Customer Reviews

Death and Disease in the Ancient City (Routledge Classical Monographs)

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Death and Disease in the Ancient City is a well-edited -- nay, fantastically edited -- collection of essays that provide an eye-opening look at a subject seldom touched upon, but which is of great importance if we are to understand the everyday reality of human existence thousands of years ago: the utter precariousness of life itself, and the specter of a possible sudden death from a myriad of sources that seemed to hang over the heads of all classes of people like the Sword of Damocles. This book deals with how the ancients viewed diseases, how they ritualized and fetishized death and mourning, and how they tried to fit the fragility and helplessness of their own lives into rational (for them) cosmological and epistemological schemes that could provide comfort and some sense of understanding of and coping with the awesome forces that could cruelly wrench existence from the living in, literally, a heartbeat.

The essays in this volume provide vital discussions on a myriad of fascinating topics, and plenty of notes have been provided to help the reader do more research on his or her own. The co-editor's dedication to providing readable and intriguing meditations on these matters is laudable, and pulled off successfully. This book is sure to be the standard tome on this subject for years to come, and I can't recommend it highly enough.