I enjoy reading fact-based imagining of the past. Dry academic history may be important, and historical fiction can be fun, but I really like a good job in between these extremes. What do the sources really say and mean? We can only imagine what the people thought and experienced. But we can create well-informed imaginings.
Here are some good examples, recent and older, all on the theme of “ancient history” in the Mediterranean.
A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponesian War by Victor Davis Hanson (New York, Random House, 2005)
The topic is the Peloponesian War, a thirty year war between the Athenian Empire and a Spartan led coalition, which ultimately involved neighbors, and ended in the destruction of Athens and exhaustion of the whole region.
Popular history has portrayed this war in various simple pictures, often reflecting contemporary anxieties and big power geopolitics. Land Power versus Sea Power, Authoritarian/Totalitarian versus “Democracy”, etc. This book is obviously influenced by contemporary anxieties and recent history, which has given us a dark, pessimistic, and skeptical view of warfare.
This was a truly horrendous war, with vast unintended consequences, grim ironies, and, as we have grown to expect, no real purpose or winner. There were endless, pointless atrocities on all sides, and quite a few “cunning plans”. Athens, relying on essentially invulnerable city walls to frustrate Spartan invasions, was ravaged by plague. “Democratic” Athens attacked just-as-democratic Syracuse, and losing the whole expedition (and how was invading Sicily a good idea, with the Spartan army besieging the city of Athens?).
Let’s add slave rebellions in Sparta, colonial rebellions in the Athenian Empire. Savage, merciless, and costly sieges. Massacres of civilians and prisoners. Ethnic cleansing. A right wing coup in besieged Athens, followed by counter coup, with hundreds of political killings. Mercenaries, pirates, guerillas, Persian intervention, generals and whole cities switching sides.
In the end, nothing could ever be the same. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
You could sum up everything with the quote from the book: “Worse folly ensued.” (p. 216)
Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore by Bettany Hughes (New York, Alfred E. Knopft, 2005).
In yet another fine book, BH considers Helen of Troy; a real woman, literary character, goddess, and cultural icon. She follows Helen as told by Homer and lesser known literature, as well as traces at archaeological sites across the Greek world. She also follows Helen across centuries, one of the few women never to be written out of history.
Helen is universally known as a symbol of beauty. A runaway Spartan queen and Trojan princess, Homer has her cursed by the gods, and makes her responsible for the war and the ultimate destruction of Troy. Throughout the ages, her memory has been worshiped and damned, she is imagined to be, as the subtitle indicates, “goddess, princess, whore”.
Hughes gives us a lively consideration of the known facts, spiced with first hand visits to the actual sites which can be found. She reconstructs as much as is possible what the real Helen would have been, and how she would have lived. She also reconstructs many of the ancient versions of Helen’s myth, in Sparta, Athens, and the Mediterranean.
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes (New York, Alfred E. Knopf, 2011)
In a second book, Hughes reconstructs an enigmatic man, Socrates. Despite his fame and pivotal importance in Western thought, little is known about Socrates. We have many simple versions of a rational, rebellious, “truth teller”, who dies a martyrs death. But that story never really made sense, and, of course, the reality is murkier.
Hughes reconstructs Athens of the time, and what we know of Socrates, his life, and how he fit (or didn’t) in Athens. The book gives flesh to the legend, with plenty of detail about real life in Athens, which is both familiar and alien to us.
The drama of his trial and execution can only be understood in the context of war-time Athens, and the aftermath of military catastrophe’s and a rightist putsch (see also Hanson, above). Furthermore, we struggle to imagine the reality of Athenian democracy, in which you could be tried and executed, literally, by public opinion.
Mystery Religions in the Ancient World by Joscelyn Godwin (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1981)
Popular history gives us a shallow and distorted view of ancient religion, which is often portrayed as a monolithic, systematic creed (Zeus, Apollo, Venus, and all). Or sometimes we are treated to stories of imagined “ancient knowledge” and “ancient mysteries”, projecting contemporary anxieties and fashions onto entirely fictional beliefs.
In fact, “[t]he people of the Roman Empire enjoyed a freedom of choice in religious matters unparalleled until modern times.” (p.7) These were living traditions, experienced by people in all segments of society. A catalog of “sects”, gods, and occult practices does not really tell us much about what these meant to their adherents. As he says, “I do not want to learn about Platonism from a logical positivist, but from a Platonist.” (p. 8) To do this requires “a deliberate effort of the imagination is necessary in order to comprehend them.” (p. 8)
This book is one of his efforts to bridge these centuries with a serious, fact-based, imaginative examination of the “mystery cults” of the Roman Empire. Chapters cover the familiar Imperial Cult, various folk beliefs, cults of Mithras, Cybele, Isis, Orpheus, and Dionysius; Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity, and various syntheses.
The emphasis is on practices, “hidden knowledge”, and how the various threads might influence each other. I was particularly fascinated by his interpretation of some otherwise inscrutable archaeological evidence, suggesting important religious uses of certain sites, uses which have been lost to history.
It is also interesting to consider Christianity at this formative period when it was a small, upcoming religion with a lot of competition. I leave it to contemporary believers to parse out any significance in the exchanges and relations among these cults.
Pagans And Christians by Robin Lane Fox (New York : Knopf, 1987)
RLF focuses on the third century AD (as we now reckon the calendar), a period during which the Pagan Cults and Christianity existed side-by-side in the Roman Empire. The transition of the Roman Empire from officially Pagan to official Christian is a well-known event, but it was the culmination of centuries of conflict and coexistence which is difficult for us to comprehend today. The simple picture of and instant of epiphany simply does not tell us what this competition meant to people of that time.
This book takes an extended look at life during this period, and how various believers viewed their own and others’ beliefs. How did Christians view the secular and Pagan environment they inhabited? Why did Christianity provoke such intense and violent attacks from Pagans, while other, equally radical, religions were quietly tolerated? And most poignantly, how did individuals navigate this complex landscape of religion, politics, and culture?
As in Godwin’s book above, we are treated to a more complete picture of a complex, sophisticated, and diverse era. For contemporary believers, there is much to learn about the roots of current religions, and perhaps some lessons about tolerance and the fruits of intolerance.
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