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The Athenian Citizen (Agora Picture Book 4)

by Mabel Lang

The artefacts and monuments of the Athenian Agora provide our best evidence for the workings of ancient democracy. As a concise introduction to these physical traces, this book has been a bestseller since it was first published almost 20 years ago. Showing how central tribal identity was to all aspects of civic life, the text guides the reader through the duties of citizenship - as soldier in times of war and as juror during the peace. The checks and balances that protected Athenian society from tyrants, such as legal assassination and ostracism, are described. Selected inscriptions are illustrated and discussed, as are ingenious devices such as allotment machines and water clocks, which insured fairness in the courts. The book ends with some of the lasting products of classical administration - the silver coins accepted around the known world, and the standard weights and measures that continue to protect the consumer from unscrupulous merchants. Now illustrated entirely in colour, with updates and revisions by the current director of excavations at the Agora, this new edition of an acknowledged classic will inform and fascinate visitors and students for many years to come. 32p, 40 col illus ((Agora Picture Book 4, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, October 2004)

Review Quote

Camp's new edition of this little gem improves on Mabel Lang's simple but superb 1987 original[...]The illustrations, now mostly in color, with crisp resolution and almost no glare, are a most welcome improvement. Camp offers appropriate new additions, substitutions, and in some cases, a reordering or recasting of Lang's original images. These changes make the text more memorable and the illustrations more vital to the book as a whole[...]

This slim volume is thus well-worth including as required reading for almost any introductory undergraduate course to Greek civilization, as this reviewer intends to do at Bucknell University. The book will likewise be attractive to the interested layperson as a brief and general introduction to some of the most important issues of Athenian political life. In short, this little volume is everything an Agora Picture Book should be: concise but informative, easy to read (and to carry), and, now, pretty.

Read the full review at the BMCR website: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-08-12.html

Stephanie Larson, Bucknell University
The Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2005.08.12)

Biographical note

Mabel Lang is Professor Emerita at Bryn Mawr College. John McK. Camp II has been director of excavations in the Athenian Agora for over 10 years and is also Professor of Classics at Randolph-Macon College.

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