In this book, James Sickinger explores the use and preservation of public records especially laws and decrees, in the ancient Athenian democracy of the archaic and classical periods.

This book challenges the growing orthodoxy in classical scholarship that characterizes Athenian literacy and record keeping as crude and primitive before the fourth century B.C. It argues instead that the practical use and preservation of laws, decrees, and other state documents were hallmarks of Athenian society from the earliest times.