism of Plato and Aristotle; Conclusion: the Vital Points of Contention; Acknowledgment; 9 Inscriptions and the City in Democratic Athens; Athenian History and Athenian Inscribing to 480 BCE; Athens and Athenian Inscribing from 480 to 403; Athens in the Fourth Century; Abbreviations.

PART III: Changing a Way of Life: Democracy's Impact on Polis Society.

The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy presents a series of essays that trace the Greeks' path to democracy and examine the connection between the Greek polis as a citizen state and democracy as well as the interaction between democracy and various forms of cultural expression from a comparative historical perspective and with special attention to the place of Greek democracy in political thought and debates about democracy throughout the centuries. Presents an original combination of a close synchronic and long diachronic examination of the Greek polis.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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