I first visited ancient Greece as an undergraduate. Homer and Plato seemed to speak directly to me, addressing my deepest questions. How do you live a good life? What should you admire? What should you avoid? Frustrated by English translations (each offers a different interpretation), I learned to read ancient Greek and then Latin. In college and then graduate school, I came to know Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Cicero, Ovid, and many others in their own words. The ancient Greeks and Romans faced the same existential struggles and anxieties as we do. By precept, example, and counter-example, they remind me of humanity’s best tools: discernment, deliberation, empathy, generosity.
I wrote
Embattled: How Ancient Greek Myths Empower Us to Resist Tyranny
As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, Ancient Greek myths provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not…
Full disclosure: Donald Kagan was my professor and mentor in graduate school.
Arguably the greatest modern historian of ancient Greece, Kagan addresses timeless questions of leadership, decision making, and the radically innovative political experiment of democratic government.
This slender biography of the great Athenian statesman and general Pericles provides guidance for anyone interested in the rationale for democracy and in methods for developing and preserving it.
From Simon & Schuster, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy is Donald Kagan's, 20th century history of Athenian democracy, exploration of one of history's greatest subjects.
An incisive portrait of Pericles is set against the shifting political trends, international tensions and relations, and intellectual movements of the ancient Greek civilization.
Jerry Pollitt was another professor and inspiring mentor to me in graduate school.
In graceful, accessible prose, Pollitt traces the development of Classical Greek art (c. 480-322 BCE) as it intersects with Greek history, philosophy, and literature. Identifying potent interactions between art, culture, and political thought, this book offers a useful paradigm for understanding how these reciprocal influences shape our attitudes and aspirations still.
An account of the development of Greek art in the Classical period (about 480-320 BC) which places particular emphasis on the meaning and content of Greek sculpture, architecture and painting. Professor Pollitt reminds us that the visual arts in Greece, as elsewhere, were primarily vehicles of expression. He does not ignore formal development but always relates this to social and cultural history, which it reflected and from which it grew. While his subject is art, he refers frequently to the literature and philosophy of the period which were shaped by the same influences.
As a cancer survivor and bone marrow transplant recipient, I found this book enormously helpful personally as well as professionally.
Drawing on his experience as a theater director producing ancient Greek tragedies for survivors of war, addiction, natural disasters, and other calamities, Doerries brings these ancient plays to life for contemporary audiences. His moving, personal, generous account – part memoir, part philosophical exploration – eloquently exposes the value of Greek tragedy for coping with trauma and tragedy today.
This is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. For years, theater director Bryan Doerries has led an innovative public health project that produces ancient tragedies for current and returned soldiers, addicts, tornado and hurricane survivors, and a wide range of other at-risk people in society.
Drawing on these extraordinary firsthand experiences, Doerries clearly and powerfully illustrates the redemptive and therapeutic potential of this classical, timeless art: how, for example, Ajax can help soldiers and their loved ones better understand and grapple with…
Osgood details the ancient version of a phenomenon we may recognize: a cold-blooded grift by a charismatic, lawless, leader transmuted into terrorism while posing as patriotism.
Detailing the violent conspiracy of L. Sergius Catilina (63 BCE), Osgood’s elegant translation of Sallust’s The War Against Catiline (c. 43 BCE) emphasizes the danger that political violence and intimidation pose to communal welfare and stability. The Romans never found the recipe for combining individual freedom with equality and political harmony. (Rome’s 450-year-old Republic ultimately devolved into civil war and autocracy.)
Sallust’s tale and Rome’s experience caution us against preserving inequities even as we seek to preserve the rule of law.
An energetic new translation of an ancient Roman masterpiece about a failed coup led by a corrupt and charismatic politician
In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the city and murder its leading politicians. The attempted coup culminated with the unmasking of the conspirators in the Senate, a stormy debate that led to their execution, and the defeat of Catiline and his legions in battle. In…
As a Classics professor, I rejoiced at Zuckerberg’s ability to insert rationality and fact into the often bad-faith debate swirling in universities and online regarding the value today of ancient Greek and Roman languages and literature.
Concentrating primarily on Roman sources, Zuckerberg critiques on-line distortions and misappropriation of Classical texts intended to promote misogyny and white supremacy.
A disturbing expose of how today's alt-right men's groups use ancient sources to promote a new brand of toxic masculinity online.
A virulent strain of antifeminism is thriving online that treats women's empowerment as a mortal threat to men and to the integrity of Western civilization. Its proponents cite ancient Greek and Latin texts to support their claims-arguing that they articulate a model of masculinity that sustained generations but is now under siege.
Donna Zuckerberg dives deep into the virtual communities of the far right, where men lament their loss of power and privilege, and strategize about how to reclaim…
As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, Ancient Greek myths provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not exist until the Greeks coined the term and tried the experiment, but the idea can be traced to stories that the ancient Greeks told and retold for centuries (8th-5th cents. BCE). Tales told in ancient Greek epics and tragedies exposed the tyrannical potential of individuals and groups large and small. They identified abuses of power as self-defeating. They initiated and fostered a movement away from despotism and toward broader forms of political participation.
Addressing non-specialist readers concerned about the world’s trajectory today, Embattled retells and reinterprets tales drawn directly from ancient Greek texts. These stories initiated a movement toward political and social equality that we in the 21st century have yet to accomplish. They empower us to resist tyrannical impulses in others and in ourselves.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
