Volume 45, Number 11 · June 25, 1998
Fun City
By Jasper Griffin
Athens from Alexander to Antony
by Christian Habicht
Harvard University Press, 406 pp., $39.95
Christian Habicht is Professor of Ancient History at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His early works were published in German; this book, too, appeared in that language and has now been translated into English, very well, by Deborah Lucas Schneider. Habicht has for years been established as probably the leading authority on the history of Athens in the centuries between the fall of the Athenian Empire, in 404 BCE, and the establishment of the Roman Empire by Julius Caesar's adopted son Octavian, known to history by the extraordinary name he took for himself: Augustus, the Sublime One. The book now made available in English will surely be the standard work on the subject for the next thirty years. If one has a regret, it is the absence of illustrations and—particularly—maps. There are military campaigns to follow, and there are place names in Attica itself, not all of which are familiar even to the tolerably well-informed reader.
Review, 3731 words
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