Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history. In the process, the book makes a powerful original argument: A cluster of unique qualities made the Greeks special and made them the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. According to Herodotus, the father of history, what made all Greeks identifiably Greek was their common descent from the same heroes, the way they sacrificed to their gods, their rules of decent behavior, and their beautiful language. Edith Hall argues,...
Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history. In the proc...
They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. But who were the ancient Greeks? And what was it that enabled them to achieve so much? This title offers a revelatory way of viewing this geographically scattered people, and more.
They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. But who were the ancie...
What do you and an ancient philosopher have in common? It turns out much more than you might think…
Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. In this handbook to his timeless teachings, Professor Edith Hall shows how ancient thinking is precisely what we need today, even if you don’t know your Odyssey from your Iliad. In ten practical lessons you can learn how to make good decisions, how to ace an interview, how to choose a partner and how to face death. This is advice that won’t go out of fashion.
What do you and an ancient philosopher have in common? It turns out much more than you might think…
