The question of life in the ancient world

Just what was life like in the ancient world? Michael Scott, Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics and Research Associate at Darwin College, shares some of his thoughts as he prepares to talk this Friday on 'Life in the Ancient World' as part of the Darwin Lecture series 2012. http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/30610 - A perpetual holiday realm, a foreign distant never-never land, a 'twin' of the modern era, a waste of space - ancient Greece has been all of these things and more to us over the centuries." - —Michael Scott There's a general feeling that we don't get the Greeks - ancient or modern. Many, including heads of state like Angela Merkel, visibly shake their head in exasperation, rightly or wrongly, at the Greek response to the(ir) economic crisis. And most newspaper articles either start or round up their coverage of the modern situation with some expression of nostalgic comparison to the glory days of ancient Greece. But to what exactly are we referring? Just what was life like in ancient Greece? It sounds a simple question, one which scholars around the world have been working on in various ways for hundreds of years. Surely, we should have a pretty good answer by now. And yet, the moment you scratch beneath the surface of the traditional comparison, the issue becomes more confusing. Compare, for a moment, the Romans. Most people, I would argue, have a pretty good picture in their heads about what the Romans were like. But the Greeks?