This work surveys all available evidence on Athenian settlements and settlers of the fourth century B.C., calling several conventional interpretations about them into question, through a rigorous preference for evidence over speculation. Three chapters trace a chronology of events relating to the settlements, examine their personnel collectively, statistically, and individually, and discuss evidence for their political, economic, and religious institutions. Long appendixes establish improved texts of numerous inscriptions relevant to the topic and provide several kinds of data on more than 1000 definite, probable, or possible settlers.

The public aspects of the lives of Athenian citizens (c. 450 to 322 BC.) are assessed to establish the nature and extent of citizen participation in the governing democracy of that period.

First full study of ancient Greek democracy in the Classical period outside Athens, which has three main goals: to identify where and when democratic governments established themselves; to explain why democracy spread to many parts of Greece; and to further our understanding of the nature of ancient democracy.

There has been much debate in scholarship over the factors determining the outcome of legal hearings in classical Athens. Specifically, there is divergence regarding the extent to which judicial panels were influenced by non-legal considerations in addition to, or even instead of, questions of law. Ancient rhetorical theory and practice devoted much attention to character and it is this aspect of Athenian law which forms the focus of this book. Close analysis of the dispute-resolution passages in ancient Greek literature reveals striking similarities with the rhetoric of litigants in the Athenian courts and thus helps to shed light on the function of the courts and the fundamental nature of Athenian law. The widespread use of character evidence in every aspect of argumentation can be traced to the Greek ideas of ‘character’ and ‘personality’, the inductive method of reasoning, and the social, political and institutional structures of the ancient Greek polis. According to the author’s proposed method of interpretation, character evidence was not a means of diverting the jury’s attention away from the legal issues; instead, it was a constructive and relevant way of developing a legal argument.