Linked by the events of Bernard Knox's re arkable life, the chapters of Essays Ancient and Modern cover subjects ranging from Hesiod, Homer, and Thucydides to Auden, Forster, and the Spanish Civil War. With a masterful eye for the telling detail, KNox continually reminds us that we share the present with antiquity's living past. A soldier in Itlay find a battered book in the rubble of a bombed-out firehouse--and opens it to read Virgil's denunciation of war. AN illiterate Greek bard composes a garbled Homeric song to celebrate the recent heroism of local partisans. A traveler heading north from modern Athens must choose between the Sacred way--or the NATO Road.
Whether the subject is the role of women in ancient Athens of the novelists of modern Italy, the wit and erudition of Bernard Knox never fail to instruct and delight. Now in paperback, Essays Ancient and Modern takes its place alongside the distinguished essay's of Knox's Word and Action, a book whose title brings together, in the words of Anthony Hecht, "the double strand of his admirable career."
