The book under review is authored by William Furley, professor emeritus of Classical Philology at the University of Heidelberg. According to the author, the study is meant for the general public, not for professional academics. This ambitious study tries to reveal what ancient “Greeks were like, what they thought and how they felt” (12), by using an emic, or rather a hermeneutical, approach on predominantly literary sources, such as Homer’s works and Aristophanes’s and Menander’s comedies, the latter being a main field of the author’s research.
The book consists of an introduction and nine chapters followed by notes on ancient authors and sources, a glossary of ancient terms, a note on meter, a list of references and a list for further reading, photo acknowledgements, and an index.
The introduction presents the aim of the book, attempting “to get inside the heads of the classical Greeks” (12), uncovering their “personal perspective” (218), and the main tool, namely Greek literature seen from the point of view of a modern person. Chapter 1, “Love,” has these sections: “Epic Love,” “Comic Love,” “Passionate Love,” “Wives and Kept Women,” “Higher (Philosophical) Spheres” (with a good comment on Platonic dialogue and the British educational system, on page 46), as well as the opposite domain, the down-to-earth, including topics such as love magic, which flourished among common people. Chapter 2, “Status,” starts with an excellent comment on the chapter’s topic as motivation for human warfare. The chapter has these sections: “Gods,” “Homer,” “The Great and the Good,” “New Men,” “Salt of the Earth,” and “Status Symbols.”
Chapter 3, “Sail and Oar,” has these two sections, “For Those in Peril” and “Gateway to Elysium.” Chapter 4, “Signs,” is comprised of these sections: “Birds and Beasts,” “Oracles,” and “Dreams,” followed by “A Little Theory,” and “Pseudoscience,” ending with a good comment regarding a new kind of hybris today, “that humans are…above nature, and not an integral part of the whole” (133). Based predominantly on orators and comedies, chapter 5, “The Daily Round,” presents Athenian daily life in the following sections: “At Home,” “The Agora,” “Messaging,” “Business” (with an interesting comment on the basic word for money-making: “things” or “material goods” needed, on page 159), “Dinnertime,” “Bedtime,” ending with “Street Crime,” which generally took place in the night. Chapter 6, “A Better World,” focuses on these sections: “Eleusinian Fields,” “Celibacy” (with a good comment on Hippolytos’s claim “to be a devotee of nature,” page 201), and “Out of the Dark.” The chapter ends with “Orphic Initiation”—the mysteries, which handed “the torch to Christianity” (216).
Starting with reasserting that ancient Greece was never a nation-state, chapter 7, “Warfare,” deals with the topic through these sections: “Epic,” “Lyric: Love and War,” “The Heroic and Not-So-Heroic” (including some wise words on immersion within narratology in relation to Theophrastus’s characters and Thucydides’s history), the saying after [the wars with the Persian kingdom] that “War Is the Father” (of Greece’s fate and Europe’s history, see page 234, also 319), and “Lady Luck.” Like the fourth topic of chapter 1 (“Wives and Kept Women”), this chapter clearly signals the male perspective of the book. Chapter 8 discusses “Dress Code” for “Women” and “Men,” while the final chapter, chapter 9, “Celebration,” encompasses the following sections: “Myth,” “History,” and “Private Celebration.” In the introductory part on the “Silver City” of “Myth,” the author wisely highlights Homer’s focus on two reasons for celebrations as depicted in the shield of Achilles: wedding and harvest, both being essential “for the survival of the community, and both being the antitheses of war” (293). The chapter also provides a good description of the Delian festival. Furthermore, the comment on celebrations “agreeing with the omitted noun hiera” (323), is important in emphasising the significance of festivals and celebrations in Greek society.
Throughout the book, the author makes comparisons with modern, predominantly Western Anglo American society, which sometimes may be good, but other times are less successful (malware in a modern computer may be a good comparison, but in modern Greece we do find a closer parallel to the ancient curse), and some even seem strange for a non-Anglo American, which is perhaps also hinted at by the author, since saints and powerful persons have taken over the role of ancient divine patrons in modern Greece and elsewhere (see references in Note 1). The same concern arises in the statement regarding the “huge difference between our “post-Christian” Western society and ancient Greece” (103, cf. 130). This is true, but many modern societies, especially in the Balkan and Mediterranean region, including Greece, reveal several cultural patterns that are typical of the whole area, as demonstrated by ethnographic fieldwork, such as saints communicating through signs, for instance, in dreams or by sending illness such as a cholera epidemic, and so paralleling the plague afflicting the Greek army at Troy, as “read” by the seer Kalchas (104) (again, see Note 1).
