Athens from Alexander to Antony

Christian Habicht

Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider

  • Winner of the 1997 Criticos Prize of the London Hellenic Society

Habicht has for years been established as...the leading authority on the history of Athens in the centuries between the fall of the Athenian Empire, in 404 B.C.E., and the establishment of the Roman Empire...The book now made available in English will surely be the standard work on the subject for the next thirty years.
   --Jasper Griffin, New York Review of Books

Christian Habicht is a German scholar of very high quality...His Athens from Alexander to Antony is a welcome new account of this turbulent period...It is a first-class piece of work, likely to remain authoritative for many years, and the reader who tackles it will be rewarded.
   --Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Wall Street Journal

Anglophone scholars will welcome this prompt translation of Habicht's excellent [Athens from Alexander to Antony]...The need for a new serious general history of Hellenistic Athens cannot be doubted, given that the last was W. S. Ferguson's Hellenistic Athens: An Historical Essay (London, 1911). Nor can it be doubted that Habicht, the distinguished epigraphist and veteran of many technical studies in this area, is the man for the job.
   --Daniel Ogden, Classical Review

Christian Habicht has written a very readable general history of Hellenistic Athens...Habicht addresses the major difficulty in writing a historical narrative of this period: the scarcity of sources. He more than offsets the problem of fragmented literary texts with the insights that the surviving epigraphic evidence of decrees, lists, reports, and coinage adds to the picture of Athenian public life. With great skill in synthesizing this source material, Habicht builds his thesis that during the period from Macedonia's domination to Rome's subjugation, Athens remained a viable city with an active citizenry who participated in political, cultural, and international affairs.
   --Randolph H. Lytton, History [UK]

  • Cover: Athens from Alexander to Antony
  • A photo of the author

Christian Habicht is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.