---
product_id: 8051564
title: "Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations"
brand: "mary beard"
price: "₩47828"
currency: KRW
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 11
url: https://www.desertcart.kr/products/8051564-confronting-the-classics-traditions-adventures-and-innovations
store_origin: KR
region: South Korea
---

# Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations

**Brand:** mary beard
**Price:** ₩47828
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations by mary beard
- **How much does it cost?** ₩47828 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.kr](https://www.desertcart.kr/products/8051564-confronting-the-classics-traditions-adventures-and-innovations)

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- mary beard enthusiasts

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## Description

Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations

## Images

![Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41WhDXunVML.jpg)
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![Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31CAnFBukFL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Must reads by an amazing historian
  

*by J***T on Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2023*

Mary Beard is among the best historians writing today. Her books on Rome and Greece are superb. Confronting the Classics was a real surprise for me. This collection of book reviews by Beard turned out to be much more readable and much more coherent and cohesive than I had expected. While I have read almost none of the books she reviews, that didn’t seem to make a difference. Yes, she is responding to the works of others. But, she adds to what they have said (or what they seem to have said), by taking the discussion to new levels. Mary Beard is best at asking unexpected questions. “Why do building have doors and what are they for?” Thought I knew the answer to that question, but it turns out that there is always much more to the story. And, it turns out that the functions of things and people in the ancient world is often different from I had supposed. With Mary Beard there is never a dull moment, even when the subject has the potential to be very dull in deed.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Impressive And Accessible Scholarship
  

*by J***D on Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2013*

Professor Mary Beard is one of the world's best known classicists.  That may not be all that enlightening to those of us who don't spend our time studying Greek and Latin literature and history, but do not fear to pick up Confronting The Classics on that account.  Beard writes engagingly and wittily, making the Greeks and Romans who are the subjects of these essays into real people rather than marble statuary or frozen mosaics. The essays in this book were originally written as book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and other British periodicals, or are transcripts of talks Beard has given. Reading them reminds me of some of the best of my own college professors, and makes me wish that I could be in one of Professor Beard's audiences.The book is divided into five sections containing 31 essays.  Chapter titles like "Alexander: How Great?," "Bit-part Emperors," and "Don't Forget Your Pith Helmet" are inviting, and they suggest a lightness of tone which does not detract from the soundness of the scholarship.  Much of the book unavoidably deals with the activities of generals, emperors, and empresses, but there is also a section called "Rome from the bottom up" which is concerned with ex-slaves, conquered peoples, and ordinary Roman soldiers stationed in far outposts of the Empire.  As a long time admirer of "I,Claudius", I enjoyed the chapters that dealt with the Emperors Augustus and Caligula and which described some of the efforts made by Jack Pulman and the producers to film Robert Graves' novel. Perhaps the most entertaining, if somewhat enigmatic chapter is "What Made the Greeks Laugh?", which reminds us that humor usually doesn't travel well or survive much past the time in which it was written.I enjoyed Confronting The Classics. It's an engaging, often amusing read based on very sound scholarship that opens the doors of the museums and libraries a bit to let us see the Greeks and Romans as actual people not all that different from us.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    disappointed to learn that so much ancient art is in ...
  

*by B***L on Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2014*

Although the Romans reportedly abhorred monarchy, they  now have a Queen of the Classics in Mary Beard. Ms. Beard is not sparing in her criticisms and one gets the sense that she believes that she is the last word on most things ancient. Nevertheless, she obviously knows her stuff, but more so, endlessly cautions that, very often in the classics, the story is far more than the evidence that supports it. I believe that the most we can know, particularly here, is that we don't know. Humans typically are impatient to find facts, and in this field, that is very dangerous. I was, at first, disappointed to learn that so much ancient art is in fact reproduction. After going to Pompeii last year, I read Ms. Beard's book on that subject and was again disappointed knowing that perhaps something I touched there was not actually there in 79 AD. But if that is the truth then so it should be told. I am reminded of a talk that Kennedy biographer Robert Dalleck gave where he described a young Vassar student who had a long affair with Kennedy while he was in office. A young woman asked him why he had to say that and apparently taint the image she wanted to harbor of him. Because it was the truth, he said. No more reason necessary.

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*Product available on Desertcart South Korea*
*Store origin: KR*
*Last updated: 2026-02-23*