Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Parthenon
    The Parthenon
    The Parthenon
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Parthenon

    Written by Mary Beard

    Narrated by Joan Walker

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Oscar Wilde compared it to a white goddess, Evelyn Waugh to Stilton cheese. In observers from Lord Byron to Sigmund Freud to Virginia Woolf it met with astonishment, rapture, poetry, even tears-and, always, recognition. Twenty-five hundred years after it first rose above Athens, the Parthenon remains one of the wonders of the world, its beginnings and strange turns of fortune over millennia a perpetual source of curiosity, controversy, and intrigue.

    At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this book conducts listeners through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. The classicist and historian Mary Beard takes us back to the fifth century BC to consider the Parthenon in its original guise-as the flagship temple of imperial Athens, housing an enormous gold and ivory statue of the city's patron goddess attended by an enigmatic assembly of sculptures. Just as fascinating is the monument's far longer life as cathedral church of Our Lady of Athens, as "the finest mosque in the world," and, finally, as an inspirational ruin and icon.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 24, 2019
    ISBN9781977349989
    The Parthenon
    Author

    Mary Beard

    Mary Beard is one of the most original and best-known classicists working today. She is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Classics editor of the TLS. She is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her books include the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2008) and the best-selling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015). Her popular TLS blog has been collected in the books It's a Don's Life and All in a Don's Day. Her latest book is Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017).

    More audiobooks from Mary Beard

    Related to The Parthenon

    Related audiobooks

    Ancient History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Thick as Thebans

      Mar 25, 2021

      Thick as Thebans
      6 min read

    • Article

      History’s Greatest Mysteries

      May 14, 2020

      History’s Greatest Mysteries
      36 min read

    • Article

      Turning Heads

      Jun 17, 2022

      Turning Heads
      4 min read

    • Article

      Reason AND Imagination

      Nov 1, 2023

      Reason AND Imagination
      6 min read

    • Article

      Strange Decline Of The British Museum

      Apr 3, 2024

      The other day, on the anniversary of my father's death, I paid a trip back to the British Museum to see some of the things we used to enjoy together. The Prints and Drawings Room used to let us both in – child though I was – to leaf through paintings

      3 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: US Should Build A Memorial 'Plague Column' For COVID-19, But Where? Here's An Idea

      May 8, 2020

      Plague columns don't exist in the United States. The nation was founded too late, after the 17th and early 18th century European heyday of memorials built to mark the end of a blistering contagion. An epidemic's brutal cost in human lives and its myr

      5 min read

    • Article

      No Common Or Garden Sculptor

      Sep 29, 2022

      No Common Or Garden Sculptor
      3 min read

    • Article

      Studio

      Nov 25, 2021

      THE ITALIAN ENGRAVER GIAMBATTISTA PIRANESI (1720 — 1778) is most famous for Imaginary Prisons, a series of dark, nightmarish images of the insides of colossal buildings [1] [2]. They contain stairways that lead nowhere, perspectives that contradict e

      4 min read

    • Article

      In Glorious Technicolour

      Dec 1, 2021

      IMAGINE a visit to the National Gallery in which every picture you see is black and white. The faces, the landscapes, even the dramas are all clear. They are simply devoid of colour. Fine, you might say, but something is missing. That is how I react

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 20, 2023

      Books
      18 min read

    • Article

      A Pilgrimage to Possagno

      Mar 4, 2021

      A Pilgrimage to Possagno
      3 min read

    • Article

      History

      Jul 28, 2021

      In the summer of 1851, 170 years ago, there was only one destination for the holidaymaker: London, and in particular Hyde Park, where the Great Exhibition was in full swing. Joseph Paxton’s astonishing Crystal Palace – doodled on a blotter when the o

      3 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Scenes At The Museums

      Sep 1, 2021

      WHEN I learned our local museum had landed an £11 million lottery grant, my thoughts returned to a Sussex garden, where we first encountered the extraordinary John Letts. Our friend called him a campaigning polymath. He set up societies the way a Fre

      2 min read

    • Article

      Medieval Life

      Dec 21, 2023

      Medieval Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Satire

      Jan 26, 2023

      THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE to be seen as devotees of the Muses are having a fine old time squealing about the Proletcult-style despoliation of the arts in Britain, with public funding being withdrawn by a Visigothic Arts Council from their frivolous pleasu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Renaissance Miracles

      Jun 2, 2021

      Renaissance Miracles
      4 min read

    • Article

      Black Madonna, or Which Do You Prefer?

      Sep 11, 2017

      Which do you prefer? The black or white Madonna of Chartres cathedral in France -- neither or both? Your call. Of this much there should be no doubt: Historical preservation is a cause well worth supporting. But which part of that history is best pre

      2 min read

    • Article

      The FOLLY & the Reason

      Dec 8, 2020

      The FOLLY & the Reason
      7 min read

    • Article

      Athens In Five Places

      Sep 28, 2023

      Athens In Five Places
      3 min read

    • Article

      A SONG for Europe

      Feb 20, 2020

      A SONG for Europe
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Parthenon

    4/5

    32 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      An excellent study of this iconic building. Thoughtful, balanced, and wise, it follows the history of the Parthenon from its construction through its later incarnations as church, mosque, powder magazine and (surprisingly late in the day) national monument. Beard is the ideal guide, never swayed by the political hysteria which dominates any mention of the temple nowadays. Equally useful as an introduction to the building and its controversies, or as a refresher for those more familiar with the issues.