Description
Book SynopsisA radical reappraisal of homosexuality in Ancient Greece, by a young historian described as ''the best thing to happen to ancient history for decades'' (Andrew Roberts, MAIL ON SUNDAY)
Kenneth Dover''s 1978 GREEK HOMOSEXUALITY remains the most recent single-volume treatment of the subject as a whole. Drawing on fifteen years of ensuing research, James Davidson rejects Dover''s excessively theoretical approach, using a wide variety of sources unknown to him - court cases, romantic novels, satirical plays and poems - to present a view of the subject that, in contrast to Dover and to Foucault, stresses the humanity of the ancient Greeks, and how they lived their loves and pleasures, rather than their moral codes and the theorising of philosophers.
Homosexuality in Ancient Greece remains a central area of debate in the classics, in ancient history and lesbian and gay studies. Greek civilisation centrally underpins our own, providing a basis of so much of the west''s
Trade Review
Davidson's own scholarship is impressive, but worn lightly, and matched with an easy tone that makes The Greeks and Greek Love a lively, and often very funny, read * LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS *
poses a radical challenge to prominent assumptions about same-sex love in ancient Greece * OXONIAN REVIEW *
