tamaranth | 2025/074: A Year in the Life of Ancient Greece

2025/074: A Year in the Life of Ancient Greece — Philip Matyszak

...the lad has now decided that he is off to Athens to study Epicurean philosophy – which would only be true if Epicureanism taught the importance of getting as far from one’s parent and potential spouses as humanly possible. [p. 60]

Having greatly enjoyed Matyszak's 24 Hours in Ancient Athens for its blend of narrative, historical fact and wry observation, I decided to try another of his books about Ancient Greece. A Year in the Life of Ancient Greece is set a couple of centuries later than 24 Hours, in 248BC, and explores the lives of a small cast of characters: a farmwife, a diplomat, an athlete (it's Olympics year), a female musician, an escaped Thracian slave, a merchant who falls ill in Egypt, a young woman due to be married, and a builder of temples. It opens with a nice little scene outside the Temple of Hera at Elis, with a group of people sheltering from the rain and a temple attendant contemplating who, and what, each of them may be. Over the preceding twelve months (starting from the autumn equinox) we discover their stories and how they're connected.

Lots of information about agriculture, about athletic training, and about medicine and music. I especially liked Kallia, who plays the lyre and has been composing her own work in unconventional modes, or scales: Thratta, the escaped slave who becomes a herbalist, is also a likeable character. I learnt slightly more than I'd expected about the mechanics and geometry of temple construction, and some unsettling facts about the role of women. (For instance, if an Athenian man died without male heirs, his youngest daughter would become an epikleros, having to divorce any husband she might have acquired so that she could marry her father's closest male relative and keep her father's wealth in the family.)

Fascinating, well-referenced, with copious footnotes and explanatory sections. Also a joke about the River Meander.