New Books in Ancient History

Many of us try to be thoughtful about the ways that we incorporate (or try, at least, to incorporate) different modes of evidence into our attempts to understand the past: objects, creatures, words, ideas. Rowan Flad's Salt Production and Social Hierarchy in Ancient China: An Archaeological Investigation of Specialization in China's Three Gorges (Cambridge UP, 2011) stands as a beautiful case study of what it can look like to do so. Flad juxtaposes texts, bamboo slips, ceramic sherds, animal remains, and other lines of evidence to offer an exceptionally rich account of the technology of salt production in early China, offering glimpses at comparative archeological practices, ideas of spatiality, and the diversity of uses of animals in early China along the way. Reading the book inspired, for me, new ways of thinking about the conceptual role of fragments in the work of the historian, and our conversation was similarly inspiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aside from being aesthetically equated to Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra has not fared well in history. In her riveting biography Cleopatra: A Life (Back Bay Books, 2011), which is now out in paperback, Stacy Schiff establishes that this was primarily because Cleopatra’s story was penned by a crowd of Roman historians for whom “citing her sexual prowess was evidently less discomfiting than acknowledging her intellectual gifts.”Schiff exhibits no such discomfort and, in brilliant contrast, seems to revel in her subject’s lively intelligence. She establishes from the out-set that, above all, Cleopatra was a consummate politician–a visionary who shaped her own persona and her people’s perception through both exceptional leadership and canny political stagecraft.One of the most significant contributions of Cleopatra: A Life is that it provides us with the least tainted view of the Egyptian queen to date. Schiff assiduously teases out the motivations of Cleopatra’s chroniclers, and the result is a compelling rendering wherein the myths surrounding the last Egyptian queen are not only deconstructed but their origins are also explained. With the veils of myth removed, the Cleopatra that emerges in Schiff’s sensitive and probing portrait is a smarter, wiser woman, and one of the strongest, most influential rulers of the ancient world.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Victor’s Crown brings to vivid life the signal role of sport in the classical world. Ranging over a dozen centuries–from Archaic Greece through to the late Roman and early Byzantine empires–David Potter’s lively narrative shows how sport, to the ancients, was not just a dim reflection of religion and... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this installment of Faculty Insight, produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School, ThoughtCast speaks with the esteemed Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy about one of the earliest and greatest legends of all time: Homer’s epic story of the siege of Troy, called “The Iliad.” It’s a story of god-like heroes and blood-soaked battles; honor, pride, shame and defeat. In this interview, we dissect a key scene in “The Iliad,” where Hector and Achilles are about to meet in battle. Athena is also on hand, and she plays a crucial if underhanded role, with the grudging approval of her father, Zeus.And Nagy is the perfect guide to this classic tale. He’s the director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, as well as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard. We spoke in his office at Widener Library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Greco-Roman world was the prism through which the British viewed their imperial efforts, and Mark Bradley’s compendium Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2010) explores the various ways in which this reception of the classics occurred. From museums, to oratorical texts, to theories of race, the classical world was a reference point for the imperial British. Bradley’s book looks at how the British thought about the classical world at a time when they were confronted by their own role as empire builders.There was the desire to reinforce, to justify their claims to being the greatest imperial power after Rome. There was doubt; the need to reconcile the colonized to their rule even as they learnt how ancient Britons had resisted Roman rule. There was a certain humbled pride that they had managed to supplant the Romans insofar as claims to being the ‘greatest imperial power’ were concerned. There was also puzzlement; the jewel in the crown, India, was nothing like any Roman province or territory-how did this place them in relation to the Romans, who after all went about subjugating ‘barbarians’ as opposed a people with a highly sophisticated civilization of their own? These are some of the issues that concerned the Britons of the Empire, and that this book analyses with great sensitivity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being a historian is a bit of a slog: years in graduate school, more years in dusty libraries and archives, and even more years teaching students who sometimes don’t seem interested in learning what you have to teach. But the job does have its pleasures, and one of the greatest–and surely the guiltiest–is watching people screw history up. Not a day goes by when we don’t see someone get it wrong, dead wrong, or so wrong that it’s not even wrong. To us, history is firmly anchored in authenticated sources that have been subjected to intense scrutiny and debate by people who know what they are talking about. To most other folks (though surely none of the people reading these words), history is something a dimly remembered teacher taught you, something you saw on the “History Channel,” or something someone told you once. This kind of history is not anchored in anything other than popular ideas and attitudes, which themselves are constantly changing. In this light, it’s not particularly surprising that when most people talk about history, they don’t get things quite right. When people make historical mistakes, we historians earnestly knit our brows and solemnly bemoan the deficit of historical knowledge. Privately we sometimes chuckle. I’ve done this myself, and I have to tell you I feel bad about it.I can only imagine, then, that Christopher Krebs had an absolute blast writing A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (Norton, 2011), for it is an epic tale of getting it wrong, history-wise. Beginning