Originally published in Dutch in 1995, Antiquity. Greeks and Romans in Context by Frederick Naerebout and Henk Singor aims to provide (in its own modest words) a ‘reasonably comprehensive one-volume’ overview of the Greco-Roman world for undergraduates and a wider interested audience (xiii).Footnote ¹ The main focus of the work is the Greco-Roman world from 1000 bc to 500 bc (divided into the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Imperial periods). Each period is covered under the same three headings (in the interests of comparability): ‘Historical Outline’, ‘Social Fabric’, ‘Social Life and Mentality’. The wider context is, however, by no means ignored. The authors provide a valuable overview of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods (27–35) and of the early civilizations of Eurasia up to 900 bc (36–58). At the other end of the timeline, the book does not simply conclude with the Roman Imperial period but carries on the story up to the tenth century ad and beyond (369–94). A particular emphasis is placed in the introductory chapter on ‘The Ecology of History’ (11–23):

Historical overviews can often seem rather world-weary, as if the real intellectual excitement lies elsewhere, but this volume bounds along with a real spring in its step. It is attractively illustrated with a good number of maps and images and would be a positive addition to any undergraduate's bookshelf or Kindle.

The fragility of the world's ecosystems and the ways in which the ancient world engaged with the environment are the focus of J. Donald Hughes's Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans. Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean. This book was first published in 1994 as Pan's Travail – an important work that built on his earlier pioneering study from 1975 – Ecology in Ancient Civilizations.Footnote ² In the Greece & Rome review of Pan's Travail it was stated that ‘a book on green issues is something new’.Footnote ³ Such publications are now far from innovative, but twenty years on the second edition of this work is more relevant now than ever before. According to the author, the new volume contains ‘new sections, chapters, illustrations, and the benefit of eighteen additional years of research, experience, and reflection’ (viii). It is divided into fourteen chapters, including ones on ‘Deforestation, Overgrazing, and Erosion’ (68–87), ‘Wildlife Depletion and Loss of Habitat’ (88–109), and ‘Paradises and Parks, Gardens and Groves’. It is a fascinating, if at times depressing, read – a book that encourages one to see both the classical world and our own with new eyes, reminding us that, even though the Greeks and Romans had no word for ‘the environment’ or ‘ecological disaster’, many of the problems which they faced are much the same as the ones we face today. Pluit ça change?

Lukas Thommen's An Environmental History of Ancient Greece and Rome, reviewed here two years ago, clearly owed a debt to Pan's Travail.Footnote ⁴ This work has now been complemented by another title in the Cambridge University Press series of ‘Key Themes in Ancient History’ – Daniela Dueck's Geography in Classical Antiquity.Footnote ⁵ The focus of this interesting and useful book is not on ecosystems but on the different ways in which the physical world was conceptualized, mapped, and explored by the Greeks and Romans. An introductory chapter highlights the important relationship between geography and politics and pin-points three major moments in the development of geographical awareness: the period of Greek ‘colonization’ (eighth to sixth centuries bc), the campaigns of Alexander and the eastward expansion of the Greek world (fourth century bc), and the consolidation of the Roman Empire under Augustus, Claudius, and Trajan; it also considers the different sorts of questions asked by Greeks and Romans about the physical world. While sensibly cautioning against generalizations, Dueck concludes that ‘for the Greeks maritime navigation aimed primarily at commerce and scientific investigation, whereas for the Romans land-routes fulfilled chiefly administrative and military purposes’ (19). There follow four short but incisive chapters on ‘Descriptive Geography’ (20–67), with a focus on literary and historigraphical discussions of geography; ‘Mathematical Geography’ (68–98), including discussion of the influence of astronomers in the attempt to fix coordinates on the globe; ‘Cartography’ (99–110), a chapter contributed by Kai Broderson which considers the striking lack of evidence for ancient Greek and Roman maps (in contrast to the evidence from Ancient China) and concludes that ‘the pre-modern Greco-Roman world generally managed without maps’ (109); and ‘Geography in Practice’ (111–21), which considers how people in the ancient world actually made use of the geographical resources (literary, scientific, and visual) that were available to them.

The ‘Very Short Introduction’ series has enjoyed remarkable success since its inception in 1995. Penguin famously inaugurated its series of ‘Classics’ with E. V. Rieu's translation of the Odyssey, while the first title in the Oxford series was the Very Short Introduction to Classics by Mary Beard and John Henderson. Very Short Introductions now run to nearly 400 titles on topics as diverse as Happiness, the Magna Carta, Teeth and Terrorism (the last two, we should add, are separate titles). Hot off the press comes the latest volume (number 382), available not just in paperback but – in a clear sign of the times – as an eBook: Classical Literature by William Allen.Footnote ⁶ An opening chapter on ‘History, Genre, Text’ lays the foundations for the eight genre-based chapters which follow, taking us from ‘Epic’ and ‘Lyric and Personal Poetry’ through to ‘Pastoral’, ‘Satire’, and the ‘Novel’. The book is written in a clear and accessible style – engaging but not patronizing. It is ideally suited for the interested sixth-former and undergraduate seeking to get a handle on the diverse forms of classical literature. It offers a window onto a rich literary world, even though, as Allan reminds us, such riches represent barely ten per cent of classical literary production. It is salutory to recall that, of the 900 tragedies produced in Athens during the fifth century bc, only 31 have survived intact (15).

From the very short introduction to the even shorter: 30-Second Mythology. The 50 Most Important Greek and Roman Myths, Monsters, Heroes, and Gods, Each Explained in Half a Minute, edited by Robert Segal (already the author of Myth. A Very Short Introduction, 2004).Footnote ⁷ According to the press release, it has ‘already sold over 1 million copies worldwide’ and is ‘ideal for anyone keen to expand their mind, impress their friends and become champion of the pub quiz’. The editors and contributors have clearly had a lot of fun in their repackaging of classical mythology, ‘using nothing more than two pages, 300 words and one picture’ for each of the fifty myths covered. Although it has apparently enjoyed great commercial success, we found it surprisingly impenetrable. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the different myths are reproduced throughout using the same one-size-fits-all template. The initially innovative formula comes at times to seem more like a strait-jacket (and at times even 300 words begins to seem too much rather than too little). To take one example, in the section on Troy, the ‘one picture’ which supports the writing is an artistic collage of rather indistinct images which adds nothing to our understanding of the topic and could have been replaced more usefully with a map or archaeological plan of the phases of the city. As for possible pub-quiz questions: Which city did Semele and Pentheus come from? Who was Dionysus' wife? Who wrote the Bacchae? The ‘Dionysus/Bacchus’ section on page 56 will not help you to answer any of the above, but if the million-dollar question happens to concern the transformation of the daughters of Minyas then you are onto a winner.