Thucydides and Euripides show us the height to which debating had risen by the end of the fifth century. In ch.2 r. Passes from the assembly to the law courts, where there was not the free-for-all of the assembly but a pair of timed and opposed speeches and in the way in which they seek to establish causes and responsibilities. Ch.3 is concerned specifically with tragedy, and in it R. argues that the tragedians increasingly left the exotic and monstrous elements of myth out of the stories, whereas French literature dealing with the myths is once more interested in the exotic and monstrous. R. Has already insisted that Classical Athens offers us principles, not models to follow. In her conclusion she asks what lessons can be learned by today’s France, increasingly alienated from political involvement and feelings of community; and she commends two organisations with which she has been involved, ‘’L’élan nouveau des citoyens’, which seeks to encourage manifestations of communal spirit at grass-roots level, and ‘Sauvegarde des enseignements littéraires’, which champions the study of classical Literature for its moral and intellectual effects. (…) R. writes with eloquence and with a deep love of the subject, and gives an attractive account of some of the achievements of fifth-century Athens.’ (P.J. RHODES in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2006, p.171).