Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people--the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? Where did they go if their marriage was in trouble or if they were broke? Or, perhaps just as important, how did they clean their teeth? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard forces us along the way to reexamine so many of the assumptions we held as gospel--not the least of them the perception that the Emperor Caligula was bonkers or Nero a monster. With capacious wit and verve, Beard demonstrates that, far from being carved in marble, the classical world is still very much alive.

Author: Mary Beard
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 09/09/2013
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.3lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780871407160


Award: 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist - Criticism


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2013
Publishers Weekly 06/17/2013
Library Journal 07/01/2013 pg. 89
Booklist 08/01/2013 pg. 22

About the Author
Beard, Mary: - A professor of classics at Cambridge University, Mary Beard is the author of the best-selling SPQR and Women & Power and the National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated Confronting the Classics. A popular blogger and television personality, Beard is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.