- Gebundene Ausgabe: 320 Seiten
- Verlag: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (12. Juni 1997)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 0002555913
- ISBN-13: 978-0002555913
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 23 x 16 x 4 cm
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Produktinformation |
Mehr über den Autor
Entdecken Sie Bücher, lesen Sie über Autoren und mehr
› Besuchen Sie die Seite von James N. Davidson auf Amazon
› Besuchen Sie die Seite von James N. Davidson auf Amazon
Produktbeschreibungen
Pressestimmen
Unsurprisingly, the ancient Greeks spent most of their time eating, drinking and making love. But were their attitudes to banquets and brothels any different from our own? Davidson compares and contrasts, drawing material from plays and from the ruins of temples and bordellos in classical Athens, painting an absorbing picture of how the Greeks satisfied their consuming passions. An entertaining and highly individual history. (Kirkus UK)
The astonishing cultural legacy of ancient Athens can leave the impression that ordinary Athenians during the Golden Age spent their leisure-filled lives contemplating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This refreshing look at Greeks at play corrects that idea. By examining the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex, Davidson is able to draw broader conclusions about the distinctiveness of Athenian culture as a whole. For instance, the author makes much of the Athenians' obsessive predilection for fish: unlike beef or mutton, fish was not a sacrificial or religious food and could be enjoyed for its own qualities, and fish consumption became a hallmark of urban sophistication, if not decadence. Wine, he shows, was central to Athenian merry-making, though the ancients appear not to have recognized the addictive and destructive powers of drink. Davidson also discusses at length the complex world of Greek sexuality: in the male-dominated society of Athens, an active commercial market in sex, the subjects of which were women classified as concubines or courtesans (decent women were so secluded that they seemed invisible), coexisted with a flourishing homosexual culture. Athenian attitudes toward pleasure had pervasive political implications as well: the pleasure-seeking class was the powerful minority, and excessive pleasure-seeking, or pleasure of the wrong kind, could emerge as a public issue when the private lives of public figures were scrutinized (Davidson discusses the trial of the politician Timarchus in 346 B.C. for having served as a prostitute). In the end, Davidson argues, the Athenian approach to pleasure, for all its flaws, "was vigorously rationalistic and humane . . . confident enough to insist on personal responsibility in managing appetites, never so frightened of pleasures as to flee them in panic." Scholarly but accessible to the general reader, especially enjoyable in its use of snippets from classical texts to evoke the quotidian world of ancient Athens. (Kirkus Reviews)
The astonishing cultural legacy of ancient Athens can leave the impression that ordinary Athenians during the Golden Age spent their leisure-filled lives contemplating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This refreshing look at Greeks at play corrects that idea. By examining the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex, Davidson is able to draw broader conclusions about the distinctiveness of Athenian culture as a whole. For instance, the author makes much of the Athenians' obsessive predilection for fish: unlike beef or mutton, fish was not a sacrificial or religious food and could be enjoyed for its own qualities, and fish consumption became a hallmark of urban sophistication, if not decadence. Wine, he shows, was central to Athenian merry-making, though the ancients appear not to have recognized the addictive and destructive powers of drink. Davidson also discusses at length the complex world of Greek sexuality: in the male-dominated society of Athens, an active commercial market in sex, the subjects of which were women classified as concubines or courtesans (decent women were so secluded that they seemed invisible), coexisted with a flourishing homosexual culture. Athenian attitudes toward pleasure had pervasive political implications as well: the pleasure-seeking class was the powerful minority, and excessive pleasure-seeking, or pleasure of the wrong kind, could emerge as a public issue when the private lives of public figures were scrutinized (Davidson discusses the trial of the politician Timarchus in 346 B.C. for having served as a prostitute). In the end, Davidson argues, the Athenian approach to pleasure, for all its flaws, "was vigorously rationalistic and humane . . . confident enough to insist on personal responsibility in managing appetites, never so frightened of pleasures as to flee them in panic." Scholarly but accessible to the general reader, especially enjoyable in its use of snippets from classical texts to evoke the quotidian world of ancient Athens. (Kirkus Reviews)
Kurzbeschreibung
A highly entertaining study of life in ancient Athenian society, concentrating mainly on their preoccupations with food, wine and sex. A refreshing and witty new angle on the society which practically invented Europe, democracy and fine art. 2 b/w illus, 8 b/w plates.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Tags(Was ist das?)Bei einem Tag handelt es sich um ein Schlagwort, das zum Produkt passt.
Tags erleichtern allen Kunden die Suche und die Sortierung ihrer Lieblingsprodukte. |
Eine digitale Version dieses Buchs im Kindle-Shop verkaufen
Wenn Sie ein Verleger oder Autor sind und die digitalen Rechte an einem Buch haben, können Sie die digitale Version des Buchs in unserem Kindle-Shop verkaufen.
Weitere Informationen
Kundenrezensionen
Noch keine Kundenrezensionen vorhanden.
5 Sterne
4 Sterne
3 Sterne
2 Sterne
1 Sterne
Kunden diskutieren
|
Das Forum zu diesem Produkt
Fragen stellen, Meinungen austauschen, Einblicke gewinnen Aktive Diskussionen in ähnlichen Foren
Kundendiskussionen durchsuchen
|
Ähnliche Foren
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lieblingslisten
Ähnliche Artikel finden
Anhand des Sachgebietes nach ähnlichen Produkten suchen:
Ihr Kommentar
Möchten Sie die Produktinformationen aktualisieren oder Feedback zu den Produktabbildungen geben?
