Depictions of the ancient world on the stage and in art have always competed with the reconstruction of the past by academics. The rise of cinema and television has heightened the difficulty in distinguishing between 'elite' and 'popular' culture. On American TV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has incorporated aspects of the classical within the high school horror genre. In art cinema, the films of Theo Angelopoulos seek to reclaim Greek myth from academia and claim its recognition as part of a living modern culture. Alexander the Great has been recreated in an animated Japanese...

A comprehensive treatment of the Classical World in film and television, A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen closely examines the films and TV shows centered on Greek and Roman cultures and explores the tension between pagan and Christian worlds.

Written by a team of experts in their fields, this work considers productions that discuss social settings as reflections of their times and as indicative of the technical advances in production and the economics of film and television. Productions included are a mix of Hollywood and European spanning from the silent...