Originally published in 1965, this was the first analysis from the viewpoints of modern sociology and social psychology of the social structure and culture of ancient Greece. The book examines Greece’s class system (with special attention to slavery), its various solutions to the problems of social identity, and its system of international relations as a background for what was also the first intensive analysis by a modern sociologist of Plato’s social theory. This study is then used to develop a more general framework within which modern social theory may be viewed and appraised in its relation to classical social thought.

The book will be of interest to sociologists, classicists, political scientists, historians, anthropologists and of course philosophers.