Customer Reviews

Classics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions S)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Beard and Henderson use as their primary focus - the temple at Bassae - to introduce the wide world of Classics and classical inquiry to the reader. It's a fascinating and enjoyable read. The use of Bassae as the focus of the introduction lends the text a cohesiveness that is so often lacking in introductory Classical works. They show how the discovery of the temple leads one to questions about history, Greek societal structure, morality, Greek cultural norms, the relation of Romans to Greeks (and Egyptians to Greeks), etc. Very very good book. Highly recommended.

The term "Classics" refers to the study of Greek and Latin Antiquity, but the authors seem to be vaguely embarrassed and apologetic in a "P.C." kind of way for their interest in this field. If they had deleted Chapter 3, which is a disclaimer of any belief in the "superiority" of the Classical tradition, and if they had avoided sticking the word "classics" in italics at odd places throughout the text, as though we might have forgotten what the book was about, I would have enjoyed it more.

Having said that, they cover an awful lot of ground in surprising depth and in an interesting way in a short few pages. The discussion is organized around the Temple of Bassae, about which they tell us a great deal, using the temple and its history to explain the very complicated relationship between the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome and our own. I have a good though unsystematic familiarity with the Classical world, and I found much that was new and interesting in this book.

The list of further reading is very good, in spite of being a bit "P.C." It is perhaps geared more to the intermediate student than to the complete beginner. The further one delves into the Classical world, the more one realizes just how vast an ocean one has entered, so even this list just scratches the surface.

It's a good read, but I took one star off for unwarranted political correctness.

As an introduction to the Classical world for beginners Edith Hamilton's "The Greek Way" and "The Roman Way" are hard to beat. They were written in pre-"P.C." days, when one didn't have to be coy about extolling the virtues of Western culture and the Classical tradition.

Moses I. Finley's "The Ancient Greeks", though less lyrical than Hamilton's books, is also quite good.

It's an interesting book, to be sure: especially to most American readers, who consider "the classics" as a field of study to be concerned mostly with the narrow teaching and learning of Latin, Greek, and maybe a little Hebrew or hieroglyphics. Actually, Classics concerns not only these languages, but the culture involved: art, archeological studies, anthropology of the the Mediterranian region (and beyond), linguistics, the history of logic and law, and so forth.

This is illustrated by the changing role of the temple of Apollo at Bassae, from sacred site to shrouded detour for vacationers: we're given a thorough grounding on how even the study of this relatively insignificant spot can involve many disciplines, and many aspects of Classical civilization. Further chapters use related hooks: slavery, entertainment, and the phrase "et in Arcadia ego" (da Vinci Code fans take note), before returning to the original conceit, and a concluding note on the centrality of Classical studies to an appreciation of the Western heritage.

Unfortunately, one is left hanging by the section labeled "Further Reading". I would have expected, and appreciated, some suggestions geared towards the beginner: certainly there is no end of books on the subject, but I'd like to have heard the joint authors' ideas on which one-volume history of Greece or Rome is the clearest and best, how to embark on learning some of the languages involved outside of school, and so on. Instead, I get a straightforward scholarly bibliography of the works quoted, but no idea of how to proceed towards the understanding that would make these works meaningful. It's as if one were to write a book "A Very Short Introduction to Mountaineering", in which one was given a fulsome account of how wonderful it felt to climb Everest, a warm salutation to the reader, an expressed wish that all might attain the peak, and then, just when one is truly excited and primed to add Tibet to their life list of Places to Go, the How to Get Started page carries only a few snaps of Base Camp.

Gradus ad Parnassum indeed. And for this I remove one star.

Otherwise, a pretty good book, and a good start to a study of the Classics, or of the VSI series as a whole.

This Very Short Introduction on Classics from Oxford University Press does what it set out to do. It introduces the reader to Roman and Greek antiquity. After reading the book I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see if the book has helped me in understanding Classics better. I would say it has. I found myself looking at certain items and sculptures and asking questions that I haven't before. I wondered about the item's purpose and how succeeding generations have viewed it. I realized I could spend a whole day (or more) pondering all the aspects of an item.

One fault I find with the book is that I find it spends too much time on how later generations have viewed Classics and how it has shaped their would and ours. I understand that this a big part of understanding Classics, but I find myself more interested in the time periods of Roman and Greek antiquity. After a while I found myself glossing over the later chapters which dealt with later generations appreciation of Classics.
All in all, if you ever go to a museum or visited an ancient site and wondered how you could better appreciate what you are seeing, I would recommend this book to you.

