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Confronting the classics : traditions, adventures, and innovations / Mary Beard.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2013Edition: First American editionDescription: x, 310 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0871407167 (hardcover)
  • 9780871407160 (hardcover) :
Subject(s):
Contents:
Do classics have a future? -- Ancient Greece. Builder of ruins ; Sappho speaks ; Which Thucydides can you trust? ; Alexander : how great? ; What made the Greeks laugh? -- Heroes & villains of early Rome. Who wanted Remus dead? ; Hannibal at bay ; Quousque tandem-- ? ; Roman art thieves ; Spinning Caesar's murder -- Imperial Rome : emperors, empresses & enemies. Looking for the emperor ; Cleopatra : the myth ; Married to the empire ; Caligula's satire? ; Nero's Colosseum? ; British queen ; Bit-part emperors ; Hadrian and his villa -- Rome from the bottom up. Ex-slaves and snobbery ; Fortune-telling, bad breath, and stress ; Keeping the armies out of Rome ; Life and death in Roman Britain ; South Shields Aramaic -- Arts & culture, tourists & scholars. Only Aeschylus will do? ; Arms and the man ; Don't forget your pith helmet ; Pompeii for the tourists ; The Golden Bough ; Philosophy meets archaeology ; What gets left out ; Astérix and the Romans -- Reviewing classics.
Summary: Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists, an academic with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience. Here, she draws on thirty years of teaching about Greek and Roman history to provide a panoramic portrait of the classical world that draws surprising parallels with contemporary society. We are taken on a guided tour of antiquity, encountering some of the most famous (and infamous) characters of classical history, among them Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Sappho and Hannibal. Challenging the notion that classical history is all about depraved emperors and conquering military heroes, Beard also introduces us to the common people--the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? What made them laugh? What were their marriages like? This bottom-up approach to history is typical of Beard, who looks with fresh eyes at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, taking aim at many of the assumptions we held as gospel.--From publisher description.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 930 B368 Available 33111005188855
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 286-295) and index.

Do classics have a future? -- Ancient Greece. Builder of ruins ; Sappho speaks ; Which Thucydides can you trust? ; Alexander : how great? ; What made the Greeks laugh? -- Heroes & villains of early Rome. Who wanted Remus dead? ; Hannibal at bay ; Quousque tandem-- ? ; Roman art thieves ; Spinning Caesar's murder -- Imperial Rome : emperors, empresses & enemies. Looking for the emperor ; Cleopatra : the myth ; Married to the empire ; Caligula's satire? ; Nero's Colosseum? ; British queen ; Bit-part emperors ; Hadrian and his villa -- Rome from the bottom up. Ex-slaves and snobbery ; Fortune-telling, bad breath, and stress ; Keeping the armies out of Rome ; Life and death in Roman Britain ; South Shields Aramaic -- Arts & culture, tourists & scholars. Only Aeschylus will do? ; Arms and the man ; Don't forget your pith helmet ; Pompeii for the tourists ; The Golden Bough ; Philosophy meets archaeology ; What gets left out ; Astérix and the Romans -- Reviewing classics.

Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists, an academic with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience. Here, she draws on thirty years of teaching about Greek and Roman history to provide a panoramic portrait of the classical world that draws surprising parallels with contemporary society. We are taken on a guided tour of antiquity, encountering some of the most famous (and infamous) characters of classical history, among them Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Sappho and Hannibal. Challenging the notion that classical history is all about depraved emperors and conquering military heroes, Beard also introduces us to the common people--the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? What made them laugh? What were their marriages like? This bottom-up approach to history is typical of Beard, who looks with fresh eyes at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, taking aim at many of the assumptions we held as gospel.--From publisher description.

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