Customer Reviews

The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World

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Ever since Kenneth Dover's pioneering work Greek Homosexuality: Updated and with a new Postscript, the homoerotic current in Classical studies has been removed from an embarassing footnote and placed front and center in many studies of Ancient Greek Civilization. Nonetheless, James Davidson feels historians still have it wrong, especially in reducing the concept of Greek Love to sexual acts and who does what to whom being of central importance.

In what promises to be the new landmark study, not only in its controversial theses but in the sheer volume of detail and example accumulated, Davidson has made the case that homoerotic relationships in Ancient Greece were far more complex than historians have previously been willing to explore.

Initially, by examining various words used to describe various shades of amorousness, desire, attraction, friendship, love and sex, and how meaning changes based on context, a complexity is exposed that goes far to impress the basic ambiguities inherent in reading the record and elucidating the questions being asked. Eventually, by further examining vast amounts of written and pictorial elements, a more complete picture of Ancient Greek sexuality is revealed, allowing the Greeks a foreigness that modern writers have frequently ignored, often in order to coopt them for modern political purposes.

It is by allowing the Greeks to be themselves, in all their strangeness, ambiguity and humanity, and by exploring in clear, frequently witty prose what can and cannot be known, that Mr. Davidson has made his indelible mark on the historic record.

One of the most important books I've read in years, and a stunning work of scholarship and humanity. Those who will not take scholarship seriously unless it is humorless and stacked high in arcane jargon are likely to be disappointed. This is a lively book that reads like a long weekend spent with a brilliant friend who's a born story teller and funny to boot. The 86 pages of footnotes and bilbiographical references are there for those who want all the citations, but what makes this book positively glow is Davidson's ability to bring to life the very complex, very human, story of homosexuality in ancient Greece.

It is long yes but it is not written in a way that is difficult to understand. Davidson covers every aspect of Greek life in regards to the practice of male-male (and female-female) love, from art to religion to military to societal differences in practices from city-state to city-state. It is well detailed, and very few things mentioned are irrelivent. Some may criticize this book for focusing on homosexual practices amoungst the ancient Greeks, but the author makes it clear that the Greeks were a predominently Heterosexual based culture and homosexual love was not viewed by the ancients as being at odds with this. The ancients loved based on beauty and quality rather than gender. Anyone who wants to learn about same-sex practices in the ancient world will enjoy this wonderful book and learn a lot from it.

I found serious problems with this (much-anticipated) book in the very first pages.

The first problem was the author's explanation of "cutting the Gordian knot." Rather than supply a brief explanation for readers unfamiliar with this hackneyed phrase, the author chose to use an entire page reprinting an ancient description of Alexander actually cutting the Gordian knot! This set off serious alarms instantly, because it told me that the author was just going to write write write and write until he had created a Big Book.

For comparison: let's suppose that an author uses another hackneyed phrase, "a Pyrrhic victory." What do you, as a reader want? A small footnote explaining that a Pyrrhic victory is one where the victor suffers such enormous damage that he might as well have lost the battle, or the author using up an entire page to reprint a description of the actual battle, its formations, its armies, and its casualties?

The result of the second path is one of the disasters of modern non-fiction. Authors feel that, if they haven't written a book of 500 or 1,000 pages, they haven't done anything. Another point of view is that they were too lazy to write something shorter.

The second problem, on the second page, was the author referring to Greek love in terms which came straight from Hillary Clinton. This was only the beginning: the anachronisms in this book are ubiquitous and grotesque. You might reasonably state that the author took all of "our" modern gay issues and rudely transplanted them in Ancient Greece, including gay marriage, gays in the military and all the rest --- issues which, frankly, never occurred to the Ancient Greeks.

Before you rush out and buy this book, I strongly recommend that you seek out Thomas K. Hubbard's extremely learned and extensive review, which can be easily found on-line by dropping the title of the book and the last name "Hubbard" into any good search engine. I think you will be as shocked as I was.

I can summarize in two different ways: as Hubbard comments, "This is not a book that the non-specialist
reader can rely upon for accuracy." To translate this for non-academics: "This book is rubbish."

I actually bought this book, and am going to use it for a door-stop.