Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations by Mary Beard (PDF)

Description

One of the world’s leading historians provides a revolutionary tour of the Ancient World, dusting off the classics for the twenty-first century. Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people―the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? Where did they go if their marriage was in trouble or if they were broke? Or, perhaps just as important, how did they clean their teeth? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard forces us along the way to reexamine so many of the assumptions we held as gospel―not the least of them the perception that the Emperor Caligula was bonkers or Nero a monster. With capacious wit and verve, Beard demonstrates that, far from being carved in marble, the classical world is still very much alive. 17 illustrations

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly Offering up 30 years of pointed insights and inquisitions, Cambridge classics professor Beard (The Fires of Vesuvius) returns with a collection of primarily reprinted reviews of her classicist peers’ work that somehow manages to touch on nearly every notable person, place, and event associated with the Ancient world. But for Beard, while the classics have always been a dialogue with the dead, the dead do not include only those who went to their graves two thousand years ago. Rather, the study of the Classics is the study of what happens in the gap between antiquity and ourselves. It’s the back-and-forth sparring between betweeded Oxford dons, it’s Picasso and Shakespeare, it’s Ben-Hur and Gladiator—it’s anything that engages in or, as the wonderful title suggests, confronts that gilded and gargantuan Greco-Roman world. So, the chapter about King Minos’s legendary palace is much more concerned with how and why Arthur Evans decided to elaborately, and disastrously, restore the site in the early 20th century. The discussion of Cleopatra turns around history’s ever-changing, mostly guessing portrait, and ends with Beard finally advising that we just stick with the Augustan myth and Horace’s ÿdemented queen.’ And then there’s her fascinating, gentle dig at the obsessive, retiring Victorian academic Charles Frazer. All in all, a smart, adventuresome read. Illus. & photos. (Sept.) From Booklist Why should twenty-first-century readers care about Caligula or Commodus, Sappho or Sophocles? In this thought-provoking collection of essays and book reviews, Cambridge classicist Mary Beard explores the reasons that ancient Greece and Rome still matter. Finding surprising substance even in Astérix cartoons, Beard convincingly establishes the Roman Forum and the Greek Agora as settings for clarifying issues still vexing the modern world. In the ancient debate over how Cicero invoked emergency powers to quash the Catilinarian conspiracy, for instance, readers find the same issues now perplexing lawmakers debating whether national security justifies abridgment of constitutional rights. Elsewhere—in the gender issues swirling around Livia’s crimes, the public-relations tactics transforming fierce Octavian into dignified Augustus, the hermeneutical problems surrounding Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War—readers repeatedly discover that visiting classical antiquity means seeing modernity more fully. Though far from seamless, Beard’s organization of her essays and reviews into four thematic sections unifies and focuses her wide-ranging forays. Lively and engaging, Beard’s scholarship brings Pericles, Antony, Nero—and other ancient titans—back to life. –Bryce Christensen Review “Beard is the best…communicator of Classics we have.” ― Independent Sunday (UK)”Starred review. Beard’s clear way of explaining times and people we may or may not have heard of makes learning not only fun, but satisfying, and her prose style is easy without being annoyingly breezy…. A top-notch introduction to some fairly arcane material, accessible but not patronizing.” ― Kirkus Reviews”Witty, erudite collection…To Beard, the classical past is alive and kicking―and she has the great gift of being able to show just why classics is still a subject worth arguing about.” ― Sunday Times (UK)”These reviews are ideal for providing a basic understanding of classical studies, as they not only pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of the books she reviews but also elucidate the sometimes tricky nuances of current approaches in the field…. Not to be missed by fans of Beard, this will also appeal to readers generally interested in classical studies.” ― Library Journal”Highly engaging.” ― Sunday Telegraph (UK)”With such a champion as Beard to debunk and popularise, the future of the study of classics is assured.” ― Daily Telegraph (UK)”Engaging…impressive… Through her lively discussion of modern scholarship, Ms. Beard succeeds in her goal of proving that study of the Classics is “still a ‘work in progress’ not ‘done and dusted’.”” ― The Economist”Essayists are like dinner guests: The best are amusing and erudite, the worst think they are. If Cambridge professor Mary Beard’s conversation is anything like her wise and elegant book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books, 31 of which are collected in Confronting the Classics, she must be very popular indeed…. Throughout, readers will learn something new or look at familiar topics afresh, alternately nodding and grinning.” ― M. Carter, The Wall Street Journal”Offering up 30 years of pointed insights and inquisitions, Cambridge classics professor Beard (The Fires of Vesuvius) returns with a collection of primarily reprinted reviews of her classicist peers’ work that somehow manages to touch on nearly every notable person, place, and event associated with the Ancient world.…. All in all, a smart, adventuresome read.” ― Publishers Weekly”In this thought-provoking collection of essays and book reviews, Cambridge classicist Mary Beard explores the reasons that ancient Greece and Rome still matter…. Lively and engaging, Beard’s scholarship brings Pericles, Antony, Nero―and other ancient titans―back to life.” ― Booklist”Many of us studied classics not only to read what was written in Latin, but also because poets, writers, and thinkers had blazed a brilliant trail. Beard conveys in her survey of the subject and the people who study it the excitement and romance of that tradition. For someone who has argued vehemently against the need to be glamorous, she makes the study of classics irresistibly attractive.” ― A.E. Stallings, American Scholar”Beard’s essays in this volume range from humor in ancient Greece to the reputation of the emperor Caligula to the restoration of Roman sculpture. She writes with grace and wit on a vast array of subjects, and she has a novelist’s gift for selecting odd and revealing details.” ― Nick Romeo, The Daily Beast About the Author A professor of classics at Cambridge University, Mary Beard is the author of the best-selling SPQR and Women & Power and the National Book Critics Circle Award–nominated Confronting the Classics. A popular blogger and television personality, Beard is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Professor Mary Beard is one of the world’s best known classicists. That may not be all that enlightening to those of us who don’t spend our time studying Greek and Latin literature and history, but do not fear to pick up Confronting The Classics on that account. Beard writes engagingly and wittily, making the Greeks and Romans who are the subjects of these essays into real people rather than marble statuary or frozen mosaics. The essays in this book were originally written as book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and other British periodicals, or are transcripts of talks Beard has given. Reading them reminds me of some of the best of my own college professors, and makes me wish that I could be in one of Professor Beard’s audiences.The book is divided into five sections containing 31 essays. Chapter titles like “Alexander: How Great?,” “Bit-part Emperors,” and “Don’t Forget Your Pith Helmet” are inviting, and they suggest a lightness of tone which does not detract from the soundness of the scholarship. Much of the book unavoidably deals with the activities of generals, emperors, and empresses, but there is also a section called “Rome from the bottom up” which is concerned with ex-slaves, conquered peoples, and ordinary Roman soldiers stationed in far outposts of the Empire. As a long time admirer of “I,Claudius”, I enjoyed the chapters that dealt with the Emperors Augustus and Caligula and which described some of the efforts made by Jack Pulman and the producers to film Robert Graves’ novel. Perhaps the most entertaining, if somewhat enigmatic chapter is “What Made the Greeks Laugh?”, which reminds us that humor usually doesn’t travel well or survive much past the time in which it was written.I enjoyed Confronting The Classics. It’s an engaging, often amusing read based on very sound scholarship that opens the doors of the museums and libraries a bit to let us see the Greeks and Romans as actual people not all that different from us.

