The success of Glover's Leonidas led him to take an interest in politics, and in 1761 he entered parliament as member for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis.
It retells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, drawing heavily on ancient accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
It was commended by the prince of Wales and his court, and celebrated by leading literary figures such as Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, and Jonathan Swift.
The Athenaid, an epic in thirty books, was published in 1787, and his diary, entitled Memoirs of a distinguished literary and political Character from 1742 to 1757, appeared in 1813.
Edmund Burke included the piece in The Annual Register for that year, and when Edmond Malone in 1776 worked on a biographical memoir for Poems and Plays by Oliver Goldsmith (1777) he based it on Glover's Anecdotes as well as first-hand information from Dr. Thomas Wilson, Senior Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin.