Describes the birth and evolution of democratic Athens, circa 500-325 BC, the world’s first experiment in radical self-government. In the Archaic Age (~ 750-500 BC), aristocrats lost exclusive hold on power owing to the changing nature of warfare (i.e., greater value of hoplites), trade, and cultural exchange foster by colonization. Solon’s 6^th-century reforms abolishing lending against personage and slavery for debt, and establishing equality before the law (but not land redistribution), and particularly Cleisthenes’ moves to provide political power to the demos and the use of ostracism to reign in factions prefigured the transition. The conversion may be traced to 503 BC, and passed the test of the Persian War, which nonetheless demonstrated democratic government requires leadership and decision making. By the Periclean era, as a matter of course selections for (minor) office were by lot and the demos voted for its generals. It was a libertarian era: individual freedom (Isaiah Berlin’s ‘freedom to’) was seen to originate in human nature (versus modern rights), and husbandry was the state’s obligation. Even as the Athenian empire grew, all the member states including oligarchies most valued freedom to set their own rules. The rise of democracy and empire coincided with flourishing arts, public building, public rhetoric: elegance crowned eminence. But the Peloponnesian War revealed the public’s incapacity for strategic decisions (as well as the persistent failures of aristocratic elites). Further, rhetoric and specifically sophism worked to sever faith in the laws as divinely inspired; might makes right evidenced itself in demagogic leadership and imperial ambition. The war was lost, oligarchic coups toppled the demos; but democratic loyalties, always strong among the hoplites) recovered power in 404. Chastened, Athens enacted reforms such as separating laws from decrees, to distinguish between the Assembly’s decision making and officeholders’’ administration, ultimately extending democracy another 80 years. So to test the appellation, the author outlines the processes of voting, administration (financial offices holding much formal power in the 4^th century), justice and the courts, and so on. About 6,000 attended the Assembly or the courts, particularly after the introduction of payment for participation. While women were admittedly excluded, he finds slavery was not the basis the city’s economy. Despite its shortcomings – notably the will to power of the 5^th-century demos, social excesses such as the Herms affair, imperialism, and susceptibility to demagogues – democratic Athens marked an unprecedented commitment to individual freedom and equality before the law. For Aristotle, too much so: extreme freedom and equality undermine merit and telos. The bigger question is whether such conditions promote or undermine loyalty to the constitution?