3.5
Confronting the Classics
ByPublisher Description
A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, this is “the perfect introduction to classical studies, and deserves to become something of a standard work” (Observer).
Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people—the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? Where did they go if their marriage was in trouble or if they were broke? Or, perhaps just as important, how did they clean their teeth? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard forces us along the way to reexamine so many of the assumptions we held as gospel—not the least of them the perception that the Emperor Caligula was bonkers or Nero a monster. With capacious wit and verve, Beard demonstrates that, far from being carved in marble, the classical world is still very much alive.Download the free Fable app
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesConfronting the Classics Reviews
3.5
“3.5/5 ⭐️”
“This books is literally a compilation of reviews Mary Beard has written, and often feels like reading a very amusing annotated bibliography. As a casual reader/someone who has not studied classical history but is interested in it, a lot went over my head. Mary Beard is a great writer with excellent wit, I’d read more of her work but I’m going to DNF this particular book.”
About Mary Beard
Mary Beard is the author of the best-selling The Fires of Vesuvius and the National Book Critics Circle Award–nominated Confronting the Classics and SPQR. A popular blogger and television personality, Beard is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. She lives in England.
Other books by Mary Beard
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