Acient Greek Mercinaries would have been a better title
358478
Other than the Name and a bit of lore in the opening credits, it really has nothing to do with Hercules.  Its a band of mercenaries fighting for the wrong guy, as often happens and then then being good guys they try to correct their mistake.  Its an ok Rock fighting film, I would have liked to see something more Herculean that just the Rock being strong and artificially so.  The fact that the Hercules legend was actually a group was an interesting twist, but much ado about nothing.  Sorry Dwayne!!
1624383
Great choice for those with no background in Homeric Greek.  Benner has more selections but is less user friendly.  Hopefully, more books of the Iliad will appear.
2188916
I don't know how to rate this and be fair to the author.  I was looking for a general reader's introduction to Constantine and his times, but this was not the book. I have no idea if it was a good representation of this Emperor, but I know this book was too academic for me.

The first third of the book is devoted to introductory material.  In the introduction, the author says this background is needed, but this background isn't re-visited much in the rest of the text.  The intro could be reduced by 80% without harming, and even helping the general reader.

Wanting to know about Constantine I stayed with it, but my retention was limited.  The narrative about Constantine was interrupted by too many explications of art work on coins, frescoes, buildings and memorials.  At times I felt I was reading a flood of facts.

Not knowing the limitation of the primary sources or knowing what a book on Constantine should include, I can't rate this book.  It may be a very good book, but my experience of it was not. I'll give it a middling number of stars.
4809674
I was a little disappointed. I went through the book and it seems to be for more advanced cooks. Majority of hte receipes call for a LOT of ingredients. I do have a nice variety of Middle Eastern Markets in my area but most of the dishes would be quite pricey to make because of the ingredients. Lots of spices not available in the local supermarket. Just looking through I saw one receipe that called for chicken hearts and livers, they use a spice called Baharat a lot which you can buy or make yourself and another ingredient I saw more than once was Baharat Spice ?  Not for the typical Americna like myself. The book has beautiful pictures of the food but I am positive it would not even look close to the photo if I made it. Interesting sounding receipes though like , Burnt Eggplant and Mograbieh Soup,Lamb stuffed Quince with Pomegranate and Cilantro and Wheat Berries and Swiss Chard with Pomegranate Molasses. So this definitely is not a book for someone new in the kitchen or new to Middle Eastern Food.
2575600
I've made 5 recipes from this book, and all have been a disappointment.  The recipes read well, but are over-elaborate and don't taste as good as simpler recipes I've made.

I did enjoy the family stories, but expected the family style dishes to be special.  They're not.

My favorite Greek cookbook, stories and recipes is "The Olive and the Caper".  Try that instead.
3311649
This was fascinating information about early Greece (really, Athens only) emphasizing its growth as an empire and how democracy started there. Then... all of a sudden ... Socrates appears and, just a few minutes later, we hear the story of his death for the crime of independent thinking (i.e. questioning everything, including the society and government).

Then, in just a few sentences, the narrator (Liam Neesom) tells us Athens turned away from empire building abroad and "to the empire of intellect that changed everything."  The End.

Yes, there were earlier mentions of Greek dramas like Oedipus, and brief mentions of a very philosophers like Thales. But Aristotle? Plato? So many others? Barely a sentence.

Where is the rest of this? And, if this is all there is, what a shame for all that was left out that could have replaced the emphasis on battles with Sparta and with the Persians. That is important, certainly, but not more important than Greek contributions to philosophy, science, mathematics, music, art and literature.  This documentary does a very, very poor job with all of those, but I gave it 4 stars just because it -did- have content and it -did- keep my interest throughout. Still, disappointing, unless it is part of a series on the Greek Empire that I can't find.
1318919
A fellow Amazon reviewer recommended this book, which he has recently read, with the catalyst being his sons graduation from college, with a now rather unusual degree, in The Classics. Prior to his recommendation, I was totally unaware of the A Very Short Introduction series, with, to me, the rather off-putting title, akin to the Idiots Guide to  The series title seems to imply a book without much meat, with information that a reasonably informed reader might already know. Far from it. Also, I assumed that Id be receiving a brief overview of classic works, much of which I have not read, from Homer through Plato and Thucydides on to Pliny the Elder and Ovid. Wrong again. But what I did receive was of much value, and my informal index of a successful work  the number of passages underlined  was high.

The authors, Mary Beard and John Henderson, teach the classics at Cambridge University (UK). They have written an engaging work, for someone like me, who (desperately!) needed some major lacunae in his education filled in. One of the central aspects of the work is how this ancient history still directly impacts us today, even though none of it was originally produced on electronic devices.

