This volume is a companion to Greek “political thought,” rather than “political philosophy” or “political theory” - why? One reason will be apparent from the table of contents: the chapters have a broader scope than the terms “philosophy” and “theory” would suggest, and their authors have been trained and teach in a variety of fields, including philosophy, classical literature and history, and political theory. But there is a more substantial reason behind the choice of title. There are three propositions that unite these chapters and that define a central tendency in recent interpretive work on Greek political thought:

1. Our consideration of fundamental questions about politics in the world of ancient Greece must be pursued in texts that cross the standard modern genre distinctions among philosophy, history, and literature. Taking these modern academic distinctions too seriously as a guide to inquiry is an anachronistic mistake and can result in serious distortions of the Greek texts. Treating Plato as a post-Kantian systematic and doctrinal philosopher is one important example of such a distortion; treating Thucydides as a proto-“scientific” historian is another.

2. But the purpose of studying these Greek texts and practices is not archival or antiquarian, nor is it a romantic longing to escape from modernity to a lost idyllic world; instead, the ultimate goal inspiring these studies is to bring voices embodied in these ancient texts into our contemporary discussions of political thought and action.

3. At the same time, this attempt to bring ancient Greek voices into modern discussions will itself be anachronistic unless we are very careful to place the Greek texts in the context of debate and action in which they were written.