Meeting Greeks

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND--Naomi Mitchison--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50). In the declining days of Greece-- when Athens was being slowly done to death by Sparta, when the age-old conflict between democracy and oligarchy was being fought out more bitterly than today--this wistful tale takes place. Its hero, Alxenor, an aristocrat with democratic leanings, is driven from Poieessa, his native Aegean isle, and follows a dubious fortune in Athens for a time, in Ephesus among the wealthy barbarians (Persians), in Sparta; and finally marches with the Ten Thousand under Cyrus into Asia, dreaming at the last the vain dream of a Hellas united at least in spirit. The reward of all his tribulations is only fairy gold, but the story of his life is a romance, an historical romance in which the writer has the good sense not to let history run away with her story nor let the story idealize history.