Classics: A Very Short Introduction by Mary Beard

Classics: A Very Short Introduction Reviews

• 
  Riku Sayuj

  
  Golden Oldies – Always The Latest Craze
  
  ‘This is no potted history of Greece and Rome, but a brilliant demonstration that the continual re-excavation of our classical past is vital if the modern world is to rise to the challenge inscribed on the
  temple of Apollo at Delphi to “Know yourself”.’ 
  
  ~
  Robin Osborne
  
  This VSI, one of the best among those I have read, is an eloquent and captivating journey into the world of the Classics. Rather than running through the
  Peloponnesian Wars, Greeks and Persians, Athens as the birthplace of democracy, Rome as the birthplace of plumbing, the Conquest of Britain, and other landmarks of the subject as it used to be taught in the school room, Classics focuses on one particular artifact — a spectacle that is familiar, but, at the same time, puzzling and strange: dismembered fragments of an ancient Greek temple put on show in the heart of modern London (the friezes from the Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia), using them as the starting point of a wide-ranging exploration of issues that are of current concern in the professional study of the Ancient World and of changing attitudes to the classical past.
  
  The core idea explored is that the Classics is a subject that exists in that gap between us and the world of the Greeks and Romans. The questions raised by Classics are the questions raised by our distance from ‘their’ world, and at the same time by our closeness to it, and by its familiarity to us. In our museums, in our literature, languages, culture, and ways of thinking. The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world (though that is part of it, as the rediscovery of Bassae, or the excavation of the furthest outposts of the Roman empire on the Scottish borders, shows). Its aim is also to define and debate our relationship to that world, which is taken as the first step towards any such education.
  
  The questions raised by Bassae is thus used as a model for understanding Classics in its widest sense, and the essential issues that are at stake — questions about how we are to read literature which has a history of more than 2,000 years, written in a society very distant and different from our own. We are told that we are obliged to find a way of dealing with that clash between our imaginary vision of Greece and what we actually see when we get there, or when we actually read the classics first hand, instead of going by hearsay — this is bound to always involve confronting different and competing visions of Classics and the classical world.
  
  Always Back with a Bang
  
  The Classics are to be always discovered anew and yet to be always known only in the light of the discovery of the past generations — which only serves to make our own discovery even more exciting, richer, deeper and stronger. It is precisely when a generation skips on the classics or on a classical education that they come back with even more of a bang. This gives me pause and makes me think of the sudden craze of classical based (at leas mythological) fiction in India. I can only hope that the next step in that craze would involve going beyond the familiar myths into the vast body of
  Sanskrit literature as well.
  
  All this makes the book more about the discovery of the classical world, about the motivations that inspired that discovery, and in the end about the relation of the modern world to the classical world, and how it was all imagined into existence  — each begetting the other.
• 
  Darwin8u

  "The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world. Its aim is also to define and debate our relationship to that world."
  - Mary Beard, Classics
  
  
  
  Using the British Museum's Bassae room and the Temple of Bassae as a framework, Mary Beard introduces us to the Classics. There are points when her Bassae-frame almost doesn't hold her subject, but her metaphor/frame largely holds together. It acts like a map, allowing Beard and Henderson an opportunity to walk around and examine the classics from several perspectives. Readers of the Classics become tourists and Beard and Henderson become our tour guides. Like all VSI, I'm always left feeling a bit snubbed and short shrifted. My whistle is barely wetted and I'm asked to leave room and exit the museum.
• 
  Amine

  "As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. But Rome is also where the visit to Greece begins; it is from Rome that the mind longs to travel, away to that outpost of cultural order in the midst of wild nature, ‘high on a mountainside in a rugged and lonely part of Arcadia . . .’ Classics travels this route constantly, speculating and pondering: Which is the greatest show on earth?"
  
