Ελλάδα

'It will be read and re-read not as a treatise but as a story: one of the most extraordinary that has ever been written of the origins of Western self-consciousness' Simon SchamaThe marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods of Olympus feasted alongside mortals. What happened in the distant ages preceding it, and in the generations that followed, form the timeless tales of ancient Greek mythology. In this masterful retelling of the myths we think we know, Roberto Calasso illuminates the deepest questions of our existence. 'The kind of book one comes across only once or twice in one's lifetime' Joseph Brodsky'A perfect work like no other' Gore Vidal

The ancient Greek thinker refutes skepticism, demonstrates God's existence, compares metaphysics to the other sciences, elucidates the nature of the infinite, and explores other major philosophical issues.

The olive is a tree of the sea breeze. It is not to be found among the hyperboreans, and does not exist in the torrid zone. On the shores of the seas of the temperate zone, or where the winds are channelled to the hinterland through deep gorges or along the banks of rivers, colonies of olive groves coexist with the rugged landscape.

 

The Olive Tree of Civilisation has a rich and varied history. The gnarled tree and its fruits has been extolled by bards from Ovid and Homer to Kipling, Tennyson and Nerua. What other fruit provides light, is a fundamental ingredient in perfume and adds joy and flavour at the table? The ancients knew these virtues and olive oil became a key to their religious and political ceremonies, from the temples of Ra in Egypt where lamps burned olive oil, to the temple of Soloman, where kings were anointed with oil based ointments. Christ was offered a sip of oil on the cross; Hanukah is, at its origin, a festival to celebrate olive oil; the tree and its oil are found in the Koran. Today the oil is worshipped by chefs for its flavours and its colours. For decades, cooks and anthropologists have divided Europe along an olive oil/butter boundary; that line is vanishing as olive oil spreads around the globe. This book explores and brings to life the olives's glorious past, with chapters on the fruit's role in

The ruined silhouette of the Parthenon on its hill above Athens is one of the world's most famous images. Its 'looted' Elgin Marbles are a global cause celebre. But what actually are they? In a revised and updated edition, Mary Beard, award winning writer, reviewer and leading Cambridge classicist, tells the history and explains the significance of the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin goddess Athena, the divine patroness of ancient Athens.

Since I too have agonized over trying to decipher the meaning of the Parthenon Frieze, I believe that I am allowed to repeat something that I supported some time ago: that the reexamination of a subject so labyrinthine and bibliographically lumbered has to be dealt with as an intellectual debt, the satisfaction of which will justify all future corrective approaches. However, the anticipated reevaluations of perhaps the most important artistic creation of Periclean times will be fruitful and forward-looking only to the degree that they will draw cognitive powers from a fundamental text by Luigi Beschi. With the republication of that text, in a free-standing format, I am sure that all the new interpretative attempts by modern scholars will be inspired by the intellectual stimuli and values of an unrepeatable scientific ethos. Angelos Delivorrias

Over the past decades there has been something of a revolution in the way we view classical drama generally and Euripides in particular. This book, updated in a second edition, reflects that revolution and aims to show how Euripides was continually reinventing himself. A truly Protean figure, he seems to set out on a new journey in each of his surviving 19 plays. Between general introduction and final summary, Morwood's chapters identify the themes that underlie the plays and concentrate, above all, on demonstrating the extraordinary diversity of this great dramatist. New to this edition, which is updated throughout, are further details on the individual plays and extra suggestions for background reading. The volume is a companion to The Plays of Sophocles and The Plays of Aeschylus (both by Alex Garvie) also available in second editions from Bloomsbury. A further essential guide to the themes and context of ancient Greek tragedy may be found in Laura Swift's new introductory volume, Greek Tragedy.

Raising questions that are as relevant to modern society as they were to the ancient world, Aristotle's The Politics remains central to the study of political science millennia after its compilation. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Greek by T.A. Sinclair, revised and re-presented by Trevor J. Saunders.

In The Politics Aristotle addresses the questions that lie at the heart of political science. How should society be ordered to ensure the happiness of the individual? Which forms of government are best and how should they be maintained? By analysing a range of city constitutions - oligarchies, democracies and tyrannies - he seeks to establish the strengths and weaknesses of each system, and to decide which are the most effective, in theory and in practice. Like his predecessor Plato, Aristotle believed that the ideal constitution should be good in itself and in accordance with nature, and that it is needed by man - 'a political animal' - to fulfil his potential. A hugely significant work, which has influenced thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli, The Politics remains an outstanding commentary on fundamental political issues and concerns, and provides fascinating insights into the workings and attitudes of the Greek city-state.

The introductions by T.A. Sinclair and Trevor J. Saunders discuss the influence of The Politics on philosophers, its modern relevance and Aristotle's political beliefs. This edition contains Greek and English glossaries, and a bibliography for further reading.

Aristotle (384-322BC) was born at Stagira, in the dominion of the kings of Macedonia. For twenty years he studied at Athens in the Academy of Plato. Some time later, became the tutor of young Alexander the Great. His writings, including De Anima, The Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics, and The Politics, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy.

If you enjoyed The Politics, you might like Plato's Republic, also available in Penguin Classics.

Travellers, poets, artists, even scholars, still go to Greece in search of something they feel that no other land quite offers them. Partly no doubt this is a by-product of the enormous prestige the world of ancient Greece acquired subsequent to the Renaissance; partly, too, it is due to the sheer physical beauty with which Greece presents one at practically every step. Even though the stereotype of classical Greece has now worn thin, and island after island, seashore village after seashore village, are overrun by the life-starved fugitives from the industrial wildernesses of northern Europe, loosed upon them week-in week-out by the seemingly endless succession of package-tours and charter-flights, the spell and the compulsion survive. For Philip Sherrard the enigma of Greece was a lifelong preoccupation. In this anthology, one of his earlier publications, he explores its various aspects through the writings of those who over the centuries have found in Greece not simply an object of study or a romantic haven, but a challenge, an incitement and a reciprocity that has stirred the wellsprings of both heart and imagination. To give an inner coherence to this exploration the passages chosen are presented in the form of an itinerary that includes all the major areas of Greece, the Aegean Islands and Crete. The remarkably evocative photographs by Dimitri complement this itinerary, providing the visual component of an image which cannot but enrich the experience of all who, for whatever reasons, have set out on this journey of self-discovery that Greece offers them. 'Balance — that is a difficult quality in speaking of a country one cares about, and I don't mean the old tag about nothing too much; for Greece everything is not enough. I mean the balance in accepting the extremes . . . And balance, the whole Greece, is what Mr Sherrard is after in this splendid anthology. Seferis and Sikelianos; Kevin Andrews' description of climbing Olympus; Patrick Leigh Fermor's passage on light; Flaubert fording the Alpheus; Robert Curzon enjoying an Athonite hermit's hospitality; poets, historians, travellers ironic, travellers intoxicated by their own emotions: a hundred scenes, a hundred reactions. . . . I am sometimes asked to recommend books about Greece. I should advise, then, reading The Pursuit of Greece not before but after a first visit — or during a second, when the noble or the lively writing will, as it were, bring out the scent of the country.' Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times. The Pursuit of Greece is a reprint of the 1964 London (John Murray) edition.