Therefore, comparisons with modern societies in the same geographical region may yield more interesting results than the “post-Christian” Western component in our global world. Regarding the author’s aim to get into the heads of the classical Greeks, it is important to remember that ancient sources only give us the possibility of interpreting ancient society, not of entering it; ancient society exists only in our minds, because the sources are signs from another cultural context and not identical to it (see references in Note 2). Therefore, most scholars agree that it is difficult to use an emic perspective on ancient sources. Nonetheless, comparative approaches are highly important and especially those using material from other cultures than the modern Western one. One may also mention that ceremonial knives for men in modern Georgian folkdances, mentioned on page 293, are also found in Greek folkdances.
Although the book is meant for the general public, it should be free from errors. However, I would like to point out some problems: The statement that Homer’s work was never sung at festivals of the gods (page 67) is erroneous, since Homer’s epic poems were recited from memory during competitions at the Panathenaia (see note 3). The same regards the statement that dancing was undignified for an Athenian gentleman (page 71), since dance was in fact one of the disciplines for competitions at the same festival. Also, selected Athenian girls wove a traditional peplos for Athena annually, not every four years as stated by Furley (267) (see note 4). However, it has been suggested that from ca. 470 BCE onward another and bigger peplos which was dedicated to the goddess every four years was woven by professional (male) weavers [3]. The claim that women were not allowed to go out (189), has been refuted by other scholars. Women also participated in the theatre and attended symposia, at least in Plutarch’s time (see note 4). One may also add that although Pandora is seen in a negative light based on Hesiod’s misogynistic descriptions of her (256), Pandora was indeed worshipped next to the earth-born Erichthonios, who was reared by Athena [2]. We are informed that men basically “wore the same garments as women,” illustrated by Herakles’s peplos (277). However, Nicole Loraux has given another interpretation of Herakles in a woman’s cloth (see note 5).
We are several times informed that the author leaves the field of history to others. Nonetheless, he ventures into history, using mainly Plutarch’s Lives as sources, which is not unproblematic. One may add that, as with many other scholars, the author seems to be unaware of the fact that historians are not only interested in politics and economy, but also individual people and culture in general (see note 6).
The statement that the author’s translations of Greek and Latin are from standard editions of the works is fine, but should nonetheless be completed by giving the editions used, especially since general readers may not be familiar with ancient sources. Also, all the exclamation points seem unnecessary, at least for this reader. Despite many of these comments, I find the book as a whole an interesting read, for the general public and also for academics.
Notes:
[1] Håland, Evy Johanne. Women, Pilgrimage, and Rituals of Healing in Modern and Ancient Greece: A Comparison. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023, see esp. 238 (re the curse), 153 and 324 (cholera), Ch. 10 (on divine manifestations influencing commanders in war). On signs, and Greek mentality, see also Håland, Evy Johanne. Competing Ideologies in Greek Culture, Ancient and Modern. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, esp. Ch. 2 (or. published in Norwegian, 2011, translated to English by the author).
[2] Håland, Evy Johanne. Greek Festivals, Modern and Ancient: A Comparison of Female and Male Values, 2 vols. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017, see, Vol. 1: Ch. 1 (interpretation of sources, esp. 32), 304 f. (recitation of Homer’s poems), and 319 (dance), 307-317 (peplos). Vol. 2: 241-242 (women and symposia), 338 (Pandora) (or. published in Norwegian, 2007, translated to English by the author).
[3] Barber, Elizabeth J. Wayland. “The Peplos of Athena.” In Neils, Jenifer, ed. Goddess and Polis. The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992: 103-117.
[4] Håland, Evy Johanne. Rituals of Death and Dying in Modern and Ancient Greece: Writing History from a Female Perspective. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014 (Ch. 9 n.3 on women in theatre).
[5] Loraux, Nicole.“Herakles: The Super-Male and the Feminine.” In Halperin, David M., John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds. Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990: 21-52.
[6] I miss a reference to the following work at pages 64, 198: Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 (1979).
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[Review length: 1629 words * Review posted on December 12, 2025]