  Quite enlightening, food for thought.
  I felt that this was somewhat lacking for a general introduction, too focused on one aspect I guess. Although maybe that shed more light on the analytical side of it, allowing us to see deeper.
  The writing was eloquent, well put together, and at times poetic.
  It also did what I presume to be the goal, spark an interest and give an idea of what the study of classics is about.
  I like the concept of the series, I hope to read as much very short introductions as I can.
  
  Et in Arcadia ego
• 
  Frank

  This short volume isn't about classics at all. Instead, we have an essay in aesthetics, reminding us that millennia of interpreters stand between us an our Greek and Roman heritage, modifying our experience of it. The idea is not new, having been examined in detail by John Dewey, for instance. The last chapters then go off the rails entirely, delivering a screed on the shortcomings of classics education.
  What were they thinking?
• 
  Laurent

  In all its shortness, this Very Short Introduction takes a long time to introduce its premise. Although I admire the way that Mary Beard has approached the vast expanse that is Classics, the opening chapters of this book are extremely slow-paced. I must say that for a person who has a massive passion for Classics to be bored by a book about CLASSICS! the authors must have EFFED UP pretty badly.
  
  This said, the book picks up speed as it moves along. In fact, it is almost distributed like the inverse of a normalised capacitor discharge (of course, totally), with interest on the y-axis and page number on the x-axis. Its apex — in the book's last chapters — is a section addressing some of what I consider the most interesting aspects of Classics: the exploration of cultural and psychological realities through classical literature. However, this book also introduced me to several other aspects of Classics that I hadn’t come into contact with, especially examples of symbols originating in Ancient Greece and Rome that have had cultural constancy over the ages.
  
  All things considered, I wouldn’t recommended it unless you are prepared for around 70 pages of absolute, tear-wrenching boredom. In fact:
  
  Just skip straight
  To chapter eight!
• 
  Susan

  This book was not what I was looking for when I chose it. I guess I didn't read carefully -- I wanted a short introduction to the classics, but there's no "the" in this title. Instead, it intends to be an introduction to [the study of] classics.
  
  Even for what it intends to be, I didn't like it much. It seemed very strident and polemical, as though the authors were trying to press their points against those who disagreed with them, rather than trying to inform someone new to the subject. The entire work was built around a discussion of a ruined temple at Bassae (Greece). Classic authors like Sophocles, Aeschylus, and others were mentioned only briefly. And I really don't think it added at all to my understanding of what the study of classics is.
  
  The best I can say for it is that it mentioned a few other books that I think might in fact be worth my reading.
• 
  Guy

  When your daughter tells you that she is going to study Classics at Oxbridge, it suddenly seems like a good time to try to better understand what the field of Classics is today and what studying it might be good for. If this is your goal, then "Classics, A Very Short Introduction" is your book: I found it stimulating of thought and interest.
  
  There are of course many things that such a short book is not and cannot be... but it does not pretend to be other than it is and those who would like it to be different are missing its most important point: Classics is as wide as our culture and as deep as our history and what Classics means must be discovered anew by each time and each person. "Et in Arcadia ego..." is up to you to complete.
• 
  Alex Pler

  Obra interesante que debería titularse "El estudio del mundo clásico", porque más que de la cultura clásica grecolatina, habla de cómo el estudio de la misma ha ido mutando a lo largo de la historia. Partiendo de un templo griego, va detallando cómo cada generación se acerca a la historia, el arte, la arquitectura, la lengua clásicas, cambiando y creciendo por el camino.
• 
  Sher

  My 12th Very Short, and my favorite so far. This book is truly interdisciplinary and connects the classics with art, literary, history, both ancient and modern. Brilliantly written, and makes one want to return to Greek and Roman literature once again.
• 
  Jon

