The principal sources of knowledge are contemporary writers who are (a) preserved in some bulk, (b) writing more or less directly about Athens, and (c) writing from a standpoint that we can discern. So the History of Thucydides and the comedies of Aristophanes are of prime importance. In Thucydides, the speeches given to Perikles, especially his Funeral Speech of the winter of 431/30 (2.35-46) and his Last Speech (2.60-4), deserve particular attention. We may claim to have a good understanding of Athens if we can translate the fine phrases and sentiments of the Funeral Speech into social and political realities. We may make the same claim if we can say what the Athenians laughed at and why.

Important, too, are contemporary public inscriptions and the, admittedly short, work of the so-called Old Oligarch, who was certainly an oligarch but may not have been old at the time of writing. (Inscriptions are cited by reference to A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions by R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, abbreviated in the text as ‘ML’. Translations of the most important documents may be found in Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War, edited and translated by C.W. Fornara.)

The surviving tragedies of Sophokles and Euripides take their plots from myth and make no explicit reference to contemporary events or persons, but they provide the best evidence we have for the emotional and intellectual concerns of thoughtful Athenians at the time. Like the comic poets, the tragedians were competing for a prize and had to beware of affronting popular convictions. The Histories of Herodotos carry the story of the Persian Wars down to the spring of 478 and make few explicit references to later events, but they seem finally to have been published only a little earlier than 414, and they provide much evidence of contemporary Greek thought of a traditional kind.

The surviving speeches written by, or attributed to, Antiphon of Rhamnous, Andokides and Lysias—whether written to be delivered by themselves or others, or rewritten after delivery, or written as models for students (like the Tetralogies attributed to Antiphon)—resemble the surviving plays in having been composed with a mass audience in mind,

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