Just Finished Reading: Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard (FP: 2013)

To date I’ve had precious little contact with the Greek and Roman classics. For one thing such works where not exactly the staple of a working class ‘comprehensive’ education. For another they’ve always had the reputation of being difficult, elitist and, to be honest, irrelevant in the 21st Century. I’ve dabbled with Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Lucretius but that’s about it (at least cover to cover reading) and dipped into Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics during my last University course but, at least so far, that’s as far as it goes. OK it’s probably a lot more than the average non-Public School person but still it’s pretty pitiful. I have probably another 30-40 such classics scattered around in various piles that I fully intend to pick up at some point. This excellent volume – basically a collection of some of the author’s many reviews – has definitely increased the odds that I’ll actually do this. It will also definitely make me look at what I’ll be reading in new and (hopefully) interesting ways.

One of the many things that made me laugh whilst reading this book (who would have thought that discussions of ancient Greek literature could be laugh out loud funny?) was the idea that the more readable the translation of the Greek original the less accurate it was likely to be – especially regarding Thucydides who apparently didn’t say his much quoted comment about the abuse of power (or at least not in the catchy way it’s remembered and often use – including by me). When I read him – and other Greek authors in future – I’ll keep that in mind.

Of course the surprising thing is that so much of ancient literature survived to be read in the 21st Century. Amusingly the author regards the examples we do have as the classical equivalent of random waste paper baskets from random office buildings. Some Greek poets left behind less than 20 lines of their work. How, she says, are we supposed to understand their work or their lives from such findings? It’s a good question. How much do we really know about this period? Not as much as we think we do it seems!

This was another of those books I picked up in my local (chain) bookstore because it was something different and something that existed on the edges of my knowledge. Reading Aristotle at University impressed me quite a bit with his modern approach – which I now appreciate probably said much more about the translator rather than the man himself – and I look forward to reading him again in the future (despite the fact that his classic books are suspected to be nothing more than lecture notes rather than books intended for publication). I’m also looking forward to reading Julius Cesare’s epic retelling (and propaganda piece) about his conquest of Gaul as well as Xenophon’s tale of his armies retreat across the Persian Empire. So much history, philosophy and politics to take it and so many significant works of literature…. Where to start……? But if you want to get a good flavour of classical literature (and Asterix!) this is a great place to start. Recommended.