Thonemann Peter - The birth of classical Europe: a history from Troy to Augustine

SIMON PRICE AND
PETER THONEMANN

A History from Troy to Augustine

ALLEN LANE
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

ALLEN LANE

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First published 2010

Copyright Simon Price and Peter Thonemann, 2010

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-194686-3

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF EUROPE

General Editor: David Cannadine

I: SIMON PRICE AND PETER THONEMANN
The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine

II: CHRIS WICKHAM The Inheritance of Rome:
A History of Europe from 400 to 1000

III: WILLIAM JORDAN Europe in the High Middle Ages

IV: ANTHONY GRAFTON Renaissance Europe, 13501517

V: MARK GREENGRASS Reformation Europe, 15151648

VI: TIM BLANNING The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 16481815

VII: RICHARD J. EVANS Europe 18151914

VIII: IAN KERSHAW Twentieth-Century Europe

already published

We are most grateful to those who have read individual chapters, or even the whole book: Michael Crawford; John Day; Peter Hainsworth; Irene Lemos; Elizabeth Nixon; Lucia Nixon, whose influence on the book is pervasive; Miranda Nixon; John North; Cynthia Shelmerdine; Philip Thonemann; Sarah Thonemann; and Roger Tomlin.

We are indebted to those who have helped us with excursuses on uses of the classical past: Lucy Bailey; Helen Barr; Nicholas Cole; John Day; Michael Dobson; Peter Hainsworth; Clive Holmes; Marie-Chantal Killeen; Bernard ODonoghue; Nicholas Shrimpton; and Jennifer Yee.

In the gathering of images for figures and plates, we are equally indebted to numerous people: William Van Andringa; John Baines; Maureen Basedow; Henry Hurst; Irene Lemos; Simon Loseby; Elizabeth Nixon; Lucia Nixon; Miranda Nixon; Damian Robinson; Eduardo Snchez-Moreno; Bert Smith; Cyrielle Thomas; Andrew Wilson; Greg Woolf; and others who helped us with illustrations that in the end could not be included in this book. We are also grateful to Aneurin Ellis-Evans for composing the index. The extract from The Ruin on pp. 3334 is from Three Old English Elegies, edited by R. F. Leslie (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, new edition, 1988).

Finally, we would like to record the splendidly harmonious and good-humoured nature of the collaboration between the two of us.

Oxford

July 2009

In October 2005 a huge steel, bronze and glass sculpture was unveiled outside the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.The sculpture, donated to the European Parliament by the town of Agios Nikolaos on Crete, depicts the mythological princessEuropa, cast in bronze, riding on the back of a steel and glass bull. Once upon a time (or so the story goes), the god Zeusfell in love with a beautiful girl named Europa. In order to gain her affections, Zeus turned himself into a magnificent bull,and carried her on his back across the sea to Crete. According to some accounts, one of their three sons was a certain Minos,who became king of Crete. So the Strasbourg sculpture acts as a elegant symbol for the place of Crete in the history of Europe:since Europa later gave her name to the continent of Europe, the Minoan civilization on Crete marks the true beginning ofEuropean history.