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Books : The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome
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Rating: 
- Brilliant and Readable look at Classical Civilisation
I first came across Robin Lane Fox's work when I read his brilliant biography of Alexander the Great. In this book, Lane Fox takes a broader brush to paint a picture of the Classical worlds of Greece and Rome, from the age of Homer to the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.
The early sections on the Archaic Greek World are a bit of struggle. Most of our evidence for this period comes from the archaeological record, leaving a lot of speculation about the events of the age, which only comes down to us in fragments from later Greek writers. These chapters help set the scene, but they are not as exciting as the later sections simply because they lack the human dimension. Lane Fox is at his finest when he describes the struggles and achievements of the individual, and not the physical remains of the Classical World.
It is in when the book reaches the period of the 5th century BC that the book really starts to shine. Lane Fox gives us a vivid view of men like Socrates and Pericles, and also the everyday lives of the classical Athenians, including a look at the lives of the Greek women and children.
He also provides brilliant chapters on the Julio-Claudians, the Punic Wars, and the Hellenistic World. Yet he also covers subjects as diverse as the Roman Army, diplomacy, Greek philosophy, technology, sports and a dozen other subjects.
One of the strengths of this book is Robin Lane Fox's text, which is lucid and very readable. He is a great writer who is able to impart a lot of information in short chunks. Most chapters only run for a few pages ( on average 13 pages) which makes them readable and accessible, and especially good if you want to read a few chapters at a time. I found this book both good to read from cover to cover, and also good to just pick up and select a random chapter.
Some have argued that Lane Fox's book is rather old fashioned in that it does not cover the Persians, Celts, or other classical peoples. I personally don't find this much of a problem, as I only expected to read about the Greeks and Romans when I picked this book up, but others might be disappointed by these omissions. What I did find odd was Lane Fox's rather politically incorrect asides, for instance he mentions that the Emperor Claudius was a 'susceptible spastic'.
With a number of excellent and well selected photographs of busts, coins and paintings, as well as a few good maps, this book is definately worth getting. This book should give you a broad, although not detailed overview of the greatest achievements and failures of the Classical World. It might be heavy going at first, but the deeper you get into it the more readable and rewarding it gets. One of the finest books on the Classical World that I have ever read. Highly Recommended!
Rating:
- Ambitious sweeping view of many different periods
Broad strokes indeed from the historical brush of Robin Lane Fox as he describes the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans. If you know nothing about this kind of history then this is a good a place as any to start. The book begins with the world of Homer and the Dark Ages before Classical Greece began and moves swiftly forward until the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian some eight hundred odd years later.
Hadrian might seem a strange place to stop telling the story seeing as there are still many more things to be said about the Roman Empire after him. In another way however this is a natural place to stop. Quite apart from the fact that any more to this book would make it longer than its almost seven hundred pages, Hadrian was a huge philhellene and so he neatly brings the two worlds together. Many of the pages refer to Hadrian and what his opinion must also have been looking back on this history.
This is truly an ambitious undertaking by Lane Fox. I dread to think how he must have agonised over what to leave out. He does indeed omit some things that I really wanted to know more about such as the Theban Epaminondas and his place in the overall scheme of the Greek world. Having said this the author manages to cover all the major points very well while also finding time to address important areas such as politics, culture, art and society. One of the best achievements of the book is that it is not simply a list of big historical events as it could so easily have been. Instead we feel that we have some real insight into people in some ways similar to ourselves and in other ways vastly different.
If you know anything about any of the periods presented here you may find that part of the book very brief and unrewarding. Even so there were a few surprising facts that I had not previously known. This is a good book for beginning a journey into the ancient world and then continuing once you have finished it with more detailed reading on the points that interest you the most.
Rating: - Informative but a tiny bit tedious
This is a very informative and suitably brief history of ancient Greece and Rome. It covers a massive amount of ground in a short space of time and provides enough insight to instill the desire for more in particular areas.
However, it is very heavy on the political and military history - and very light on the social and cultural. This means that it often gets a bit dull, to be honest. There is also much left unsaid about why things were the way they were; or how particular practices evolved and developed.
All in all, though, quite a good read.
Rating:
- Comprehensive, but a bit dull
The prologue immediately launches into a bizarre screed about what defines classicism, which sets the tone for the book; painstakingly researched, but not light reading.
Enthusiasts only.
Rating: - standard 'history' of Greece and Rome
This is undeniably a good, light read, but in some ways it is almost out of touch with the actual research occupying classicists working academically in the field. Yes, I do know that Lane Fox is a hugely respected Oxford academic, but all the same there is something very traditional and almost wistful about this simple reading of the history of Greece and Rome. As a previous reviwer has mentioned (accurately) this concentrates on 'events' rather than analysis, and given the huge scope of the book, treats them fairly simply and reductively (the entire Julio-Claudian dynasty, for example, is covered in one short chapter).
I suppose the major problem for me is the dismissal of classical literary culture to the margins: Athenian tragedy for example has a paragraph, and even there Lane Fox regards it as being 'timeless' and completely divorced from the institutions of democracy. Not just does this assume a huge coincidence that tragedy appears and disappears precisely in the years coinciding with 5th century democracy in Athens (and nowhere else), it also evades the political discussions and negotiations that take place in the plays about the very ideology of democracy which make the plays so important.
Similarly there is little discussion of Roman, especially Augustan literature, that engages so closely with the political transformation from Roman republic to principate.
That aside, the end point was slightly odd, in that Lane Fox chooses to end with Hadrian, rather than continuing to the collapse of Rome, thus ending on a high note rather than following through to the , perhaps, more appropriate conclusion.
If you know nothing about the classical world, then this is an excellent starting point but it's just the beginning...
