Classics: A Very Short Introduction

This is a very poor introduction to the subject. VSI are very hit or miss from one book to the next, and this one is more like a list of gripes married with some historical views on the classics have been interpreted. Now if you, like me, picked this up to learn more about the classics as such, you won't get that here. If you're looking for some information on the state of the field, how gender research influenced it, how it's been used to sell a political message of unity, this book will give it to you.

Very insightful look into the notion of "Classics". The authors cover a wide range of art, literature, history, and philosophy and the impact of classics in an engaging and entertaining way. As a reader who has studied both the Latin and Greek languages, this little introduction generated some great perspective and explored questions about how we engage our culture and the past.

This bppk is very short, but it deals more with our relationship with classics than with the classics themselves. Nobody could fail to be informed and entertained. In language accessible to non-specialist and student alike, Beard and Henderson illustrate how Classic encompasses not just a study of the ancient world, but also of its traditions of scholarship and its influence on the culture of the western world. This book does not fail to challenge and provoke. Nor does it ignore the problems and current issues that beset the subject and its teaching, but presents them even handedly and with humour, eschewing propaganda.

Quite an unusual approach to the topic, with deep reflection on what it means for us to read the classics from such a distant point in time and culture. I found it very hard to follow what they were trying to accomplish in the final chapter ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ - I think it's something about understanding the classics as a kind of mythological grand tour landscape, but it's not clear.

If you want to see another angle on the grand tour landscape, I recommend the television Time Team Special episode 28 "Secrets of the Stately Garden".

Unabridged audiobook:

Julia Whelan reads Elg-in (as in Elgin Marbles) as El-gin

Interesting. Not so much about the Greeks and the Romans as about how the Greeks and Romans are the same as and different from us and the similarities and differences between the ways people have regarded them in different generations. A lot to get through in just 120 pages.

Using the temple at Bassae in Arcadia and its sculptured frieze as a starting point, the authors discuss the relationship of the Roman civilization with that of Classical Greece and of both of them with modern Europe since the Renaissance. For such a small book its scope is wide; the writing is thought-provoking.

Interesting overview of the field of Classics through the lens of the temple at Bassae.