Nadya Williams’ Christians Reading Classics: What the Ancients Can Teach Us

I love old books, but sometimes the gulf between the culture in which a book was written and my own is so great that I fail to get the original intent of the author. Nadya Williams’ new book, Christians Reading Classics, is an invaluable guide to some of the most time-tested classic works from the ancient world, and it can help bridge that cultural divide. It is divided into five parts, in rough chronological order.

Part I is Longing for Eternity, and it covers Homer’s The Iliad, Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, Pindar’s Odes, and the Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. Each chapter is relatively short but packed with profound insights. For example, in her analysis of The Iliad, Williams writes,

The externally governed nature of this heroic code – that one is only a great hero if this person is recognized by others and has accumulated great prizes of honor, including prizes that are real people! – is a warning to us as we consider how aspects of such a code appeal to our own desires even today. Each of us wants to be declared good – as God once spoke when he created Adam. In fact, we would like to be declared “the Best”, and we would like this coronation to come unconditionally from absolutely everyone around. But our worth and any declaration of goodness, excellence, and ultimately righteousness is to be found in God alone, not in other people’s view of us. The suffering of the heroes in The Iliad and in other ancient epics, where heroes do all they can to be declared “the Best”, is an important warning of what happens if we place our value in others’ opinion of us. It reminds us of the empty promises of this kind of glory – it cannot satisfy. (p. 9)

Part II: The Formation of Virtuous Citizens, covers Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle. These authors’ works are the high point of ancient Greek literature, and Williams makes the case that they wrestle with the issue of what qualities are necessary to be virtuous. Aristophanes used comedy and political satire to make his points, while Sophocles and Euripides used tragedy. At the end of each chapter, Williams includes some helpful questions. Here are the ones at the end of her chapter on Plato and Aristotle:

1. What do we learn about Socrates and the Socratic method from Plato and Aristotle?
2. What is the difference between eunomia and isonomia? Why does it matter?
3. Why did Aristotle consider poetry so important for the education of citizens? Do you agree? Why or why not?
   (page 113)

In Part III:  Words of Power and The Power of Words, we transition from Greek culture to Roman. It includes ancient Athenian forensic speechwriters, an entertaining overview of ancient “how-to manuals”, Cicero, Caesar, and Ovid. If there’s one obvious difference between Greek and Roman authors, it’s that the Romans are much more practical and pragmatic.

Part IV: Heroes and Role Models features Cato, Livy, Vergil, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Plutarch. These writers were alive from when the office of the Roman emperor was established through the turbulent and unstable second century AD. Williams makes an interesting point about how the new religion of Christianity made profound changes in Roman culture:

We can learn a lot about a culture’s values from seeing who its heroes are. In the ancient world before Christianity, these heroes were always famous politicians and generals – an overlapping category, for to be one was to always to be the other. Only after the rise of Christianity do we see different sorts of heroes arise: the meek, the lowly, and the ones willing to die for their faith. The rise of these new heroes correspondingly changes the genre of biography.
(page 218)

The final section, Part V: Virtues and Vices in the Age of Anxiety, brings us to the end of the Classical Age. We meet Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Perpetua, Cyprian, and Boethius. Williams makes a very compelling case that Athens (rationalism) needs Jerusalem (heart and soul), and Jerusalem needs Athens. You can have political leaders that are brilliant, but without virtue, they will turn into tyrants:

Socrates students were renowned as brilliant. They had received an excellent education. But lacking genuine character formation in the virtues, some of them turned that education against fellow citizens, overthrowing their democracy and ruthlessly killing anyone who opposed them. After all, selfishness and desire for power are the only impulses that do not have to learned – they are inbuilt.
(page 251)

Christians Reading Classics is an excellent introduction to some of the greatest thinkers and writers who ever existed. It is not a deep analysis of their works, but rather an appetizer that ideally encourages the reader to check out the actual plays, speeches, histories, and dialogs these men and women wrote centuries ago. Williams makes a strong case that they still can entertain and enlighten us. She includes recommended translations of every work she refers to at the end of each chapter. There’s a reason these are classics – they have stood the test of time, and generations of readers have benefitted from reading them.