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The Parthenon Enigma: a New Understanding of the West’s Most Iconic Building and the People Who Made It.

Amazon.com Price:  $14.84 (as of 03/05/2019 06:48 PST- Details)

Description

A New York Times Notable Book and one in all The Day-to-day Beast‘s Best Books of the Year
Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award

Since the Enlightenment, the Parthenon—the greatest example of Athenian architecture—has been venerated as the definitive symbol of Western democratic values. Here, Joan Breton Connelly challenges this conventional wisdom, drawing on prior to now undiscovered sources to present a revolutionary new view of this peerless building. Reaching back across time to trace the Parthenon’s story from the laying of its foundation, Connelly finds its true meaning not within the rationalist ideals we generally go together with Athens but in a vast internet of ceaseless cultic observances and a unique mythic identity, during which democracy in our sense of the word would have been not possible. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, and full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma sheds a stunning new light at the ancient Athenians from whom we claim cultural descent—and on Western civilization itself.

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