The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine

Penguin History of Europe #1

by Simon Price

An innovative and intriguing look at the foundations of Western civilization from two leading historians; the first volume in the Penguin History of EuropeThe influence of ancient Greece and Rome can be seen in every aspect of our lives. From calendars to democracy to the very languages we speak, Western civilization owes a debt to these classical societies. Yet the Greeks and Romans did not emerge fully formed; their culture grew from an active engagement with a deeper past, drawing on ancient myths and figures to shape vibrant civilizations. In The Birth of Classical Europe, the latest entry in the much-acclaimed Penguin History of Europe, historians Simon Price and Peter Thonemann present a fresh perspective on classical culture in a book full of revelations about civilizations we thought we knew. In this impeccably researched and immensely readable history we see the ancient world unfold before us, with its grand cast of characters stretching from the great Greeks of myth to the world-shaping Caesars. A landmark achievement, The Birth of Classical Europe provides insight into an epoch that is both incredibly foreign and surprisingly familiar.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, European History, Greece, Audiobook, Ancient

601 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 27, 2009

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a lot of historical fiction I’m starting to want to know more about certain periods in European history that I’m aware of but don’t fully understand & after a little search came across this epic series (I hope) by Penguin which covers 7 books entitled “Penguin history of Europe“ https://www.goodreads.com/series/7814...

We start with the above titled which in it’s own words tells us “This history of classical Europe will travel from the so-called Minoan civilisation of Crete to the later Roman Empire, from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC to the early 5th century AD”

The book is an easy read giving mostly an overview of the civilisations of the region backed up with archaeological record/findings or written historical text from the period or later. Some of the early history is retold through later recorded historians & the text advises us these are incomplete in places but the authors have compiled it all giving references as they go. As a result some periods are more expanded upon (better recorded/evidenced) & go into much more depth, mostly periods which are perhaps not so well known so I felt that I was learning all the time whilst having what I already knew reinforced / put into perspective in a timeline.

Many civilisations are mentioned throughout which is great as ive heard of many of them through other works but couldn’t always place them geographically or knew much more about them in terms of their overall place/role/impact in history. Throughout the book are short tie-ins with other periods of history, for instance the Greek/Turkish war C 1920-22 which ended nearly 3500years of Greeks living throughout Asia Minor.

Spliced between the text are figures, maps & plates adding clarification as we go. At the back of the book we have a date chart, an index & also further reading on the subject highlighting chapter by chapter where the authors have drawn their insight & knowledge from.

In all a well put together & informative text which gives a great overview for a beginner on the subject matter or even someone with some experience who wants to join the dots (like me!)

Following gives a flavour of each chapter....... Bare with me this might go on a bit......I made notes as I went along...... skip to the end perhaps if you jus want the score or don’t want to know any detail (cant really say spoilers ahead as its History after all!)

The book is broken into nine recognisable eras (chapters), our journey starting C 1750BC with the Minoans, Mycenaeans & Trojans, ending around 1100BC where the ancient Greeks hold sway in the region. The foundation of Europe so we are told starts in Create with the palaces of Knossos & other city complexes found on the island. Ancient Greek text is recovered from wax tablets on the island (outdating that found on the mainland) & so the Minoans (Of Crete) are credited with being the first Europeans which as traders centred around the Aegean is a credible factor for me. Further evidence shows there to be a lot of migration & overlapping of the Mycenaeans & Minoans which points towards the two cultures being the forerunners to ancient Greece.

We’re next taken to the Mediterranean, The Levant & Middle Europe C 110BC – 800BC where we start in the near-East (Today’s Modern Turkey & the Middle East) & work our way through the turmoil of the region (no difference there then) for the period in question which is much to do with the collapse of the Hittites & the civil wars / takeovers of Egypt from Libyans & then the Nubians. A transition from Bronze to Iron Age is also relevant to this period & of course the trade/expansion of peoples across the Aegean. We learn about the creation of Israel (through archaeological evidence & not the fictional work of the bible), the expansion of the Phoenicians & the rise of states in the Near East from mere cities along with their fall & subsequent impact across the Aegean, as trade routes disappear & rise across the centuries. Middle Europe gets a mention which is everything North of Greece encompassing France, Spain & everything in between, then there’s the Atlantic System (Atlantic Coast, British & Irish Isles) & finally the Nordic System...... Archeologically not a lot was going on in any of these three regions during that period in terms of development from a Bronze age era...... all the action is going on around the Aegean waters & the Eastern Mediterranean which is mostly accredited to agriculture & trading/interaction of the civilisations present.

Chapter 3 takes us from 800-480BC with the focus on the Greeks, Phoenicians & the Western Mediterranean....... we experience evidence of a shift in Ancient Greece where the rise of the Greek Polis (Citizen states) occurs along with the orientalising of Greek culture and society which is influenced immensely during the earlier part of the period via the near East, namely alphabet from the Phoenicians, pottery designs from Egyptians, deities from the remnants of the Hittites..... the period sees an urbanisation of the city states from rural enclaves, population explodes & a connected culture rises in the region which builds throughout until the clash with the growing Persian Empire C 500BC . In the west we experience expansion in North Africa & Iberia through the Phoenicians (who originate from modern day Lebanon region) by their establishing a series of trading posts, set-up to tap into & exploit natural resources in Iberia (Copper, Iron, Silver, Gold & lead) thereafter along the Atlantic coast (Tin trade)..... whilst the Greeks begin to colonise westward to first Sicily, southern Italy & beyond to Marseilles (which they founded C600BC)..... It’s these interactions with local populous that sees technology & culture begin to take root & flourish in Western Europe. The 8th-6th centuries BC was undoubtedly a critical stage in the development of Europe, local cultures continued to evolve, some dramatically like the Etruscans, but the real story is the connectivity between the cultures & by 500BC the Mediterranean can be thought of as a single cultural world.

The next few chapters see a split in East/West Europe & first (Chapter 4) we concentrate on the Greeks, Europe & Asia 480-334BC. We start with the defeat of the Persian Empire which is wrapped up in 2 neat paragraphs! (ive read a whole series of 6 books about this war - Killer of Men) Then the next dozen or so is about the Athenian Empire & how by stealth (for want of a better word) & naval power they set about being the domineering force in the Aegean Greek World. The Spartans than enter the stage as the saviours of the Greeks from the Athenian Empire & the Peloponnese War runs in earnest for 30+ years its frontline running from the Greek states in Asia Minor to Sicily with hundreds of Greek polis taking part in the conflict, the Athenians are finally defeated by virtue of Spartan assistance from Persian Satraps in Asia Minor, Persia finally reclaiming all the Greek city Polis (Ionians) in Asia Minor after they & Sparta go to war. The Spartans have a period as being top dog in Ancient Greece before they too are toppled by the Thebans..... its a period of rise & fall of individual Greek Polis who try to effect power over their near neighbours. Once all the Greeks had beat each other into submission the Macedonians under Philip I defeated the Northern/border Greek city states in turn before defeating a combined Athenian/Thebian army. Its this period (C340-330BC) where Europe is spoken of in broader terms as there was more than jus the Greek culture in the region with the Macedonians & the Illyrians (Modern day Yugoslavian region). Calendars are also discussed in this chapter which is very interesting as there were no conforming timelines between polis.... history is recalled by events as are claims to lands/titles by displaced peoples with all timelines leading back to the fall of Troy & Bronze Age Heroes.....