about half a millennium ago, people began to say all kinds of wrongheaded things about Tacitus’s thin volume: that Tacitus was writing about “Germans” (he wasn’t); that he knew a lot about “Germans” (he didn’t); that he uniformly praised “Germans” (nope); that the traits he ascribes to “Germans” can be found among modern German-speakers (wrong again).Were it not for the fact that these “interpretations” emboldened evil people (especially the Nazis) to do evil things (too numerous to recount), this exercise in bad history would be funny. But, as Krebs points out, it’s really not very funny at all. It’s a reminder that we professional historians have a duty to make sure we get what we say about the past straight, or else. Christopher Krebs is clearly fulfilling his duty in this important, readable, and very witty book. It deserves a wide audience. That means you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a (much beloved) colleague who calls all history about things before AD 1900 “that old stuff.” Of course she means it as a gentle jab at those of us who study said “old stuff.” Gentle, but in some ways telling. Many historians and history readers genuinely have a bias against the older periods, and particularly against the history of the pre-Hellenic Ancient World (roughly 10,000 BCE to 500 BCE). That’s really too bad for a whole host of reasons. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just list three “biggies”:1) The Ancient World witnessed the greatest single break in the history of humankind, that is, the transition from hunter-gather to sedentary agricultural life;2) The deepest roots of our civilizations (Western, Eastern, you name it) are mostly to be found in the Ancient World;3) Finally, the basic institutions of what we think of as “modern” life were all hammered out for the first time in the Ancient World.Take, for example, diplomacy. As Amanda Podany shows in her engaging new book Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East (Oxford University Press, 2010), the rulers of Sumer, Akkad, Syria, Egypt and the rest developed a way of dealing with one another that will be strikingly familiar to anyone who follows modern international relations. They regularly sent envoys to one another. Those envoys were given safe passage, provided with diplomatic immunity, and treated as special guests. Royal representatives followed strict instructions from their masters. They negotiated formal treaties, which included such things as the conditions for international trade. They presented gifts from their masters to their hosts and expected gifts in return. They arranged for diplomatic marriages of the kind any student of European history would recognize. All this is nothing if not strikingly “modern.” Yet, as Amanda points out, the entire system was invented over 4,000 years ago. And, thanks to Amanda, you can read all about it.If you do, you won’t think of “that old stuff” as really that old, or at least odd.Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s the classic historical question: Why did the Roman Empire fall? There are doubtless lots of reasons. One historian has noted 210 of them. No wonder Gibbon said that we should stop “inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed,” but rather “be surprised that it lasted so long.” Indeed. But 210 reasons do not amount to a satisfying explanation. Historical events are complex, but historical writing must be parsimonious if it is to achieve its primary aim, that is, to make the past clear to us. Happily, Adrian Goldsworthy‘s How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (Yale UP, 2009) does a marvelous job of boiling it all down. He proposes that structural explanations–governmental inefficiency, economic decline, imperial overstretch and the 207 others–are fine, but they really won’t do the job in this case. The late Roman Empire was ill, but it was hardly on its death bed in the third and fourth centuries. Moreover, even at its weakest moments, the Empire was hugely more powerful than any of its competitors. In order to understand how the Romans managed to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory (or at least survival) Goldsworthy says we need to look at Roman politics, or what I would call Roman “political culture.” In Goldsworthy’s telling, the Roman political elite forgot what the empire was for, that is, to serve the interests of the Romans (the “Res publica”). Instead, up-and-coming Roman leaders were primarily interested in making it to the top and staying there. That meant staying alive, and since many failed do so for very long long-term political instability ensued. Too often the Romans were busy fighting each other instead of fending off their many though relatively weak enemies. It was only a matter of time before they fought each other one too many times and those enemies defeated them.Goldsworthy also has some interesting things to say about comparisons between the late Roman Empire and the contemporary United States. I won’t give away what he says, but I will tell you he doesn’t like them very much and for what I think are excellent reasons.Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Swords and Sandals” movies always amaze me. You know the ones I’m talking about: “Spartacus,” “Ben-Hur,” “Gladiator,” and the rest. These movies are so rich in detail–both narrative and physical–that you feel like you are “there.” But the fact is that we don’t and really can’t know much about “there” (wherever “there” happens to be in the Ancient World) because the sources are very, very thin. As Joyce Tyldesley points out in her terrific Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008), Cleopatra is a mystery and necessarily so. We don’t know who her mother was, when she was born, what she looked like, whom she married, and a host of other details about her life. That means, of course, that every dramatist from Shakespeare on has been, well, making stuff up about Cleopatra. Actually, many of the “primary sources” about her are full of invention because they were written long after the events they describe by Roman authors who just didn’t like her very much. They did like a good story, so they embellished, as any good storyteller will. Joyce is an excellent storyteller herself, but she takes no poetic license. She tells us just what can be known–and trust me, that’s more than enough to hold our attention! This book is a great read for anyone interested in learning about the real world of Ptolemaic Egypt.Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices