Review of Star, Apocalypse and Golden Age

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: This is the end (Robert Cioffi).

Apocalypse and Golden Age: The End of the World in Greek and Roman Thought
by Christopher Star.
Johns Hopkins, 320 pp., £40.50, December 2021, 978 1 4214 4163 4

Excerpt:

Greek and Roman literature has sometimes been thought immune from apocalypse, or outright opposed to it: Rome was after all known as the eternal city. But in Apocalypse and Golden Age, Christopher Star argues that Greeks and Romans were, in fact, pioneering and often deeply pessimistic thinkers about the long-term future of humanity. In contrast to Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts, they do not often imagine the survival of humanity, much less a new transcendent world and an eternal reward for the righteous. ...

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