One World (2021) p/b 322pp £9.99 (ISBN 9780861541218)
Using the device of extensive conversations with his dog Una, a lurcher, as they go on walks around North London or sit indoors sheltering from bad weather, W. has produced a passionate and amusing defence of the continuing relevance of Classics in all its forms. He asserts: ‘A language is only truly dead when it is no longer on lips, in minds, in hearts.’
W. draws on his experience as an on-line Classics tutor to stimulate, amuse and inform the reader, while finding a myriad of doggy connections and doggedly employing as much canine word play as he can.
The twelve chapters contain helpful inset boxes with titles such as: Divinities: The Second Eleven; Philosophers and how to spot them and The Trials of Odysseus. Five appendices include basic Latin grammar, useful Latin phrases, the Greek alphabet, a list of the main Greek and Latin authors with brief information about them and a catalogue of what is shown on the Amyclae Throne. A bibliography and comprehensive index complete the volume.
The first chapter, An Introdogtion: These are the Dog Days, sets the scene and explains how both ancient Greek and Latin, their history, myths and literature have survived to the present day. W. comments: ‘If literature is the steak, then background is the Bearnaise sauce.’ He introduces Una to Iris, Cerberus, Liddell and Scott, Bellerophon, the Iliad and modern Latin media such as Nuntii Latini and Vicipaedia, among others. The next chapter, Cave Canem, Dogs in Classical Life and Literature, features dogs from the works of various Greek and Roman authors and includes an excursus on the myth of Cephalus. The more extensive third chapter, A Doggodly Digest, Who’s Who in Myth, covers the Olympian and other gods, both Greek and Roman, and several well-known myths, such as the story of Tantalus and his descendants, Pelops, Atreus and Agamemnon. W. explains to Una ‘the plasticity of myths’ and how different versions were conflated, which led to many contradictions. At the beginning of this chapter, W. briefly describes the Amyclae Throne in Sparta, which reminded the people every day of their mythical heritage.
Chapter 4 provides a relatively brief introduction to both the Latin and Greek languages and is aptly entitled: Latro, latras, latrat: A Note on Language. W. expounds on the challenges of trying to look up Latin and Greek words in a dictionary and looks at the history of the languages. He concludes, perhaps controversially, that: ‘Both Latin and Greek are worth the blood, sweat and toil of learning. Not because many words in English derive from them, or because you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, or because they are the foundations of European languages, or because it “trains your brain.” Because in learning them you will be able to read the ancients, to savour their words, and enter into their minds.’
Chapters 5 to 10 focus in more detail on specific works, genres or authors, but always include plenty of reference to the roles played by dogs. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are summarised in the fifth and sixth respectively, with the former including a section on the rest of the Trojan cycle and Schliemann’s excavations. A chapter on Virgil’s Aeneid contains a digression into other stories of Rome’s foundation and history and an explanation of Roman citizens’ three-part names. This is followed in Chapter 8 by a discussion of Ovid and, in particular, his Metamorphoses. W. next turns his attention to the Greek tragedians, outlining the origins of Greek tragedy and later developments, describing the Great Dionysia and explaining the differences in style between Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. He uses The Oresteia as a detailed example and compares the three poets’ versions of the Electra story. Catullus and Sappho are his final choice of writers in a chapter aptly entitled Hounded by Love.
The volume is completed by a chapter on the history of ancient Greece and Rome and some of their historians, followed by one on daily life. This final chapter is entitled Doggy Style? Sex and Sewers and includes a discussion on homosexuality in ancient Greece.
This book is intended both to whet the appetite of those who know very little, if anything, about the Classical world, and to rekindle the interest of those who may have encountered classical subjects at school or elsewhere, but who have forgotten much of what they once learned. W. writes in a lively and informative way with much humour about well-known topics and more obscure ones. It is a book to be dipped into and revisited, rather than consumed all at once.
Marion Gibbs