Review by Choice Review
Hall (King's College London) takes a somewhat unusual approach, covering the ancient Greeks not just from the time of the Mycenaeans but up to the early Christian period. This is very good to see, as the Greeks are too often shortchanged in the periods after Macedonian or Roman conquest. While Hall's coverage is generally engaging and thought provoking, there are some jarring notes. In her chapter on the period after the Peloponnesian War, for example, rather than covering Sparta's role in Greek history, she retreats and mainly covers Spartan society from the classical period; this is too bad, since Sparta's actions in that period are quite interesting. Additionally, early in the chapter on the Macedonian takeover, Hall argues that, of course, the Macedonians were really Greeks; this forces her to awkwardly try to fit the Macedonian character into her larger thesis on p. 206, when she covers the post-Alexander kingdoms. As with too many new publications today, this book is a bit short on citations. Would it be too hard to cite the ancient authors in the text? Would sources for quotes be too much to ask? Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty. --Dorothy Anne Slane, University of Maryland University College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
British classicist Hall (The Return of Ulysses) has composed a panorama of two millennia of Hellenic history, depicting Greeks as sea lovers who "felt trapped when they were far inland." Starting with the Minoan and Mycenaean thalassocracies (a political system based on sea domination), Hall embarks on an odyssey toward the four long poems of Homer and Hesiod that offer "unforgettable scenes of fighting, sailing, and farming," pausing to appreciate the three essential crops-"grains, vines, and olives"-at the heart of Greek identity. The meandering tour features a Who's Who of Greek thinkers: scientists Thales and Anaximander; Heraclitus, first philosopher; Xenophanes of Colophon, "first skeptic"; Parmenides, founder of ontology; Zeno and his paradoxes; atomic theorist Democritus; comparative anthropologist Hecataeus; and Herodotus, historian and "Father of European Prose." Greece's "apex of creativity" in democratic Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. segues to the marching Argeads of Macedonia under Alexander the Great, who bequeathed his world empire "to the strongest." Hall limns how the Greeks "colonized the minds of their Roman masters," since "cultural hegemony has more lasting effects than political dominance." The prose is fluid and lambent, and though chapters are lengthy, readers will welcome the volume's accessibility. Maps & illus. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
British classicist Hall (Greek Tragedy, 2010, etc.) defines 10 characteristics that unified ancient Greek culture.The author focuses on an individual characteristic during a particular historical period: For example, the Mycenaeans, whose heroes and wars are the subjects of Greek culture's foundational epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were, like all the Greeks who followed, seafarers. The Greeks' inherent suspicion of authority shaped their ethnic identity, which began to cohere in the eighth century B.C. around the idea that each free man had equal rights and privileges. (Hall is matter-of-fact about the miserable position of women in ancient Greece but is given to delightfully tart asides such as, "Medea [in Euripides' tragedy] is the Athenian husband's worst nightmare realized.") Their inquiring natures sparked the births of natural science and philosophy as intellectual disciplines in the sixth century B.C. Their insatiable competitiveness led Alexander the Great to conquer most of the known world but kept him from naming an heir and prevented his warring successors from presenting a united front against the rising threat of Rome. The Greeks' love of excellence and addiction to pleasure are among the other traits Hall explores. It's a clever way to organize 2,000 years of history, albeit slightly schematican impression reinforced by her tendency to frequently recap the 10 characteristics and a weakness for such this-will-be-on-the-test phrases as, "in the next chapter we ask" or "their achievements form the subject matter of this chapter." These mildly annoying academic mannerisms are trivial in comparison to Hall's wonderfully rich portrait of Greek culture's evolution and underlying continuity from the Bronze Age to the triumph of Christianity. Maintaining a judicious neutrality in the modern scholarly wars, the author acknowledges that the Greeks adopted many of their Near Eastern neighbors' best ideas and practices yet praises them for the unique "cluster of brilliant qualities" not found elsewhere in the ancient world.An excellent survey for general readers, refreshingly opinionated without neglecting to give conventional wisdom its due. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