- Brilliant and Readable look at Classical CivilisationI first came across Robin Lane Fox's work when I read his brilliant biography of Alexander the Great. In this book, Lane Fox takes a broader brush to paint a picture of the Classical worlds of Greece and Rome, from the age of Homer to the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.
The early sections on the Archaic Greek World are a bit of struggle. Most of our evidence for this period comes from the archaeological record, leaving a lot of speculation about the events of the age, which only comes down to us in fragments from later Greek writers. These chapters help set the scene, but they are not as exciting as the later sections simply because they lack the human dimension. Lane Fox is at his finest when he describes the struggles and achievements of the individual, and not the physical remains of the Classical World.
It is in when the book reaches the period of the 5th century BC that the book really starts to shine. Lane Fox gives us a vivid view of men like Socrates and Pericles, and also the everyday lives of the classical Athenians, including a look at the lives of the Greek women and children.
He also provides brilliant chapters on the Julio-Claudians, the Punic Wars, and the Hellenistic World. Yet he also covers subjects as diverse as the Roman Army, diplomacy, Greek philosophy, technology, sports and a dozen other subjects.
One of the strengths of this book is Robin Lane Fox's text, which is lucid and very readable. He is a great writer who is able to impart a lot of information in short chunks. Most chapters only run for a few pages ( on average 13 pages) which makes them readable and accessible, and especially good if you want to read a few chapters at a time. I found this book both good to read from cover to cover, and also good to just pick up and select a random chapter.
Some have argued that Lane Fox's book is rather old fashioned in that it does not cover the Persians, Celts, or other classical peoples. I personally don't find this much of a problem, as I only expected to read about the Greeks and Romans when I picked this book up, but others might be disappointed by these omissions. What I did find odd was Lane Fox's rather politically incorrect asides, for instance he mentions that the Emperor Claudius was a 'susceptible spastic'.
With a number of excellent and well selected photographs of busts, coins and paintings, as well as a few good maps, this book is definately worth getting. This book should give you a broad, although not detailed overview of the greatest achievements and failures of the Classical World. It might be heavy going at first, but the deeper you get into it the more readable and rewarding it gets. One of the finest books on the Classical World that I have ever read. Highly Recommended!
Rating:
- Ambitious sweeping view of many different periodsBroad strokes indeed from the historical brush of Robin Lane Fox as he describes the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans. If you know nothing about this kind of history then this is a good a place as any to start. The book begins with the world of Homer and the Dark Ages before Classical Greece began and moves swiftly forward until the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian some eight hundred odd years later.
Hadrian might seem a strange place to stop telling the story seeing as there are still many more things to be said about the Roman Empire after him. In another way however this is a natural place to stop. Quite apart from the fact that any more to this book would make it longer than its almost seven hundred pages, Hadrian was a huge philhellene and so he neatly brings the two worlds together. Many of the pages refer to Hadrian and what his opinion must also have been looking back on this history.
This is truly an ambitious undertaking by Lane Fox. I dread to think how he must have agonised over what to leave out. He does indeed omit some things that I really wanted to know more about such as the Theban Epaminondas and his place in the overall scheme of the Greek world. Having said this the author manages to cover all the major points very well while also finding time to address important areas such as politics, culture, art and society. One of the best achievements of the book is that it is not simply a list of big historical events as it could so easily have been. Instead we feel that we have some real insight into people in some ways similar to ourselves and in other ways vastly different.
If you know anything about any of the periods presented here you may find that part of the book very brief and unrewarding. Even so there were a few surprising facts that I had not previously known. This is a good book for beginning a journey into the ancient world and then continuing once you have finished it with more detailed reading on the points that interest you the most.
Rating:
- Informative but a tiny bit tediousThis is a very informative and suitably brief history of ancient Greece and Rome. It covers a massive amount of ground in a short space of time and provides enough insight to instill the desire for more in particular areas.
However, it is very heavy on the political and military history - and very light on the social and cultural. This means that it often gets a bit dull, to be honest. There is also much left unsaid about why things were the way they were; or how particular practices evolved and developed.
All in all, though, quite a good read.
Rating:
- Comprehensive, but a bit dullThe prologue immediately launches into a bizarre screed about what defines classicism, which sets the tone for the book; painstakingly researched, but not light reading.
Enthusiasts only.
Rating:
- standard 'history' of Greece and RomeThis is undeniably a good, light read, but in some ways it is almost out of touch with the actual research occupying classicists working academically in the field. Yes, I do know that Lane Fox is a hugely respected Oxford academic, but all the same there is something very traditional and almost wistful about this simple reading of the history of Greece and Rome. As a previous reviwer has mentioned (accurately) this concentrates on 'events' rather than analysis, and given the huge scope of the book, treats them fairly simply and reductively (the entire Julio-Claudian dynasty, for example, is covered in one short chapter).
I suppose the major problem for me is the dismissal of classical literary culture to the margins: Athenian tragedy for example has a paragraph, and even there Lane Fox regards it as being 'timeless' and completely divorced from the institutions of democracy. Not just does this assume a huge coincidence that tragedy appears and disappears precisely in the years coinciding with 5th century democracy in Athens (and nowhere else), it also evades the political discussions and negotiations that take place in the plays about the very ideology of democracy which make the plays so important.
Similarly there is little discussion of Roman, especially Augustan literature, that engages so closely with the political transformation from Roman republic to principate.
That aside, the end point was slightly odd, in that Lane Fox chooses to end with Hadrian, rather than continuing to the collapse of Rome, thus ending on a high note rather than following through to the , perhaps, more appropriate conclusion.
If you know nothing about the classical world, then this is an excellent starting point but it's just the beginning...