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 Ambitious sweeping view of many different periods July 8, 2008
Adam Graham Malster (Taiwan)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Informative but a tiny bit tedious October 24, 2007
JG (UK)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
 Comprehensive, but a bit dull September 23, 2007
D. M. Powell (London, England)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
standard 'history' of Greece and Rome May 13, 2007
Roman Clodia (London)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
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...
So, is it "good" history? January 16, 2007
nicjaytee (London)
36 out of 39 found this review helpful
Seeking to cogently summarise an incredible period of development & change - from the emergence of Greek city-states to the peaking of the Roman Empire - in just 600 pages is some challenge, but it's one that Robin Lane Fox rises to through his mastery of the subject and his ability to distil his knowledge into a manageable and highly readable format. And, as an example of making the "key facts" of complex history understandable and sufficiently succinct to capture and hold the attention of non-academic readers, it's an excellent book.
But, is it "good" history? Well that, of course, depends on how you view the subject. If it's a summary of major political & military events then you won't be disappointed for it's a fascinating period and, by the end of it all, you'll know what happened: who, where & when. But good history should be more than a mere distillation of "facts": it should explore why things happened. And, given the period being addressed - one in which the exploration of philosophy, science, politics and history itself was paramount in making it so important - Lane Fox's failure to do this is a major weakness.
For example, the reasons for the massive social & political differences in the parallel development of Athens and Sparta - two key city states only 100 miles apart - one of which pioneered philosophy & democracy, and the other of which pioneered the exact opposite, is virtually ignored other than in terms of their regular military conflicts. Or, why Athens made the most incredible intellectual advances during a period in which it was under constant military threat and in which half of its citizens were killed in wars... were they related issues? Or, the whole subject of slavery, in particular how the ever-present threat that "free" citizens in one state could rapidly find themselves slaves in another affected people's thinking. Or, how Rome controlled and administered, so effectively, such a huge empire for such a huge period of time - a subject that is not only fascinating but extremely relevant to any understanding of both the Romans and, the development of political & military science. Interesting, but largely ignored, as is the whole issue of blood sports in the Roman Empire, other than a short section summarising some of what happened without any real insights into the reasons why it was endorsed & accepted and how it was used to maintain power.
And so it goes, for as you pass through chapters filled with highly articulate and entertaining explanations of the key political & military events that shaped the "map" of the period you're left with nagging questions about what life for people outside of the often transiently dominant elite ruling class was really like: why their underlying societies developed in the way they did, what their social structures & needs were, and how these factors impacted on the seismic changes in politics, culture, the arts & science that make the period so interesting and important.
To be fair, Lane Fox has limited source material concerning the social history of the period to work off and, where this material is available (in particular in Cicero's & Pliny's letters), he does address some of these questions, but, given his exceptional knowledge of the subject and his willingness to provide his own interpretations of political & military events in other areas, he should also have allowed himself much more space to consider the wider, equally relevant issues at play here, bringing the book "alive" while adding to the reader's understanding of what was actually going on.
A tour de force in making traditional, academic level history available to the masses and a great "read" but, a lost opportunity in providing real insight into his subject matter.
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