ABSTRACT
Important, too, are contemporary public inscriptions and the, admittedly short, work of the so-called Old Oligarch, who was certainly an oligarch but may not have been old at the time of writing. (Inscriptions are cited by reference to A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions by R.Meiggs and D.Lewis, abbreviated in the text as ‘ML’. Translations of the most important documents may be found in Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War, edited and translated by C.W.Fornara.)
The surviving tragedies of Sophokles and Euripides take their plots from myth and make no explicit reference to contemporary events or persons, but they provide the best evidence we have for the emotional and intellectual concerns of thoughtful Athenians at the time. Like the comic poets, the tragedians were competing for a prize and had to beware of affronting popular convictions. The Histories of Herodotos carry the story of the Persian Wars down to the spring of 478 and make few explicit references to later events, but they seem finally to have been published only a little earlier than 414, and they provide much evidence of contemporary Greek thought of a traditional kind.
