Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Med Men
The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World
By Cyprian Broodbank
Thames & Hudson 672pp £34.95 order from our bookshop
‘I don’t have time for all that weird stuff. Cut it out!’ The professor was berating me for a passage in a textbook for US undergraduates. The weird stuff was about Mediterranean peoples of the first millennium BC: the Garamantes, who crossed the Sahara in chariots and built underground irrigation channels in the arid Fezzan; the Tartessians of southern Spain, with their legends of long-lived kings; the Etruscans, with their strangely deferential attitude towards women; the Illyrians, reputed descendants of Polyphemus and Galatea, who defended themselves against Greeks and Romans from behind Cyclopean walls.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Feminists have been caricatured so often that it’s worth recalling the many obstacles placed in the path of women campaigning for equal rights.'
@polblonde on @helenlewis's new book about difficult women throughout history.
http://ow.ly/Is9c50ywe7G
'Too many historians sneer at our forbears; scolding them if they follow the customs of their own day ... tut-tutting if the poor things are detected having a little fun.'
From the archive, Mary Clive on medieval travellers.
http://ow.ly/yk8a50yrjSG
'Reading Taylor’s book has also made me join a book club. I did not like the January book; I did enjoy drinking gin while saying why.'
@clamorousvoice explores the history of women readers.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/she-readers