A social history of Ancient Greece which sternly judges the Hellenic character as well as its democratic excesses, but ultimately holds up Hellenistic society as the pinnacle of pre-Roman development. Most reliant on literary artifacts – legend as well as artistic works – the 19th-century German identifies four primary phases (heroic, agonal/polis, declining, and Hellenistic) through which state power gives way to tyranny of the masses as well as incipient individualism. Much in the latter that resembles 21st-century America.