Myths, Muses and Mortals: The Way of Life in Ancient Greece

Myths, Muses and Mortals gives new insight into a multitude of life experiences in ancient Greece. The book introduces the lives of the ancient Greeks through extracts taken from a range of sources, including poems, plays, novels, histories, lawsuits, inscriptions and private note-tablets. The voices speak for themselves in fresh translation, but in addition William Furley gives the narratives historical context and illuminates the literary genre in which they appear. The texts are grouped around important areas of life love relations, travel and trade, social status, divine signs, daily events, warfare, philosophies, dress code, and private and public celebration giving voice to the variety of lives experienced by the citizens of ancient Greece and an insight into the Greek mind.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Glossary of Ancient Terms Note on Metre LOVE Epic love Comic love Passionate Love Wives and kept women Higher Spheres Down to Earth STATUS Gods Homer The Great and the Good New Men Salt of the Earth Status Symbols SAIL AND OAR For Those in Peril Gateway to Elysium SIGNS Birds and Beasts Oracles Dreams A Little Theory Pseudo-Sciences THE DAILY ROUND At Home The Agora Messaging Dinnertime Bedtime Street Crime A BETTER WORLD The Beginnings Elysian Fields Celibacy Out of the Dark Orphic Initiation WARFARE Epic Lyric: Love and War The Heroic and the not-so heroic War is the Father Lady Luck DRESS CODE Women Men CELEBRATION Myth History Private Celebration Notes on Ancient Authors and Sources References Further Reading Acknowledgments Photo Acknowledgements Index

About the Author :
William Furley is emeritus professor of Greek at Heidelberg University and research fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, London. His publications include Greek Hymns and three editions of plays by Menander: Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Misoumenos.

Review :
In his new thematic overview of ancient Greek culture, the classicist Furley notes that his subjects never "thought of writing just for themselves, as a meditation or perhaps a kind of self-expression or therapy." Since so many scholars today write only for themselves, Myths, Muses and Mortals comes as a double delight: free of academic jargon, to be sure, but also underpinned by frequent and ample citations from major poems, plays, philosophical tracts, and other writings of the ancient Greek world. Divided into chapters on love, social status, sailing, warfare, and more, the volume is an ideal primer for the fledgling Hellenophile. An engaging book which approaches the ancient Greek world from an interesting and fresh point of view. William Furley writes with the authority of the distinguished scholar that he is but also with the irresistible enthusiasm of a writer completely in love with his subject. I challenge anyone to read this book without being totally won over to Furley’s view that the ancient Greeks are curious, unique and utterly fascinating. Myths, Muses and Mortals is a unique book. It explores all aspects of life in ancient Greece through a wide range of Greek texts from Homer and Herodotus to curse tablets and political inscriptions. William Furley writes masterfully and brings the past to life again.