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Chapter 6, ‘National Antiquities’, looks at the problems of origins and the representation of early societies in the historians' work. It points to the crucial role that myths of origins have occupied in European historiography. It discusses various versions of ‘antiquity’: Nordic, Indo‐European, Latin, ‘Semi‐Nomadic’ and a putative Slavic variant. It demonstrates that early societies were portrayed by an appeal to Tacitean topoi and were strikingly similar to representations in mainstream historiography. Social justice, equality, common ownership of lands, and chiefs who selflessly represented their community characterized this idyllic ahistorical situation. The view is put forward that images of antiquity were relational and competitive, as claims about seniority were typically made in relation to equivalent assertions about other nations.

At least three important challenges to the Athenian ideal of courage can be found. First, the Spartans were renowned in antiquity as the most courageous of the Greeks; so how are we to compare Spartan and Athenian courage? Second, Plato criticized the immoderation and political corruption of the Athenian democracy and presented his character Socrates as the truest embodiment of courage. Third, Alexis de Tocqueville charged that democracy both weakened and diminished the citizenry and that democracy also promoted an excessively bellicose ideal of courage. In the process of responding to these criticisms in turn, it emerges that the Athenian democracy developed an ideal of courage that unified practical rationality with emotional training and character development, that incorporated the wisdom of democratic discourse, and that cultivated attention to the flourishing human lives that constitute the proper end of courage. The Athenians could be proud of their novel interpretation and practice of courage, and modern democrats could learn a great deal from their example.

The introduction to the volume outlines the approaches represented in the following chapters, discusses their importance and identifies running themes and the avenues of research that they open, and sets them into the wider framework of possible forms of fruitful engagement between ancient Greek history and the social sciences. It explores the methodologies employed in recent work, in particular by the author (Josiah Ober), to show that engagement with the social sciences is not just about using quantified data to test explanatory hypotheses. The chapter is also, explicitly, written for two audiences: on the one hand it strives to describe the advantages that thoughtful engagement with the social sciences can bring to the ancient historian; on the other hand, it addresses social scientists and makes the case for the significance of the ancient world (and of the ancient Greek polis in particular) as the source of privileged and (relatively speaking) abundantly documented case studies for testing modern theories.