| |
| The
Bluffer's Guide to the Classics | | By
Ross Leckie | | | | Extracts
from the book | |
| | | Hadrian's
Wall | | If
the beginning of 'the Classics' is bad, the ending is even worse. Stick your neck
out. Define the end of the Classics as when the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD) first
developed a predilection for donkeys and for walls. That will lead you, at once,
to the sort of subjects on which your imagination and peoples' interest will flourish. |
| | | Thought
provoking | | The
'thought' of the Classical world which has shaped the West and formed the best
of what we are is singularly, exclusively Greek. Maintain, categorically, that
Rome produced no original thought or philosophy. The Greeks, were always thinking,
about justice, beauty, truth, the gods, mathematics, physics, architecture, medicine.
When they ran out of other things to think about, they thought about thinking. |
| | | Porridge |
| Sophocles
began his magnificent play Oedipus Colonus aged 90. King Agesilaus of Sparta was
still active on the battlefield at 80. The longevity of the ancients was occasioned,
you will assert, by the fact that, even in the Roman Republic, a typical meal
consisted of two courses, the first a kind of porridge and the second, a kind
of porridge. If only Byron had eaten more bran. |
| | | Concrete |
| You
will hear many say that the contribution of Rome to art was the arch. They are
wrong. The Greeks knew all about it and, occasionally, used it, but generally
avoided it for aesthetic reasons. The Romans gave us instead concrete. |
| | | Democracy |
| Most
people believe that it is to the Classical world that we owe Democracy and her
handmaidens, Peace, Brotherhood, the Common Agricultural Policy and the IMF. Bluffers
know better. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans knew anything about Democracy at
all. The only occasion on which anything like it occurred in the Classical world
was for 20-30 years in Athens and, apart from producing the Parthenon, that was
a disaster. | | |
| Reviews |
|
| | | The
ultimate guide to cultural one-upmanship.... |
| The
Sunday Times, Scotland | | |
| The
Bluffer's Guide to the Classics has some good lines in it. I like Lawrence
Durrell's master who held up a picture of the Venus de Milo and said: 'What do
you think they were trying to do? Make us tingle with lust? Certainly not! They
were asking themselves what beauty is, and whether it lies in proportion.' |
| The
Times | | |
| This
is a witty, erudite lampoon of Roman and Greek life, literature, politics etc.
The book is in the same vein as "1066 and All of That" a famous treatment of British
history. | | A
reader from St. Louis, USA | | |
| Table
of Contents | |
| | |
When? Where?
Greece
Italy and Rome
Who?
Gods
Demi-Gods
Men
What?
Democracy
Homosexuality
Misogyny
Slavery
Tyranny
Beauty
How?
Oracles, Omens and Auguries
Armies
Oratory
Ostracism
Art
Language and Metre
Thought
Why?
Vital BlufferÕs Phrases
Dramatis Personae
Achilles
Aeneas
Aeschylus
Alexander
Aphrodite
Apollo
Ares
Aristophanes
Artemis
Athena
Atlas
Augustus
Bacchus
Caesar
Caligula
Callimachus
Caracalla
Cassandra
Catiline
Catullus
Cicero
Diogenes
Draco
Eubulides
Hera
Herakles
Heraklitus
Herodotus
Hesiod
Homer
Horace
Juvenal
Kronos
Lucretius
Mercury
Nero
Ovid
Pan
Persephone
Pindar
Plato
Prometheus
Pyrrhus
Pythagoras
Romulus and Remus
Sappho
Socrates
Themistocles
Thucydides
Virgil
Zenas
Zeus |
| |
| |
Fortune
Telling
