A Day In Old Athens

Preface

This little book tries to describe what an intelligent person wouldsee and hear in ancient Athens, if by some legerdemain he weretranslated to the fourth century B.C. and conducted about the cityunder competent guidance. Rare happenings have been omitted andsometimes, to avoid long explanations, probable matters have beenstated as if they were ascertained facts; but these instances arefew, and it is hoped no reader will be led into serious error.

The year 360 B.C. has been selected for the hypothetical time ofthis visit, not because of any special virtue in that date, butbecause Athens was then architecturally almost perfect, her civicand her social life seemed at their best, the democratic constitutionheld its vigor, and there were few outward signs of the generaldecadence which was to set in after the triumph of Macedon.

I have endeavored to state no facts and to make no allusions, thatwill not be fairly obvious to a reader who has merely an elementaryknowledge of Greek annals, such information, for instance, as may begained through a good secondary school history of ancient times.This naturally has led to comments and descriptions which moreadvanced students may find superfluous.

The writer has been under a heavy debt to the numerous and excellentworks on Greek “Private Antiquities” and “Public Life” written inEnglish, French, or German, as well as to the various great ClassicalEncyclopædias and Dictionaries, and to many treatises and monographsupon the topography of Athens and upon the numerous phases of Atticculture. It is proper to say, however, that the material fromsuch secondary sources has been merely supplementary to a carefulexamination of the ancient Greek writers, with the objects of thisbook kept especially in view. A sojourn in modern Athens, also,has given me an impression of the influence of the Attic landscapeupon the conditions of old Athenian life, an impression that I havetried to convey in this small volume.

I am deeply grateful to my sister, Mrs. Fannie Davis Gifford, forhelpful criticism of this book while in manuscript; to my wife,for preparing the drawings from Greek vase-paintings which appearas illustrations; and to my friend and colleague, Professor CharlesA. Savage, for a kind and careful reading of the proofs. Thanksalso are due to Henry Holt and Company for permission to quotematerial from their edition of Von Falke’s “Greece and Rome.”

W. S. D.

University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
May, 1914.

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