Chapter 5 & we’re still in the East with Alexander the Great & the Hellenistic World (334-146BC), heard of him! Not so much the world after him.... but the book portrays that Alexander (in his own view) in conquering the Persian Empire now controlled the entire inhabitable world. With the spread of Hellenistic (Greek & Macedonian) culture in Asia Minor occurring for the next 300 years, in doing so it’s claimed by the authors that Europe in reality stretched as far as the Indus in the East & the Nile in the South. It’s a period when conversing in Greek or worshipping Greek Gods meant power & all bar a small percentage of officials in the region were Greek/Macedonian.... as a result the Hellenistic culture was embraced by the populous long after Alexander was gone by those that filled the power void left by him as his empire fragmented (Ptolemies, Attalids, Seleucids, Parthians, Bactrians & Antigonids) – all founded by former satraps of Alexander. Greek scholars & mathematicians of the period are discussed & the great leaps they made in their fields especially in the recording/dating of their pre-history is a fascinating read. The story then shifts to the La Tene Celts, their name (origins) from the Eastside of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland & we follow their expansion/migration across Central Europe & subsequent battles with Rome (sacked 386BC) & the Greeks (C279BC), again only a small flavour. Towards the end of the chapter we have the Romans appear on the scene who have been slowly expanding along the Adriatic coast & we follow their interactions with the Greeks first as benefactors aligning against Macedon C214BC with the help of the Aetolians, a cycle which is continued amongst different Greek states until come 146BC Rome has picked off the Greek states & wiped Corinth off the face of the earth..... The next chapter switches us to the West & Rome

Rome, Carthage & the West C 500-146BC – We have already read that Rome superseded the Greeks in the East Mediterranean come 146BC through the Greek side of things, now we switch to the Romans. There is an opening caveat to this chapter about the origins & early history of Rome in that much of the early history is taken from much later sources or from Greek historians when the Romans begin to expand into their territory. Nevertheless the story begins C753BC with the founding of Rome by Trojan refugees & the early origins/myths/stories/legends are discussed starting from Romulus & the early kings to C507BC where Rome became a republic. Archaeological facts are interspliced logically where possible as we go (but as the caveat says it’s a fragmented history) & its an interesting start as we begin to understand the workings of the Roman culture, it’s people & how it expanded within the Italian peninsula in its informative years. Once we get past C500BC the history is on more solid ground & the text illustrates how Rome expanded through firstly the Latin league (alliances with local city states) & then through Roman colonies or in other cases subjugation. The sack of Rome by the Gauls is covered & we see from there on a determination that a repeat would not occur as they further expand through the Italian peninsula which is done in periods of rapidity. We learn about their social-economic history/transformation as well as the founding & spread of Latin as a common (Roman) language, the use of roads to foster their trade network & most importantly that all subservient states/cities didn’t pay taxes/levies to Rome but provided manpower for her armies which was the key to their success. The last part of the chapter (which is divided into three rationales) talks of Carthage, its Phoenician origins, its early treaties with an expanding Rome as the senior partner C 507BC, its affinity with the Greek World, a further treaty with Rome C348BC where it looked to limit Rome’s trade & expansion in Carthage’s Mediterranean world...... we all known about the Punic Wars & the chapter is neatly wrapped up in 146BC with the destruction of both Carthage & Corinth.

Rome, Italy & Empire (146BC – AD14)
This chapter starts in a period where the Gauls were independent of Rome & ends with Roman provinces over a huge part of Europe & the Mediterranean which had major consequences for how that territory was administrated. We also see the change from a Republic to the days of an Emperor ruling Rome. An event called the “social wars” is covered which revolved around the states on the Italian peninsula wanting at first Roman citizenship & then a separate state to Rome, the outcome was to see the Roman populous triple in size at wars end as most of Rome’s peninsula allies became Roman themselves which was originally what they craved. In the East in 133BC the Attalid kingdom is bequeathed to the Romans & the province of Asia is born, the next 40 years sees the annexing of the Seleucids kingdoms creating the province of Syria & the state of Judea, all rebellions (Pontus) in the region are crushed & the old kingdoms of Alexander the Great in Asia Minor are absorbed into the Roman Empire. To the West Massillia (Marseilles) request Roman assistance C125BC & they too are absorbed into the Empire along with most of Southern France allowing the Italian peninsula to join up with their conquests in Iberia & form a continuing border with the Middle European peoples (Gauls & La Tene Celts). The status quo remains for a period & then along comes a chap called Julius Caesar...... his history & that of his heir Augustus is told & by the end of his reign in 14AD the world is no longer spoke of in terms of Europe & Asia or indeed Europe, Asia & Africa but that of the Roman Empire centred on Rome itself. Roman historians travel the length & breadth of the Empire to record history & mention the peoples of the time/regions which is covered in this chapter as we learn of the Gauls, Germans (peoples North of the Rhine) & the British.

The Roman Empire AD14-284 is the penultimate chapter & swiftly takes us through the emperors & talks of Roman expansion coming to a halt by the reign of Hadrian AD117-38, the empire now stretched from the hills of Cumbria to the Nile Delta & the Portuguese coast to the desert plains of Jordan. This period sees stability throughout bar a few minor revolts & the chapter explains that this is simply (it does detail its theory/findings) down to Romanisation which is driven by the local populous. Its similar to how the Greek civilisation spread in the Near East where now everything of power is associated with Roman values/goods/culture. The peoples in the West undergo the most change as before Rome there was no popular urbanisation, there is even evidence of Celts in Gaul abandoning their own towns/villages in order to create a Latin gridwork one based on Roman architecture. Language/buildings/pottery/design/culture/gods are all affected & the overriding factor is that all want to be part of the Roman civilisation during this period resulting in most of the pre-Roman history of the region disappearing from our understanding. In the East we experience a difference as the Greek culture is deep rooted, cities are already established with urban population through the prior Greek expansion. The overseas trade to India is revealed as is the conflicts with the Parthenon’s & their successors but come the end of the chapter the main focus is about the spread of Christianity & it’s impact in the Eastern regions of the Empire. Talk of Europe in this chapter sees it split into 3 parts, the first zone which is Roman, the 2nd zone which is controlled by Roman client kings/chiefs & the 3rd zone which is all the rest outside of Roman control – simple really!

The later Roman Empire AD284-425 – A complicated chapter if wanting to know about the fall of Rome as it wasn’t really 1 key event that brought it about but merely a drip drip effect over a long period of time which is retold for the reader. Be it weak emperors, too many in quick succession, barbarians at the gates, rise of Christianity, the split between East & West, spiralling debt..... likely all of the above & probably others too. A fair bit of this chapter follows the religious activities of the time alongside the fragmentation of Roman power throughout it’s Empire (mainly in the West). It’s (Christianity) impact on the recording/writing of history is explained too as it spreads throughout the region replacing the pagan ways of the Romans & the Greeks. We finish at the sack of Rome AD410 without much mention of the barbarians of the time which for me is quite an omission.

I don’t read so much non-fiction these days but found this an excellent & entertaining read & hope the rest of the series is as good as its helped pulled a lot of snippets of knowledge I had together to make semblance of it all. FIVE Stars for me as it delivered exactly what I was looking for & pitched at the right level of detail.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is volume one of the nine volume Penguin History of Europe series, whose other titles cover the Dark Ages; the High Middle Ages; the Renaissance; the Reformation; 1648-1815; 1815-1914; 1914-1949; and 1950-2017. What a long strange trip it’s been.

In this book Simon Price traces civilization from the Minoans, who entered history about 3500 BC, flourished around 2000, entered a decline about 1450, and collapsed around 1100. It was long thought the the destruction was caused by the catastrophic volcanic explosion of the Island of Thera (now called Santorini), but that is now in question. Mr. Price writes that the eruption is securely dated to about two hundred years before the fall, which would correspond with radiocarbon dating placing it between 1645-1600 BC, but there is also an alternative dating based on records from other Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures, which places it around 1500 BC, which would make it roughly correspond to the time Minoan civilization entered its terminal decline.

As the Minoan civilization faltered after 1450 BC it was supplanted by the Mycenaean Greeks, both on Crete and mainland Greece. This was a palace culture whose main cities boasted citadels with walls many feet thick. Archaeologists have some evidence of the culture based on tomb discoveries (such as the magnificent finds of Heinrich Schliemann), the remains of buildings and statuary, and stashes of clay tablets which were accidentally preserved when the buildings they were in were burned. The Mycenaean civilization ended at the same time other civilizations around the Mediterranean came crashing down, roughly 1075 BC. The collapse has been attributed to various causes, including the Dorian invasion from the region of the Caucasus, and the mysterious Sea Peoples, who attacked kingdoms in Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, the Levant, and Egypt, which was the only one to survive the assault, and then just barely.

With the collapse of the Myceneans Greece entered the Dark Ages, and civilization almost disappeared. “[T]he number of inhabited places in mainland Greece fell by two-thirds in the twelfth century, and by another two-thirds in the eleventh century. This was the low point, and recovery then began: settlement numbers doubled in the tenth century, and doubled again in the ninth-eighth centuries.”

