“Fourth-century Athens has a special claim on our attention apart from the great men it produced,” writes Hamilton, “for it is the prelude to the end of Greece...The kind of events that took place in the great free government of the ancient world may, by reason of unchanging human nature, be repeated in the modern world. The course that Athens followed can be to us not only a record of old unhappy far-off things, but a blueprint of what may happen again.”

With the clarity and grace for which she is admired, Edith Hamilton writes of Plato and Aristotle, of Demosthenes and Alexander the Great, of the much-loved playwright Menander, of the Stoics, and finally, of Plutarch. She brings these figures vividly to life, not only placing them in the context of their own times, but also conveying very poignantly their meaning for our world today.