Periclean Athens by Cecil Maurice Bowra

Description

In this, one of his last books, Sir Maurice Bowra delivered a verdict on the place, the people and the period which had inspired his life’s work.

The Athens of democracy and empire, of Phidias and the Parthenon, of Sophocles and Euripides, of Thucydides the historian and Thucydides the opponent of Pericles, he places exactly in a tradition which derived from the social reforms of Clisthenes and Themistocles’ inspired defeat of the Persians at the naval battle of Salamis. Neither is he blind to the flaws which ruined the glory of Athens at the close of the fifth century.