As civilizations began to recover vibrant trade networks were established, centered around the Aegean Sea, but stretching far and wide: to the Black Sea in the north-east, south as far as Egypt, and then west along the coast of Africa and over to Italy. This was also the time of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

The book next covers the period from 800-480 BC, and takes some time to examine non-Greek cultures, such as the Phoenicians, whose ships spanned the breadth of the Mediterranean and started to trade along both the west coast of Africa and around Spain into Europe. In John McWhorter’s book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, he notes that Proto-Germanic, an ancestor of English, was unusual among Indo-European languages in that p, t, and k sounds morphed into f, th, and h, which is also an attribute of some Semitic languages such as Phoenician, raising the possibility that their trade networks may have extended all the way to the Baltic and thus influenced early Germanic dialects.

This was also the period in which classical Greek civilization was finding its footing. It was the era which saw the rise of the city states, and the Phoenician alphabet was brought over from the Near East and adapted to the Greek language. It was also when new colonies were being established around the Mediterranean. In Will Durant’s Life of Greece, he gives a possible, tongue in cheek explanation for the sudden increase in colonies, saying that some adventurers, “reaching home after a perilous journey, found their thrones or their wives occupied, and returned to their ships to build new homes and fortunes abroad.”

This section ends in 480 BC, a momentous year in European history, as it marks the first Persian invasion of Greece. To quote Durant again,

The Greco-Persian War was the most momentous conflict in European history, for it made Europe possible. It won for Western civilization the opportunity to develop its own economic life – unburdened with alien tribute or taxation – and its own political institutions, free from the dictation of Oriental kings. It won for Greece a clear road for the first great experiment in liberty; it preserved the Greek mind for three centuries from the enervating mysticism of the East, and secured for Greek enterprise full freedom of the sea.

The next section covers 480-332 BC. 322 was another portentous year in history as it was the year Alexander the Great died and his empire dissolved. In 480, with the Persians defeated power in Greece coalesced around Athenian sea-based power and Spartan land-based phalanxes, and it was inevitable that the two would clash. Athens did not cover itself in glory during this period, becoming harsh and hegemonic, forcing cities around the Aegean to join its confederation and supply ships and tribute. Much of Greece supported Sparta when the two clashed, but the war dragged on for decades, finally coming to an exhausted end that saw Athens defeated and briefly subdued. It recovered but never again reached its previous heights. Sparta, meanwhile, was fading from the world stage. The fighting men, known as the homoioi, or Equals, numbered eight thousand in 480, two thousand in 371, and seven hundred in 341. When the Spartan phalanx was finally broken by Epaminondas at Leuctra in 371, the society itself broke, and receded into permanent historical obscurity. On this I will quote Durant one more time:

In the end Sparta’s narrowness of spirit betrayed even her strength of soul. She descended to the sanctioning of any means to gain a Spartan aim; at last she stooped so far to conquer as to sell to Persia the liberties that Athens had won for Greece at Marathon. Militarism absorbed her, and made her, once so honored, the hated terror of her neighbors. When she fell, all the nations marveled, but none mourned.

By this time classical Greece was doomed. As would happen again during the Italian Renaissance, mutually hostile city states were no match for the armies of unified nations. Philip II of Macedon swept through Greece and was preparing to invade Persia when he was assassinated, and his plans taken up by his son. Alexander’s empire would stretch west from the Adriatic and east to the Indus, from the Black Sea in the north to Egypt in the south, yet he ruled for only four years, and by the time of his death his domain was already starting to unravel because of his increasingly erratic behavior. Upon his death his generals carved the empire up among themselves and immediately began warring with one another.

At this time on the near horizon was the one empire which would rule them all, Rome, and on the far horizon first appear the barbarian tribes who would eventually bring Rome down. As Rome began to consolidate its influence by conquering or absorbing the tribes in Latium, the Celts, under the pressures of rising populations and with a warrior culture that emphasized conquest and plunder, spread out from the area which is now Denmark and Scandinavia. Some of the tribes went east as far as Anatolia, and some entered the Balkans and raided Greece as far down as Delphi. Other groups crossed the Alps and laid waste to the Italian peninsula, sacking Rome in 387 BC.

The Celts were paid off to leave Rome, whose power eventually increased to the point where they could militarily expel the barbarians to the far side of the Alps. With all of Italy under their control, the Romans took advantage of Greek rulers asking for their aid against rivals to exert more and more control over Greece and Macedonia. When they were opposed, they brutally suppressed the rebellions, culminating in the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC when every man was killed, every woman and child enslaved, and every building razed to the ground. After that there was no more organized resistance. Several centuries later Tacitus would summarize Roman philosophy by saying, “Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. (They create desolation – and call it “peace.”)

Inevitably, Rome would clash with the other great power in the Mediterranean, Carthage, fighting three wars and eventually defeating them utterly. However, in becoming a great empire the Romans lost their republic. The demands of constant warfare destroyed the livelihoods of the citizen farmers who had once formed the backbone of their armies, and wealthy men swept in to pick up the bankrupt farms, building vast estates based on slave labor. The Gracchi, Tiberius and Gaius, led a popular movement to break up the large estates, limit the amount of land one person could own, and force the current owners to repay the rents they had been ignoring. Both were assassinated and Roman politics descended into bribery, extortion, and murder. By the time Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon people were begging him to end the republic and declare an empire so they could once again have peace and stability.

The empire reached its maximum extent under the emperor Trajan (98-117 AD), but it was already starting to buckle. Rising taxes and frequent devaluation of the currency sapped the economy, and a falling birthrate meant more and more soldiers from outside the borders needed to be recruited, in exchange for some citizenship benefits. New barbarian tribes arose in the north and swept down. They were held for a time along the Rhine in the west and the Danube in the east, but there were too many of them, and never enough Roman soldiers, so the empire began to shrink. The good emperors were replaced by whoever could pay the most to wear the crown, who were then murdered by the Praetorian Guard when someone else could pay more.

Eventually the empire would split into eastern and western regions. In the east Constantinople would survive until 1453, but in the west Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455, and the last Roman emperor was deposed in 476. The Church would then assume secular as well as religious authority, keeping alive some fragments of the old knowledge. The coming Dark Ages were not as dark as people used to believe, but it would not be until 800 that Charlemagne’s new empire would start the process of forging the national identities we know today.

[Ozymandias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories and Their Uses
I’m going to start this review in a somewhat roundabout way by looking at the series as a whole and its competitors. I don’t see any way around this because I think that the book’s weaknesses (and strengths) come from the circumstances of its creation. So bear with me.

Penguin is just one of several publishing houses to produce multi-volume accounts of a single region. All have their strengths and weaknesses. Cambridge for example is focused on superdense reference works composed of essays by multiple scholars – authoritative but expensive and often tedious. A go-to source for further research and an absolutely terrible place to start. They have more of these series than any other publisher I know of, and of series overlapping this one they have the Cambridge Modern History, World History, and British History. Oxford’s history series are slightly more accessible texts with the same basic determination to be exhaustive. There are scheduled to be fourteen(!) volumes in their New History of England, which is double those in the Penguin series. The Ancient World is a common one for these series: Edinburgh, Harvard, and Routledge each have their own, all aimed to one degree or another at a popular audience. Routledge’s are generally the best. They have an ideal mix of depth and accessibility. I find the Edinburgh ones too condensed and the Harvard ones too narrative-driven.

And that brings us to Penguin. Their basic approach is to be as accessible as possible. They’re not intended to be textbooks – while you can learn a lot of information in here these are easy to read and not just a rushed list of facts. This is meant to be an introduction to European history (a broad topic none of the others attempted) and they recruited some of the best scholars out there to write books that can be accessible to laymen. The General Editor of the series is David Cannadine, a scholar of 19th century British history, and the last two books are written by titans of their field like Richard Evans and Ian Kershaw. The books get significantly longer as they reach the end. In fact, the last book (Kershaw’s) got so long that it was split in two, and still each volume is more than twice as long as this one. This is even more astounding when you realize his books only cover 35 and 67 years each. The one before that covers 99 years and after that they jump to 150 years each, only falling to 400-600 for the ones on the Middle Ages.

