The purpose of this volume is to supplement the standard and easily accessible sources of the history of the Greek world in the fourth century BC.

It is not surprising that a large proportion of the documents translated here are inscriptions from Athens, for the Athenians of the fourth century, at least while they governed themselves democratically, continued their fifth-century practice of publishing all their public business (peace treaties, laws, casualty-lists, accounts, etc.) on marble stelai. But by the end of the fifth century this practice had become widespread in the Greek world, even in states that were not democratic. So the student will find inscriptions from Delphi, Boeotia, Tegea, Cyrene, Samos, Skepsis, Olynthus and several other places. Down to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 I was able to use the selection in M.N. Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, vol. 2, though it occasionally needed to be supplemented by recent finds (e.g. nos. 8, 9 and 45). For the period after 323 the selection is entirely my own.

Inscriptions are primary sources of information, but their interpretation often depends upon a narrative account. We have, of course, the extant histories of Xenophon and Diodorus, but there were many other historical works, written in the fourth century or later, that pertained to the fourth century. On the one hand there was the Universal History of Ephorus of Cyme, upon which Diodorus drew.