by Philip Hooker
We have again studied the
Bookseller’s Buyers’ Guide to pick out the new books on classical themes which
publishers believe will be of interest to the general reader and have also
called in some more from elsewhere.
We start with some of the more
scholarly popular works. Liz Gloyn’s Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture deals with the
creations of Ray Harryhausen, the television opponents of Hercules, Medusa, the
Minotaur and more. In similar vein,
Edinburgh’s Screening Antiquity
series features Epic Heroes on Screen (Hercules
and others), a set of papers edited
by Antony Augoustakis and Stacie Raucci, and another set on Ancient Greece on British Television
edited by Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley.
Peter Wiseman
offers The House of Augustus: A Historical
Detective Story – the Palatine home of Augustus has often been called the
Emperor’s palace, but close scrutiny of the archaeological and textual evidence
reveals that he was no Emperor and it was no palace. Jerry
Toner with Infamy: The Crimes of
Ancient Rome moves forward to the times of Tiberius and Nero, exploring not
just the excesses of the emperors but also the chances of a citizen being
mugged in the street. Meanwhile in Troy: myth and reality, which accompanies
the forthcoming British Museum exhibition, Lesley
Fitton and others explore how Troy has inspired the storytellers and the
classical artists over the ages.
Mary
Norris
in Greek to Me – Adventures of the Comma Queen explains how the New Yorker copy
editor became an enthusiast for the Ancient Greek language and literature. Nicola
Gardini, who teaches Italian in Oxford, has Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language (a best seller
in Italy in 2016), which explores its history, authors, essential role in
education and enduring impact on modern life. David
Stuttard offers Roman Mythology: A
Traveler’s Guide from Troy to Tivoli, which takes the reader on a tour of 18
ancient sites and the stories which accompany them (following on from a similar
work on Ancient Greek sites). Dilys Powell’s An Affair of the Heart, a classic 1955 account of the 1931 Perachora
dig undertaken by her husband and her later return to the site, has now been
reprinted.
Daisy Dunn, already highly praised
for her work on the two Plinies, now has Of
Gods and Men: 100 Stories from
Ancient Greece and Rome (and also a Ladybird Expert book on Homer). Bettany
Hughes offers Venus and Aphrodite: History
of a Goddess, while Asa Bennett
(a Classics graduate and now Brexit commissioning editor at The Telegraph) is
publishing a Romanifesto: Modern Lessons
from Classical Politics - what can Boudica teach us about Brexit, what
could Emperor Hadrian teach President Trump about walls? We also have a good
number of works of fiction, the latest by Robert
Fabbri and Simon Scarrow among
others; the most entertaining may be JM
Alvey’s Scorpions in Corinth, the
second in a series about a Greek comic poet turned detective.
Teachers should note Teaching Classics with Technology,
edited by Bartolo Natoli and Steven Hunt, which reviews new
developments in the US, the UK and elsewhere. In addition, Andrew Wilson (who previously produced an Ancient Greek version of
Harry Potter) now has Avem Occidere
Mimicam, a translation of Harper Lee’s “best-loved American novel”.
Among more substantial academic works
we note Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards
a Lyric Archaeology by Richard Neer
and Leslie Kurke, a feat of “lyric
archaeology” which considers both the poetry and the sites referred to therein;
Author Unknown: The Power of Anonymity in
Ancient Rome, an exploration of anonymous works of literature by Tom Geue; The Spartans (a very short introduction) by Andrew Bayliss; The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe
by Barry Cunliffe; Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome by Lindsay Watson; The Great Fire of Rome: Life and Death in the Ancient City by Joseph J Walsh, which examines the fire
of 64 AD with the aid of modern forensic techniques; The Ruler’s House: Contesting Power and Privacy in Julio-Claudian Rome
by Harriet Fertik; Escape
from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity by Walter Scheidel; and a different view, Imperial Tragedy: From Constantine’s Empire
to the Destruction of Roman Italy AD 363-568 by Michael
Kulikowski. Julia Hell’s The Conquest of
Ruins: The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome describes the way in which
subsequent European rulers were fascinated by the history of the Roman Empire. There
is also Postclassicisms by The Postclassicisms Collective: nine prominent scholars map a space for
reflecting and theorising on the values attributed to antiquity and offer
suggestions for a discipline in transformation structured around 12 concepts.
There are also several new texts
and translations. Peter Liddel’s Decrees of
Fourth Century Athens (403/2- 322/1 BC): Volume One describes the literary
evidence. The latest Cambridge Green and
Yellows include Virgil: Aeneid
Book XI, Euripides: Ion,
Aeschylus: Suppliants, Homer: Iliad
Book VI, Longus: Daphnis
& Chloe, and Greek Elegy and
Iambus: A Selection. The Oxford
series has Sophocles: Electra and Aristophanes: Wasps. Aris & Phillips has Terence: The Girl from Andros
and Herodotus: Histories Book V. The
latest Oxford World's Classics include Diodorus
Siculus: The Library, Books 16-20
and Artemidorus: The Interpretation of Dreams (with a
separate monograph from Peter Thonemann). Martin
Goodman has also provided a monograph to accompany the recent edition of Josephus: The Jewish War. The latest
Loebs include Appian: Roman History (three volumes) and Livy:
History of Rome, Volume 5. We also note translated selections from Cicero (How to Think About God: An Ancient Guide for Believers and
Nonbelievers) and Plutarch (How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise
Leadership) as well as Pamela Mensch’s
version of Theophrastus: Characters (An Ancient Take on Bad
Behaviour), commended by A E Stallings as “a perfect gift for the person in
your life who mentions Plato’s cave or Zeno’s paradox or wears a bow tie or
uses a fountain pen or enjoys a bit of harmless armchair misanthropy”.
Philip
Hooker is the Hon. Treasurer of the Classical Association, and writes regularly
for the CA Blog on Classics in the Media
