Product Description

This book provides an original and challenging answer to the question: 'Who were the Classical Greeks?' Paul Cartledge - 'one of the most theoretically alert, widely read and prolific of contemporary ancient historians' (TLS) - here examines the Greeks and their achievements in terms of their own self-image, mainly as it was presented by the supposedly objective historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Many of our modern concepts as we understand them were invented by the Greeks: for example, democracy, theatre, philosophy, and history. Yet despite being our cultural ancestors in many ways, their legacy remains rooted in myth and the mental and material contexts of many of their achievements are deeply alien to our own ways of thinking and acting. The Greeks aims to explore in depth how the dominant group (adult, male, citizen) attempted, with limited success, to define themselves unambiguously in polar opposition to a whole series of 'Others' - non-Greeks, women, non-citizens, slaves and gods. This new edition contains an updated bibliography, a new chapter entitled 'Entr'acte: Others in Images and Images of Others', and a new afterword.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54580 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Paul Cartledge is Reader in Greek History at the University of Cambridge. His publications include The Cambridge Illustrated History of Greece (CUP, 1997) and The Greeks (BBC, 2001).

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Introduction to Classical Greece
This book is introductory because it does not require the reader to have any previous knowledge of ancient Greece. Initially it discusses the different approaches to the study of such an alien world (how much can we really relate to the people of that time?), which brings up many interesting questions I had not previously considered.

The book then proceeds to discuss the polarities in greek culture (these polarities are explained clearly in the introduction), Greek vs. Barbarian, Citizen vs. Alien, Man vs. Woman, Free vs. Slave, Gods vs. Mortals. These are discussed, primarily in relation to the historians (the first historians - there is some discussion of history and historigraphy) Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristotle and with reference to other important people of the time.

The book is written in a very readable style, with the occasional complex sentence being the only exception. It is well-structured, with information being provided in logical progression. I enjoyed this book because, unlike most academic books, it captured my attention and imagination - making it more like a novel (albeit a very educational one). Finally, the extensive "Further Reading" section and Bibliography provides excellent direction for further study of the sections of interest.

Clear, lucid, explanitory and well written.
Paul Cartledge is an expert on antiquity and nowhere is his expertise reflected more clearly than in this brilliant, concise portrayal of the Greek mental world. Cartledge's approach is extremely instructive, dividing the Greek mental set into various compartments, analysing their ideas on foreigners, slavery, religion, women, citizenship and other areas of the Greek world which interacted to compose their entire cosmology. Through the use of apposite examples he carefully deconstructs the organisation of their mental world, laying it bare and brutal and utterly fascinating. His written style is lucid and fluid and minimalist. For anybody searching for an easy to read and understand portrayal of the inner machinations of the ancient Greek world, this is a must.

Not quite what it was intended to be
I purchased this book because I wanted to get away from the usual (boring) style of historical writing that focuses almost entirely on political and military fact.

It seemed promising at first; the author states in the early sections that he himself grew tired of this format and wanted to look more into the spirit of the Greeks and how they defined themselves in terms of a series of cultural polarities. He therefore explores areas such as citizen vs. alien, men vs. women etc.

For the most part, this structure certainly is different from standard historical books on the subject. However, within each chapter it does descend into exactly this kind of writing. What remains is in fact a rather bland telling of largely military and political fact shoe-horned into a more novel structure and order. At the end of the day it's still fairly boring.