A connected history of Athens during the Hellenistic period does not exist. The nearest approach to one may be obtained by combining Gaetano de Sanctis's Contributi alla Storia Atheniese della Guerra Lamiaca alla Guerra Cremonidea (1893)with the History of Athens from 229 to 31 B.C., written in his own language by the Russian scholar, Sergius Shebelew (1898).But apart from the obvious inaccessibility of these works to the English reader, they do not, even when taken together, cover the entire period; and, while each was excellent in its own time, neither is any longer adequate from the standpoint of either the specialist or the reader at large. The present book, therefore, aims to fill a conspicuous gap in historical literature.
It has many shortcomings, doubtless, and some of them are probably inexcusable; but it is perhaps pardonable for the author to say, what the specialist knows in advance, that others are due to the character of the sources from which the narrative is drawn. He had to deal with a considerable body of official documents, dateless except in an approximate way, and an inconsiderable body of literary notices, also weak in chronological coherence.
