Edith Hall (1) (1959–)
Author of Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life
For other authors named Edith Hall, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Edith Hall is a research professor of Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London
Image credit: Edith Hall
Works by Edith Hall
Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind (2014) 251 copies, 3 reviews
A People's History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1689 to 1939 (2020) 32 copies
Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris: A Cultural History of Euripides' Black Sea Tragedy (2013) 12 copies, 1 review
Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly (2016) 11 copies
Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s "Iliad" in the Fight for a Dying World (2025) 10 copies, 1 review
Associated Works
4 Plays: Bacchae / Iphigenia in Aulis / Iphigenia in Tauris / Rhesus (2000) — Introduction, some editions — 187 copies
The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon (Cambridge Companions to Literature) (2016) — Contributor — 24 copies
Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture (2008) — Contributor — 17 copies
Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy (2011) — Contributor — 11 copies
The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance (2010) — Contributor — 11 copies
Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre (Mnemosyne, Supplements) (Latin Edition) (2013) — Contributor — 7 copies
Celts, Romans, Britons: Classical and Celtic Influence in the Construction of British Identities (2020) — Contributor — 6 copies
Forward with Classics: Classical Languages in Schools and Communities (2018) — Contributor — 5 copies
Our Mythical Childhood: The Classics and Literature for Children and Young Adults (2016) — Contributor — 5 copies
Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin (2008) — Contributor — 5 copies
Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Politics 430-380 BC (2007) — Contributor — 4 copies
Beyond Greece and Rome: Reading the Ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe (2020) — Contributor — 3 copies
Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature (2007) — Contributor — 3 copies
Aristophanes and Politics: New Studies (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition) (2020) — Contributor — 3 copies
Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century (2018) — Contributor — 2 copies
Unbinding Medea : interdisciplinary approaches to a classical myth from antiquity to the 21st century (2010) — Contributor — 2 copies
Arethusa (vol 25 no 1): Reconsidering Ovid's Fasti — Contributor — 2 copies
Framing Classical Reception Studies Different Perspectives on a Developing Field (Metaforms: Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity) (2020) — Contributor — 1 copy
Disability Studies and the Classical Body: The Forgotten Other (Routledge Studies in Ancient Disabilities) (2021) — Contributor — 1 copy
Classical reception and children's literature : Greece, Rome and childhood transformation (2018) — Contributor — 1 copy
Ancient Greek Comedy: Genre – Texts – Reception (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, 101) (2020) — Contributor — 1 copy
Poet and Orator: A Symbiotic Relationship in Democratic Athens (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, 74) (2020) — Contributor — 1 copy
Handel : Semele : 2024/25 [programme] (2025) — Contributor [Handel, Ovid and the birth of musical drama] — 1 copy
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare : Opening 5 June 2025 {programme} (2025) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1959
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Oxford (Wadham College ∙ BA ∙ Classics & Modern languages ∙ 1982)
University of Oxford (St Hugh's College ∙ D Phil ∙ 1988) - Occupations
- university professor
- Organizations
- Royal Holloway University
Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama
King's College London - Awards and honors
- Academy of Europe (2014)
Humboldt Research Award (2012) - Short biography
- Edith Hall is a British scholar of classics, specializing in ancient Greek literature and cultural history. She is a professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. Previously, she held a chair at Royal Holloway, University of London. She also co-founded and is consultant director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University. In 2012, she was awarded a Humboldt Research Award to study ancient Greek theater in the Black Sea area.
- Nationality
- UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
In Book 21 of the Iliad Achilles has a violent confrontation with the nonhuman world. Overcome with wrath after the death of Patroclus, he sets about annihilating his Trojan enemies, piling their bodies into the River Scamander in such numbers that, choked with corpses, the water stops flowing. The river implores Achilles to halt his murderous spree before retaliating, summoning its waters in a deluge that threatens to sweep the hero away. In her 2023 translation of the Iliad Emily Wilson show more rendered Scamander’s rebuke with agonising plainness: ‘This is too much.’
The Iliad, a poem shaped by the excesses of warfare, production, and environmental degradation, exposes the limits of what the planet can bear. That, at least, is the argument advanced by Edith Hall in Epic of the Earth, the first substantial ecocritical study of Homer. Much like the Iliad itself, Epic of the Earth ‘looks backwards and forwards in time’. It illuminates the ideologies that underpinned the Homeric world and makes the compelling case that, if used ‘to expose the deepest contradictions underlying the environmental crisis that we humans have created’, the Iliad can help in the struggle against ecological collapse. Can it?