  I got this one solely because it was co-written by Mary Beard, one of the foremost classicists today, and often wryly funny. Not much time for humor here, but an interesting way of organizing things--describing a temple in Greece and then coming at it from a number of different directions in order to illuminate the history and development of classical studies itself, mythology, ancient religion, ancient travel and geography, philosophy, and literature. Apart from a quibble about what I think was a bizarre over-reading of one of Horace's Odes, I found the whole thing fascinating. I especially appreciated her dwelling on the well-known phrase "Et In Arcadia Ego." (And [or even] in Arcadia, I). I always wondered where it came from, since it sounds like Virgil but isn't. She says it was inspired by his Eclogue 5; but it was coined by Pope Clement IX in the early 17th century. I was gratified to learn that Dr. Johnson supposedly thought it was meaningless, which it is unless it is put in some context that identifies who "I" might be. Usually it accompanies a picture of a skull or skeleton representing Death. The phrase then means something like, even in the most perfect place you can imagine, death is there too. But Goethe, after he'd visited Italy for two years, used it to rejoice that now even he had been in Arcadia. It was also used as the title for the first half of Brideshead Revisited, where the young lovers try to have a perfect place in an imperfect world--they mock the phrase, but in the end it mocks them. A good Short Introduction to a very large topic.
• 
  Kris

  This book is more about the study of the classics, rather than the classics as a field of study. The authors talk about architecture, geographic regions, and people who studied classics in the 19th century. But they never tell me what classics IS as a field or WHY I should study it!
  
  The chapters contain various paragraphs which, even if they do contain valuable info, don’t relate to each other and don’t connect to the chapter title. The authors swing from one thing to the next without tying it all together.
  
  A disappointing first book for the Very Short Introductions series. Great idea from Oxford’s Editors, just a poorly written book from these authors. Still going to try more of these!
• 
  Smiley

  Reading this ten-chapter book, I think, is an inspiring introduction to the term “classics” itself as regards the meaning, scope, application, etc. in which few could know and understand thoroughly. Recommended by John Godwin, it’s been praised because “The authors show us that Classics is a ‘modern’ and sexy subject.” (back cover) Some may wonder how so it would suffice in the meantime to say that we need to read it for better understanding rather than leave it as an academic myth preached by some professors.
• 
  Ahmad Sharabiani

  Classics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions #1), Mary Beard, John Henderson
  We are all classicists--we come into touch with the classics on a daily basis: in our culture, politics, medicine, architecture, language, and literature. What are the true roots of these influences, however, and how do our interpretations of these aspects of the classics differ from their original reality?
• 
  منن نصار

  أول كتاب لي في سلسلة مقدمة قصيرة جدا
  حبيت أبدأها بالترتيب بدلا من اختيار الموضوعات التي تستهويني فقط .. ربما سأغير تلك القاعدة :D
  الكتاب يقدم نبذة عن الحضارة اليونانية ووليدتها الحضارة الرومانية من خلال زيارة معبد باساي
  مزود بالصور ومعلومات قيمة عن الحالة الثقافية في تلك الحضارة. . ربما شعرت بالملل في بعض الأجزاء وشعرت أنها تخصصية أكثر من مقدمة لشخص غير دارس
  لكن الكتاب في المجمل جيد
• 
  Mared Owen

  Although I can see, on one hand, that the temple at Bassae was used as a sort of prompt for introducing readers to the classics, I felt at times that I wasn't really learning anything about the classics at all, but rather just learning about a temple; despite being quite interesting, it wasn't what I wanted from this (very short) book. However, the later chapters I found much more intriguing and useful. Surprisingly, I greatly enjoyed chapter 7, 'The Art of Reconstruction' as, at first glance, it concerns archaeology. Which I'm not the biggest fan of. However I found that this chapter in particular helped explain things, or at least made things clearer. Chapter 8 I also found incredibly interesting, although that was expected of me, seeing as it concerned literature.
  
