Books like Hubris — picked by fans

If, like me, when you read a history book, you want to learn something new both about a crucial period or personage in history and about how they reflect more generally on the human condition, then look no further than Jennifer T. Roberts’ magisterial study of the ancient Greek world between the Persian Wars and the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War (490-360 BCE).

It thrilled me and informed me alike from its first page to the last. At the start of her chosen timeframe, the Greek world was at risk of being overwhelmed by the Persian Empire. Had the Persians won… no Greek democracy, no Athenian theatre or philosophy, no Hippocratic medicine? Possibly. But did the Greeks make the most of their freedom from foreign conquest and control? Possibly not.

War between Greeks—of Greek state against Greek state, and between Greek citizens of the same state—was a plague, a metaphorical… show more.

I loved this book, by a brilliant younger French scholar, because it’s simply one of the best books around on the life and times of the Athenian democratic leader and, no less, his fluctuating reputation in and after antiquity right up to the early 21st century.

Being a prominent politician in a direct democracy that lacked political parties and any means of mass communication except face-to-face interaction meant a precarious, topsy-turvy life for would-be ‘demagogues’, leaders of the people, like the great Pericles.

I loved how Dr. Azoulay explored all the facets of Pericles’ multiple interactions during his generally brilliant career, including the more scandalous ones such as his eccentric love life. I loved, too, how he traced all the ups and downs of Pericles’ reputation over 24 centuries, showing expertly just how foreign a country the past can be—our past no less than that of the ancient Greeks.

You have heard of the ‘Thucydides trap’ but have little or no idea what it is, or why it might be interesting or even important? I can think of no other acceptable substitute for reading the work of the man himself.

Thucydides was born into an elite Athenian family about 460 BCE (when Pericles was about 35). His firsthand contemporary history of the Peloponnesian War (431-404) is an all-time classic, a possession forever, drawn on heavily by both Roberts and Azoulay—and by me.

I happen to be able to read him in the original Athenian Greek (which I started learning at age 11), but most of us will need a translation. For us anglophones, I can’t recommend any other as highly as Dr Waterfield’s. Which is not only the most recent but also accurate, clear, and perfectly suited in tone and register to the gravity of the original, as well… show more.

I love Cambridge (University Press) Companions—over 900 have been published so far, including many in my own field of ancient Greek history.

There is even a Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles. But that’s not the one I’ve chosen here, partly because Pericles has—rightly—had his fair share of attention and praise in my other choices, but mainly because the city of Athens, especially during Pericles’ lifetime, was one of the great cities of the world in any age.

The volume co-edited by Professors Neils and Rogers has many virtues and strengths, but what I love about it most is its vast breadth of coverage and its tight integration both between and within its 33 chapters of literature, history, and material culture.

It’s invidious to select, but space requires me to, so I’m going to recommend just six: those on the Acropolis, on animals in Athenian life, on… show more.

Athens is where I lived as a student in the 1970s, and I’ve loved the place ever since! People who visit Greece often miss out on the capital or find the modern city ugly and noisy. But this book explains the magic effect that Athens has exercised on natives and visitors for at least two thousand years – all the way from the legendary wisdom of Solon the lawgiver to the gritty problems of a decade of enforced austerity (only recently overcome), and of a new multi-culturalism that comes with mass migration across Europe’s front line into Greece.

Rome appropriated many aspects of Athenian (and Greek) culture for its political and cultural needs – so much so that the poet Horace spoke of ‘captured Greece capturing the rude conqueror’. This book discusses the ‘Romanization’ of Greece and the impact that Greek culture or Hellenism had on the Romans, and by extension, how the Romans (or at least educated ones) came to view the Greeks. In this cultural interaction, Athens played a key role, as the author shows. This book is an important balance to the ‘usual’ political and military approach to the period, and shows the importance of Athens beyond the terminating Hellenistic era date of 30 BC.

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.

Strap on your toga, Watsonus, the game is afoot…or something like that.

Who needs Consulting Detective when you’ve got the literal inventor of logic on the case? The ancient Greek philosopher gets drawn into a messy case of murder defending the family of a former student.

I read this just after coming back from Athens—I wish I had it while I was there to compare the mentions in the text to real-life sites! 

As an author of mystery-thrillers, including the Sherlock Holmes Pastiche, “Elementary, My Dear Spock” as well as a longtime fan of Agatha Christie, I was drawn to the appeal of an ancient Greek “detective”, Heracles Pontor investigating murders in Plato’s Athens. And, Somoza does not disappoint, inviting us to share Pontor’s journey down a rabbit hole that grows ever more intriguing and dangerous page by page. Somoza welcomes us with a beautifully translated murder mystery that soon envelopes us in a fascinating exploration of Plato, reality, and, as reflected in the original Spanish title, the Cave of Ideas. 

All through my school years, I heard that democracy began in Athens, in ancient Greece. But I never understood how that could have happened. To me, constitutions and democracy began with the American and French Revolutions. It turns out that Athenian democracy too began with a revolution! And it was a situation very similar to our own origins: A democratic revolution in a slave-owning society! And at a time when a “national” identity was just being formed out of local and regional ones. This is a book of essays, and you don’t have to read them all. But Josiah Ober is the foremost modern expert on Athenian society and the origins of its democracy, and his essays on that topic in this book are the best accounts we have.

He clearly presents a world that is thousands of years away from us and very strange, but shows how they confronted… show more.