Classics: A Very Short Introduction

A novel take on 'the Classics' in a volume that avoids the usual emphasis on history and the arts. Instead, it focuses on such intangibles as identity in the ancient world. The authors take the Greek writer Pausanias as a starting point. Although he was was writing his 'Guidebook to Greece' more than two centuries after Greece had become a Roman colony, he chooses to write about Greek civilisation, architecture and history as though it were still independent of Roman influence. His silence on matters Roman speaks volumes and reminds us that reading between the lines is sometimes more revealing than reading the lines themselves. Beard and Henderson suggest that Classics is not the study of a dead culture but a live, interactive process informed by the 'vast community of readers across the millennia'. Their book dwells on the friezes from the Temple of Apollo at Bassae - initially, at what seems too great a length, but actually for very good reason. The temple friezes, now on exhibit at the British Museum, are independent blocks of marble that can be reassembled in many different ways. Bassae is therefore a metaphor for discovery and re-evaluation. Furthermore, the temple is set in Arcadia - a region of huge importance for literature, religion and philosophy, giving it yet more symbolic significance. As the authors suggest, the notion of Arcadia - sometimes paradise, sometimes brutish wilderness - is itself capable of multiple interpretation, like so many aspects of the ancient world. Each new generation's interpretations and insights shed extra light on, and themselves become part of, the classical heritage. The book's unexpected emphasis on the historic reception of classics constitutes, perhaps, its major strength. It is an emphasis reflected in the concluding Timeline, two pages of which record events from 800 BCE to the Renaissance and the other two and a half pages to events such as the election of Dr Johnson to a Professorship at the RA (1770) and the publication of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980). Probably not everyone's idea of a classical initiation, but this is a fresh and stimulating introduction to what can still seem a dauntingly élitist and exclusive area of study.

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.

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]

I think my dissatisfaction with this book may have been due to a misunderstanding of its purpose. I note that there is another book in this series entitled 'Classical Literature: A Very Short Introduction', and I think that was what i was expecting from this book. Instead, I got a seemingly interminable discussion of an obscure Greek temple in Arcadia, the figures on a decorative freeze, its architecture and so on. What I was hoping for was an overview of Homer, Virgil, Euripides, Aeschylus, Ovid and the rest. If that's what you're looking for, try Robert Cahill's 'Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter' (which does, however, only cover the Greek half of classical literature), or the other book in this series that focuses on literature.

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.