  Overall, this book did a good job of explaining what 'classics' really consist/s of and why it is so important that we continue to study the subject. However the the things that were, I assume, intended to make things clearer really just got in the way of the actual points being made.
• 
  Kuba Zajicek

  Thanks Mary Beard, I yawned myself to shit. I always thought that the classical world is a storehouse of good ideas for people to raid. And yet, Beard's dull narrative gives the impression that the classical world is essentially as mundane as her own use of the English language, which it certainly isn't. This book is so boring presumably because the scope of it is unfortunate; instead of focusing on the interesting literary side of Classics or its contemporary relevance, she offers long and uninteresting descriptions of Roman and Greek antique buildings, which were admittedly important for their culture, yet should have recieved less focus by an author that claims to have written a "comprehensive introduction" to Classics. What a waste of time.
• 
  Fernando Jimenez

  Con este título puede parecer la enésima recopilación de cosas sabidas sobre Grecia y Roma para bachilleres pero este ensayo en una delicia. A partir de un ejemplo significativo, el tempo de Apolo en Basas, en medio de la Arcadia griega, los autores van estableciendo un diálogo entre el mundo grecolatino, la actualidad y toda la concepción y uso que de la cultura clásica ha hecho la Historia occidental. Beard responde a un montón de cuestiones pero plantea otras muchas en un juego fascinante de semejanzas y diferencias muy interesante.
• 
  Ahmed Almawali

  الكتابُ الثاني لي في هذه السلسلةِ بعدَ الإخفاقِ في الكتابِ الاول "القيادة"، الترجمةُ هنا جيدةٌ ومحفزةٌ للاستمرار في القراءةِ. يجعل الكاتبُ من المعبد اليوناني في باساي محورا رئيسًا للحديثِ في كيفيةِ التعاملِ مع النصوصِ الكلاسيكية التي تسعى إلى تحسين معرفتنا باليونان وروما، فهنالك مكتشفونَ دخلوه في أيام الخلافةِ التركيةِ ونقلوا خزائنه لبريطانيا، ويومياتٌ كتبها الإغريقي باوسانياس، وعبيدٌ استعملوا لبناءه "آلات ذو صوت بشري"، يتناولُ كل ذلك في الكتابِ، هو كتابٌ متخمٌ بالتساؤلاتِ الباحثةِ عن الاجوبةِ
• 
  Emmanuel Olowe

  This book aims to answer or give an account of:
  
  What is the study of Classics?
  What is the methodology used by Classicists?
  How does Classics relate to the various time periods?
  
  
  The book certainly gears toward teaching you about the questions raised and the methodology of classics rather than an account of ancient Rome and Greece. The Temple of Bassae is used as a device to which the methodology of Classics is introduced to the reader. This can be boring at times; especially if the purpose of your reading is to learn about the events, philosophy and works of classical antiquity. You get some insight into the thought process of a Classicist when approaching literature, art and politics of classical antiquity. I feel you come away with an understanding of questions to ask yourself when exploring works produced at this time.
  
  The book also shows you the interconnected nature of Greek and Roman history, through case studies of Roman poets (Horace), Architecture (the use of the Corinthian Order, etc) and more. The effects of our preconceived notions of the period on the interpretation of material from the time too are detailed through various examples. There is quite a bit of focus on Pausanias' Guide to Ancient Greece and lots of sprinkles of information about events and works produced in the time period.
  
  I would recommend for people interested in the brief account in the methodology of Classics.
  
  

  "The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world. Its aim is also to define and debate our relationship to that world. " - Mary Beard
• 
  Illiterate

  Focuses less on Classics than how to study it. The main ideas are thus watery versions of ones found throughout the humanities.
• 
  Daniel Wright

  Ancient Greece and Rome: mysterious, romantic, distant, and exercising an almost disproportionate fascination on many centuries of intellectuals. The authors' choice of Arcadia as the underlying theme of their book is highly appropriate; the attitude of the writers of the cradle of European civilisation to that lost rustic wilderness is comparable to our modern impression of that lost opulence mixed with technological simplicity, however inaccurate that impression may be.
  
  I confess, I have myself indulged in that fascination. I studied Latin and Greek at school, all the while subconsciously wondering what were the unifying features behind the diversity of the texts I studied.
  
