Edward Bulwer Lytton 
Athens: Its Rise and Fall [PDF ebook] 
With Views of the Literature, Philosophy, and Social Life of the Athenian People

Athens: Its Rise and Fall, originally published in 1837, is the most important and readable of the Victorian histories of ancient Greece. It stands alongside Macauley and Carlyle as a great historical work of British Romanticism, and anticipates the thinking of George Grote and John Stuart Mill on Greek history by over a decade.Originally published in two volumes, this new one-volume edition includes the text of the never-before published 'third volume’ on which he was working at the time of his death, recently rediscovered by Oxford academic Oswyn Murray.An absolute must for any scholar of ancient Greece.