Ten Lessons On The Classics eBook

The classics never exhaust what they have to say. Informed by this belief, with this brilliant book Pietro Boitani invites the reader to discover the timeless beauty and wisdom of ancient literature, highlighting its profound and sometimes surprising connections to the present.

The themes explored in this book are as wide-ranging as they are continuously relevant. They include theIliads depiction of power and war indeed of a cosmic conflict as well as its invocation of compassion as one of the necessary foundations of society; the Odyssey as the worlds first novel; Lucretius and the way he transformed Greek scientific thought into sublime poetry; Virgils celebration of the history of Rome, from small village to world capital, as well as Tacitus denunciation of the imperialistic nature of Roman power; and, finally, OvidsMetamorphoses a poem about incessant change and the first postmodern classic.