And so it tends
to present a picture of ancient civic life
which is strong on political ideals and principles,
and decidedly thin on political
culture and routine civil life. It is not always
easy, when reading modern accounts of
ancient citizenship, to imagine how the
figure of the active citizen dovetails into the
mundane civil affairs of relatively peaceable
societies – let alone what value, if any, was
accorded to the unheroic practices of ‘passive’
citizenship.