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.