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/epic-earth-edith-hall-review
Abigail Bleach is a medievalist and ecocritic based at the University of Manchester. show less
The Iliad, a poem shaped by the excesses of warfare, production, and environmental degradation, exposes the limits of what the planet can bear. That, at least, is the argument advanced by Edith Hall in Epic of the Earth, the first substantial ecocritical study of Homer. Much like the Iliad itself, Epic of the Earth ‘looks backwards and forwards in time’. It illuminates the ideologies that underpinned the Homeric world and makes the compelling case that, if used ‘to expose the deepest contradictions underlying the environmental crisis that we humans have created’, the Iliad can help in the struggle against ecological collapse. Can it?
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/epic-earth-edith-hall-review
Abigail Bleach is a medievalist and ecocritic based at the University of Manchester. show less
Introducing the ancient Greeks : from Bronze Age seafarers to navigators of the Western mind by Edith Hall
So I went backward. I read what books on the ancient world I could find, as they there what I had. I learned but it was disjointed and understanding came in fits and starts.
Then I read this book.
The tone and voice is perfect. It is not and does not claim to be the ultimate book on the subject. It's a very good and effective introduction. It's written well and introduces what you need to know to continue study.
More over it sets you up for further study. The opening information includes two show more detailed maps and a timeline for reference. At the end each chapter has it's own list of references to pick up if a topic caught your eye and you want to know more.
But the brilliance that most impressed me is the habit of connecting and explaining events and populations. This is a vibrant, interactive and dynamic world. It's alive and active and passionate. And she is somehow able to bring that off the page.
This is how an introduction book is written. show less
Then I read this book.
The tone and voice is perfect. It is not and does not claim to be the ultimate book on the subject. It's a very good and effective introduction. It's written well and introduces what you need to know to continue study.
More over it sets you up for further study. The opening information includes two show more detailed maps and a timeline for reference. At the end each chapter has it's own list of references to pick up if a topic caught your eye and you want to know more.
But the brilliance that most impressed me is the habit of connecting and explaining events and populations. This is a vibrant, interactive and dynamic world. It's alive and active and passionate. And she is somehow able to bring that off the page.
This is how an introduction book is written. show less
When writing a book like this, there’s a fine line between 1) staying true to the philosophical complexity of the original thinker, and 2) presenting those views in a simplified manner for popular consumption. Edith Hall perhaps leans a little too far to the latter, but I can’t fault any author for trying to popularize Aristotle’s ethical system for wider familiarity and practice.
It is much needed. Religion is losing its appeal, which is a good thing, but for some people this has show more created a gap. People need a framework from which they can act, and ancient Greek philosophy can provide this framework.
In fact, I’m usually surprised when I hear of the conflict between religion and science as if there is not an extensive philosophical literature concerning moral behavior. So again, any author that can bring this to popular attention is performing a great service. This has been done with Stoicism but not, as far as I know, with Aristotle’s virtue ethics.
Hall does a reasonable job of presenting Aristotle’s philosophy as a new way to envision ethics that stands in sharp contrast to modern moral discourse. Rather than thinking in terms of universal laws or obligations or theoretical calculations, morality is presented as a more personal endeavor tied to virtue, behavior, habit, and inner contentment and happiness. Hall covers most of the main ideas and does particularly good job in the first few chapters on happiness and potential.
Where the book at times falls flat is with the monotonous and vapid contemporary examples where she overextends what Aristotle would have thought, for example, about how to craft a cover letter for a job. She also apparently has a very superficial understanding of Stoicism, as she called it “a rather superficial and grim affair. It requires the suppression of emotions and physical appetites. It recommends the resigned acceptance of misfortune, rather than active, practical engagement with the fascinating fine-grained business of everyday living and problem-solving”
This is simply not true, and is a common misconception of Stoicism, an easy and superficial criticism. Stoicism recommends the acceptance of what one cannot control, not the resignation from the business of everyday living and problem-solving. If this were true, Marcus Aurelius would not have been the emperor of Rome!
There is a difference between actively working to solve problems within your control and not worrying about that which you cannot control. This is not complete resignation. And, what’s most ironic is that, later in the book, Hall writes “Time spent worrying about things you cannot change is wasted.” That’s a very stoic thing to write from an author that 50 pages earlier called the philosophy a “superficial and grim affair.” In fact, much of Aristotle’s teachings were consistent with Stoicism in many ways (while differing in less important ways).
Overall, this is decent book if you have little knowledge of Aristotle and virtue ethics, but after the first few chapters the quality and insightfulness drastically decline. show less
It is much needed. Religion is losing its appeal, which is a good thing, but for some people this has show more created a gap. People need a framework from which they can act, and ancient Greek philosophy can provide this framework.
