In his "The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome," Oxford University's Robin Lane Fox tries to distill 900 years of classical history from the beginnings of Greek civilization to the rule of Hadrian, the Roman emperor fondest of Hellenic culture. Throughout Mr. Fox explores the themes of freedom, justice, and luxury, which was also what the ancients concerned themselves with as well.



Freedom, justice, and luxury are also themes that the thinkers and legislators of both Britain and America, as Rome's heirs, would also worry much about. Alexander Hamilton worried incessantly about luxury, and how it would drain the fledging republic's treasury and moral character. When Edmund Burke warned of the tension between liberty and empire he was referring to how young Englishmen were raping India and returning with the spoils to corrupt the British political process: for Burke, empire was a direct threat to British liberty. A much more vivid example found in "The Classical World" was Julius Caesar, whose ambitions were realized when he took command of Roman legions in Gaul, raped and pillaged these territories at the cost of millions of lives, and used the plunder to assure his political ascendancy back in Rome. (This is a disturbing insight into the nature of empire: the ambitious must exploit and expand the fringes of empire in order to rise successfully in the center.)



Mr. Fox thinks very little of Julius Caesar, who in his opinion was a mere opportunist who succeeded because of fortunate circumstances and the incompetence of his enemies. Mr. Fox also has nothing but outrageous slander for the other enemies of freedom and the republic: Mark Anthony a stupid thug, and Octavian a cowardly manipulator. Before Mr. Fox also writes how in destroying Greek freedom in order to advance his sense of freedom Alexander the Great was merely a product of the Macedonian warrior culture who sought conquest for the sake of conquest. Alexander the Great also had the good fortune to inherit tough veterans (soldiers who were still menacing and hardy even in their sixties) from his father.



This is most unfair and unkind of Mr. Fox. Both Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were creative military geniuses, and in attacking Caesar so viciously for being the immediate destroyer of the Roman republic Mr. Fox forgets that neither Athenian democracy nor Roman republicanism were stable anyway. Human history is full of flux, and that's what accounts for creativity and diversity: Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism are temporary phenomena, as are Roman imperialism and the American hegemony of today.



If he's ambivalent about the Romans Mr. Fox has nothing but glowing admiration for the Athenians. Athens was one of many Greek city-states that were continually competing against each other. These Greek city-states were originally ruled by an aristocratic class that formed a powerful cavalry before they were overthrown by a change in military tactics (a hoplite formation whereby infantry could withstand a cavalry change) and by the disorder and instability caused by the aristocracy's inane self-defeating competition over luxury. Tyrannies arose throughout the Greek world to bring order and stability, but that threatened the Greeks' love of freedom and justice. The Greek city-states constantly struggled between order and freedom, and Athens upon overthrowing their tyrant decided upon a remarkable innovation: equal rights for all its male citizens. Male citizens were selected by lot to serve as magistrates in Athens, and so given the limited population of Athens every male had an opportunity to serve as magistrate in his life-time. Democracy required oratory, and with oratory culture and learning also flourished. The Greeks' love of freedom and their oratory were two critical factors in their successful defense against the massive Persian invasion, the definitive historical event in Mr. Fox's understanding that secured the safety of the young child of democracy in the world.



The Greeks' successors in upholding the Western tradition the Romans thought the Greeks were too dishonest, too clever, too corrupt, and too homosexual. If the Greeks worshipped the trickster Odysseus then the Romans worshipped Aeneas, whose one quality was that he was pious. The Romans were first and foremost pious, and they were a hardworking, virtuous, and simple breed who offered citizenship from all walks of life. Their virtues - honesty, simplicity, piety, and openness - were to be the bedrocks of their republic and their empire. Rome simply had the most stable, strongest, and most coherent society in their region, and it was natural that they would go out to conquer most of the known world. And when they did so it would also be natural that their original values would be diluted, and that they would over time become corrupted by luxury and empire.



Thus, what killed the Roman republic was the inevitable progress of history, and while Julius Caesar may have been a military genius he became one because Rome at that particular juncture permitted him to be one. After all, Rome had many military geniuses before, but the Roman people would have revolted against an all-conquering hero who tried too hard to push the boundaries of Rome, their traditions, and their liberty (for example, read Shakespeare's Coriolanus). By the time of Caesar, Rome was ready and willing to become an empire - all it needed was an emperor.



A book that attempted to cover 900 years of history in 600 pages is bound to be simplistic and reductive, and Robin Lane Fox clearly betrays his prejudices. Even Herodotus is fairer and more nuanced. Robin Lane Fox considers Themistocles an Athenian hero who saved Greek democracy against the Persians with his brilliant oratory and naval genius; Herodotus considers Themistocles a double-dealing thief who sought to save his own skin and who got stupid lucky against the Persians.



What ultimately propels the book is Mr. Fox's clear elegant prose, but even his writing cannot sustain the book. It is too long by half.