The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian |
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The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian
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by Robin Lane Fox
Sales Rank: 49250
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List Price: $35.00
$23.10
At Amazon
on 7-31-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 672 pages
Published by: Basic Books October 9, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0465024963
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0465024964
Book Dimensions:
9.4 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
Weighs: 2.3 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Framing this history of the classical world as he imagines the second-century Emperor Hadrian (who traveled the classical world and had a "classicizing mind") would have done, this scintillating survey seeks to understand Greek and Roman civilizations on their own terms. Oxford historian Fox (Alexander the Great) structures his study around the ancient concepts of freedom, justice and luxury, as they evolved from Homeric literature onward. The story arranges itself around two poles: democratic Athens, of which, for all its flaws, Fox is an unabashed partisan, and Rome, whose fatally unequal republic declined into the grotesque tyranny of the early empire. This intellectual framework provides an interpretive skeleton for a loosely structured, well-paced narrative history. (One disappointment, a major one for an "epic history," is Fox's sketchy, montage-like treatment of military campaigns.) Into the story the author weaves insightful passages on art, religion, technology, marriage and the prominent role of homosexuality in classical culture, along with set-piece profiles of statesmen and thinkers from Pericles to Plato to Pliny. Fox is a fluent, perceptive color commentator on the pageant of ancient history, while giving readers some idea of where the parade was headed. 71 black and white illus.; ten maps. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Greek and Latin may long since have lost their central place in Western education, but the influence of the classical world on our own culture remains very strong. It's there in language and law, and far more vividly present in ideas and ways of thinking about the world. Both the name and concept of democracy came from the Greeks (even if in practice ancient democracies varied massively from each other and their modern counterparts). A century ago, people were fond of comparing the British Empire to that of Rome, and nowadays it is common to look at America in the same way. The great Greek historian Thucydides would have been delighted but not surprised by such analogies; when he chronicled the struggle between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century B.C., he claimed that the events he described would be "repeated in much the same way in the future."
In reality, the parallels are rarely so neat, and all too often people twist the past to confirm their own preconceptions. The Nazis used the writings of Roman authors such as Tacitus to bolster their ideological claims about the inherent moral and martial superiority of the German race. That was an extreme case -- at one point, Himmler even tried to seize the oldest manuscript of one of Tacitus's books -- but even today, commentators with different political backgrounds will often draw radically opposing conclusions from the same episode in Greek or Roman history.
We need to understand the past on its own terms before trying to draw any lessons from it, and for this and other reasons, Robin Lane Fox's splendid The Classical World is to be especially welcomed. Lane Fox, who teaches at Oxford, is that rarest of writers: a distinguished academic who is willing and able to address a general audience. This latest book presents a survey of Greek and Roman culture over some 900 years, beginning with the era of Homer and ending with the rule of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. It is not a narrative history -- events such as the Peloponnesian War or Alexander the Great's campaigns are skimmed over -- but the discussion has a chronological framework, ensuring that we are not presented with a simplistic view of unchanging attitudes and beliefs.
This is a big book, but the subject is truly vast. In spite of this scope, the book's pace never slackens, and it remains readable throughout. Lane Fox makes no attempt to hide the vast gaps in our knowledge; phrases like "in my opinion" occur frequently, warning the reader that other interpretations are possible, even if there is no time to discuss them.
Evidence or lack thereof dictates what we can say about the ancient world, of course. Important figures such as the Athenian statesman Pericles remain quite shadowy, and it is very hard to gain a sense of what the great man was like. Not until the entry of King Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great, do key characters in the story register more as human beings, although the sheer scale and speed of the latter's achievements will always make him something of an enigma. This changes when we come to the centuries of Roman dominance, when the reader gets far more vivid impressions of men like Pompey and Caesar, Cicero and Pliny, Augustus and Hadrian. This is simply a reflection of the sources Lane Fox has to work with, for biographies and even private letters survive from many of these men (it is invariably a question of men since even the most influential women of the imperial court remain vaguely known figures).
Although the scope of The Classical World is broad, it deals primarily with the lives and attitudes of the wealthy elite. We know relatively little about the less well off, even in democratic Athens, and we know almost nothing about the poorer inhabitants of other Greek cities. So we do not get much sense of the lives of the majority of the population, although this would be a little more feasible in the Roman era. Three main themes of The Classical World -- justice, liberty and luxury -- are each shaped by the perspective of the upper class. For instance, Roman justice was never supposed to be blind but to take full and favorable account of a person's wealth and status. Or consider another recurring topic, the importance of horses and hunting. Few academics mention such things other than in passing, but Lane Fox -- himself an experienced equestrian and hunter -- justifiably stresses these quintessentially aristocratic concerns.
Lane Fox's survey deserves to be widely read. Indeed, I cannot think of a better introduction to the subject for those with no prior knowledge. Whether or not you agree with all his interpretations -- and many will not -- no one will doubt that these are the considered opinions of someone with a deep knowledge of the subject. (Personally, I am unconvinced that the Roman Republic "could, indeed should, have survived" Julius Caesar after he had become dictator, or that it would have survived had Mark Antony been assassinated along with Caesar.) Still, Lane Fox's strong and clear narrative will stimulate those reacquainting themselves with this fascinating era as much as it enthralls newcomers.
Reviewed by Adrian Goldsworthy
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Reader Reviews
Those who study classical history know how rare it is that a scholar can take us in a consistent line from the development of classical and Hellenistic Greece to the conquering might of Rome, and illuminate both worlds. Robin Lane Fox has pulled off this unusual achievement in his The Classical World. Taking three very ancient-world concepts - Liberty, Justice and Luxury (in its sense of extravagance, decadence) - Fox manages to walk confidently from Archaic Athens to the mid-point in the Roman Empire (the Emperor Hadrian, perhaps the most Greek-influenced of Roman Emperors, second century A.D.) and brilliantly evoke both the changes within the Greek and Roman cultures as they rose to empire and then fell from that high point, and to `compare and contrast' the two great cultures in a way that makes sense to the reader. Perhaps more importantly, this is a deeply satisfying book both for the expert scholar and the interested reader who doesn't have his M.A. in classical studies. It's amazing to see how these three `civilized' needs or qualities are dealt with in differing ways by the various cultures of Greece and Rome, and how complaints of decadence always seem to follow the cultural richness of a developing civilization. At heart, the question is - what constitutes a civilization? How do you reconcile the needs of Liberty and Justice, and what happens to both when the rich become richer and the poor become poorer? Is wealth in and of itself a clue that a civilization that has lost its earlier energy? How did the Greeks and Romans deal with wealth and poverty, and how did they view them as influencing both liberty and justice? How did the great warrior ideals Homer exemplified influence the cultures after them, for good - or ill? Did Athens fall, in part, because of its increasing wealth drawn from its increasingly-resentful allies? Did the largesse of the Caesars do more harm than good to the average Roman citizen? These and other questions are discussed (but not intrusively) as the reader time-travels through the rise and decline of the Athenian Greeks; Fox takes his leave with the Emperor Hadrian. In his time, Rome was still the greatest, most civilized nation on earth - but the hints of the decline to come were already visible with those who had eyes to see. Fox is best known, perhaps, for his marvelous biography of Alexander the Great (and his consulting participation in Oliver Stone's movie Alexander). Similarly, Fox was able to make Alexander both comprehensible and accessible, wading through a multitude of conflicting sources and eons of contradictory scholarship. The Classical World feels, simply, like a labor of love from a man who finds much to love, to deprecate, and to honor in both the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome.
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The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian
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