This book covers 2175 years.

It’s pretty obvious what’s happened here: the focus of the editor is primarily on modern history and the further back you go the less interest (or perhaps knowledge) they have. They lucked out with Chris Wickham, whose volume on the Early Middle Ages is one of the best full stop, not just of this series but of the Early Middle Ages. But even in the hands of a genius, covering 2200 eventful years in a single volume is just too complex a task for any scholar. On top of that, Simon Price was diagnosed with cancer two years before the book came out and died the year after its publication – hardly an ideal situation for anyone to carry out such a complex and time-consuming task. I’m not completely clear on the timetable, but that may be why Peter Thonemann was brought on board. This is the only one of Penguin’s volumes to have two authors.

It has to be said that this book would always face difficulties regardless of who was writing it. The problem with a history of ancient Europe is that the term “Europe” has no meaning there except as the westernmost section of Eurasia. There was no common European culture, no shared sense of identity, no unifying religion or central authority. There was the Roman Empire, based around the Mediterranean, and before them the Greeks, but if you’d asked a Roman who he identified with more, someone from North Africa or a German from beyond the borders he would undoubtedly answer the African. North and Central Europe was an alien land the Romans had nothing to do with, and the justification for rule in the areas they did govern had nothing to do with a shared Europeanness. The problem is nicely epitomized by the irony that the two bookends chosen for the book (Troy and Augustine) aren’t even in Europe!

The authors have recognized this problem but I absolutely hate their solution. Rather than emphasizing that the idea of Europe (in the form of Christendom) didn’t exist until after the Arab Conquests they try to emphasize a growing sense of Europe being separate from Asia. This is largely treated through the prism of Orientalism: an idea (though not a term) invented by the Greeks that placed stereotypes on all easterners including weakness, decadence, cruelty, and effeminateness (they wore trousers!). This is a good brick to lay because it will build the foundations of how later Europeans will view the East. But the discussion here misses out two things: (1) The rationale was primarily climate: too much heat made people lethargic and weak, thus any hot region (not just Asia) was potentially “oriental”. (2) It elides that this was a binary definition: barbarians in hot lands (i.e. their east and south) behaved like this, but barbarians in cold lands (i.e. their north) were violent, savage, and incapable of reason or government. The Greeks, in short, weren’t representatives of Europeanness against the Orientals, but the perfect balance between decadence (Asia) and savagery (Europe). You can see how later Europeans would ignore that last bit as foolish prejudice, but that’s no excuse for doing it here.

Another way of dealing with this issue, and one of the most distinctive elements of this book, is its focus on how memory is used. To some degree this makes sense – Greek and Roman conceptions of the world only have relevance nowadays because of a millennium of rewriting them to suit new circumstances (the idea of European civilization key among them). Any book intended to serve as the first in a series on Europe needs to make clear both the original ideas that would retrospectively be seen as fundamentally European as well as something of how they would later be used. But the main focus is not how the Ancient World viewed itself differently from how we view it now, but on how the Ancient World reworked and edited its own past. This seems less helpful, particularly when so little space is available. Do we really need three pages on how the Athenians reinterpreted the tyrannicides when we don’t even have a single one on Socrates or philosophy? Not to mention the constant digressions (usefully separated within gray boxes at least) on subjects as varied as Byron’s participation in the Greek War of Independence or Dante’s influence on modern Italian or Freud’s theories on dreams. Those are interesting topics, but ultimately distractions.

This obsession with memory and rewriting the past colors everything and assumes a central role that really doesn’t fit the supposed aims of the book. It is the main theme throughout. What else does the book focus on? There is a strong sense of narrative. We get a rough rendering of historical events from the Persian invasion down. Very few names are given, probably due to space issues. We get some discussion of political forms, a bit about social structure, a little on religion, a whole lot on archaeology and material culture, quite a bit on poets and historians (though really only Herodotus and Tacitus/Homer and Vergil), a fair amount on ideology and views of the world… Nothing on philosophy (except for the Library of Alexandria), warfare, economics, precious little on culture…

A look at the center of its narrative of Greek history is instructive. Here is a list of all the paragraphs from the summary of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath (about 70 years):

¶1: Causes of the war
¶2: Why Athens lost
¶3: Spartan ideology of freedom and its failure
¶4: Spartan takeover of Thebes
¶5: Thebe’s defeat of Sparta and establishment of Messenia
¶6-7: Messenian use of myths to justify its existence
¶8: Sparta’s new reduced status
¶9-10: What this tells us about how Greeks viewed their past
¶11-12: Greek dating methods

Only about half of this section is anything like a narrative. The rest is concerned with issues of how the past was perceived. This does not sound like the summary of a basic introductory text trying to give general readers a background in ancient history: it’s a monograph on memory and representation masquerading as one.

It does have to be said that the book gets better once it reaches the Romans. I’m not sure of the reason for it, but it’s as if the list of interesting topics expands and use of memory gets shunted to one side. We get some good discussion on cultural change, gods and religion, trade and economics, and the chapter on the Christian empire does a good job of (finally) justifying the focus on changing depictions of the past. I’m not sure of the reason for this dramatic improvement. It may have something to do with authorship. Price was always much more keen on Rome than on Greece, and on religion in particular. Was Thonemann (an expert on the Hellenistic period) brought in only after the first half had been finished? It may be again that the volume’s mandate (or perceived mandate) was interfering with the early chapters. Brief (but useful!) summaries of goings on in Central or Western Europe during the Greek chapters help keep the book focused on Europe, but with Rome that pan-European survey can be integrated into the narrative somewhat and we get a strong summary of general trends in the empire and beyond.

There are other positive attributes as well, although they do require compromises. I appreciated that the book didn’t just focus on specific moments but tried very hard to cover each era equally. A lot of books jump straight from the Bronze Age to the Classical Era, skipping over the Greek Dark Ages and early Archaic, because of how few sources there are. This one tries to cover every period more or less equally. Most chapters cover around 300 years at a stretch, and none cover much less than half that. The book is also very well illustrated, with two sections of color plates and a black-and-white illustration or map every few pages. The cost, of course, is that both of these takes up space. And that can lead to problems. For example, we don’t even reach recorded history until we’re about 1/3 of the way through the book. The good news is that you get a very good sense of the general fluctuations in Classical society, without favoring one period over the other. There’s no sense of a quintessential Greek or Roman ideal which any change represents a decline from. The bad news is that some chapters are much more stuffed than others. The chapters on Athens and Sparta in their prime has far more going on than the one on the Greek Dark Ages. And it’s one of the chapters covering only 150 years too.

I fundamentally don’t understand why these specific authors were chosen or why they chose to accept the task. They obviously have little interest writing the type of history that this type of series calls for. It’s not even that it’s a bad book, it’s just the wrong book. There’s nothing wrong with their interest in the changing uses of the past. It could have made a great monograph I’m sure. But why did it have to consume all of this book? That said, I know nothing of the kinds of pressures and concerns that went into writing this. I can’t even imagine how one handles a terminal cancer diagnosis and continues functioning. This book had more than its share of disasters and many of them are entirely independent of authorial decisions. Its whole appearance is almost an afterthought: a necessary volume that nobody really wanted but felt was obligatory. It is the second shortest of all Penguin’s books (coming in just ahead of Europe in the High Middle Ages) and covers a period longer than all the other books combined. The decision to restrict this to one book and then to make that book so short was a mistake. But even so, that mistake was hardly the only one made. All I can say is that I do not find this a particularly helpful guide to an amazing period. Particularly given that it’s the start of the strongest (and onliest) continuous series on European history. Don’t give up if you started here though: the next volume is one of the best and later volumes continue strong.

If you’re unhappy with this book there are better guides to the Classical World out there. The Routledge History of the Ancient World is great, although it’s about as long as this series. Which is fair if you think about it: it covers 2000 years in nine volumes as opposed to the 1600 years the eight books following this one cover. Harvard’s History of the Ancient World is also great and probably the closest in style and target audience to this series. The only problem is that they’re still waiting on all their Greek volumes. If all that seems too long for you there are several books that cover Greek or Roman history in their entirety. Robin Osborne’s Greek History: The Basics is a good but short account. As for Rome: Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome is one of the most accessible out there. I also like Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History, although its focus is more limited. If you must have a one-volume book though, Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian is one of the few catering for your interests. It doesn’t go quite as far as I would like (neither does Beard) so you miss the rise of Christianity and fall of the Roman Empire, but what it does cover it does a good job of presenting. Avoid Bauer's History of the Ancient World. At best it recounts myths; at worst it creates them.

