along with their analysis and evaluation by the classical poets, playwrights,
historians, and philosophers, ‘‘are what they are yet they possess a transcend-
ent signiWcance as well’’ (Thompson 2001 , 24 ). In other words, they treat the
classical authors as bringing a past to the present. They do so not because
there are no discontinuities between ancient and modern but because they see
the Greeks as reXecting on ethical and political dilemmas and problems that
are analogous to our own and so as co-thinkers, not museum-pieces. Because
unpacking similarities and diVerences between ancient and modern often
involves careful reconstruction of local contexts and horizons, these theorists
draw liberally on the works of classical philologists, ancient historians, arche-
ologists, anthropologists, and sociologists.
Exploring how the classical authors engaged critically not only with their
contemporary practices and institutions but also with their contemporary
values and ideas, and sensitive to the language and tone in which these
engagements are expressed, the political theorists under discussion trans-
late these classical critical attitudes into an interrogation of current practices
and institutions and also of the political and philosophical ideas and values
informing them. Like the classical authors they study, these political
theorists undertake critical interrogation at least in part to stimulate individual
and collective self-reXection and thoughtful and meliorative political
change. Thus, the premodern practice of political thought becomes not
only imaginable as a living tradition but actually lived, which is to say, rein-
vented and also respected for what it was, namely, a way of life (Hadot 2002 ).
IV. TheWnal shared commitment among these political theorists is to engage
the classical Greek poets, historians, and philosophers speciWcally with a view
to how they may educate contemporary theorists and practitioners of demo-
cratic politics, domestic or international. To do this is not to treat Thucydi-
des or Aristophanes or Plato or Aristotle as a friend of democracy in any
simple sense. This is not least because these and otherWfth- and fourth-
century authors adopted largely critical, although varied, attitudes to the
democratic regimes they inhabited and to democracy more generally. But
neither are the classical authors treated as democracy’s foes. Instead the
political theorists I am describing attend to the ways in which the criticisms
of democracy oVered by the classical authors are made within, and ‘‘to a
certain extent enabled by, a democratic culture’’ (Mara 1997 , 3 ) and are often
made with a view to its improvement. Thus, Thucydides’ treatment of
Greekness (Mara 2003 ), Sophocles’ and Euripides’ tragedies, staged before
180 jill frank