Legendary lives

“Unfortunately, we modern people have often cultivated a dual attitude towards the ancients: on the one hand, we think that everything they said or did is sublime, worthy of being carved in marble, simply because it is ancient; on the other hand, for the mere fact that we have had the good fortune to come after them, we feel more evolved, more intelligent, more refined than they were. Perhaps we are mistaken in both cases.” This is how the author, a lecturer in Greek literature at the University of Trento, puts it in the prologue to this volume, and there is no doubt that his book is an excellent resource for learning how to avoid the mistakes mentioned above. Indeed, Ieranò presents some of the illustrious figures of classical Greece in all their concrete humanity, without turning them into untouchable icons, nor into dusty, obsolete relics. Drawing primarily on the writings of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, Ieranò presents the reader with portraits of Solon, Pisistratus, Leonidas, Themistocles, Pericles, Alcibiades, Socrates, Xenophon, Dionysius the Great and Demosthenes, without forgetting certain female figures to whom he devotes a particularly brilliant chapter. For each of these figures, the book recounts their lives and the events that shaped them, naturally prioritising the most significant ones, yet without neglecting to dwell on what we might call ‘curiosities’. In this regard, the description of Socrates – a giant amongst giants – deserves special mention; it includes much information that humanises him considerably, such as the biting irony with which Aristophanes treats him, reducing him to a caricature, or his physical ugliness, or his habit of walking barefoot through the streets of Athens, or, indeed, his stormy relationship with his shrewish wife Xanthippe. Having covered all this, Ieranò does not overlook the trial and death sentence to which Socrates fell victim, and which represent one of the most famous chapters in the entire history of Western culture. Who, then, was Socrates? A martyr for free thought? A wise man who paid for his moral intransigence with his life? The victim of a violent era characterised by bloody conflicts? The book’s conclusion is devoted to Alexander the Great. With him, Greek history turned a new page, and his story marked the dawn of a new world. The old world had faded away, leaving a legacy that should not be mythologised, but whose extraordinary richness continues to fascinate us.

    

Giorgio Ieranò
, "Legendary
Lives", Sonzogno, 270 pp., 18 euros