The Greek Commonwealth is a vivid account of Athens during its Golden Age – the time of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, of Pericles and Themistocles, of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Socrates and Protagoras. It was the time, too, in which art and architecture reached unsurpassed heights: the time of the Parthenon and Acropolis. In few periods of human history have so much achievement, so much creative genius, so much epochal decision been concentrated as in firth-century Athens. No understanding of the Western heritage is complete without knowledge of this stirring hour in the history of mankind.