Politics; antiquity and its legacy

Ancient Greece is famous as the civilisation which 'gave' the world democracy. Democracy has in modern times become the rallying cry of liberation from supposed totalitarianism and dictatorship. And the desire by the western powers, especially America, to foment ( or impose) democray across the globe is one of the most powerful driving motors in present-day goepolitics: not least in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, a lively and well informed treatment of the nexus between politics in antiquity and political discourse in the modern era is both timely and apposite. As Kostas Vlassopoulos shows, much can be learned about the practice of politics from a comparative discussion of the classical and the contemporary. Above all, the book shows how important and suprising the study of antiquity can be in reassessing and revaluating modern political debate.