Synopses & Reviews
Review
Boardman's style is compelling and easy to read. (Library Journal, Nancy J. Mactague, 15 March 2003)
Review
Boardman's authoritative and wide-ranging study valuably illuminates the operation of Greek cultural imagination. (Times Literary Supplement, Armand D'Angour, 9 May 2003)
Synopsis
This volume explores how the Greeks created and re-created their past in physical terms in both objects and images: those that are recoverable, those that are mentioned in texts, or those that may be imagined. It offers insights into the making of myth and the exceptional imagination of a people building the first modern civilization out of the relics of the past. The ancient Greeks drew upon their phyical environment not just to illustrate the past but also in many ways to invent: massive fossil bones were the remains of giants; strange rocks were petrified heroines; Bronze Age walls and tombs were the work of titans; and artefacts from the past became Achille's spear, Helen's necklace and Hercules' cup. The Greeks could point to where Poseidon struck the Acropolis with his trident, to Athena's olive tree, to Odysseus' cave in Ithaca. They worked out what Oeidipus' Sphinx looked like, and found Memnon crying to his mother Dawn in an Egyptian statue. It all enhanced their sense of Greekness and history, and it attracted the Roman tourist too: Julius Caesar was warned to tread carefully in the long grass at Troy lest he step on Hector's ghost.
About the Author
John Boardman, Lincoln Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford University, has written widely on the arts of ancient Greece.