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TIME OUT FROM ENGLISH GRAMMAR
This section features wide-ranging, thought-provoking articles in English on any subject under the sun. Its objective is to present new, mind-changing ideas as well as to show to serious students of English how the various tools of the language can be felicitously harnessed to report a momentous or life-changing finding or event, to espouse or oppose an idea, or to express a deeply felt view about the world around us.
The outstanding English-language expositions to be featured here will mostly be presented through links to the websites that carry them. To put a particular work in better context, links to critiques, biographical sketches, and various other material about the author and his or her works will usually be also provided.
I hope you’ll enjoy the new selections that will be presented here each week.Joe Carillo
Peeling off the multilayered legends from ancient Greece
A Cambridge University classicist peels off the many layers of legend from the glorious stories of the heroes of ancient Greece, particularly Alexander the Great and the Spartans of Thermopylae. Michael Scott, in his recently released book From Democrats to Kings, presents new-found evidence that Alexander was actually a mama’s boy who infuriated his generals with his endless stream of letters from the battlefield to his mother Olympias.
Even more damaging to Alexander’s much-vaunted reputation as a warrior, Dr. Scott propounds the idea that Olympias was more fearless and violent in battle than her son, and that she was even suspected of murdering her husband, Philip of Macedon. As to the Spartans, Dr. Scott dismisses them as nothing more than a “bunch of bullying tugs,” war-mongerers who policed Athens with near-mindless violence.
This is according to a review of From Democrats to Kings by Paul Bignell in the October 4, 2009 issue of the Independent UK. In his personal blog last October 5, however, Michael Scott says that Bignell’s review—along with those of two other London newspapers—misrepresented the central arguments he made in the book. “My book doesn’t ‘threaten’ ancient myths and I am not ‘shattering’ ancient legends—my point is to explore them!” he explains.
