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The Children of Athena
- Greek Writers and Thinkers in the Age of Rome, 150 BC-AD 400
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
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The Children of Athena
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Summary
A compelling and fascinating portrait of the continuing intellectual tradition of Greek writers and thinkers in the Age of Rome.
In 146 BC, Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic; sixty years later, when Athens and other Greek city-states rebelled against Rome, the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato, laying waste to the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied. However, the traditions of Greek cultural life would continue to flourish during the centuries of Roman rule that followed, in the lives and work of a distinguished array of philosophers, doctors, scientists, geographers, travellers and theologians.
Charles Freeman's accounts of such luminaries as the physician Galen, the geographer Ptolemy and the philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with contextual 'interludes' that showcase a sequence of unjustly neglected and richly influential lives. Like the author's The Awakening, The Children of Athena is a cultural history on an epic scale: the story of a rich and vibrant tradition of Greek intellectual inquiry across a period of more than five hundred years, from the second century BC to the start of the fifth century AD.
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- Dennis Sommers
- 14-12-23
An utterly brilliant production
This wonderfully informative and well written book fills a gap in many readers’ education between the classics we know and the thought of late antiquity/ not an area most of us have studied except Nureyev theologians; and even these can learn and digest the abiding legacy and influence of Greek ‘pagan’ philosophy on our often too precious church doctrine. Freeman is also honest about the lowdown and dirty squabbles and lower politics that overtook the church once it became an arm of secular control. The chapters tracing the influence of science through the Arabs and right into mediaeval and modern times are invaluable.
How the reader learned to emphasise the second syllable in ‘Origen’ is a mystery but you have to find something to bleat about however insignificant.
This audiobook will go straight into my very favourite collection.
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