Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us

Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us by Ferdinand Mount. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781847399342.

So much about the society that is now emerging in the twenty-first century bears an astonishing resemblance to the most prominent features of what we call the classical world - its institutions, its priorities, its entertainment, its physics, its sexual morality, its food, its politics, even its religion. The ways in which we live our rich and varied lives correspond - almost eerily so - to the ways in which the Greeks and Romans lived theirs. Whether we are eating and drinking, bathing or exercising or making love, pondering, admiring or enquiring, our habits of thought and action, our diversions and concentrations recreate theirs. It is as though the 1500 years after the fall of Rome had been time out from traditional ways of being human. This eye-opening book makes us look afresh at who we are and how we got here. Full Circle is not only wonderfully witty and brilliantly astute, but also profound and often disquieting. Ferdinand Mount effortlessly peels back 2000 years of history to show how much we are like the ancients, how in ways both trivial and crucial we are them and they are us.