Having just taken a humanities course that helped to increase my understanding of the importance of Classic Western art, architecture, literature, and philosophy, I picked up "Classics: A Very Short Introduction." Having read it, I now have an increased understanding of the importance of Classic Western art, architecture, literature, and philosophy.

(See what I did there?)

All kidding aside, it really isn't the primer on classics I expected it to be. Instead, it focuses on such things as early archaeologists' trips to Athens and the Temple of Bassae, and how (and why) classics have been taught over the years.

It's not great, but for the ratio of educational value:hours reading:cost, it's pretty good. "Classics" may not have turned out to be what I had expected, but it nurtured a growing academic interest of mine. And that's never a bad thing.

"Classics" as a separate and distinct academic field have been around for a while, almost as long as most North American colleges and universities have existed. Despite its long history, "Classics" is a relatively young academic field, and in the way we understand it today it can trace its origins to the early nineteenth century romanticism and the revival of the interest in the Greek and Roman "classical" cultures. To be sure, many of the "classical" literary, artistic and philosophical works had been continuously studied and admired since the antiquity, but until perhaps the late Middle Ages they had been considered a "regular" part of the academic curriculum.

This very short introduction aims to explain some of the key issues and topics that are part of the research field of "Classics." Unfortunately, the book focuses too much on the field itself and presents very little material on the actual classics. We learn very little about Greek and Roman history, culture, philosophy or anything else. On the other hand we learn much more about the Greek temple at Bassae, which the authors think is somehow paradigmatic of all the Classics. The authors tend to rhapsodize eloquently on all the themes that they touch upon, and this style of writing gets tedious after a while. They seem to be overly self conscious of their own field and constantly project some of modern ideas and concerns back into the ancient world. This could have been an infinitely better book if the authors tried to remove themselves and their own egos from it and let the Classics speak for themselves. Unfortunately I have hardly learned anything new about the ancient Greco-Roman civilization from reading this book, and cannot recommend it as a suitable introduction to the subject.

It is unfortunate that this book is the first one in the otherwise outstanding "Very Short Introduction" series from the Oxford University press. I've found most of these short introductions to be absolute gems of clear presentation and clear thinking, and would strongly recommend almost any one of the other volumes as a suitable introduction to its given subject.

The timeline at the end of this book gives a clue to the authors' approach. It starts at c800-500 BCE ("Early Greece"), ends at 1995 with the publication of this book, and includes entries like "1959 Ben Hur film starring Charlton Heston". It is about Classics as a subject, about how the Classical world has been viewed and interpreted over the years, and how it continues to impact today's world. In other words, it is more about the nature and significance of Classics as a discipline than about specific Classical topics. That makes it an excellent introduction for someone embarking on such a study.

The Further Reading section at the end is something of a letdown, being just an unhelpful list of titles. See Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Morales, for an example of how a Further Reading section should be done. In fact, the Morales book should be seen as a companion volume to the present one.

But this is a well written and entertaining exploration of a fascinating subject, full of valuable insights. Read this first and then the Morales book.
[PeterReeve]

Although I replied to one of the negative reviews herein, I noticed that that didn't change the overall rating of the book, so I'm writing this to warn other potential buyers. The other Very Short Intros I've looked at have been excellent; this one suffers from a distorted emphasis, I think. Rather than giving us a broad overview of the cultural products of ancient Greece and Rome, the authors seem to be examining contemporary PERSPECTIVE on the classics by attention to just one of classicism's artifacts, the temple of Apollo at Bassae. It is almost as if the book should fall into another category--The Contemporary Mind Regarding Antiquity, or something. There remains to be written an actual very short introduction to ALL of the classics. This disappointed me quite a bit.

This short book discusses the important but changing role played by Classics in our civilization over the past 2000 years. The temple at Bassae, unknown to me until I read this book, serves as a recurring example of how perceptions and interpretations evolved. In conclusion, the work deals relatively lengthily with Arcadia, an actual region of Greece.

The result is extremely interesting and of high intellectual level. By no means, however, does it qualify as an introduction to the topic. On the contrary, the reader is expected to be familiar with Greek and Roman authors and their works as well as with classical architecture.

Though the book is really not expensive, one would expect illustrations to be of a much higher quality. Photos are tiny and black and white, sketches, as of the frieze in the Bassae temple, are minimalist and maps are not of professional quality. (What is Washington, D.C., doing on a map of the classical world?).

Overall this brief book is recommended to those interested very specifically in its topic, the varying significance of Classics.