  But I have to say that, for me personally, this book completely failed to capture that fascination. It was interesting, certainly, and I learnt things, but it begin to strike me that the whole discipline of Classics was somewhat parochial. True, Greece and Rome were important, and the study of them is not to be neglected. But so what? What about the rest of the world? What about the rest of history? And no classicist has ever really been able to make that argument convincingly, and these two are no exception. Our ancestors, the medievals, through the Renaissance as far as the Enlightenment, were intrigued by the distant past in general, so they learnt all they could about Greece and Rome because that was what they has access to, and nothing else. I do not see any excuse for continuing to confine ourselves when so much else has become available in the last fifty years, not to say the last two hundred.
• 
  Emmett

  I opened this book with a few expectations that I found were not adequately met. Most importantly, there isn't a definition of classics, as the term is used and the field studied. While I appreciate the intention of using the Bassae as a focal point and a thread for discussion, I feel a comprehensive introductory text ought to grant views of elsewhere, too. It is less what classics is all about, i.e. what periods are studied, the geo-political landscape broadly sketched out, and prominent figures than it is an academic's reflection of the Classics, without all the bare-bones initiation.
• 
  Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  Well written and thought provoking. Looks at a few specific elements: mainly the temple to Apollo at Bassae, and explores different perspectives thereof to give us a holistic picture of an academic discipline and its relevance. A bit I liked: when they point out that, when it comes to explaining how the ancients built all that stuff, the answer is usually 'slaves'. Another bit I liked: when they get snarky about an early poem by Poe!
• 
  Alexandru Bondoc

  To me it was a book which is heartbreaking to finally finish. It is the kind of book you will empty your pens underlining on and, when switching to John Henderson's, your phrases should become more corporeal in day-to-day life. However, it was worth putting my latest red pen to rest and if you get through Chapter 8, you're all set.
  
  Importantly, I will not utilize the many, many relevant quotes from this book, on which I've exhausted my writing devices. Only on a few occasions, if you choose to read this, will you be met with words I remember. Displaying its goals to the core is superior in my opinion.
  
  From the get-go, this so-called 'Introduction' will make you, in typical Mary Beard fashion, want and look to ask all sorts of questions, in this phrasal uncertainty which always leaves way for a new interpretation or different version of the story. As Classics are most logically to be presented - with all rumors and sides to the discussion stubbornly left by the Ancients fascinating us today. (This apparent lack of confidence in writing - 'may be', 'perhaps' - always irritated my teachers, but the larger goal is to be pursued here, as I knew very well what I was looking to achieve.) We simply do not always know what the Greeks and Romans had on their minds and, as elaborated upon in the book, we today know more about their world than they themselves knew. We have developed medicine and technology and we have satelites to show all geographic locations on Earth. And if there's someone willing to dissect seemingly unimportant details for hundreds of things you missed, this writing duo will do the trick. Thou should be baffled.
  
  Teaching the reader to ask questions - to be observant - is the first target and it is largely fulfilled, worth noting, indirectly. This Introduction's larger goal is to justify WHY the study of Classics must be continued, in spite of the last 1800 years, during which one might think enough was written on them. But the two authors form a complex image on how each generation will leave its own print on these Ancient teachings. And introducing them to every new generation of readers will only diversify the way they are percieved and understood. This is stated directly, thus giving a concrete thesis. Keeping in mind also that the desires (or motivations, the word I think they use) to study the Ancient world have shifted too - modern scholars are eager to look at texts outside the Greats of Latin literature, for example, Caesar, Horace and Cicero, which have indeed been studied all the time by now, in order to analyze writings from the Late Roman Empire, 'both pagan and Christian' and archaeologists no longer dream of uncovering lost temples, they rather excavate Ancient farms and collect bones to reconstruct the diets of their inhabitants, both human and animal, and thus the crops they maintained. Latin and Greek are no longer spoken by millions of people. But their legacies have indeed shaped Europe and the world.
  
