H.D.F. Kitto: The Greeks (1951)

The Greeks has long been touted as the best basic introduction to the culture of ancient Greece, where the foundations for much of the way we think and live today were laid but which still can seem strangely alien from a viewpoint two and a half millennia years later. Now over sixty years old, is it still worth reading?

Clearly, the book itself has not changed in any way (especially as mine is quite an elderly copy). It remains an excellent basic description of ancient Greece, concentrating on the aspects of the culture which are especially influential. Kitto is occasionally self-indulgent, getting carried away by his love of the literature, as when he translates large portions of the first book of the Iliad which are not directly relevant to the aims of the book (though it does illuminate aspects of the culture almost in the way that a lengthy Bible quote would shed light on Western culture, or a section from the Koran would on Arab thought). My background (growing up with a parent who had not just studied classics, but who wrote books about Greece and Rome alongside translations of ancient texts) does not make me an ideal test for the use of The Greeks as an introduction, but from what I can see it does seem to do the job it sets out to do.

One thing which has certainly changed is the correctness of the assumptions Kitto makes about how much of Greek culture is already known to the general reader. Kitto assumes a certain amount of knowledge in his readers, and in the 1950s he would have been able to assume more than would be the case today; after all, most British schools still taught at least Latin in those days, and hardly any do so today. This has two consequences: the number of people who have any idea that the book might be interesting to them is smaller, and the likelihood is that they will find it far harder to understand. On the other hand, web sites like Wikipedia will fulfil many of the needs which The Greeks was intended to, so it is not as useful as it once was.

Edition: Pelican, 1958
Review number: 1456

M.I. Finley: The World of Odysseus (1954)

Edition: Pelican, 1972
Review number: 272

The World of Odysseus is the book which made Finley's name as a classical scholar. He takes a fresh look as a historian at Homer's two great poems, which (even if not by the same hand) show many similarities in the world they depict. He uses insights derived from studies of other peoples based on an oral tradition to assess how the Odyssey and Iliad might relate to historical fact. (Poems like the Nibelungenlied and the Yugoslav poetry studied by Milman Parry include events and people known from more conventional historical sources, making this easier.)

Finley manages to distinguish two kinds of writing in Homer, other than principally fanciful episodes (like the Cyclops encounter in the Odyssey). There are distorted reflections of some past time, and insertions from the poet's own time. Sometimes they are combined, as in the descriptions of chariot fighting: the poet knows that chariots were used, but not how (because the use had died out by his time), so imagines them to be a kind of taxi to get to the battlefield, where the hero gets out to fight on foot. The description of gift exchange, which closely parallels similar systems known to anthropologists, is ancient; similes involving iron are contemporary.

Finley discusses many issues related to his theme, and is always interesting and convincing. There is the relationship between the poems and the Linear B tablets; between the poems and the excavations by Schliemann and others at Hissarlik and in Greece; between the works of Homer and Hesiod, near contemporaries; how later editing (known to have occurred) might have affected the poems; the existence and identity (identities) of Homer; the attitude towards the gods revealed in the poems (a downplaying of the more homely, primitive gods like Dionysus and Demeter). To a non-classicist like myself, his conclusions always seem to make sense. It is the romantic weight of the poems themselves, as evidenced in the desire to connect Hissarlik to the Troy of the Iliad by going beyond the archaeological evidence, which meant that The World of Odysseus caused such controversy.

M.I. Finley: The Legacy of Greece (1981)

Edition: Oxford University Press, 1982

This collection of essays from scholars is intended to re-examine the role that ancient Greece has played in shaping our modern culture. It consists of fourteen articles by leading classical scholars covering various fields which are generally considered to be strongly influenced by Greek culture, including philosophy, science, figurative art, religion and so on, or covering the interaction between Greece and other cultures that have shaped our own (specifically Jewish and Christian). The book is completed with an article examining how Greek ideas have been passed down through the last two thousand years, and how those who lived during that period thought of Greek culture.

Being classicists, each writer tends to dwell on that part of their essay which summarises what makes up that particular aspect of Greek culture, which is not really what they were intended to do (at least as far as I see it). Most of them say less about modern culture, and some of them have quite old-fashioned and personal ideas about the modern side of the field about which they are writing - I disagreed with just about everything the writer on drama has to say about twentieth century theatre, for example. Still, each essay is of interest.

It is the last article - the history of attitudes to ancient Greece - which is perhaps the best, though I always like Finley's writing (he wrote the introduction and the first piece, on politics, as well as editing the book as a whole).

Peter Green: Classical Bearings: Interpreting Ancient History and Culture (1998)

Edition: Thames and Hudson, 1998
Review number: 86

Classical Bearings is a collection of (independently written) essays on classical history and literature arranged more or less chronologically by subject. The range of subjects within these fields is quite large, from Mycenean history and Homeric literature to the early Roman Empire.

Although now a senior academic, Peter Green first made his name by a strong attack on the parochial world of the classics scholar, and his work is still extremely critical of the academic fashion. His views are always original and based on an understanding of not only the particular issue at hand but of the whole of the Greek and Roman scene - though particularly the Greek.

Every article is worth reading, and all contain interesting insights. This is partly because of the vast range of knowledge which Green has, and which is a consequence of the way in which classics used to be taught.