As we were finishing up work on The Classical Tradition, we knew that what we had on our hands was more coffee table conversation starter or rainy day companion than destined-for-dust reference work. Across its 563 articles by 339 contributors the book's purpose is to remind us of the myriad ways that the fascinating classical age, seemingly forgotten and now routinely left off curricula, actually continues to animate our modern world. The book aims to restore our sense of the deep history of disciplines and phenomena as commonplace and diverse as zoology, cartography, comic books, cupid, and nudity. Which is to say that the book has as much vigor as it has Latin.
We wanted the actual presentation of the book to convey that spirit, and its beautifully campy cover certainly helps. There was some pause in planning the book’s back cover, until a few heads here came together and hit on a really inspired solution. On the left, they placed a rendering of the statue Laocoön and His Sons (a photograph of which is above), which depicts the strangling by serpents of the priest who warned against accepting the Trojan Horse. To the right, they set a New Yorker cartoon by the beloved Charles Addams. Titled Laocoön Sausage, the cartoon depicts a butcher and his sons struggling valiantly with a string of links, in clear echo of the serpentine struggle beside it. (You can see the image about halfway down this page). This diptych, at which one can’t help but chuckle, immediately communicates the ethos of this book, which Michael Dirda, writing in the Washington Post, called “one of the best bedside books you could ask for.”
The book’s editors are the classicists Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most, along with art historian Salvatore Settis. In the book’s preface they explain that though so much of post-classical life is infused by ancient models, the interpretation of those models is often well off the mark. Far from an offense, they say, it’s often been these “creative misunderstandings that have preserved the ancient heritage and made it useful for later needs.” Against the scholarly score-settlers that pedantically correct modern mistakes and destroy the fascination in the process, the editors of The Classical Tradition embrace the entrepreneurial misuses to which history has been put:
“The history of the reception of classical antiquity, as of any work of the human spirit, must balance, delicately and not unproblematically, between an unwavering commitment to uncovering as far as possible the truth of both ancient and modern cultural formations on the one hand and an undogmatic appreciation of the endless resourcefulness and inventiveness of human error on the other.”
They’ve conceived The Classical Tradition as a guide pointing out the ways that “the post-classical tradition has drawn sustenance and inspiration from (revering, but also misunderstanding and opposing) classical antiquity.” They mean the book to fill an only recently opened void in our cultural memory. For a long time, any serious European or American education included a firm grounding in the classics—often followed, in the case of well-off young men, by a “grand tour” visiting the sites that gave rise to ancient glories. But as this practice has eroded (the pros and cons of which development have been debated elsewhere, and also here, elsetimes), so too has the average educated person’s understanding of the many ways in which the ideas, practices, and artistry of ancient Greeks and Romans have permeated almost every aspect of Western culture from antiquity to the present day.
The Classical Tradition is bringing it back, without stomping on the fun. So, if you ever wonder where Ajax cleaners got their name, or about the roots of astrology, or just what Picasso was on about, or the actual stories of Pandora, Spartacus, or Arachne, then spend some time with this great new book on Western cultural heritage.
