Confronting the Classics
Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations
New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.
Format: Book
Edition: First American edition.
Description: x, 310 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
One of the world's leading historians provides a revolutionary tour of the Ancient World, dusting off the classics for the twenty-first century.
Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people--the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? Where did they go if their marriage was in trouble or if they were broke? Or, perhaps just as important, how did they clean their teeth? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard forces us along the way to reexamine so many of the assumptions we held as gospel--not the least of them the perception that the Emperor Caligula was bonkers or Nero a monster. With capacious wit and verve, Beard demonstrates that, far from being carved in marble, the classical world is still very much alive.
Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people--the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? Where did they go if their marriage was in trouble or if they were broke? Or, perhaps just as important, how did they clean their teeth? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard forces us along the way to reexamine so many of the assumptions we held as gospel--not the least of them the perception that the Emperor Caligula was bonkers or Nero a monster. With capacious wit and verve, Beard demonstrates that, far from being carved in marble, the classical world is still very much alive.
Contents:
Introduction: Do Classics Have a Future? -- Section One. Ancient Greece -- Builder of Ruins -- Sappho Speaks -- Which Thucydides Can You Trust? -- Alexander : How Great? -- What Made the Greeks Laugh? -- Section Two. Heroes & Villains of Early Rome -- Who Wanted Remus Dead? -- Hannibal At Bay -- Quousque Tandem ...? -- Roman Art Thieves -- Spinning Caesar's Murder -- Section Three. Imperial Rome : Emperors, Empresses & Enemies -- Looking for the Emperor -- Cleopatra : The Myth -- Married to the Empire -- Caligula's Satire? -- Nero's Colosseum? -- British Queen -- Bit-Part Emperors -- Hadrian and his Villa -- Section Four. Rome from the Bottom Up -- Ex-Slaves and Snobbery -- Fortune-Telling, Bad Breath and Stress -- Keeping the Armies out of Rome -- Life and Death in Roman Britain -- South Shields Aramaic -- Section Five. Arts & Culture; Tourists & Scholars -- Only Aeschylus Will Do? -- Arms and the Man -- Don't Forget Your Pith Helmet -- Pompeii for the Tourists -- The Golden Bough -- Philosophy meets Archaeology -- What Gets Left Out -- Astérix and the Romans -- Afterword: Reviewing Classics.
ISBN:
9780871407160 (hbk.)
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
HISTORY Ancient Bea | Main (Downtown) | Third Level, Nonfiction | In |
HISTORY Ancient Bea | Main (Downtown) | Third Level, Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references and index.