Another scholarly book about the archaic period, this one focused on Athens. The subtitle "From Solon to Cleisthenes" led me to believe it would offer a comprehensive view of their respective impacts on Archaic Athens.
However, the book focuses minutely on the definitions of the three communities that composed Archaic Athens: The kinship, legal and political communities.
Although I'm learning from the book, it dwells microscopically on how to best define these groups, citing the various opinions of other researchers ad nauseum. The goal is to define who really was a citizen and who was not, but the emphasis on minutiae left me drifting.
Perhaps a 50 page review of the same would have better suited me, rather than 400+ pages.
As I've written previously, I need to spend more time qualifying books on ancient history now that I have progressed from books for the general reader to books for serious historians.
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