The volume’s overarching theme is ‘the conceptual capacity of “the people” in history’, especially the cultural and political dynamics between the rulers and the ruled in ancient China, Greece, and Rome (I). This is new, as previous comparisons of the political cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and China have mainly centred their focus, at the macro level, on the formation and operation of the empires. The volume is composed of a brief introduction and thirteen chapters, which are divided into four thematic sections. In the introductory chapter, the editors give a brief survey of the cultural meanings of the people—demos (Greece), populus (Rome), and min (民, China)—in their respective cultural and political contexts. The overall methodological principle is to calibrate a balance between generalisation and particularisation (xiii), aiming to ‘make the cultural encoding of universal paradigms visible, and disclose the force it wielded over the historical development (xiv)’.