Top Highlights

• The voices of the ancient Mediterranean are there waiting to speak to us if we will only listen. They are there in the mythology of Hesiod, the philosophy of Parmenides, the poetry of Solon, the history of Herodotus, the political science of Thucydides, the comedies of Aristophanes, the dialogues of Plato, the leadership of Xenophon, the romances o...
• the ancient historians themselves—Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon and Polybius, Livy and Plutarch
• C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and a close friend of Tolkien who shared Tolkien’s mission to rehabilitate the negative reputation of the Middle Ages, once wrote that the best way to understand the medieval knight is to put on his helmet and look at the world through his visor.
• what we call the Golden Age of Greece is essentially equivalent to the Golden Age of Athens.
• Crete built a trading empire that was both highly advanced and richly cosmopolitan. The palace of Knossos, home to the legendary King Minos, boasted modern plumbing, solariums, frescoes of great beauty and delicacy, and an intricate maze of rooms that may have given rise to tales of the labyrinth where Minos kept the dreaded Minotaur imprisoned.