  Reading the 'Introduction to Classics' might get you interested in architecture, at least when it comes to Ancient Greek temples erected in 'barren' landscapes. But I am willing to do what they wanted me to do and question how much this can be called an introduction. Beard and Henderson elaborate on a number of fields, they will familiarize you with many names, both of prolific Ancient figures and more recent ones, and, in Henderson's Greek-habituated style, massive enabling of adjectives and 'ands', the phrases become harder to digest. For your brain this might not be the most pleasant of affairs. Chapter 8, 'The Greatest Show on Earth', is by far the best in this 'Very Short Guide', but also the one which will pummel you the most mercilessly. Part of it is because of this wordy manner.
  
  
  Cannot wait to read this again. Was too excited not to write the review right now however ;). If you took your time, I hope I brought something new to your mind.
  
  'Kennedy discovers the gerund and leads it back into captivity.' I'm amazed I lived to shed my perception on this before dying of laughter.
• 
  Jerome

  I was at first put off by some of the negative reviews. But I felt pulled in by the gentle tour guide introduction to a somewhat obscure (to lay people) temple in the heart of the Peloponnese peninsula, the Bassae, far removed from Athens, as an entry point to discuss elements of Classical culture. Included in this "Very Short" introduction is a discussion of the "discovery" of the temple at Bassae by a multinational group, and the taking of some friezes to the British Museum. There follows examples of fortunate discoveries and expansion of our knowledge, while ruing what has not survived; the role of those at the margins of Greek and Roman society; reconstruction of the archaeology of Greek and Roman culture; and a discussion of its effect on literature and thought; as well as other topics. The notes at the end contain good suggestions for those whose interest has been piqued.
• 
  Shawn Thrasher

  This is an excellent little book.
  Mary Beardis a tremendously interesting personality and celebrity; I loved her book
  SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, and have enjoyed her television documentaries. This particular book was published in 1995, but stills feels sharp and fresh. I came into the book with a love for books about Ancient Rome (I particularly like the novels of
  John Maddox Roberts and
  Steven Saylor). I now have a better understanding about the study of classics, and how those ancient Greeks and Romans still walk and talk with us today.
• 
  Lucy Barnhouse

  I hadn't read this cover to cover since I was in a classics seminar as an undergraduate. The increased consideration of inequality both in ancient history and in the history of how the classics have been studied in the years since the book's publication makes even the conscientious acknowledgement of this seem a mere sop, at times. Beard and Henderson do rather assume that their audience is chiefly made up of those who count themselves participants in and heirs of the "western tradition" manufactured in large part through studying the classics. I wonder about ways in which this marginalizes some readers... including the students I plan to teach with the text, most of whom are almost entirely lacking in "cultural literacy" as measured by a canon with Greece and Rome at its heart. I hasten to add that the volume does not shy away from acknowledging and exploring histories of sometimes-violent imperial appropriation. On the whole, it remains a remarkably thoughtful and effective -- and, I need hardly add, exquisitely written -- introduction to 'the classics,' in all their multivalent complexity.
• 
  Seb Yawlo

  This was not as expected but nevertheless, not unenjoyable. It centres on Bassae and uses themes from there and Arcadia to pull together an introduction to Classics. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but it did frame the subject nicely and I would recommend as introduction for a novice like myself. It has sparked a continued interest in the subject and I will find myself spurred on to discover more.
• 
  Garrick Anderson

  Page 43 spoils The Name of the Rose. Beware!
  
  "Classics" here means "anything Greek or Greek-influenced." You are not told what Greek works are most influential. You are not told which Greek works are most relevant today. You are not introduced to key players, except in passing. Nothing here is systemic in any way. You are treated to a heap of anecdotes, most of them about a temple, and whether or not we can truly know that temple as the builders knew it. (No.)
  
  It is not so much an "introduction" as it is 120 pages of attempts to impress with a vast knowledge of Greek stuff.
  
• 
  Sam

  This book disappointed me but it is unarguably authentic to its trade in the sense that as soon as you pick up an actual book on a subject you’re mildly interested in it turns terribly boring, and fast.