The subject is enormously important and terribly difficult, requiring a detailed knowledge of the ancient world, of the thinking and experience of the Founding Fathers of the American republic, and of the entire history of western political thought through the eighteenth century. Rahe has that knowledge, an original and convincing understanding of the realities and thinking of life in ancient Greece, and a powerful and compelling thesis that explains how ancient republican ideas have changed almost totally as they have been transformed into the modern republic.--Donald Kagan, Yale University.