What do you think?
Rate this book
From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition
For several decades G. W. Bowersock has been one of our leading historians of the classical world. This volume collects seventeen of his essays, each illustrating how the classical past has captured the imagination of some of the greatest figures in modern historiography and literature. The essays here range across three centuries, the eighteenth to the twentieth, and are divided chronologically.
The great Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon is in large part the unifying force of this collection as he appears prominently in the first four essays, beginning with Bowersock's engaging introduction to the methods and genius behind The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's profound influence is revealed in subsequent essays on Jacob Burckhardt, the nineteenth-century scholar famous for his history of the Italian Renaissance but whose work on late antiquity is only now being fully appreciated; the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, whose annotations on Gibbon's Decline and Fall tell us much about his own historical poems; and finally W. H. Auden, whose poem and little known essay "The Fall of Rome" were, in quirky ways, tributes to Gibbon. The collection reprints Auden's poem and essay in full.
The result is a rich survey of the early modern and modern uses of the classical past by one of its most important contemporary commentators.
The great Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon is in large part the unifying force of this collection as he appears prominently in the first four essays, beginning with Bowersock's engaging introduction to the methods and genius behind The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's profound influence is revealed in subsequent essays on Jacob Burckhardt, the nineteenth-century scholar famous for his history of the Italian Renaissance but whose work on late antiquity is only now being fully appreciated; the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, whose annotations on Gibbon's Decline and Fall tell us much about his own historical poems; and finally W. H. Auden, whose poem and little known essay "The Fall of Rome" were, in quirky ways, tributes to Gibbon. The collection reprints Auden's poem and essay in full.
The result is a rich survey of the early modern and modern uses of the classical past by one of its most important contemporary commentators.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 25, 2009
2 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Glen W. Bowersock
35 books25 followersGlen Warren Bowersock is a contemporary American scholar of the ancient world. He is the author of over a dozen books and has published over 300 articles on Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history and culture as well as the classical tradition.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 1, 2020
The W.H. Auden is the portion of this book likely to be of greatest general interest. The rest of Bowersock's volume is frequently too specialized and, viewed as a whole, disjointed. Dating from 1978 into 2007 and ranging from the popular—'The New Republic'—to the scholarly—'Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society', these seventeen pieces represent more the broad range of their author's interests than any particular, unifying theme beyond, perhaps, his belief that the classics and ancient history retain some enduring relevance.
Two topics predominate: Gibbon and Cavafy. Indeed, the collection being divided into three sections by century, eighteenth through twentieth, Edward Gibbon alone runs virtually throughout. Bowersock argues and attempts to demonstrate that 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', despite its author's lack of German, poor Greek, limited sources, internal inconsistencies, plagiarisms, aristocratic bias, moralizing, presumptuousness and avoidance of original research or fact checking remains recognized as an unsurpassedly brilliant work of historical “imagination.” Constantine Cavafy, the diasporic Greek poet and neo-pagan Christian, is more confined to three of the twentieth century essays. He serves as a bridge to “Auden and the Fall of Rome”, which includes the poet's twice-rejected (written in 1966 at the request of 'Life Magazine', then rejected by both it and 'The Atlantic Monthly') “The Fall of Rome” and a lyric of the same name.
Like Cavafy, a poet spiritually drawn more to the old world than the new, sexually drawn more to young men than women, Auden's essay represents an existential confrontation of the classical celebration of homoeroticism with the Christian aversion to corporeality. Both writers had felt such tension in their souls. Both saw the popular fusion of paganism and Christianity in late antiquity as constituting a home large enough to accommodate the breadth of their beings.
This kind of questionable, yet provocatively plausible, argument runs throughout Auden's essay. He makes claims about Irenaeus and Augustine which are almost certainly false, but his very tendency to make large, controversial judgments makes his piece interesting in a manner that Bowersock's attention to demonstrable fact cannot. Auden's, like Gibbon's, may be a derivative and inferior history, but it also, at least in parts, is brilliant.
Two topics predominate: Gibbon and Cavafy. Indeed, the collection being divided into three sections by century, eighteenth through twentieth, Edward Gibbon alone runs virtually throughout. Bowersock argues and attempts to demonstrate that 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', despite its author's lack of German, poor Greek, limited sources, internal inconsistencies, plagiarisms, aristocratic bias, moralizing, presumptuousness and avoidance of original research or fact checking remains recognized as an unsurpassedly brilliant work of historical “imagination.” Constantine Cavafy, the diasporic Greek poet and neo-pagan Christian, is more confined to three of the twentieth century essays. He serves as a bridge to “Auden and the Fall of Rome”, which includes the poet's twice-rejected (written in 1966 at the request of 'Life Magazine', then rejected by both it and 'The Atlantic Monthly') “The Fall of Rome” and a lyric of the same name.
Like Cavafy, a poet spiritually drawn more to the old world than the new, sexually drawn more to young men than women, Auden's essay represents an existential confrontation of the classical celebration of homoeroticism with the Christian aversion to corporeality. Both writers had felt such tension in their souls. Both saw the popular fusion of paganism and Christianity in late antiquity as constituting a home large enough to accommodate the breadth of their beings.
This kind of questionable, yet provocatively plausible, argument runs throughout Auden's essay. He makes claims about Irenaeus and Augustine which are almost certainly false, but his very tendency to make large, controversial judgments makes his piece interesting in a manner that Bowersock's attention to demonstrable fact cannot. Auden's, like Gibbon's, may be a derivative and inferior history, but it also, at least in parts, is brilliant.
June 30, 2017
Bowersock has a lovely width of mind and a facility across fields, such that if you're a fan of Cavafy's historical poems, set in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine world, you won't want to miss this historian's appreciation of them: he documents how scrupulous in scholarship Cavafy was, and understands them as poetry too. The other highlight for me was 'Gibbon's Historical Imagination', recommended for admirers of the Decline and Fall.
November 13, 2024
A bit uneven. I liked some of the comments on Cavafy, and especially the essay on Gibbon's Library:
A personal library is not simply a collection of books. It is a mirror of its owner, but a magic mirror that reflects far more than the image that is put before it. It can expose secret aspirations and cut deeper than any scalpel into an unquiet heart. For the genius that Gibbon undoubtedly was, his library is our surest guide into his human frailty and his ambition. He could write and rewrite the pages of his Memoirs in quest of a perfect image of the historian of the Roman Empire, but his library was not so easily reworked. In its majesty and authority it reveals both the man that Gibbon was and the man he wanted to be.
May 6, 2009
I bought this book (at Amazon's prompting) because it promised essays on two favorite writers – Edward Gibbon and Constantin Cavafy. Bowersock is a classicist but he writes well, on recondite subjects that would parch your eyes in the prose of most scholars. (Example: an essay, which actually was a bit dry, on Gibbon's library.) He concludes with an amusing essay on Auden, who wrote a less amusing, barely-existing essay on "the fall of Rome" (but then Auden, for me, is always too didactic by half, a lane to the land of the dead).
I enjoyed the essays on Cavafy most. By fortunate coincidence, his book has appeared just as Daniel Mendelsohn's new translations of the Cavafy's poetry have been published. This slim book will appeal only to the bookish few who share Bowerstock's interests, but you won't be disappointed.
I enjoyed the essays on Cavafy most. By fortunate coincidence, his book has appeared just as Daniel Mendelsohn's new translations of the Cavafy's poetry have been published. This slim book will appeal only to the bookish few who share Bowerstock's interests, but you won't be disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews