| Acropolis Now
Greek Culture Goes Pop It doesn't take a Delphic Oracle to notice that ancient Greece is the vox populi these days. The comic book racks feature the miniseries Age of Bronze, launching the Trojan War on the sandaled heels of Frank (The Dark Knight Returns) Miller's five-issue run on 300, which covers the Battle of Thermopylae. The same battle of 300 Spartans versus the armies of Asia is the subject of Steven Pressfield's novel, Gates of Fire. In Courtesans & Fishcakes historian James Davidson looks at the consuming passions of classical Athens. Online, the community traffic in AncientSites' virtual Athens (www.ancientsites.com) is number one with a javelin over the likes of moldy old Rome, Egypt, and Babylon. In Techgnosis,Wired contributor Erik Davis posits Greek mythology as a guiding light of the information age: "Lord of the lucky find, Hermes crafts opportunity like those brash start-up companies that fill a market niche by creating it in the first place… Apollo can be considered the god of science in its ideal form: pure, ordering, embodying the solar world of clarity and light. Hermes insists that there are always cracks and gaps in such perfect architectures; intelligence moves forward by keeping on its crafty toes, ever opening into a world that is messy, unpredictable, and far from equilibrium."According to Davis, Platonism foreshadows William Gibson's cyberspace cowboys whose spirits are released from the entropy of flesh. Ancient Greece has always played well in higher learning's ivory towers, but the today's surround sound is pure pop culture. Parallels between the millennium society and the world's first democracy, maybe. At any rate, the birthplace of the forum hasn't been this appealing in centuries. Age of Bronze, Image Comics 300, Dark Horse Comics, www.darkhorsecomics.com Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield: $23.95. Doubleday. www.bdd.com Techgnosis, by Erik Davis: $25.00. Harmony Books. Courtesans & Fishcakes, by James Davidson: $25.95. Dunne Books. AncientSites: www.ancientsites.com --Kevin Patterson |
 |
 |