Table of contents : Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements 1 The Athenian . . . empire? 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Empire and rhetoric 1.3 Source problems and Athenian imperial rhetoric 1.4 “I would annex the planets if I could” (Cecil Rhodes) 1.5 “An empire exempt from all natural causes of decay” (Lord Macaulay) 1.6 “Imperious, irrepressible necessities of life” 1.7 “We do our humble best to retain by justice what we may have won by the sword” 1.8 The seductions of empire 2 Tragedy and Athens: Aeschylus and Sophocles 2.1 Introduction: Athens in and out of disaster 2.2 Aeschylus’ Persians 2.3 Aeschylus’ Eumenides 2.4 Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 3 Euripides, empire and war 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Heraclidae 3.3 Suppliants 3.4 Heracles 3.5 Peirithous and Theseus 3.6 Ion 3.7 Erechtheus 3.8 Hippolytus 3.9 Trojan Women 4 Aristophanic Archē 4.1 Comedy, truth and Athens 4.2 Remnants of the ideal 4.3 Wasps 4.4 Acharnians 4.5 Knights 4.6 Peace 4.7 Birds 5 Thucydides: what was really said? 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Thucydides’ methods 5.3 Thucydides and mythology 5.4 Believing Thucydides 6 Thucydides’ Athens: Λόγῳ μέν . . . Ἔργῳι δέ 6.1 Book one 6.2 Book two 6.3 Book three 6.4 Book five 6.5 Book six 6.6 Book seven Bibliography Index