Customer Reviews

The Oxford History of the Classical World

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

 

 

A fine book considered by many scholars to be the best single volume history of the classical world. The first twelve chapters provide a comprehensive overview of ancient Greece -- its history, literature, philosophy, religion, and art. The next nine chapters describe the Hellenistic Period and the emergence of the Roman Republic. The final eleven chapters concern the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Each chapter concludes with a detailed list of suggested books for further reading. An essential book for anyone interested in classical history and culture.

As a classics major in college, I have been regularly referred to the Roman section of this work to gain increased general knowledge over later classical antiquity. After thoroughly reading and rereading many sections, I can scarcely say I've gleaned anything close to that.

The "chapters" read more like non-peer reviewed articles that are virtually impossible to understand for the casual reader, and very difficult for classics students. They constantly diverge from their central theses, lack chronological sequence both within themselves and in relation to other chapters, use highly colloquial terms and accentuate seemingly arbitrary themes throughout history while ignoring others.

Cases in point: Marius' name is mentioned about 3 times, and never in regards to his own exploits. Cinna is missing entirely as far as I can tell. The Catilinarian conspiracy receives about half a paragraph (even though Sallust devoted a book to it and Cicero couldn't shut up about his own involvement), as do the Gracchi brothers, and Cato the Elder, but we receive heaps of names about obscure groups in the Italian peninsula during Rome's expansion, whose importance as individual tribes is obfuscated by varying levels of information which seem to lead nowhere, while their individual legacies are absent. The exact identities of "Roman", "Etruscan", "Latin", and "Italian" are anyone's guess. When the political division between the "populares" and "optimati" are introduced, the latter term is left undefined. Very, very shoddy.

I have not read the Greek section yet and refrain from commenting upon it.

The Roman section of this text, I think, is a disgrace to the Oxford University Press. If you want to learn about classical history, I suggest you read an array of entries from the Oxford Classical Dictionary, a thick but condensed reference work that cuts through much of the subjective interpretation of events to the meat of the matter, giving you the "who's who" and "what's what" in concise entries.

While the appeal of the 'oxford' name and the attractive price/page ratio make this book seem like a good deal, I found it extremely difficult to get any useful information out of this book. The authors give their opinions on subjects, before (or in many cases, in place of) giving any coherent summary of it. Just for example, try to figure out who Draco was. If you don't already know, this book is not going to tell you. The writing style is not especially clear, either. If this is one of the best texts available, I can see why nobody learns classical history anymore.

This work, contrary to the comments of other readers, is an invaluable introduction to and comment on ancient history. As an Oxford student I have first-hand knowledge of many of the contributors and I can tell you that they represent some of the architects of modern classical study.

A criticism of this book is that it doesn't contain much information on the 'famous' incidents, and spends too much time on 'obscure' areas and peoples in Italy. This is like the opinion of a 1950s classicist who spends too much time reading Caesar and is ignorant of the fact the Classics and Ancient History are disciplines that extend beyond Catiline and the Gracchi. There are books about the fact that we don't know who Draco is (see below), but what we do know is on page 31 (and anyway he doesn't belong to the Classical world, rather the pre-Archaic Dark Ages).

This book is an enormously helpful and balanced work, beneficial to the beginner and the advanced student (both of which I have been while in the this book's company).

The condition of this book was great it was as described!As far as the content goes I did not waithed that long to write this review!