Classical and modern interactions

by Karl Galinsky

Postmodernism, multiculturalism, the alleged decline of the United States, deconstruction, leadership, and values - these topics have been at the forefront of contemporary intellectual and cultural debate and are likely to remain so through the 1990s. Participants in the debate can usefully enlarge the perspective to a comparison between the Greco-Roman world and contemporary society. In this thought-provoking work, a noted classics scholar tests the ancient-modern comparison, showing what it can add to the contemporary debates and what its limitations are. Writing for intellectually adventurous readers, Galinsky explores Greece and Rome as multicultural societies, debates the merits of classicism in postmodern architecture, discusses the reign of Augustus in terms of modern leadership theories, and investigates the modern obsession with finding parallels between the supposed "decline and fall" of Rome and the "decay" of U.S. society. Within these discussions, Galinsky shows the contin