A focal point of their work is the temple to Apollo at Bassae, in a remote and bleak region of Greece, called Arcadia. I, like many people, had heard of the Parthenon in Athens. But I was totally unfamiliar with the temple at Bassae, which the authors indicate is the second most significant structure from ancient Greece. They describe how it was rediscovered by those outside the immediate area, which was under Turkish rule, in the 19th Century. It was a dangerous place to visit, with malaria and bandits prevalent. It would be a young architect, Charles R. Cockerell, who would have a leading role in the excavation, and the removal of many of the friezes to the British museum, where they remain today. Like the more famous Elgin marbles, the removal is still controversial today, but the authors point out that it was also controversial when it occurred, and quote Lord Bryon as one of the most vociferous critics.

Beard and Henderson emphasize that much of what we know about the Bassae temple would not be known save for the work of the Roman author Pausanias. The most famous painting of the temple was done by Edward Lear, which is one of the many illustrations in this work. The authors point out that the landscape surrounding the temple is actually the landscape of England, and not remote Arcadia. The authors also trace how this bleak and inhospitable region became a symbol in Western literature for an idyllic pastoral setting, almost a Garden of Eden. But to disabuse the reader of such romanticism, the authors emphasize that the work at the impressive temples of ancient Greece was performed by slave labor, and even include a drawing of slave collar. There is much, much else, from Karl Marxs doctoral dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus, and the atomic theory of matter, to the outbreak of the plague during the Peloponnesian War to James Frazers work&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Golden-Bough-A-Study-in-Magic-and-Religion-A-New-Abridgement-from-the-Second-and-Third-Editions-Oxford-World-s-Classics/dp/0199538824/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion: A New Abridgement from the Second and Third Editions (Oxford World's Classics)</a>, and the novels of Mary Renault.

Seemingly in contradiction to the very short title, this is a very meaty introduction, which provides more jumping off points for further reading than likely time available. I also note more than a hundred other titles in this series, ranging from the Druids and Game Theory to the Meaning of Life. Overall, for this work, 5-stars.
2041812
This is a book that is interesting to read and appears to be well-researched (more on that later) but it is also disappointing because it could have been so much more.

The main reasons I bought this book are because I wanted to learn more about western martial arts and Classical-era history in general.  It was definitely informative with regards to martial history, detailing the rise and fall of a number of different Greek & Roman empires and rulers and the significance of key battles and campaigns.

From a western martial arts view, it was more disappointing.  It had details about battlefield tactics and unit divisions.  It had some detail about arms and armor, although more would have been nice.  However, the periods it describes ARE quite a long time ago, so it is entirely possible the information is just not available.

Where I absolutely find fault with the book is in a distinct lack of guidance for those who would like to do more research.

 - There is no bibliography.

 - There are sparse chapter end-notes, usually about technical details that didn't really have a place in the text.  In a few cases, a sub-section will state which ancient author or authors in particular are the source for that particular subsection.  But generally, there is no way to tell which particular statements are based on which particular sources.

 - Sources for each major section are named at the beginning of that major section, along with information about whether the source had first-hand experience of what he wrote, what his background was, and whether he seemed to be relatively even-handed or definitely biased towards a certain viewpoint.  Also included is information about which ancient authors have works that are still extant and which authors' works are lost to us and known only through intermediate authors and secondary sources.  But many times the ancient authors are mentioned only by name and the titles of their relevant works are not included.  There is also no information about which particular authors & works have been translated and published in English.

So, for example, if I want to know more about Athenian light-armed troops in the time of the Peloponnesian war (mentioned in the last paragraph of "The Athenian Army" in the section titled "The Peloponnesian War"), there is very little information to go on.  The beginning of the section on the Peloponnesian war mentions Thucydides, Xenophon's "Hellenica", "other historians . . . of whose works only fragments survive", Plutarch, Theopompos, Ephorus, Cratippus, and a 900-line fragment from an Egyptian papyrus manuscript which may or may not be a continuation of Thucydides. Besides "Hellenica", do any of these other works have formal titles?  Are any available in English translations?  Which are available to the public, either through reprints that can be purchased or through public libraries, and which are only held in private or institutional collections?  And which, if any, of these were used specifically for the paragraph on Athenian light-armed troops and therefore might have more information on those troops?  You won't find any of those answers in the book.

Also, there are NO illustrations or maps and the book could have benefited GREATLY from these.

Finally, I was APPALLED at the number of spelling and grammar errors.  Does the author not proof-read his work? Does the publisher not have a copy editor?