⭐More academic than straight history, this does offer insights in both the history itself and especially in the lives and views of those who have written and interpreted that history. Roman blades were sharp, and so are those who write about them. Don’t pay much for this, but it is enjoyable.

⭐Although the Romans reportedly abhorred monarchy, they now have a Queen of the Classics in Mary Beard. Ms. Beard is not sparing in her criticisms and one gets the sense that she believes that she is the last word on most things ancient. Nevertheless, she obviously knows her stuff, but more so, endlessly cautions that, very often in the classics, the story is far more than the evidence that supports it. I believe that the most we can know, particularly here, is that we don’t know. Humans typically are impatient to find facts, and in this field, that is very dangerous. I was, at first, disappointed to learn that so much ancient art is in fact reproduction. After going to Pompeii last year, I read Ms. Beard’s book on that subject and was again disappointed knowing that perhaps something I touched there was not actually there in 79 AD. But if that is the truth then so it should be told. I am reminded of a talk that Kennedy biographer Robert Dalleck gave where he described a young Vassar student who had a long affair with Kennedy while he was in office. A young woman asked him why he had to say that and apparently taint the image she wanted to harbor of him. Because it was the truth, he said. No more reason necessary.

⭐Loved everything about it. Mary Beard’s book is erudite and thoroughly enjoyable. If you love Roman history as much as she obviously does, this is well worth the read. Her range of expertise in the area is phenomenal, and she is adept at recounting moments in Roman history that will appeal to laypersons as well as scholars. Most of the essays are book reviews written at the beginning of this millennium. While none of them enticed me to read any of the books she reviewed, the background she gives to each period or theme covered by the authors and her criticism and/or praise for aspects of their books are well worth the read, and there’s much to learn from it. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in Roman history.

⭐I have read her history of ROME, SPQR, and am a classicist. This book is a must for anyone interested in the classics, which have been given short shrift over the past few decades. Mary Beard writes in a compelling and authoritative voice, for the modern reader of the classics, and to increase interest for the curious.

⭐Potential buyers should be aware that, apart from the introduction and the opening essay, this book is a collection of a number of Mary Beard’s book reviews. She uses the introduction to frame the reviews into a kind of narrative, a narrative indicating points of contention in our understanding of the classical world. The reviews themselves are arranged in chronological order by subject. While her reviews give you a sense of what the original book says, on some occasions I did find myself thinking, “I need to have read the original to appreciate what the review says.” Hence, the reviews that I found most useful and interesting were the reviews of books that I have already read. Nonetheless, Dr. Beard is never dull: she always writes with energy and enthusiasm. Several of her reviews made me want to look up the original books.