[David Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are thousands of books about the classical world so one might ask if we really need another. The answer is yes we do. Our understanding of the past is constantly changing as new information is discovered. New writers have new ways of looking at old subjects. Most of all as the world we live in changes we need new books to help us connect with a past that is constantly moving.

The Birth of Classical Europe is a wonderful introduction to the ancient world. The authors focus on Greek history and then move on to Rome. They do not spend a lot of time on the civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Ancient Near East, and Egypt. That is not because of any Eurocentric prejudice, but rather they focus their story on one specific region. They spend a lot of time on Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. Using archeological discoveries from the last 20 years they build up a picture of the ancient world that is a little less catastrophic than the previous pictures that we have had. They argue more for a story of a sequence migrations that ends with assimilation. This is a little less sudden than the image of hordes of invaders wiping out the natives and resettling the region.

The authors spend a lot of time with ancient authors and recognize the value of the ancient sources. They do not accept the ancient stories at face value, that would of course be a mistake. Instead they look at the archeology and see how that illuminates the stories. Often credible theories of the past can be built when one uses this method.

This book is not meant to be a comprehensive history of the ancient world. Instead it is an introduction to the period. As the first volume of The Penguin History of Europe its purpose is to give the reader an understanding of the foundations of European civilization. The book is designed for the general reader. If you are not well read in the period you can pick this book up and learn a lot. I consider myself to be moderately well read in the period and I learned a lot. The Further Reading section at the end has a wonderful list of books, both scholarly and general reader, that should keep the person interested in the period satisfied for a long time to come.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who would like to learn about the ancient world. This can be read as a general reader book and could also be used as a high school level textbook for home schoolers or others interested in providing young people with well written book that is informative and enjoyable.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Price and Thonemann treat history more like a report of scientific evidence than a discussion of human drama. Of course the data on pre-literate cultures is all physical, so the first two chapters are almost entirely detailed presentations of quantified data. To be strictly objective, the authors give nothing but the facts, while constantly warning about the hazards of interpreting mute archeological remains.

Later the account involves more story. The ancients’ recorded words start to interact, producing storylines and fragmentary discussions. Still, the authors keep their focus on getting the data accurate. It’s largely dry and fact-laden. Still, the records produce a string of fascinating insights. For example, during the reign of Alexander the Great, around 320 BCE, a statesman named Lycurgis deposited some “certified” documents in the archives of Athens. These were copies of plays by Aeschylus, Sophicles, and Euripedes. The city passed a law stating that these were the standard versions of these plays, and actors performing the plays must stick exactly to the recorded lines. Here we have a first recorded case of writing that gets “copyright” status, rather than just being part of an evolving folklore. Later in the 100s BCE, a head of the library of Alexandria (named Aristiphanes) drew up a list of authors and works that he considered “first class.” The list drew attention from readers and copyists, so that those books tended to be the best known and preserved. The term for “first class” (classici) made for the notion of a “classical canon” for a “classical civilization.”

[Anisha Inkspill · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I started to read works by Homer it was because I have always daunted by it – I just never expected to enjoy it. The translations I read were packed with helpful notes but these also got me thinking – why are we still drawn to these and similar old stories?

My first real clues appeared in Troy. Simon Price and Peter Thomann’s book goes further, starting with the Aegean and the Trojans and working its way to end of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of Christianity. Big subjects, where I was expecting this book to be daunting, but instead I really enjoyed reading it.

In reading this, I have discovered a bit more about the wars between Athena and Sparta. Also, the only thing I knew about Alexander the Great was his name, but now I have a better understanding of who he is, what he achieved and how it was a touch tricky because he wasn’t really Greek. I was also expecting to feel overwhelmed by Rome’s early history, but it was explained so well that I just about managed to follow it; I especially enjoyed reading about Julius Caesar and the people involved in his murder as I had recently read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare.

I also liked the care put into its kindle edition when formatting the book(other books I’ve read where the styles switch back and forth are messy, making it harder to follow it). I also found the number of maps included generous. All this gets 5 stars, but for me it’s also worth these stars for making reads like this easier than I imagined they would be.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading two of the Penguin History of Europe volumes, which were bad and quite bad, why did I pick up this one? Honestly, because they're well designed and I love series. Luckily, this was much better than the other two. It's not in depth at all, but that's fine; that's the type of thing I want from books like this. It's well written, which is hardly a given these days even for supposedly accessible history writing. And it has a cogent argument: those who look to ancient Greece or Rome for some sort of fixed starting point of history or Europeanness or tradition or whatever are engaged on a fool's errand. Price and Thonemann show that the pre-classical civilizations, and the Greeks and Romans, were always looking backwards to justify their actions or existence. People still do it today: x is good/valuable/right because it's what our forefathers did. Well, that's nonsense. As if that wasn't good enough, P & T also manage to split the difference between "There are no facts, only interpretations" and "Only facts matter, interpretations are meaningless" by making sure they explain the facts as well as how those facts were interpreted at the time and since. Their section on pre-classical civilizations was particularly interesting, as were the smattering of pages about the Celts and other north of the alps types. My only caveat is that this might be a tough read if you don't know something about the period already; lots of names whiz by.

[Victor Sonkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely excellent history of Classical Europe; more like a sequence of separate stories about different strands of the phenomenon.

[Anton Ivanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well researched book but unfortunately lacks analytical depth and understanding of the historical process. Roughly one third through the book but feeling a bit disappointed.

The level of skepticism towards the oral tradition and myths is a bit surprising. At least we can probably acknowledge that there might have been some historical ground behind the oral tradition, although, of course, over the course of the centuries it might had been distorted and additional colorful details might had been added and some important facts were omitted.

Then this book is too focused on archeology. Ancients did not know that we would be researching them in the future, so probably did not try to deliberately leave traces of the historical events in the chronological order or make things easier to follow. Building research solely on archeology and disregarding other sources of evidence introduces a bias: the artifacts that were better preserved are given more weight in the resulting analysis. So as a result a large part of the beginning of the book is dedicated to analyzing grave finds and cemeteries, which were preserved best, but a good question is still how representative those are of the time period being researched and whether they should be given the central place in the narrative at all like it is done in this book.

Then some of the examples of questionable analysis from the book:

- "the killing of horses and, in many cases, deliberate damage of weapons of the weapons in early Iron Age warrior graves act as conspicuous demonstration of the family's wealth; this family could afford to damage or destroy goods of great values"

It is also probable that horses were killed and weapons destroyed (also "killed" in a way) to just be transported to the afterlife right along with their owners so that they could still use them, and not to "demonstrate wealth". This by the way, has its analogies in the old Norse burial rituals.

- "it is very striking how eager they were, both through the ritual activity on the ancient palace-sites an through their elite burial practices, to relate their new world to the surviving traces of the palatial past"

Is it equally striking how we still try to relate our own present to the distant past? Or imagine that the Western tradition comes from the Greek and Roman roots, or still try to follow the Christian religion established centuries ago?

There might be some crises and periodic destructions such as the ones of the Minoan or Mycenaean civilizations, but in general people tend to refuse to acknowledge that something changes and try to stick to the old ways of how life is organized or think that they still follow them. Just as one example, later Byzantine state thought of itself as a Roman empire and Byzantines were Romans in their own eyes. This was part of the legitimization of the rule of the state and myth creation of the state's and people's identity. Another one: the "Holy Roman Empire" that was not Roman in any way with its "emperor" in the Middle Ages who tried to legitimize themselves through the distant "glorious" past that was not quite directly related to them.

In this book one would expect a better analysis of the crises of the ancient civilizations and understanding of how culture is seemingly "preserved" under new economic conditions. Instead economy is mentioned only briefly in between the extensive analysis of the grave contents and surprise is expressed at the fact that people try to connect to their assumed historical past. And, what is even more important, and what the book also fails to fully notice, is that this image of the past would then gradually turn into a myth like it happened in "Iliad", which, unfortunately, seems to be just a bit more than a fairy tale from the perspective of the book.

