Just Finished Reading: Eureka! - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Ancient Greeks but Were Afraid to Ask by Peter Jones (FP: 2014) [372pp] 

If you’ve ever wondered about what all the fuss is about regarding the Ancient Greeks and were wondering just exactly how to ‘get into’ the subject in a ‘try before you buy’ kind of way, well, this is definitely the book for you! If you’re either starting from a fairly low knowledge point, refreshing your knowledge base or making sure that you have missed anything major so far in your other reading this excellent volume will take you through the civilisations major moments, major achievements and central characters in easily digestible, bit-sized chunks. 

Starting from the earliest days – 2000-800 BC – until the end of Alexander the Greats empire the author (who taught Classics at Cambridge before retiring in 1997) picks out developments large and small from the beginnings of writing, the production of epic poetry, the development and expansion of Philosophical thought in all directions (essentially THE basis of ALL Western Thought!), political structures – including (naturally) the emergence of the first Democracy and what it represented (and who it didn’t involve!), the rise of the city-state and its export to the coast of Asia, North Africa, Italy, France and Spain, internal Greek conflicts (although people living in what we now call Greece wouldn’t have thought of themselves as ‘Greek’ at that time!), as well as the classic fight between Sparta & Athens in what we now know as the Peloponnesian War, the equally momentous war(s) with Persia which effectively saved Western civilisation from Persian domination, discussion of The Trojan War and, of course, Homer himself, Tales of ‘The Gods’ and how the Greeks saw them in quite different ways to how we see our ‘Gods’ today, views on slavery and the place of women in various city-states (there was no single Greek ‘culture’ as such until much later. Each city-state had its own views on religion, politics and much else besides), and, of course, the Alexandrian impact of the region together with the series of ‘encounters’ with the rising Roman Republic and, later, Empire. It’s a LOT of ground to cover but the author covers it with authority and quite a bit of humour mixed in – including a rye nod at the contemporary surge of ‘reinterpretations’ of Greek stories/myths. 

All in all, this was a fun and interesting read and I was pleased that very little was completely new to me. I’ve been reading (and in various ways studying) the Ancient World for some time now so I think I have a pretty good layman’s appreciation of the subject. But this doesn’t mean that I found this work boring or uninteresting – FAR from it. Not only did the author’s love of the subject shine through again and again he was also sure enough of his subject to see the often-funny side of things as well as to call into question older interpretations of archeological findings and appreciate that more modern views of objects and textual findings might be overturned in the future. We may be looking at long dead civilisations and dead languages but the subject itself is far from a dead one. I shall look forward to other books from this author on Rome and the Ancient World as a whole. Definitely recommended. 

[Side Note: FINALLY, the virtual World Tour is back up and running. One more book on Greece to come and then we move on to India. See you there...!]