Books: Meeting Greeks

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND—Naomi Mitchison—Harcourt, Brace ($2.50). In the declining days of Greece— when Athens was being slowly done to death by Sparta, when the age-old conflict between democracy and oligarchy was being fought out more bitterly than today—this wistful tale takes place. Its hero, Alxenor, an aristocrat with democratic leanings, is driven from Poieêssa, his native Aegean isle, and follows a dubious fortune in Athens for a time, in Ephesus among the wealthy barbarians (Persians), in Sparta; and finally marches with the Ten Thousand under Cyrus into Asia, dreaming at the...

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