- "worshipers were certainly aware of the site's palatial past"

Not only were they aware, most likely they tried to directly relate to it like we still do with our own carefully constructed images of the past. The local economy could no longer support the palatial system of organization, but there might had been much more of the cultural continuity or at least trying to relate to the past than the book admits.

- "illustrate how much 'heroic' material in Homer was derived not from the age of the palaces, but from the 'Dark Age' centuries immediately preceding his own day"

Why is it at all surprising? Would somebody really expect to encounter the careful preservation of all the details in the oral tradition? The fact that they are distorted does not mean that there are no historical events behind the oral tradition and does not immediately turn it just into a 'fairy tale'-like narrative. We can compare this to the paintings of the events from the Roman history by much later European artists up until the 20th century: the armies, armor and weapons are always contemporary to the artists, but only because this is the only kind of armor and weapons they ever saw and could paint.

Is it then at all surprising that people tend to describe past events in the terms familiar to them from the present? Again this may display some misunderstanding of the process of myth creation and passing down of the oral tradition on the part of the book.

To sum up, having details from the 'Dark Age' centuries does not automatically invalidate the Homer works as the historical source, in fact such details are to be expected by a historian.

- "in the ninth century some families won themselves a prominent position in local Knossian society by playing up their connections to the ancient architectural and pottery styles"

We can be almost sure this is not how they won a 'prominent position'. On the other hand after winning this position they might have tried to cement their rule and legitimize themselves by making such connections to the past. Again, this demonstrates misunderstanding of the historical process and how politics works on the part of the book. Can we, for example, name any modern royal house which came to power "by playing up their connections to the ancient architectural and pottery styles"? There are none, but this is where the sole focus on archeology and pottery styles has lead us: analysis bias and confusing the cause with the effect.

Then, as mentioned before, the book does not stress enough the economic reasons for the collapse of the civilizations of the Minoan and Mycenaean periods both in the Aegean and the Ancient Near East. Foreign invasions and destruction of the palaces were first most likely just a consequence of the systemic economic crises and overstraining of the productive limits of the available agricultural lands. The very same processes that brought down the Western Roman Empire might have brought down the earlier civilizations. Then, of course, invasions in turn would cause the decrease of the surplus needed for the existence of the palaces and damage the economy even more, so a downward spiral would start that would eventually lead to a complete destruction of the old society and its transformation. This process should sound quite familiar to any modern economist, but may be a bit harder to comprehend for a modern historian.

Then the 'Dark Ages' happened quite a few times in history and they tend to repeat. Trying to embellish them and say that, well, civilization did not collapse completely, there were still some small villages and some economic activity is probably in vogue in modern historical circles, but again hides the true economic reasons of the collapse and fails to analyze the process of cyclical decay of civilization properly. This, by the way, is very similar to how medieval historians try to show the 'complexity' of the early Middle Ages. The fact is when there is less economic surplus, the societal organization simplifies, writing becomes less important and life becomes more primitive. We tend to call such periods 'Dark Ages' and there were already quite a few of them in history in different parts of the world.

Overall this is a rather average modern scholarly text, not better, not worse, but very unlike the works of Thucydides or Xenophon who had some practical experience and real understanding of the subject they were writing on, and not just were viewing it from an abstract scientific perspective of a narrowly specialized discipline.

[Brian Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first volume in the Penguin History of Europe balances academic rigor and insightfulness with a compulsive readability. As a result, I throughly enjoyed a long overdue return to the "ancient world" of Europe, with a significant amount of clarity and new insights. My five stars might be somebody else's four, based on your enthusiasm for approximately 1500 BCE-400 CE.

From my reading, the first 1/3 (100 pps), surveys the development of Europe into a discrete, vaguely familiar space. There is a lot of overlap with the Middle East and Northern Africa, as those areas distinctly impacted what we now call Europe. Most significantly, Phoenecia and the Middle Eastern area of Levant (basically what we now call the Holy Land and Syria) were the most literate and spread the ideas of language and civilization that impacted the European continent (of course, I'm putting it very simplistically). The middle 1/3 covers what we call classical Greece, and the final 1/3 the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity as a reforming force.

You would be disappointed if you read this volume for the narrative and facts of the dates and names of Greece and Rome. They are covered, but very methodically and over the space of a few pages. I believe the assassination of Julius Caesar for instance is one paragraph if that, and the Peloponessian War is covered over less than 10 pages. These events receive far more page space in fantastic books out there. This book covers the cultural, economic, socio-economic, and daily lives of these civilizations primarily, and it does make for fascinating reading. It is a balanced approach that actually yields quite a bit of insight, and it propels the story. In the end, I was fascinated by connecting the dots in my head towards where Europe developed in later volumes, and foreseeing how for instance French wine is in particular very much descended by Roman imports, or how for instance the Celts began in northern Gaul and spread South and East (and eventually North) from there. If you want to know what the modern countries of France and Britain where like roughly a millennium before they became France and Britain, this book will give you the material to connect those dots.

One last note: a brilliant idea by the authors to include the "text within text" grey boxes that provides divergences for these areas down the line. There are brief looks at how Shakespeare portrayed events in Rome in his plays or how the Parthenon ended up in pieces in London, and they place our modern perspective into direct focus with the events that led to them. Great stuff and a fun read, particularly for the subject matter. If the above sounds fascinating, this book comes highly recommended.

[Alex Echevarria · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 400 pages, Simon Price gives a whirlwind tour of 1,500 years of European history. Obviously not meant for the serious scholar, this is a wonderful dip in the water, giving a very macro view of various currents in European history. The writing is breezy and devoid of jargon, and the book should make the reader want to delve more deeply into the stories it relates.

[Ellana Thornton-Wheybrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book.

As a narrative, it was fascinating. The book covers a wide range of both time and place, covering most of Europe. However, I found a few conclusions to be inadequate, badly explained, or just plain wrong.

For example, in one chapter a burial of "The Doctor" is described, a Celtic person who was cremated, then the urn buried with trinkets and important items. The book casually says the burial was "probably of a man" but shows no evidence to say why. There were many of these little things throughout the book.

As a narrative, like I said, it was a fascinating read. The book covers a wide range of subjects, from the fall of Troy to the fall of Rome. I quite enjoyed reading it, despite its flaws.

[Sverre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and informative, albeit a somewhat dryly written account of the early history of Classical Europe. I found some facts to be simplified, as one would reasonably expect from a book dealing with material of this magnitude. One of the book's strengths is its frequent drawing of parallels between the periods, distinguishing the work from other books on the subject. I recommend this for more intermediate Classical readers, as it can come across as quite inaccessible at first reading.

[Yair Zumaeta Acero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Embarcado ya en la que será una maratónica travesía a bordo de un tirreme por las costas de la historia de Europa, empieza ya la odisea con el primer libro (de un total de 9), de la serie editada por la editorial Penguim Random House, abarcando la historia del continente Europeo desde la Guerra de Troya y los primeros asentamientos minoicos, hasta nuestros días. Con cada libro siendo escrito por un diferente autor y englobando un periodo de tiempo específico, para esta primera entrega se escogió a los historiadores de la Universidad de Oxford y expertos en historia greco-romana, Simon Price y Peter Thonemann, para que nos relaten el origen de la “Europa Clásica” desde su nacimiento a partir del mito del rapto de Europa al lomo de Zeus encarnado en un toro; hasta el saqueo de Roma a manos de Alarico I en el 410 de la e.c.

Como se puede ver, es un libro que intenta abarcar un poco más de dos milenios de historia, compactados en poco menos de 400 hojas. Así que los autores no se detienen en detalles ni minucias, y mucho menos en una larga descripción de fechas, guerras y cronologías, sino que ofrecen una visión global del largo período a través de tres pilares: memoria, identidad comunal y dimensión geográfica, columnas que sostienen la construcción de las civilizaciones clásicas: Minoicos, Micénicos, Griegos (desde la llamada “Era Oscura”, pasando por la Edad Clásica y el Período Helenístico) y Romanos. La memoria de cómo las civilizaciones recuerdan (o inventan) su propio pasado y lo vinculan con su presente; la identidad comunal o de cómo grandes grupos humanos fueron tomando consciencia de las características que los unían y a la vez, los distinguían de otros; y la dimensión geográfica de Europa a lo largo de la historia como un proceso de construcción histórica y un sumario de influencias tejidas por los protagonistas de cada período, considerando que dependiendo del momento de la antigüedad sobre el cual nos situemos, Europa puede tener su última frontera con lo que hoy conocemos como Irán, o que un habitante del norte de áfrica sea más europeo que un picto de la moderna Gran Bretaña.

