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Title: Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Hellenistic Culture and Society, No 1) by Peter Green ISBN: 0-520-08349-0 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: October, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Helleni
Comment: Although this book contains much interesting information on the hellenistic age, I think it has several flaws. First, it contains too many subjective opinions to be properly 'scientific'. Second, Green's sarcasms are often so biting and his views so negative, that it is likely to kill the lay persons' fascination for the subject. Furthermore, his views on art and architecture is often at variance with most authorities. A case in point is the Laocoon, which in Green's opinion is a dreary piece of art. Great artists such as Michelangelo and Rubens clearly did not share this view. I am not saying that it is not allowed to share a few personal opinions in such a vast book, but in this case it clearly diminishes the value of the text for both the professional historian and the lay person.
Rating: 2
Summary: Peter Green Trying To Impress His Peers
Comment: It is hard to believe this ponderous tome was written by the same Peter Green who wrote the engaging "Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B. C.: A Historical Biography."
Obviously written to impress and withstand the criticism of a small group of his academic peers, there is very little in this weighty volume to recommend it to the average reader, unless he is an insomniac. It is virtually guaranteed to put you asleep, head swimming in the names of minor characters of the Hellenistic age, included not so much for completeness as to avoid criticism from those nit-picking pretenders who find it easier to tear down a work than write an original one of their own.
While undoubtedly important in the academic retinue that delights in debating minutia and cutting other authors down to size by finding minor faults, there is no value in this work to any outside the cloistered halls of Academe.
Peter green does not display the ability of Eugen Weber of UCLA to bring the Hellenistic age to life for the average student. This book belongs, along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, in a cloister devoted to its lifelong study to the exclusion of all else.
Save yourself [the money], unless you are a history professor who wishes to catch Peter Green in some minor error, and thereby justify your tenure by writing a scathing review. This book was written for academic scholars only, and written in such a way as to render it bullet proof from attack. A big disappointment and a crashing bore for the average student!
Rating: 5
Summary: If you meet a Stoic, ask for his horoscope
Comment: This book is indeed 'magisterial'. Over 945 pages long, thoroughly annotated, and heavy enough to use as a weapon.
It covers the period of time referred to as 'Hellenic'; When the Greeks finally had it with the burden of freedom. After Alexander forced his troops to kneel to him in worship, murdered his closest asociates, and subsequently dropped dead himself.
Alongside palace murders and dynastic wars, Green gives us a detailed account of a Greek-centered world after the suicide of Greek liberty, integrity and brilliance. Such are the pitfalls of conquering the world. A geographical expansion concurrent with a contraction of genius.
Now, everybody and his cousin is Hellenized. It's the in thing to be since Alexander's generals have become kings in their own right. They may lack his courage and military genius but not his megalomania, tyranny or paranoia. And their princely offspring are generally inclined to be either half-witted or even more vicious.
No matter how much history may have romanticized Themistocles, Pericles, Socrates, and the rest of the boys in the previous 'golden age,' the Hellenic period is such a fall from grace that the reader can hardly wait for a sane and efficiently corrupt Rome to wipe them out in the final chapters.
Green's style may be too breezy and ironic for some readers who prefer their scholarly works dry.
As an example, Green mentions that Cleopatra respected Caesar while Mark Antony "nearly drove her nuts."
Above all, it's in the area of philosophy that Green show his most original or, to some, annoyingly cute writing.
Philosophy, far from being a rarified persuit of academics, is the central spirit of the culture and times. And the times were tough.
This is why Cynics, who would normally be considered parasites or simply nuts, flourished and why Skeptics often brought men toward rather than away from religion. After all, if nothing can be proven with certainty, why not go for the afterlife with gusto?
For those of us who are inclined to think of Stoics as heroes or of Epicureans as noble, Green rounds out the portrait unflatteringly.
Epicurus was, according to Green, a cult leader who was able to live placidly in his 'garden' thanks to the generous donations of rich dilettantes. Working for a living does not enter into his philosophy. A dogmatist who shunned debate and anathematized all 'heretics' in his polemics, he was probably suffering from bulemia. Hence, his constant emphasis on avoiding pain as the greatest of virtues.
In this 'monastic life' his followers engaged in friendly conversation trying to convince themselves that all careers were uselesss and death was not such a big deal.
Stoicism also takes a beating. We're told it was a pop philosophy, logically suspect in its premises, a consolation for a once free people who were now politically powerless.
Stoics became vastly more influential than Epicureans, not because their message was more profound than, 'Gather your rosebuds while ye may,' but because it provided a cosmological support to astrology, an increasingly popular fad among the powerless as well as an incentive to the ambitious that they were fulfilling the destiny of the living universe as they strove for their goals by hook or by crook.
Therefore, it could be all things to all people, producing such unlikely bedfellows as Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca.
Bottom line? For anyone intersted in the Hellenic period, this is THE book.
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Title: Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B. C.: A Historical Biography by Peter Green ISBN: 0520071662 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: September, 1992 List Price(USD): $17.44 |
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Title: The Greco-Persian Wars by Peter Green ISBN: 0520203135 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Greek World After Alexander, 323-30 BC by Graham Shipley ISBN: 0415046181 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $33.95 |
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Title: The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse by Paul Cartledge ISBN: 1585674028 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Collapse of the Bronze Age : The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt, and the Peoples of the Sea by Manuel Robbins ISBN: 0595136648 Publisher: Author's Choice Press Pub. Date: 21 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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