Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists, an academic with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience. Here, she draws on thirty years of teaching about Greek and Roman history to provide a panoramic portrait of the classical world that draws surprising parallels with contemporary society. We are taken on a guided tour of antiquity, encountering some of the most famous (and infamous) characters of classical history, among them Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Sappho and Hannibal. Challenging the notion that classical history is all about depraved emperors and conquering military heroes, Beard also introduces us to the common people--the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? What made them laugh? What were their marriages like? This bottom-up approach to history is typical of Beard, who looks with fresh eyes at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, taking aim at many of the assumptions we held as gospel.--From publisher description.

Introduction: Do Classics Have a Future? -- Section One. Ancient Greece -- Builder of Ruins -- Sappho Speaks -- Which Thucydides Can You Trust? -- Alexander : How Great? -- What Made the Greeks Laugh? -- Section Two. Heroes & Villains of Early Rome -- Who Wanted Remus Dead? -- Hannibal At Bay -- Quousque Tandem É? -- Roman Art Thieves -- Spinning Caesar's Murder -- Section Three. Imperial Rome/Emperors, Empresses & Enemies -- Looking for the Emperor -- Cleopatra : The Myth -- Married to the Empire -- Caligula's Satire? -- Nero's Colosseum? -- British Queen -- Bit-Part Emperors -- Hadrian and his Villa -- Section Four. Rome from the Bottom Up -- Ex-Slaves and Snobbery -- Fortune-Telling, Bad Breath and Stress -- Keeping the Armies out of Rome -- Life and Death in Roman Britain -- South Shields Aramaic -- Section Five. Arts & Culture; Tourists & Scholars -- Only Aeschylus Will Do? -- Arms and the Man -- Don't Forget Your Pith Helmet -- Pompeii for the Tourists -- The Golden Bough -- Philosophy meets Archaeology -- What Gets Left Out -- Asterix and the Romans -- Afterword: Reviewing Classics