A pesar de lo que pueda parecer, no es solamente una historia Greco-Romana. Fenicios, Cartagineses, Etruscos, Celtas, Persas, Seléucidas y Partos tendrán el correspondiente espacio para entrar en la escena de la historia y de sus relaciones y tensiones con las civilizaciones “Europeas”.

Con una gran cantidad de diagramas, planos de construcción de casas y asentamientos antiguos, monedas, fotografías de hallazgos arqueológicos y lo mejor de todo, un número ingente de mapas perfectamente referenciados y ubicados; sumado a una prosa sencilla y no demasiado técnica, hace que la lectura sea amena y entretenida. Remata el libro un aparte dedicado a una amplísima y variada bibliografía escogida por los autores especialmente para aquellos lectores que deseen desarrollar sus conocimientos y profundizar sobre temas específicos que se tratan en el libro. Un detalle que se agradece infinitamente, especialmente por las mentes expertas desde las que provienen dichas recomendaciones.

Tal vez se echa de menos que los autores hayan pasado de manera rápida por eventos trascendentales de la historia clásica: Maratón, la Guerra del Peloponeso, las Guerras Púnicas, Accio o Farsalia son meras anécdotas que sirven como sostén de la narración, pero en cuyos detalles no se detienen ni estudian de manera profunda. De igual forma, la época imperial romana es vista como una mera sucesión de emperadores mencionados de forma no cronológica, lo que puede llegar a confundir a quien no esté familiarizado con la historia de Roma. Aun así, “The Birth of Classical Europe” resulta ser un entretenido libro de historia general, exploración cultural y construcción de una identidad general del concepto “Europa”, más allá de la mera noción geográfica. Es también un perfecto “punto de partida” para adentrarse en temas, civilizaciones y personajes más específicos del rango histórico que abarca. Como línea de comienzo de la serie “The Penguin History of Europe”, esta obra resulta ser una agradable e interesante manera de comenzar el largo viaje…

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This overview nicely stresses identities and memories, their artificiality, and yet their real effects.

[Justin Tapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine is a fantastic overview of Mediterranean and broader European history. One advantage of reading modern books on history is you have the latest thoughts coming from recent archaeology, technological development, discoveries about languages and migrations, etc.

I have read Freeman's Egypt, Greece, and Rome (my review) so this book was a good refresher for events but did a better job helping me understand the overall historical contexts of the Mediterranean and Asia Minor (Anatolia) during the time period covered. Whereas Freeman tended to categorize his chapters by looking at art, war, technology, and religion separately, Price and Thonemann weave them together as a whole. You can't understand what we know about, say, the Punic Wars without looking at who recorded the stories and the context they were writing in. Price and Thonemann also look more at what modern archaeology tells us about the lives and development. There are also several inset boxes that explain the significance of an event or writing in modern history-- whether it be what influenced Machiavelli or Dante's writings, Shakespeare, the U.S.'s Founding Fathers, or Nazi Germany's inspirations.


We start in the areas of Mycenae, whose inhabitants also settled in Crete, blending with a native culture that was growing and continue with the development of Classical Greece, then through the later Greek periods. Not too much time is spent on Philip and Alexander's Macedonian conquests. We then look at the rise of Rome while also looking at the civilizations that existed in mainland Europe (Gaul) and Britain, Carthage (North Africa), Persia, and Syria. The book concludes by looking at Christianity in the early Roman empire, and the increasing divide between East and West (Greek-speakers vs. Latin speakers). It concludes with a look at St. Augustine, which having just read Confessions I found helpful to put him in a greater context. Augustine is truly a post-Roman, a Latin speaker living in a Roman colony, highly educated in the classics and trying to reconcile those classics and Roman history with biblical history. If you want a general history of Europe and the Mediterranean with plenty of peeks at details without going too deep, then this is your book.

I greatly enjoyed it and give it 5 stars.

[Piker7977 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first entry in the Penguin History of Europe analyzes the period of antiquity by focusing on the Greeks and Romans. While the text is fairly dense and complex, the authors provide a brief narrative that could have easily been extended by hundreds of pages. Would that have been necessary? No. If the reader is looking for an exhaustive narrative I would recommend the Cambridge Ancient History 2nd ed.

What the reader comes across is a general timeline beginning with the early migrations to Crete and the Greek peninsula and ending with the writings of Augustine. The authors do a fine job of describing how and where the main events took place in the timeline without getting bogged down in context. This is both the main strength of the book and its biggest detriment. I envision the individuals who pick up this book will already be familiar with the likes of Pericles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Sparta, Athens, etc. thus leaving a contextual background of the infamous names unnecessary. However there is room for background when describing various adversaries from the two periods of rule along with details about the more obscure rulers and regions. As an example, Carthage is adequately described in a historical context and also by historiographical analysis of ancient authors. Surprisingly the Gothic tribes are not given the same attention. This is a small complaint of a book that is by and large informative and relevant to a modern understanding of Classical Europe.

All in all, The Birth of Classical Europe provides a decent framework for understanding the origins and subsequent transformation of thought, society, and order in the period of antiquity. The authors do a fine job of setting up the next entry in the series which examines the departure from Roman order to a Christian-based continental Europe. Readers should look into a little background before beginning this entry. I would recommend Bulfinch's Mythology, the works of Julius Caesar, and a basic work concerning the emergence of the Greek mainland.

[Adam Glantz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps my rating is unfair, as this is a serviceable history in certain ways, but I expected more. My difficulties begin with the notion of memory, which is a central concept of the work. I appreciate the authors evading the stale question of whether or not a particular legendary event like the Trojan War actually happened in favor of asking how ancient peoples themselves conceived of their past. So far, so good. But if memory is both functionally ubiquitous and infinitely malleable, with every city and tribe innovating their own link to the legendary past, it loses its conceptual power and becomes just a static cultural constant, interesting perhaps, but not very useful.

Giving credit where credit is due, the authors' other key paradigms, Romanization from below (self-Romanization?) and the evolving idea of Europe are much tighter. I'd have wanted even more attention devoted to these topics, since the book is about Europe, but I accept that I might be forcing things further than a true analysis warrants.

My final criticism is a bit painful, partly because I'm afraid it might be quibbling and partly because I open myself to the rejoinder that I didn't comprehend the subtlety of the authors' approach. But I can't help it. The narrative feels meandering, with the level of analysis zooming in and out. The opening contains a long excursus into several archaeological digs that might better have been summarized. Then, some huge events like the Punic Wars were squeezed into just a few pages. Toward the end, I wished the beginning of the transition to feudalism had been spelled out a bit more, rather than merely hinted at. In sum, the book comes across as the work of two scholars with divergent interests, who didn't coordinate their efforts as well as they might.

[Carmelo Militano · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is slightly confusing at the beginning what with all this talk about pre & post Minoan palace periods but the picture that emerges is of a people and their self-awareness-based on legend and their knowledge of the Illiad and the Odysssey- and how this shaped both ancient Greek and Roman culture. This alertness to the heroic past is the the start of the idea of a Europe. But what I don't get is why the Romans were so keen on hooking up their past with Aeneas. Why have one of the founders of Rome the escaped son of the losers at Troy? Hardly noble or heroic. Compare that to the defeat of the Persians by the alliance of the ancient Greek city states.
The gradual expansion of the Romans up & down the Italian peninsula and eventually the whole Med basin is well done And, the last bit on the rise of the early Christian church in the Roman empire is enlightening indeed !

