Overview

The study of ancient Greece has been central to Western conceptions of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which successive generations have reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary worlds. Thus, in the eighteenth century, the conflict between Athens and Sparta became a touchstone in the development of republicanism, and in the nineteenth, Athens came to represent the democratic ideal. Amid the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century, the Greeks were imagined in an age of suffering, inspiring defenses against nationalism, Nazism, communism, and capitalism. Oswyn Murray draws powerful conclusions from this historiography, using the ever-changing narrative of ancient Greece to illuminate grand theories of human society. Analyzing the influence of historians and philosophers, Murray also considers how coming generations might perceive the Greeks. Along the way, The Muse of History offers rare behind-the-scenes glimpses of figures who shaped the study of ancient Greece, some devotedly cited to this day and others forgotten. A thrilling work that rewrites established scholarly traditions and locates important ideas in unexpected places, The Muse of History reminds us that the meaning of the past is always made in and for the present.

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Oswyn Murray is an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford, and a leading scholar of the ancient world. He has written widely translated books, including Early Greece and The Symposium: Drinking Greek Style and is the coeditor of The Oxford History of the Classical World. Justin Avoth is a talented actor and voiceover artist who studied acting at RADA. He has appeared in television shows such as Ripper Street, Dracula, and Father Brown. As an audiobook narrator, he worked with Tom Baker in a Doctor Who audio drama.

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