Pierre Grimal (1912–1996)

Un petit livre facile à lire mais qui ressemble plus à un roman qu'à un livre d'histoire. L'auteur me semble avoir une conception un peu naïve et désuette de l'histoire, et prendre au pied de la lettre les écrits des anciens romains eux-mêmes.

L'histoire est racontée sur un mode narratif, il n'y a pas beaucoup de repères chronologiques. Elle est aussi vue "par le petit bout de la lorgnette", et on a du mal à replacer les fait historiques dans un contexte plus général. En reposant show more ce livre, j'ai du mal à comprendre comment cette civilisation a pu dominer le monde occidental pendant aussi longtemps.

Bref, je reste un peu sur ma faim mais c'est quand même une bonne introduction à l'histoire de Rome, je suppose. A emprunter de préférence à la bibliothèque (ce que j'ai fait), ça ne vaut pas le coup de l'acheter à mon avis. show less

Gorgeous. One of my favourite acquisitions of 2016.
Okay, I'm exaggerating - somewhat. This was put together in France in 1963, so does not reflect the last half-century of scholarship. Europe gets the bulk of the book, followed by East Asia, with smaller sections at the end for the New World and Africa. But, then again, I would expect an equivalent book published in, say, Kenya to be exactly the same in reverse, so how can I complain?

A wonderful book that discusses, in the introduction, the show more problems of prehistoric religions, and acknowledges that the vicissitudes of history also play their role in the critical lacunae of the Americas and Australia: literary cultures in Europe and East Asia simply left more complex details of their mythologies and - in some cases - simply had more (often needlessly) complex mythologies because of these generations of literate people.

Anyhow, this is an exquisite book on the subject, with each of the 546 pages packed with information. No extraneous chatter here, no attempts to fill out pages with anything less than research and thought-provoking discussion. And a decent bibliography rounds out the package. show less

Everything from Abas to Zeuxippe is included in this concise and readable dictionary. The result is a handy reference to the classical world and its important members. The inclusion of genealogical tables helps make this a worthwhile addition to your classical library.

Un indispensable de la bibliothèque de tout amateur de mythologie.