100 books like Free Speech in Classical Antiquity

I have collaborated with Bettany over many years—in her scholarly documentary filmmaking, including programmes on Socrates of Athens (469-399). Socrates never wrote or published in written form a word of his philosophy, yet through his immediate and succeeding disciples (above all Plato and Aristotle) has been hugely influential. But was he a democrat, as his fellow Athenians understood that term? In 399 a jury of 501 of his peers, chosen randomly by lot, delivered their resounding—negative—verdict, and condemned him to death by hemlock poison for being undemocratically irreligious and for teaching his pupils undemocratic values. Plato violently disagreed, and the debate over Socrates has continued ever since. Since it can be made to appear that he was convicted by an illiberal jury on grounds of his use of (democratic) freedom of speech, his condemnation has often been used as a stick to beat the ‘tyranny of… show more.

I have met Orlando only once, alas, at the university where he has taught for many years (Harvard), he is both a novelist and historical sociologist. For a Black scholar originating from Kingston, Jamaica, to write approvingly of forms of freedom that he believes ‘made’ Western culture, when that culture arguably in both its ancient Greek and its modern Euro-American modes was also based on slavery, is in itself very remarkable. This is the first of a two-volume study.

Kurt, a Swiss-German scholar who spent much of his career in Germany and the United States (Brown University), is an old and beloved friend of mine but I would have chosen this book even if he had not been. Its origins go far back, to the author’s Habilitationsschrift (Free University, Berlin, 1979), but it was completely updated for its English reincarnation. Its seven chapters take the story of Greek freedom, both internal and external, both political and cultural, from its origins in the 8th century BCE down to the Roman conquest and occupation of Greece in the 2nd century.

I have read dozens of books on a variety of free speech topics–everything from political dissent to hate speech to pornography. But I have never found a single book on the entire history of free speech over the ages of Western civilization.

I love the way that this work portrayed the most significant free speech struggles from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Enlightenment, and beyond to today’s social media controversies. More often than not, histories are boring and pedantic, but this history kept me involved and interested right up to the last page.  

I love this unusual and thoughtful book. It looks not at the realities and practicalities of ancient warfare but at how different societies have made use of the striking, impressive, sometimes pitiable spectacle of ancient war.

Roman poets wrote about the last moments of dying warriors, and ancient Greeks conjured up images of the battlefield in song and dance. War as Spectacle also makes space for thinking about how and why later eras refer back to ancient wars, be it the military dictators of modern Greece or the monument-makers of the USA. This work is a rich cultural experience across space and time.  

This is a fat book, but almost unputdownable. What could be more fundamental to understanding the world of the ancient Greeks than finding out how many of them there were, and how they worked the land? We are learning more and more about the uses of the countryside, especially from survey archaeology, in which walkers systematically transect a given area of land. A good eighty or ninety percent of all ancient Greeks made a living (not necessarily a good one) through agriculture. The issues involved in trying to determine, say, the overall population of Greece in 500 BCE, or the pattern of land use in Athens, or the annual rates of cereal productivity, are complex, but Sallares steers us through the evidence with a sure hand.

This is the daddy of travel books about Greece, penned by a Greek from western Turkey who toured the sights during the pax Romana (2nd century AD).

Catching ancient Greece before it fell into ruin, he enthusiastically wrote up the buildings and artworks and the local history of places both famous and obscure. My own copy, decidedly battered, has been a companion of my academic career since my twenties.

You can still follow Pausanias on certain archaeological sites, like Delphi or Olympia. On others it’s fascinating, after visiting them, to turn to this ancient guide to read how he described the same places when they were intact.

Peter Levi’s translation is highly readable and well equipped, but not overladen, with footnotes.  

Not – repeat not – because I am its editor and wrote more than half of it but mainly because this is I believe the one-volume, one-stop-shop book to have on your shelves or digitally on your computer if you want to gain something like a complete understanding and appreciation of the world or rather worlds of Ancient Greece. I can do no better than quote from the ‘blurb’ provided online by the C.U.P. itself.

It is sumptuously illustrated throughout, almost entirely in colour. It offers fresh interpretations of the whole range of ‘Classical’ Greek culture, different aspects of which are expertly handled by members of an international cast of top-notch scholars both male and female. These aspects include: the influences of the environment and economy; the effects of interstate tensions; the implications of (bi-, homo-, hetero-normative) sexuality; the experiences of workers, soldiers, slaves, peasants and women; and the roles… show more.

It’s impossible to enter the mindset of the ancient Greeks without understanding that democracy runs deeply in their cultural bloodstream. There are numerous books on the subject – I did a course called Athenian Democracy: An Experiment for the Ages for The Great Courses – but Cartledge’s book, as the title suggests, offers a biography from its beginnings down to the present day. It also provides a nuanced exploration of the connection between Greek politics and society. Democracy: A Life depicts democracy not as a theoretical model but at work, and, in the challenges it faces today, a work in progress. Get A Life!

Closely related to my love for history is my love of mythology—the boundary between the two is porous. This book started that love. There have been many books published that present the Greek myths to children, and this book is not considered one of the classics, but because it was my favorite book when I was six, I have never found another version better. I love the illustrations and how stylized they are. They capture the myths’ mystique, yet you can always see the human. I was clutching this book in the back seat of my family’s car when my mom announced that we would be getting a baby brother. As I was reading about Jason and the Golden Fleece, I suggested Jason as a name. It stuck!