Audiobook5 hours
The Parthenon
Written by Mary Beard
Narrated by Joan Walker
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Oscar Wilde compared it to a white goddess, Evelyn Waugh to Stilton cheese. In observers from Lord Byron to Sigmund Freud to Virginia Woolf it met with astonishment, rapture, poetry, even tears-and, always, recognition. Twenty-five hundred years after it first rose above Athens, the Parthenon remains one of the wonders of the world, its beginnings and strange turns of fortune over millennia a perpetual source of curiosity, controversy, and intrigue.
At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this book conducts listeners through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. The classicist and historian Mary Beard takes us back to the fifth century BC to consider the Parthenon in its original guise-as the flagship temple of imperial Athens, housing an enormous gold and ivory statue of the city's patron goddess attended by an enigmatic assembly of sculptures. Just as fascinating is the monument's far longer life as cathedral church of Our Lady of Athens, as "the finest mosque in the world," and, finally, as an inspirational ruin and icon.
At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this book conducts listeners through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. The classicist and historian Mary Beard takes us back to the fifth century BC to consider the Parthenon in its original guise-as the flagship temple of imperial Athens, housing an enormous gold and ivory statue of the city's patron goddess attended by an enigmatic assembly of sculptures. Just as fascinating is the monument's far longer life as cathedral church of Our Lady of Athens, as "the finest mosque in the world," and, finally, as an inspirational ruin and icon.
Author
Mary Beard
Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at Cambridge University. Her many books include The Roman Triumph and The Fires of Vesuvius.
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Reviews for The Parthenon
Rating: 4.09374996875 out of 5 stars
4/5
32 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent study of this iconic building. Thoughtful, balanced, and wise, it follows the history of the Parthenon from its construction through its later incarnations as church, mosque, powder magazine and (surprisingly late in the day) national monument. Beard is the ideal guide, never swayed by the political hysteria which dominates any mention of the temple nowadays. Equally useful as an introduction to the building and its controversies, or as a refresher for those more familiar with the issues.