The field of leisure studies routinely has adopted the conventional account that ancient Greek citizens embraced leisure as a cultural ideal while despising work as slavish and degrading. Described in the works of such aristocrats as Plato and Aristotle, this ideal is most typically attributed to the democratic city-state of Athens during its classical period (fourth and fifth centuries BC). Evidence challenging this explanation has prompted a reassessment of attitudes toward work and leisure in ancient Athens. Perusing documents that shed light on the perspectives of leisured aristocrats and working-class citizens, this study investigates the classical conception of leisure in its sociopolitical context. Ideal and ideology were blended in Athenian views toward work and leisure. In particular, theories of work and leisure were politicized by aristocrats in an effort to exclude ordinary citizens from membership in the city-state. Working citizens were not passive recipients of the aristocratic view, however, but instead responded with a perspective of their own that both challenged and accepted the aristocratic ideal. In correcting the record, this study points to the need to place leisure theory in historical context.