Classics: A Very Short Introduction New Ed Edition

The timeline at the end of this book gives a clue to the authors' approach. It starts at c800-500 BCE ("Early Greece"), ends at 1995 with the publication of this book, and includes entries like "1959 Ben Hur film starring Charlton Heston". It is about Classics as a subject, about how the Classical world has been viewed and interpreted over the years, and how it continues to impact today's world. In other words, it is more about the nature and significance of Classics as a discipline than about specific Classical topics. That makes it an excellent introduction for someone embarking on such a study.The Further Reading section at the end is something of a letdown, being just an unhelpful list of titles. See Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Morales, for an example of how a Further Reading section should be done. In fact, the Morales book should be seen as a companion volume to the present one.But this is a well written and entertaining exploration of a fascinating subject, full of valuable insights. Read this first and then the Morales book.[PeterReeve]

It has been more than forty years since I took any courses in Greek or Latin or the history of Greece or Rome. With a son graduating next week with a B.A. in the Classics, I thought I should honor him and brush up on my own now very patchy, superficial understanding of the Classics. So I read this installment in Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series. I thought it would be an introductory survey of the highpoints of Ancient Greek and Roman culture -- such as Homer, Sophocles, Plato, and the Parthenon; and Virgil, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and the Pantheon. It is quite different, in a thoughtful and provocative -- although not altogether satisfying -- way.Authors Mary Beard and John Henderson are both professors of Classics at Cambridge, so they know their subject. CLASSICS, their book, is not donnish, however. It is a "big picture" book. It touches on a wide variety of disciplines and activities involved in expanding and refining knowledge of the classical world. As opposed to the landmarks of architecture, sculpture, poetry, and theater, the book is inclined towards matters of economics, sociology, and historiography. A sense of the wide-angle lens through which the authors view their subject is conveyed in these sentences from early in the book:"'Classics' is a subject that exists in [the] gap between us and the world of the Greeks and Romans. The questions raised by 'Classics' are the questions raised by our distance from 'their' world, and at the same time by our closeness to it, and by its familiarity to us. * * * The aim of 'Classics' is not only to 'discover' or 'uncover' the ancient world * * *. Its aim is also to define and debate 'our' relationship to that world. "CLASSICS does not operate exclusively on a macro-level, however. The authors often supply interesting examples of their larger points or themes. For instance, slavery. They write that "there can be no explanation for anything in the classical world, from mining to philosophy, from building to poetry, that does not take account of the presence of slaves." And in the next paragraph they refer to a legal rule that was of particular interest to me, as a retired trial lawyer: many societies have barred slaves or others who were not "full citizens" from giving evidence in court; in Rome, slaves could not give evidence unless they did so under torture; in other words, their testimony was admissible ONLY if it were elicited under torture.In many ways, CLASSICS will be beneath all who have even a modicum of knowledge about the subject. (Such as my son, although for him the book might offer some welcome reassurance as to the continued relevance of his major.) But for those who know very little about the Classics and tend to think of it as an arcane, intimidating subject, the book is worth reading.

Great but be warned you don't need this well written little book if you already have or intend getting Mare Beard's "Confronting the Classics" as it seems to be condensed from that excellent book. That being said it is a lovely, well wri tten member of a great series of " Introductions.

This short book discusses the important but changing role played by Classics in our civilization over the past 2000 years. The temple at Bassae, unknown to me until I read this book, serves as a recurring example of how perceptions and interpretations evolved. In conclusion, the work deals relatively lengthily with Arcadia, an actual region of Greece.The result is extremely interesting and of high intellectual level. By no means, however, does it qualify as an introduction to the topic. On the contrary, the reader is expected to be familiar with Greek and Roman authors and their works as well as with classical architecture.Though the book is really not expensive, one would expect illustrations to be of a much higher quality. Photos are tiny and black and white, sketches, as of the frieze in the Bassae temple, are minimalist and maps are not of professional quality. (What is Washington, D.C., doing on a map of the classical world?).Overall this brief book is recommended to those interested very specifically in its topic, the varying significance of Classics.

Wow! I sure wish I could remember more of the high school Latin from decades ago! We did read Julius Caesars letters and the Aeneid, but mostly I remember the teacher told us several times a day that repetition is the mother of learning. I'm looking forward to reading more.