![]() ![]() Archaeologists who think they can recover the world of Boudicca, the queen of the Iceni who rebelled against Roman occupation, grossly overstate their insights: “despite their scientific advantages, they have not done much better…than their antiquarian, or pre-antiquarian, predecessors”. Several essays demolish previous scholarship: Sir Arthur Evans and his team of architects, Beard observes, built up the Minoan ruins in Crete, with plenty of “embarrassing mistakes”, and fed “to the early-twentieth century exactly the image of primitive culture that it wanted”. ![]() ![]() The collection offers short, thought-provoking pieces on a wide range of subjects, with an emphasis on ancient Rome (Greece is less well represented). Reviews have been an important part of Mary Beard’s career, both as a classical scholar and a public figure, and it is fitting that they are collected here as a testament to this aspect of her work. Confronting the Classics brings together 31 reviews and essays originally published as stand-alone pieces in The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, dating back to 1990. ![]()
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