[Omar Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great review of the rise and fall of classical Europe, from the earliest civilizations in Crete and Greece to the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. The authors are professional historians and remarkably free of either Left or Right wing cant. They provide an excellent summary of the rise of Mediterranean civilization and the origins of the notion of Europe. They manage to pack a remarkable amount of facts into this book, including quantitative data where possible ("X percent of all crockery at this site changed from Greek to Etruscan between Y and Z years" kind of thing). Greco-Roman nerds will know many more details obviously, but even they will not be disappointed with how much information and perspective the authors can fit into a small space. Well worth reading.

[Ryan Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Shloka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully done.

[Frank Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Solidly informative but (too) dry.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid, if unspectacular, account of one of the most fascinating epochs in human history. Price starts with the mysterious Minoans, before moving his attention to the under-appreciated Carthaginians and, of course, the Greeks and Romans. The short length of the book necessitates a fairly cursory treatment of each—the transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire under Augustus is handled in about one paragraph—but it successfully conveys an outline of events and whets one’s appetite for more.

Price’s analysis is very interesting, but there just isn’t enough of it in this small page count! He recovers some fascinating historical gems — one section about Roman manufacturing and the evidence it gives for the process of Romanization was especially notable to me — but I agree with the general criticism, noted elsewhere, that this book is too brief for its immensely rich subject matter. I’ve read that the author was battling cancer while writing this, so that may be the understandable cause of its deficiencies.

(As an aside, I’m concurrently reading Braudel’s ‘Memory and the Mediterranean,’ and I think that it is a superior work of history, although the two work even better in tandem. If you only have capacity for one book on the period, read the Braudel.)

This first volume in the ‘Penguin History of Europe’ series certainly won’t waste your time, but I think you can find better histories of this essential era elsewhere.

[Brandon Kriplean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must say I am not as impressed as I wanted to be. I am reading through the Penguin History of Europe, and this is the first book in that series. I felt that it did not serve as a very appropriate text for readers without a background in classical studies. I wish the authors better explained many of their casual references instead of just assuming the readers would understand. For example, they causally note the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, but do not explain at all what occurred or why. They just assume the reader will know about the war. Maybe British education emphasizes Roman history in school (after all penguin is a British publisher), but I feel most American readers would want more explanation from a book aimed at introducing its readers to this era/empire.

I hope the rest of the series is more informative and aimed at providing a general historical survey. If not, the whole point of reading the series (to learn the history of a continent that I am very inadequately informed of) will not be achieved.

[Roniius · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good history of Europe in antiquity. I don't remember much of it, which speaks to its complexity (and also how long I took a break between the Greek and Roman sections). Tends to focus on historical processes, with case studies of them, rather than put names and dates everywhere. Doesn't explain, say, the crisis of the third century, but does explain how what happened after impacted the cultural divide within the Roman Empire.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a great history that has a lot of information packed into 432 pages, however, the content of this book reads like a textbook or a elongated museum exhibit rather than a piece of history that can be consumed by a causal reader that wants to know the history of early Europe. I did enjoy the pictures and maps scattered throughout the book, but the small boxes within the text kind of left me thinking what was the point of them.

Solid read, just very dense.

[Hunter Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent overview. I thoroughly appreciated the author's decision to contrast Europe's history and Europe's memory as two separate things. However, I removed a star due to what I believed was an overly critical approach to written sources.

[Carlos Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

去年底(2018)，中國的出版社新思文化推出了一套引人矚目的重點作品“企鵝歐洲史”，相信應該吸引了許多喜好歐洲歷史的書友注意。這套多卷本的大部頭自2004年開始出版以來，在歐美學界已經享譽盛名，每一卷的作者，都是該領域內的重量級學者，例如，我個人注意已久，第二卷《羅馬帝國的遺產》的作者Chris Wickham ，在古典晚期到中世紀早期的經濟史上早已成一家之言，著述甚豐，雖然華語圈幾乎沒有他的作品引進；第八卷《地獄之行》的作者Ian Kershaw ，他的《希特勒傳》更是公認的經典；第七卷《競逐權力》的作者Richard J. Evans 在對近代歐洲跟第三帝國的研究也是佼佼者。光這三位，就足以讓我萬分期待了。不過，由於是邀約各個不同學者撰寫，各卷雖然有劃分時代，但出版順序不一，華語版亦然，去年先推出了五至八卷，又隔了約一季，方推出前三卷。至於卷九，目前計畫是2020年出版，最遲的是卷四文藝復興，因為英文版都還沒推出，仍遙遙無期。個人則按照興趣，一直等到了前三卷出版後，方才開始著手閱讀。

這本《古典歐洲的誕生》的篇幅不長，但要描述的時間卻是漫長的古典歐洲時代，橫跨幅度超過千年，受邀請的兩位學者Simon Price跟 Peter Thonemann，顯然不是用一般敘事史的手法撰寫。


沒錯，兩位作者對於本書的重心，是放在古典歐洲人怎麼用“歷史與神話的想像”，去塑造出他們的“地中海世界”，那種“想像的共同體”的古代版。

自從Benedict Anderson 對於近代民族主義的那本經典作品《想像的共同體》面世以來，這個書名就成為相當好用的代名詞。其實，自從人類對於自己的過去有意識以來，怎麼樣塑造出一套“說法”就成為重要的“顯學”。下從個別家族講究祖上十八代的淵遠流長，上至一個族群城邦追尋與神的連結。姑且先不論古代人是否真的相信，但這些確實是一種不折不扣的“想像的共同體”。人們出於各種理由編造出一套說法，建構“我者”與“他者”的互動聯絡，是當世界日益複雜化時的一種必然的產物。古典希臘人透過希臘神話，各個城邦或有姻親，或有敵對，不論是否有所謂的證據，只要願意相信，它就成立。當波斯帝國這個大敵出現時，原本彼此勾心鬥角的希臘諸城邦，就利用了這種想像達成了共同對外的共識。隨著雅典城邦的輝煌，愛琴海旁的文明建構的“想像”更在亞歷山大的腳步之後擴張到亞細亞，就連遠在千里之外的小城邦，也出於某些利益編造了一套故事來跟希臘攀親帶故。君不見羅馬人強盛之後，就忽然祖上變成了特洛伊後裔了嗎？


這正是兩位作者主要講述的主題。他們認為，古典歐洲正是在這種想像中誕生，這種“歷史與神話”的共同體在愛琴海諸城邦開始建構，從希臘與波斯的對抗中成形，亞歷山大的遠征建構了希臘化世界，塑造出歐、雅、非三洲的觀念，最後的帝國興起塑造出一個整體的羅馬世界，然後在基督教的興起後轉型，不過這是卷二的主題，奧古斯丁怎麼解決這種轉變，留待後面再說。


也基於此，本書在敘事部分相當的精簡，個人覺得兩位作者想面對的讀者是需要對古典史有基本素養的，甚至最好是對整體歐洲史都要有概念的中上水平。我個人很喜歡作者時不時開專欄講述的一些“番外篇”，例如有時談談馬基維利跟羅馬政治，或從羅馬的殖民征服實踐中觀察英國對印政策、羅馬政治實踐對美國革命的影響等，都是很有趣的連結互動，也是要讀者對那些主題有概念才能懂作者想討論的。


中信新思這次的翻譯基本上除了幾個瑕不掩瑜的小瑕疵之外，可以說是成功的完成了任務。不過，最大的缺點來自於“一種不可抗拒的因素”，也就是全部的地圖都被刪去，這也是無可奈何，個人覺得影響不大，很在意的讀者只能自救。


順便再說個題外話。近來中國出現了一批專業以外的愛好者，製造出了一種“希臘羅馬偽史說”的論調，似乎還越演越烈。本書請來寫序言的學者郭小凌在文後略提了此事，還語帶嘲諷的說教了幾句，讓他們從這本的推薦書目開始好好的重新研究，也是挺妙的。基本上這種被網民稱之為“學術義和團”的行為(據說始作俑者何新是為了報復西方學界對夏朝的存疑態度才帶頭著書撰論，居然還吸引了一票信眾)，對這些正經八百的古典研究者來說，他們並非是真的不讀書，而是用似是而非的論調顛倒黑白，更讓人傷腦筋吧。

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a solid survey course of classical Europe. It was a little too high level for me and didn't offer any substantive conclusions or insights I haven't already come across. Regardless, it was well researched and well written. I'd recommend it to anyone looking to make a systematic study of classical history.