ancient Greece - Kate Degelau-Pierce

Ignoring the feminine

Mary Beard is, of course, a well-know classicist, and it’s a personal life mission of mine to read all of her books. Even the dry academic ones – they’re quite interesting, if you’re curious about life in the Ancient Roman or Greek worlds. This is not one of those.

Women & Power is a very slight book – less than 100 pages – that is basically a transcript of two speeches she gave about just how deep silencing women goes in Western culture. Spoiler alert: the first example of silencing a woman in a written text is the Odyssey, which is possibly the oldest written text there is.

There are examples of powerful women in ancient texts, but these women are never portrayed as positive role models – think of Medea and Medusa – and even Athena is problematic. The feminine is secondary to the masculine by default.

This was a quick but illustrative read. Definitely recommended.

Media Studies in the Ancient World

What’s it about?
Confronting the Classics is a series of book reviews written for the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, or the Times Literary Supplement over the years by the author. Mary Beard is a famous classicist (if there is such a thing as a famous classicist), and her reviews are all trying to answer the question: why does this particular book she’s reviewing matter to you, a non-classicist?

Why should you read it?
I loved it for a few reasons.

I have a not-so-secret fondness for Ancient Rome. Mary Beard has a great skeptical eye through which to take a second look at some books I’ve read.
Not to mention suggestions for all kinds of new books to read. Seriously, this one made my to-read list grow.
She asks the serious question: why is Asterix so funny? Why do so many people (including me) love Asterix?
I like her approach to book reviewing – asking why a particular book matters to someone who isn’t a classicist allows her to explore all kinds of questions. What was the woman’s voice in Ancient Greece (about Sappho)? What did the ancients find funny? Why do we still find most of those jokes funny?
So much of what we know about the ancient world is because of what’s been written down. That’s biased in certain ways, with certain people wanting to influence how someone else was perceived. (e.g. Augustus burning anything about Cleopatra that didn’t fit how he wanted Roman society to see her). She takes a critical eye that reminded me a lot of modern media studies – there’s a thread in common with, say, Anne Helen Petersen.

Overall, I enjoyed it. You might too.

Glimpsing Western Civilization

What’s it about?
The Gods of Olympus shows how the ancient Greek Olympians are portrayed throughout Western history, from archaic Greece (~800 bce) to the Renaissance (1500 ce), with many stops in between. It talks about historical realities (Augustus was portrayed as Apollo, Antony was Bacchus, to his detriment as the two were warring for control of the Roman Empire), and how the Olympians as characters changed and stayed the same.

Why should you read it?
It turns out that the history of the Olympians is a useful proxy for a history of Western civilization. As different cultures become ascendent, they tend to adopt the gods and portray them as their own. The Romans’ gods transformed from civic deities into cults of personality after they conquered the Greeks. The gods became personifications of nature during the Renaissance. I’ve never read another book quite like this one – there are plenty of stories about the Olympians, but not another book that traces their characters through history and reflecting that back on the culture. It was interesting.