Book description
Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists - a brilliant
academic, with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience both
though her TV presenting and her books. In a series of sparkling essays,
she explores our rich classical heritage - from Greek drama to Roman
jokes, introducing some larger-than-life characters of classical
history, such as Alexander the Great, Nero and Boudicca. She also
invites you into the places where Greeks and Romans lived and died, from
the palace at Knossos to Cleopatra's Alexandria - and reveals the often
hidden world of slaves. She brings back to life some of the greatest
writers of antiquity - including Thucydides, Cicero and Tacitus - and
takes a fresh look at both scholarly controversies and popular
interpretations of the ancient world, from The Golden Bough to Asterix.
The fruit of over thirty years in the world of classical scholarship,
Classical Traditions captures the world of antiquity and its modern
significance with wit, verve and scholarly expertise. Mary Beard is a
professor of classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the classics
editor of the TLS. She has world-wide academic acclaim, and is a fellow
of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. Her previous books include the best-selling, Wolfson
Prize-winning Pompeii, The Roman Triumph and The Parthenon (in the
Wonders of the World series of which she is general editor). Her TLS
blog has been collected in the books It's a Don's Life [9781846682513]
and All in a Don's Day [9781846685361].