In all, a decent introduction and overview, but this book could have been SO much better with some more time put into it.
2133103
On the surface this seems like a great idea: take short passages in Greek from Thucydides massive work and annotate them for the middle or beginner student. In practice it doesnt work out that well. As a beginner-middle or middle-beginner I find the commentary only partially adequate for some of the very difficult passages presented, such as The Melian dialogue. The cost is also an issue with the Bryn Mawr commentaries [see: Thucydides Book 6 (Bryn Mawr Commentaries, Greek)] much cheaper, and Thucydides: Events at Pylos and Sphacteria by M. Campbell more complete with vocabulary for each section and an extensive discussion of Thucydides grammatical eccentricities, which are legendary. Of course you get a greater selection in Blasys work, which is nice, but at the expense of clarity and coherence as it is mostly short excerpts.
880860
Enjoyable read but the fact that the characters call themselves "Byzantines" drove me crazy.  This is a made-up word.  The characters would have called themselves "Romans" and their land "Romania".  Also, I don't buy the ending.  If Maslama had a chance to take Constantinople, he would have done it--ghouls or no ghouls.
4822773
The storys theme was predictable, but I enjoyed feeling as if I was in Greece as I followed the characters. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if the family characters were both men and women.
902932
Published in 1972 by Oxford this is a well-researched work by a historian intent on demystifying the Greek Revolution. In this he succeeds in painting a tedious, painful account of the volunteers. Unfortunately the work downplays and ignores the role that ideology, national identity, spirituality, heroics had in the philhellenic formation of modern Greece. His bleak account is much too one sided and the academic narrative withers under the weight of his own narrow perspective.

According to St Clair, the philhellenes, European volunteers in the Greek Revolution were ineffective, prone to deadly infighting, falling prey to "Greek" starvation and disease (my Dickens what was London like in 1821?), brought poor equipment (pistols, swords and ceremonial dress), and suffered from the betrayal and general incompetence of the Greeks they came to aid. Additionally the Philhellenes (including Byron) were led there by false promises and false propaganda created by other misguided philhellenes.

Got it? St Clair tells us the war was won by accident at Navarino in any case and the long campaigns against Ibrahim Pasha and years of fighting attrition and slaughter by both sides was basically pointless.

St Clair explains how the Greeks adopted the European Philhellene notion of "regeneration," Regeneration being the notion of the connection of the modern and the ancient Greeks. By renaming streets after ancient historians and tearing down mosques we gather from St Clair that the modern Greeks are being silly. According to St Clair and consistent with his general perspective, "The Acropolis of Athens was stripped of everything and rendered a lifeless desert."

The book is a serious scholarly work however, one of a handful that broadly document events and personalities of the Greek War. Much of the book explores the relationship of the Great powers and their interest in the outcome. The author does present a wide array of facts (even with his sniping about diseases or Greek backwardness) and is evenhanded or even sympathetic to a few philhellenes, Thomas Gordon is spared (the fact that he settled in Argos is mentioned as an inconvenient fact) and the Bostonian Samuel Howe's philanthropic work is praised. However the author is intent on casting the struggle and the work of the philhellenes as a "cruel disappointment."  Modern Greece with all of its faults is a testament to the alternative point of view, namely that Greece remains free and its cultural legacy informs us all in part due to the sacrifice and mythologizing of the Philhellenes.
985833
The print is very small and the author's style is a bit challenging, Some of the research is well done, but much of the reliance on linguistic folk-etymology could be spurious.  His case would have been made stronger by a more thorough appeal to the archaeology and a better layout to include diagrams of the sites and better image plates.  Additionally this could have been put into two volumes.  The second I ould probably say should begin sometime after Herodotus.  The Pelasgian connections to the pit grave culture is interesting.  Many of his sources are not available in English, but the material is interesting and it represents a serious attempt to chronicle an area poorly understood by English speaking countries.
872296
kind of Meh. they mix up Greek and  Roman names for eh God's add quotes form other Authors and writers. Breaks up the flow of the reading.
3314474
This is an average explanation of the greeks but not how to adjust the position when the greeks go against you
4159880
Not a Greek student or proficient in Greek, But as soon as I received the book I opened my interlinear English-Greek New Testament and found the English word authority under the Greek word and looked it up. How? well I had a very rough knowledge of the Greek alphabet and proceeded
to find words starting with the first letter of the Greek word and the the first and second letters, the third and so on till I found the Greek word
I was looking for! It gave the same meaning as the Interlinear Bible English translation!
 However I find it weak on information about the book such as helpful hints on how to use the book, the Greek alphabet, and information
about the Greek language and translation guides, translation problems, etc.
I did however find this kind of information in the English-Greek NT that I used to find a Greek word to look up.
Worth the 35$ !
895791
Good greek myths like Polymphemeus's Cave and the Golden Fleece but still could have some improvement.