The Lyric Age of Greece Review

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(More customer reviews)The "Lyric age", in this book, is the period that follows on the "epic age" - the age in which the poems of Homer and Hesiod took shape - and precedes the classical age of Herodotus, Sophocles and Plato. (What would one call this, then? The tragic age? The philosophical age?). This is a large, learned and judicious book, shedding light over a dubious period without ever underestimating the extent of the difficulties in reconstructing a historiography from sources that vary from the contentious to the downright mythological. As one would expect from the title, the work of the early lyrical poets feature largely, but Burn makes excellent use of every kind of evidence, from legends recorded by Herodotus and Pausanias, to archaeology. The overarching nature of this study means that there is no central outstanding issue to praise or blame, but the covering leaves throughout an impression of insight and real knowledge; and while archaeology and scholarship have moved on since 1960 (when this book was first published), this remains an excellent introduction to an important and foundational period of history.

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