Full name: Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens

Author: James Davidson Year: 1997 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Classic, Historical fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780060977665 9780226137438 0060977663 0226137430

The luxury of the ancient world is legendary, but the Athenian reputation is sober because this wealthy, successful city-state spent all its money on the conspicuous consumption of ephemeral things. Their consuming passions for food, wine and sex drove their society, as well as generating the rich web of privilege, transgression, guilt and taboo for which they are remembered today. Using pamphlets, comic satires, forensic speeches - from authors as illustrious as Plato and as ignored as Philaenis - as source material - this study combines a traditional classicist's rigour with an appreciation of the new analytical techniques pioneered in gender and cultural studies to provide an alternative view of ancient Athenian culture and to bring its reality into a focus easier on the modern eye. Similar books: The Greeks by H. D. F. Kitto Ancient Greece by Sarah B. Pomeroy From Democrats to Kings by Michael Scott The Ancient Greeks by M. I. Finley The Classical Greeks by Michael Grant The Rise Of The Greeks by Michael Grant The Greek Experience by Maurice Bowra The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley The Greek Achievement by Charles Freeman The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan Early Greece by Oswyn Murray The Spartans by Paul Cartledge Athens by Christian Meier The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson The Nature of Alexander by Mary Renault Miracles and Massacres by Glenn Beck What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool