The Children of Athena: Greek writers and thinkers in the Age of Rome, 150 BC–AD 400

Written by Charles Freeman

Narrated by Mark Elstob

A compelling and fascinating portrait of the continuing intellectual tradition of Greek writers and thinkers in the Age of Rome.

In 146 BC, Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic; sixty years later, when Athens and other Greek city-states rebelled against Rome, the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato, laying waste to the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied. However, the traditions of Greek cultural life would continue to flourish during the centuries of Roman rule that followed, in the lives and work of a distinguished array of philosophers, doctors, scientists, geographers, travellers and theologians.

Charles Freeman's accounts of such luminaries as the physician Galen, the geographer Ptolemy and the philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with contextual 'interludes' that showcase a sequence of unjustly neglected and richly influential lives. Like the author's The Awakening, The Children of Athena is a cultural history on an epic scale: the story of a rich and vibrant tradition of Greek intellectual inquiry across a period of more than five hundred years, from the second century BC to the start of the fifth century AD.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803281940

Reviews for The Children of Athena

[Frank Spencer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is important because, as the author wrote, "There are certain epochs in European cultural history that many historians choose to ignore, leaving a gap in the record rather than exploring important intellectual trends and developments and addressing the achievements of some remarkable intellectuals. One such is the period of Greek history between the point when Greece came definitively under Roman rule in the second half of the first century BC up to the time when Christianity became
the dominant religion of the empire in the fourth century AD.

This is a well-written and well-paced profile of the Greek intellectuals of this much-neglected period of history.