I’ve mentioned Neville Morley’s Theories, Models and Concepts in Ancient History before, but hadn’t said anything about Ancient History: Key Themes and Approaches. This is because I thought they were similar books. I’ve got a couple with differing UK and American titles. In fact it’s another good book – though Morley didn’t write much of it at all. This is because it’s a source book.

What Morley’s produced is a treasure trove of opinions on various topics connected to ancient history. The first section tackles various topics. The subjects you’d expect are listed like, Christianity, Myth and Tyranny and one or who you might not, like Magic and Divination and Euergetism. Part Two tackles specific writers, both historians and people from other fields. So you get highlights from Foucault and Marx as well as Finley and Gibbon. The snippets are well chosen and give plenty of starting points for discussion.

As an example here are two from Archaeology. (more…)