Confronting the Classics

Traditions, Adventures and Innovations

Mary Beard

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781781250488
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847658883
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists - a brilliant academic, with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience both though her TV presenting and her books.

In a series of sparkling essays, she explores our rich classical heritage - from Greek drama to Roman jokes, introducing some larger-than-life characters of classical history, such as Alexander the Great, Nero and Boudicca. She invites you into the places where Greeks and Romans lived and died, from the palace at Knossos to Cleopatra's Alexandria - and reveals the often hidden world of slaves. She takes a fresh look at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, from The Golden Bough to Asterix.

The fruit of over thirty years in the world of classical scholarship, Confronting the Classics captures the world of antiquity and its modern significance with wit, verve and scholarly expertise.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Do Classics Have a Future?
• Section One: Ancient Greece
• Section Two: Heroes & Villains of early Rome
• Section Three: Imperial Rome – Emperors, Empresses & Enemies
• Section Four: Rome from the Bottom up
• Section Five: Arts & Culture; Tourists & Scholars
• Other eBooks available from Mary Beard
• Afterword: Reviewing Classics
• Further Reading
• Acknowledgements
• Sources
• List of Figures
• Index