I wanted to like this book more than I did. Ancient Greek has been waiting its turn for a long time on my list of languages I want to learn. Like Sanskrit, which I learned in order to penetrate more deeply into the literature, culture and philosophy of ancient India, I have seen Greek as a door into another world. Ancient cultures are so different from our own that when we read their authors in translation, we are especially vulnerable to the assumptions, beliefs and skill of the translator, who must choose a single rendering among many possibilities to convey the intent and sensibility of the author, while often effacing the ambiguity that resides in the original expression. When you read the original text, you have direct access to both precision and the subtlety of the author's expression.

So I was receptive to the Marcolongo's passion for Greek and the access it provides to the unique sensibility of Hellenism. But this passion leads to maddeningly exaggerated claims, undermined by her subsequent analysis.

We will never know for certain how a Greek word is pronounced. The sounds of Greek have vanished forever along with those who spoke it. We have their literature we can read and study them, but we can't pronounce them. They have come down to us silent. Stifled. Voiceless. [53]

The first sentence is accurate, but the subsequent hyperbole is at odds with her detailed explanation of Greek pitch accent, rhythm, vowel length, and the like. Likewise, she sets up a discussion about how Greek survived Roman invasion with, "Rome only succeeded in imposing its language on races open to social change." [192] Not exactly how imperial conquest works.

The book is part memoir and part instruction. Perhaps it would have succeeded better had it committed more fully to one or the other.