⭐Let’s be clear about what this book is to avoid untoward expectations. This is a collection of some 30 book reviews written by Mary Beard since 1990, although most are more recent, and which already have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Book Review and other general but highbrow periodicals. They cover a wide range of Ancient ( Greek and Roman) history and culture subjects, most of which have been thoroughly treated over the last 200 years in innumerable publications. Beard’s virtue is to always provide some added value, some fresh insight or viewpoint. So this book will probably provide greatest pleasure to those who already have some familiarity with the subjects treated.

⭐There are some bad reviews for this book, but if you look it is possible that some did not understand what this book is, so to make it clear this is a series of essays/reviews that have been published before in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. It is likely then that you have read some of these before, but probably not all of them.There is an active table of contents so it is easy to find something, some pictures and prints that do show up perfectly okay on a standard kindle e-reader, but obviously for instance on a tablet device you can enlarge if you so desire. Of course, as you would expect with something like this you also have a bibliography, index and so on.Mary Beard with her usual insight gives us here a very interesting book, reminding us what we know and do not know about certain events in the past. With certain biographies, she shows us where things have been made up to fill in blank in life histories. Indeed, I have read some really good biographies over the years as well as some quite bad ones, as I am sure we all have.With numerous articles on books, the Classics and antiquity this has a lot in its pages to make you ponder and think, including an article on Asterix, which I had never read before. In all then this makes for a very good and interesting read, but please think before you buy this as obviously for a lot of people you probably have no interest in the subject, although so saying the history and the original books from the Greek and Roman period do still have a bearing on our lives.

⭐Maybe I didn’t read the product info carefully enough but I was mildly disappointed to discover that this book is merely a collection of book reviews. Which begs the question – why would you want to read them unless you were intending to buy the books? To be fair there is quite a lot of information and discussion aside from Mary Beard’s critiques of the books but I am still left with the feeling that she was just seizing the opportunity to make some more cash out of her reviews.I’m not sure why the title is ‘Confronting the Classics’. Confronting the hapless authors might be more accurate as barely one escapes without being judged wanting to some degree. And occasionally Mary Beard rubbishes someone else’s theory without citing the authority for her own opinions.Lastly, this is not a book for the general reader. Unless you are interested in why Romulus murdered Remus (if, in fact, he did, assuming they existed at all) or why Thucydides is such a difficult author to get to grips with, I would give this a miss.

⭐I liked, as ever, Professor Beard’s outstanding ability to match serious scholarship with witty disrespect. In this she never disappoints. I learnt a lot from this book and laughed a lot too. What I did dislike, and disliked quite considerably, was the failure to warn readers that the pieces are book reviews albeit very good reviews of books which with only one exception I had not read. While I trust her reasons for applauding or disliking each of these books, reading the reviews was a bit like reading a cookery book about dishes you have never eaten and probably never will. Reviews aren’t really essays. I never thought I would have to rate a book by one of my favourite authors so lowly.

⭐Classics – Alive and Kicking: This discussion of primary and secondary sources of the classical era is a miniature tour de force. Mary Beard appraises us of the paucity of documentation for some periods and issues of bias, invention and a predilection for anecdote of some classical authors. She warns us of how certain authors ingratiated themselves with the new emperor by denigrating the old. She fruitfully explores the relationship between written and archaeological sources and the latter’s problems of interpretation, preservation and restoration (Knossos, Pompeii, Laocoon). She acknowledges the creative use made of a fortune-teller’s compendium of questions and answers to gain insights into the lives of the lower and middling orders. Her explanations of the obtuseness of Thucydides and Tacitus is revealing – still causing classical scholars head-aches about what they actually meant. Each chapter is short, entertaining and dense and I only realised half-way through that it is a collection of her book-reviews over the last 16 years which she has edited and adapted for this volume. She rightly argues that classical studies entail a continuing dialogue, not only with primary sources (Suetonius, Cassius Dioi et al) but also with all classical scholarship since. However, her analysis of Sappho was not quite as rounded as Margaret Mountford’s T.V. account. My old tutor, K.D.White, would have liked more on agriculture (including the Carthaginian treatise the Senate wanted translating!), technology and the economy in general. She upbraids other authors for their use of ‘bons mots’ but is quite lavish in her own sprinkling (apt and funny in the main). But this is carping. This is an erudite and accessible opus by an academic at the top of her profession and in complete command of her discipline. I learned a huge amount from this little tome.

⭐This book comprises a set of book reviews written for various non-specialist magazines. So, in a way, the information on the classical world is offered somewhat tangentially. But there is plenty of Ms Beard’s erudition and wit on display as well as an insight into the world of classics academics (including a serial groper who you would hope would have a rather harder time in these more enlightened days). Overall, an enjoyable read with some good academic knockabout, but not a history book

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