A great book on exactly how the Classics created the modern Western world. Goldhill drives home the point that most of the asumptions taken for granted by his readers about the liberties they enjoy in life stem directly from the legacies of Greece and Rome.

I had to read this for school. It was good but not amazing. I liked some chapters more than others and did learn some interesting facts about Ancient Greece!

An excellent essay for all Europeans who want to really know who we are, what we bealive or not, helps you think from where you start until your destination.

This is the book to read if you want to know what Greek love is really all about!

certain parts of this book are so, so fascinating. i especially enjoyed the sections about romance, sex, and democracy

it was difficult to get through however because there was so much fluff. he says the same thing a million times in a row. it read like a persuasive essay that was trying to get the word count up. could have been cut down 50%

Bilgilendirici bir kitap olmuş..Atina dan başlayıp günümüze kadar ki gündelik yaşamdaki yaşam tarzlarını ve o zaman ki değerlerini anlatmış..Seks'ten Felsefe'ye,Demokrasi'den Romalılara,Gladyatörlerden savaşlara kadar enine boyuna ele almış tarihi..İdeal kadın ve erkek tarifleri detaylı şekilde yapılmış ve ilginç olan şey ise;Antik Yunanlılardaki tarif bugün dahi geçerliliğini hala koruyor modern dünyada.Kadın için; yumuşak ve gevşek,tüysüz ve cilveli.Her nekadar "demokrasi"nin doğduğu topraklar isede Kadın'a hiçbir hak verilmemiştir.

Platon ve Aristotales'in homoseksüelliğin aileye zarar verdiğini gösterdiğini ve bunu desteklemenin devletin işi olmadığını iddia etmişlerdir..
"Erkeklerin,kendlerine "Atina Vatandaşı" denmesinden gurur duyarken,kadınlar genellikle "Attica Kadını"olarak adlandırılır..Atina ismine dahi sahip değildiler..
Yunan aşkı'nı tanımlamak-erkeğin erkeğeduyduğu arzu,bunun gelenekleri ve uygulamaları...
Nietzche'nin de önceden sorduğu gibi,modern dünyadaki en şiddetli ve yıkıcı çatışmalar "fikirler arasındaki savaşlardır"
...yasalar,vatandaşın anası ve babasıdır..

"Romalılar döneminde,erkeğe ve kadına tecavüz bir nevi cezalandırma biçimi olarak algılanıyordu..
"Ereksiyon görmüş bir penis hiç şüphesiz Yunanlılarda bir bereket sembolü görülebilir....Penis sembol olarak kamu anıtları yapmak için kullanılırdı,kapı girişlerine ve kavşaklara konulurdu,kapı zili ve lamba olarak kullanılırdı antik çağda..Eros'un hernekadar "aşk tanrı"sı olanarak biliniyorsada aslında "arzu tanrı"sıymış..
Cicero"Eğer nereden geldiğinizi bilmiyorsanız,her zaman bir çocuk olarak kalacaksınız"
Seneca; "eşle bir aşık gibi sevişmek,zina kadar iğrençtir"

my sister had a copy of this at her house and so i grabbed it for something to read on the plane. and read it, i did. there are some erotic paragraphs which make for a stilted and intriguing flight considering it's five hours long, there is the dull, lifeless wind of the airplane, the sound of the guy snoring behind me and the problem of my sister and i suffering sibling angst when we are sitting near one another for too long ("stop pinching me," "i'm not pinching you," "will you order me a coke, i'll pay you in philly," "no, i already bought you a sandwhich," "i'm not a freeloader, i just need a coke," "sigh,").

That all aside, i needed to pick up this book because i am about as graceful and nuanced when it comes to matters of the heart and matters of the eros as a person tripping over their pants in a half-lit room in the morning because they are late for work and their alarm is still beeping fiercly. sexy.

what do i pun about? probably a broken heart, but, let me save that for a short story so i can hide the actual facts of my own heart and instead create a universal story out of fictional characters so that many can relate to it and that i might be spared embarrassment for my personal failings.

what this book offers, aside for some juicy bits about ancient history? it makes you feel like norms about sex and love are socially constructed. that we admire, arrange and create our lives based on what we were given, the stories we generate and that our emotions all come down to an evolving history of our human identity passed along to us by those who came before. if there is hope in here, it's that we are able to sift through the stories and find routes and people along the way that can connect with us.

but, this book also makes you realize that greek guys really didn't have a thing for women, very much, especially being that no female writing or historcial records made it out in tact, save for some eros-reputured poems by sappho. they considered the female body to be soft and weak. that men should strive never to look or act as a woman. it was actually kind of thought of as gross to be a woman. haha. the male physique was dominantly displayed and revered.

now, look. this is an intresting way into a theory of mine. in our culture, the male body is not so often displayed or revered. women's bodies are. a reversal of greecian times, yes, perhaps. but, it makes me remember an argument (spirited) that i had at a bar one time with a mate or two about how male bodies should be revered just the same, otherwise there is a kind of social and political imbalance going on. women are constantly reminded that there is this ideal that they should look like, meanwhile, dudes are kind of off the hook.

away from this shallow stuff. why do we fall in love with the people that we do? i think it goes beyond what we see, though, gulp, sometimes what we see can be pretty niiice (borat). i think love feelings actually comes from and flows to that human intangible stuff that we emote to one another or what we feel is emoted. unless a person is looking to simply get laid, i think humans want emotional connection; when you watch the show Millionaire Matchmaker, for example (wait you haven't seeen it?) you are mostly kind of there to watch a circus of put-on dewey eyed millionaires searching for love. and you kind of feel for them but you know that the means that they are approaching the issue is kind of, well, sorry guys and gals, bankrupt. people in LA have the greecian ideal of a perfect body but how many of their hearts are adrift and how many of the double d's have spent time working on their mental and emotional lives?

don't get me wrong, my favorite characters are often ones who have a kind of innocence to their own being; boy meets girl, girl meets boy, they are average intelligence, weight, attractiveness, and they just love one another. you can just kind of see it. they cuddle, they fear, they kiss away worry, they brush hair off forehead, they are over weight and they know it and they don't care so fuck you, they are kind, and they don't need to know who soren kierkegaard is so fuck you and they are basically just good. and they need one another. i will have this couple in my book. i encourage other writers to work out this story in their own way; along with some greecian body stories and some plane rides with sisters.

After reading his Reading Greek Tragedy, I was surprised by how conversational this book felt. Goldhill covers a good group of topics and works hard to trace them from ancient to modern. My only criticism is that there was any striking insight that seemed new or novel.

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The Idea that Western Culture has a continuity tracing back to the ancient world is seriously challenged by reading the classics. Ideas of the individual, sexual mores and common sense of the ancient Greeks and Romans seem utterly alien to the modern Post-Christian Westerner. Yet we supposedly trace our cultures origins to such people. I've always had an interest in the ancients but this book only increased my curiousity.

Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and my one criticism of this book is that it places so much emphasis on the legacy of Ancient Greece that there is little space left to explore the complex and enduring contribution of the Romans.

That aside, I thoroughly enjoyed Goldhill's breezy polemic. He makes a strong case for redressing the neglect of the ancient world by contemporary educationalists, pointing out that almost everything we understand by Western culture today has its origins in the classical world and that, as Cicero said, If you do not know where you come from, you will always be a child.'

Read this for a school project and it was pretty interesting overall!