In fact, I’m usually surprised when I hear of the conflict between religion and science as if there is not an extensive philosophical literature concerning moral behavior. So again, any author that can bring this to popular attention is performing a great service. This has been done with Stoicism but not, as far as I know, with Aristotle’s virtue ethics.
Hall does a reasonable job of presenting Aristotle’s philosophy as a new way to envision ethics that stands in sharp contrast to modern moral discourse. Rather than thinking in terms of universal laws or obligations or theoretical calculations, morality is presented as a more personal endeavor tied to virtue, behavior, habit, and inner contentment and happiness. Hall covers most of the main ideas and does particularly good job in the first few chapters on happiness and potential.
Where the book at times falls flat is with the monotonous and vapid contemporary examples where she overextends what Aristotle would have thought, for example, about how to craft a cover letter for a job. She also apparently has a very superficial understanding of Stoicism, as she called it “a rather superficial and grim affair. It requires the suppression of emotions and physical appetites. It recommends the resigned acceptance of misfortune, rather than active, practical engagement with the fascinating fine-grained business of everyday living and problem-solving”
This is simply not true, and is a common misconception of Stoicism, an easy and superficial criticism. Stoicism recommends the acceptance of what one cannot control, not the resignation from the business of everyday living and problem-solving. If this were true, Marcus Aurelius would not have been the emperor of Rome!
There is a difference between actively working to solve problems within your control and not worrying about that which you cannot control. This is not complete resignation. And, what’s most ironic is that, later in the book, Hall writes “Time spent worrying about things you cannot change is wasted.” That’s a very stoic thing to write from an author that 50 pages earlier called the philosophy a “superficial and grim affair.” In fact, much of Aristotle’s teachings were consistent with Stoicism in many ways (while differing in less important ways).
Overall, this is decent book if you have little knowledge of Aristotle and virtue ethics, but after the first few chapters the quality and insightfulness drastically decline. show less
Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind by Edith Hall
Ancient Greece culture is one of the pillars of modern Western civilization, and this book is a great introduction to almost two thousand years of history that still shapes our culture.
The author lays out in the very beginning of the book what she considers as the essential components of ancient Greek culture and character, and then proceeds in chronological fashion to show us how parts of ancient Greek history relates to those components. It is not easy to summarize such a long segment of show more history in only a few hundred pages, but within these constraints, this book does a splendid job, becoming almost a page-turner.
I found some parts of the book not detailed enough, for example the period and events surrounding Hypatia deserve more details, but that's the mathematician in me speaking. There are so many fascinating periods, events, characters in this history, it is indeed very difficult to be fair to all of them. All in all, this book helped me fill in many blanks for me, because before this book, my knowledge of ancient Greece were limited to my readings on history of philosophy, mathematics and medicine; that is somewhat patchy and fragmentary.
I can easily recommend this book to the curious readers who want a very easy to follow introduction to ancient Greek culture and history, a coherent guide to this important period of our civilization. A few laughs and smiles are almost guaranteed and some of the characters you will find so alive as if ready to jump from those pages to you, lecturing on their current events. Finally, suggested reading and notes section are also very valuable for guiding the readers so that they can satisfy their appetite for more history. show less
The author lays out in the very beginning of the book what she considers as the essential components of ancient Greek culture and character, and then proceeds in chronological fashion to show us how parts of ancient Greek history relates to those components. It is not easy to summarize such a long segment of show more history in only a few hundred pages, but within these constraints, this book does a splendid job, becoming almost a page-turner.
I found some parts of the book not detailed enough, for example the period and events surrounding Hypatia deserve more details, but that's the mathematician in me speaking. There are so many fascinating periods, events, characters in this history, it is indeed very difficult to be fair to all of them. All in all, this book helped me fill in many blanks for me, because before this book, my knowledge of ancient Greece were limited to my readings on history of philosophy, mathematics and medicine; that is somewhat patchy and fragmentary.
I can easily recommend this book to the curious readers who want a very easy to follow introduction to ancient Greek culture and history, a coherent guide to this important period of our civilization. A few laughs and smiles are almost guaranteed and some of the characters you will find so alive as if ready to jump from those pages to you, lecturing on their current events. Finally, suggested reading and notes section are also very valuable for guiding the readers so that they can satisfy their appetite for more history. show less
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- Works
- 33
- Also by
- 54
- Members
- 937
- Popularity
- #27,411
- Rating
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- Reviews
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- ISBNs
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