This book is a celebration of two thousand five hundred years of democracy. At the same time it is a collection of essays to honour the sixty-fifth birthday of David Lewis, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. The book brings together contributions from twenty-two leading scholars from Britain.

Continental Europe, Israel, and North America; its central themes are ritual (both in the religious and extended anthropological sense); finance, including the accountability principle which was basic to Athenian democracy; and politics. All represent significant new contributions in the field. The contributors pay especial attention to epigraphy (the editing and interpretation of inscriptions on stone), David Lewis's speciality. They have made full use of the newest epigraphic evidence, and discuss topics such as the purposes (including symbolic and monumental motives) for which democratic inscriptions were set up.

The Introduction locates individual contributions within the study of classical Athens and relates them to Lewis's own published work.