" I finished it months ago, but skimming over it to write my research project. Hamilton is a classicist rather than a historian, although historians of Ancient Greece tend to be as familiar with Aeschylus as they are Thucydides. Hamilton does know her history, but is rather bold if not reckless in her ideas which would probably get a more circumspect response from a true historian. The Athenians were the only civilization up to that time who loved life, she says. All other civilizations, she says, created institutions around death and the afterlife. She ignores the importance of money that allowed Socrates and others freedom from work to persue art, how in a small town the ideas of intelkects will resonate in all quarters of the city, making intellectual pursuits the talk of all denizens, and how war and its atrocities gave drama art not to mention democracy turning into demogagery "
— Steven, 2/12/2014