Love, Sex & Tragedy
How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives
345 pages
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50 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2004
"If you do not know where you come from, you will always be a child." Cicero wasn't talking about being a child in the sense of enjoying life in a state of ignorant bliss. He was, rather, adamant that those who don't understand their origins are consigned to a life without power or authority, without the ability to act fully in the world. Love, Sex & Tragedy is acclaimed classicist Simon Goldhill's corrective to our state of ignorance. Lifting the veil on our inheritance of classical traditions, Goldhill offers a witty, engrossing survey of the Greek and Roman roots of everything from our overwhelming mania for "hard bodies" to our political systems.
Marx, Clark Gable, George W. Bush, Oscar Wilde, and Freud—Goldhill's range here is enormous, and he takes great delight in tracing both follies and fundamental philosophical questions through the centuries and continents to the birthplace of Western civilization as we know it. Underlying his brisk and learned excursions through history and art is the foundational belief, following Cicero, that learning about the classics makes a critical difference to our self-understanding. Whether we are considering the role of religion in contemporary society, our expectations about the boundaries between public and private life, or even how we spend our free time, recognizing the role of the classics is integral to our comprehension of modern life and our place in it.
When Goldhill asks "Who do you think you are?" he presents us with the rarest of opportunities: the chance to let him lead us, firmly but with a wink, back two thousand years to where we are.
Marx, Clark Gable, George W. Bush, Oscar Wilde, and Freud—Goldhill's range here is enormous, and he takes great delight in tracing both follies and fundamental philosophical questions through the centuries and continents to the birthplace of Western civilization as we know it. Underlying his brisk and learned excursions through history and art is the foundational belief, following Cicero, that learning about the classics makes a critical difference to our self-understanding. Whether we are considering the role of religion in contemporary society, our expectations about the boundaries between public and private life, or even how we spend our free time, recognizing the role of the classics is integral to our comprehension of modern life and our place in it.
When Goldhill asks "Who do you think you are?" he presents us with the rarest of opportunities: the chance to let him lead us, firmly but with a wink, back two thousand years to where we are.
"Love, Sex & Tragedy is great, and great fun, the kind of book you find yourself reading out to your other half as you go along-a sparkling, erudite, and amusing remedy for our collective historical amnesia, a book that persuasively argues that without an understanding of our classical roots we are stumbling in the dark, missing vital information about who we really are and why we do the things we do. What do we mean by democracy? Why and how do we mix up history and myth and at what price? Whom do we love and how? Which bodies do we want and why? How do we entertain ourselves, and to distract us from what horrors? Simon Goldhill forces us to examine what we increasingly ignore: our radical reliance on a history we barely know."--Zadie Smith
"Goldhill writes with breezy wit in a style accessible to readers who did not grow up on Plato and Tacitus. This can disguise the fact that his intent is deadly serious, comparing the modern world to teenagers who believe themselves the first to discover sex and swear-words. If you do not know your history, he insists, you cannot be self-aware. As this brilliant book demonstrates, a familiarity with the ancient world is about much more than a life in ruins."--Joan Smith, Independent (UK)
"A passionate, witty, and broad-ranging exploration of the ancient foundations of our world. Goldhill skilfully overturns and amends our existing beliefs and is superb when discussing the origins of democracy, the importance of tragedy, and, inevitably, sex. . . . There is a widening gap between our perceptions and the ancient sources. Goldhill closes that gap with this lively and multi-layered challenge to assumptions embedded in modern life."
"It is confident, intelligent and assertive; it stands up for "classics" without apology, without snobbishness and without conservatism."—Oliver Taplin, Guardian
"Goldhill argues for the interdependence of classical and modern Western culture, but his book is no simplistic self-help invitation to rejoin the classical world. Its ultimate lesson is subtler. From Erasmus to Freud, from Keats and Oscar Wilde to Mussolini and, albeit questionably, George W. Bush, the classical past has had many influences on modern Western culture, often simultaneously good, bad and ugly. Goldhill invites us to explore these like Oedipus, to find out where we come from, who we are and where we are going. He emphasizes, again without being preachy or doom-saying, the costs of not engaging the past in an informed way. I wish more classicists would write as invitingly and honestly as Goldhill does about the humanistic values embedded in the complex history of the classical tradition. The world would be a better place."—Tom Palaima, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Mr. Goldhill . . . takes us through the looking glass into antiquity and shows us some of the sights that he thinks most interesting and informative. . . . Anyone who goes on the journey will be amused, surprised, and enlightened."—Mary K. Lefkowitz, New York Sun
"Whatever your investment in the subject, this book will excite you and engage you and make you want to argue with it."—Catherine Conybeare, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Contents
A Life in Ruins
i who do you think you are?
1. The Perfect Body
2. A Man’s Thing?
3. The Female Body – Soft and Spongy, Shaved and Coy
4. His and Hers – A Love Story?
5. Greek Love
6. A Man Is a Man Is a . . .
7. Longing for Sappho
8. Doing What Comes Naturally?
ii where do you think you are going?
1. The Empire of Religion
2. Superstars of the Flesh
3. Sex and the City
4. What’s Athens to Jerusalem?
5. Greek is Heresy!
6. Knowing the Answer
iii what do you think should happen?
1. Does Politics Need History?
2. Athenian Democracy – Changing the Map
3. The Good Citizen
4. The Critics of Democracy – Experts and Education
5. A Question of Betrayal
6. The Will of the People
iv what do you want to do?
1. That’s Entertainment!
2. The Question of Tragedy
3. The Gladiator and the Baying Crowd – ‘At My Command, Unleash Hell’
4. The Last Supper
v where do you think you come from?
1. A Greece of the Imagination
2. Founding Fathers – From Keats to Hollywood and Back
3. Finding the Fatherland – Where Freud’s Oedipus Comes From
4. The Mother of All Stories – The Greek Oedipus
5. The Myth of Origins
6. History Today
Notes
Further Reading
Picture Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
i who do you think you are?
1. The Perfect Body
2. A Man’s Thing?
3. The Female Body – Soft and Spongy, Shaved and Coy
4. His and Hers – A Love Story?
5. Greek Love
6. A Man Is a Man Is a . . .
7. Longing for Sappho
8. Doing What Comes Naturally?
ii where do you think you are going?
1. The Empire of Religion
2. Superstars of the Flesh
3. Sex and the City
4. What’s Athens to Jerusalem?
5. Greek is Heresy!
6. Knowing the Answer
iii what do you think should happen?
1. Does Politics Need History?
2. Athenian Democracy – Changing the Map
3. The Good Citizen
4. The Critics of Democracy – Experts and Education
5. A Question of Betrayal
6. The Will of the People
iv what do you want to do?
1. That’s Entertainment!
2. The Question of Tragedy
3. The Gladiator and the Baying Crowd – ‘At My Command, Unleash Hell’
4. The Last Supper
v where do you think you come from?
1. A Greece of the Imagination
2. Founding Fathers – From Keats to Hollywood and Back
3. Finding the Fatherland – Where Freud’s Oedipus Comes From
4. The Mother of All Stories – The Greek Oedipus
5. The Myth of Origins
6. History Today
Notes
Further Reading
Picture Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
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