How are political communities cemented together? Are rights inherent in the idea of citizenship? Saving the City examines ancient political thought from Homer to Cicero. It explores the problem of exploiting the philosophical past without reading the present back into it, discussing how far we can use categories such as the heroic code, utopianism, ideology, the economy or political rights to examine the evidence. This erudite and stimulating book offers fresh resolutions of disputed issues in well known texts such as Homer's Iliad and the Politics of Aristotle, and new explorations of some less familiar material, notably Plato's Laws, Aristotle's Eudemiau Ethics, Stoic political theory and Cicero's Republic.