Review by Choice Review
The dust jacket of this book juxtaposes a romantic drawing of the ancient Athenian Acropolis with a photograph of the first modern Olympic Games, held in a restored ancient stadium in Athens in 1896. Indeed, the theme of the book is the legacy of this famous city throughout the centuries. About half of the volume covers the two-century period of the classical era, the so-called Golden Age. The remainder shows how the Athenians failed to live up to their own ideals, and how in later years, the city, now ruled by others than Greeks, became first a museum, and then, in the medieval period, a virtual ghost town--a remote outpost of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. What sustained the city--indeed, revived it--to become the capital of modern Greece was the undying reference in the minds of Greeks and foreigners alike to its famous past. This is a book for general readers; experts (and the author is an expert) will learn little new from it. But rarely has anyone told the story with such charm, elegance, and insight into the lives of Athenians through the ages. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Public and undergraduate collections and above. E. N. Borza emeritus, Pennsylvania State University, University Park Campus
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Timed for the 2004 Olympics, this historical narrative aspires to a broader focus than most books celebrating the meteoric rise and fall of classical democracy in fifth-century Athens. Opening significantly prior to Pericles and following Athens' decline through the Roman empire and beyond, it does manage to contextualize the glory days of Greece within a broad historical arc, even if somewhat unevenly: the 1,500 years from Byzantium to Lord Elgin are compressed somewhat uncomfortably into the same amount of space devoted to ancient Athens' leisure activities. Athens in the twentieth century--including the civil war leading to Greek independence--appears only in the epilogue. In spite of these unfortunate foreshortenings, however, Waterfield's study of the deep footprints of the classical era in general and the Olympic ideal in particular is honest, accessible, and enlightening. Its tour of daily life in classical Athens is excellent, and while it deals with modern Athens much less than its subtitle would imply, the modern political world looms present in Waterfield's analysis of Athens' downfall, the result of shortsighted arrogance and overreaching. --Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Athens will host the Olympic Games in 2004, perhaps restoring some glory to a city that, according to Waterfield, has seen better days. In this fast-paced history, Waterfield, who has translated many works from ancient Greek, chronicles the rise and fall of Athens, from ancient days (the bulk of his narrative) to the political revolutions of the 19th century. Legend has it that the great Theseus, who killed the Minotaur, was one of the city's founders and fostered its democratic spirit. Athens's location near the coast (facilitating trade) and its fertile land attracted migrants from the Mediterranean world. For Waterfield, the period of Athens's greatest glory came in the fifth century B.C., when Pericles overturned its aristocratic rule and established a democracy. For 30 years (446-416 B.C.), Athens reached a glorious pinnacle during which philosophy, religion, art and architecture flourished. The grandest accomplishment was the building of the Parthenon, completed in just nine years. During its peak years, Athens also attempted to reign over neighboring states, and its increasingly arrogant imperialism and materialism eventually resulted in war with Sparta and other Greek states that destroyed Athens's splendor. As Waterfield observes, Athens would never again achieve such glory, and it became a territory ruled over the years by Persia, Rome and Turkey. Waterfield sandwiches his helpful history between an opening section on the ancient Olympics and a closing one on the forthcoming games, which jars readers out of their pleasant excursion though the ancient city. 8 pages of b&w photos, not seen by PW. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Of sophistry, slaughter, slavery, and, here and there, the smog that a visitor to Athens chews today while enjoying "the taste of ouzo with the sunlight filtering through a shady vine." Later this year, Athens will serve as the site for the Olympic Games, whose ancient origins lie in the western Peloponnesus and whose modern version was born in the city in the mid-19th century. Waterfield, a translator of ancient Greek literature, gives credit for the latter revival to the Athenian plutocrat and nationalist Evangelos Zappas, long overshadowed by Baron de Coubertin as the architect of the modern games. He then turns quickly to the city's classical age, and there he mostly remains, giving a lucid account of the deeds of some of its more illustrious citizens, among which are, of course, the likes of Pericles, Socrates, and Alcibiades. The emphasis on personalities has good authority behind it, for, as Waterfield rightly notes, "an ancient Greek polis was its citizens; the name 'Athens' referred only to the physical city with its buildings and open spaces; as a political unit, the name was 'the Athenians.' " Waterfield's account of postclassical Athens is cursory, though, even with many equally illustrious (or at least picturesque) characters with which to populate his pages, and he devotes only three dozen pages to the city under the many centuries of Byzantine and Ottoman rule. He reasonably observes that the literary and historical attestations for ancient Athens are richer than those of its succeeding iterations, but this quick treatment leaves little room for a discussion of how the modern city--and modern Greece--came to be. In the end, Waterfield's study is serviceable, but listless; one longs for what Jan Morris might have done with the same material. Even on the matter of the ancient polis alone, it is less impressive than Christian Meier's Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age (1998). In a strong field of competitors, this one carries few championship qualities. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
