18th c. understanding?

[Lyceum]

In the Classics the day of the dilettante is thankfully long past ... the days of writing about whatever the hell you wanted under the bland banner of "greco-roman" are pretty dead.

Interesting. Would you say the same of ancient history?

Honestly? No idea actually. One would think to a degree yes, I mean the things I point out that affect our perception of Greek culture, religion, literature etc also to some degree affect the way we view historical events. A prime example would be the burning of Persepolis, on one hand it looks like an act of vandalism but when you consider it in context it suddenly seems like a shrewd, religiously motivated, act by Alexander. Or simply realising the depth of Greece's integration with the near East might change things in general.

Obviously everyone benefits from new textual editions, better access to inscriptions and all that stuff. I think the gap between the amateur and the professional is pretty huge, yes, that doesn't mean you don't get good work done by the former and bad by the latter though. I've read things on this forum in the past that made a lot more sense than stuff I've seen in books by otherwise respective academics. Argument simply from authority is no argument at all, but obviously to some degree that authority has to be won somehow.

I do think that slowly the general perception of the ancient world is starting to change, not just the academic one.

hoc post edidit utor "Lyceum": Also I know this is RAT but I can't say much about Rome. I think we've came out of the habit of seeing ourselves in the Romans (and the Greeks) and that's helped a lot, plus there has been some attempt to put the Hellenic influence on Rome into context (i.e not omg copycats! which is retarded) and several notable advances on the Etruscans. We have a somewhat workable system for their inscriptions now, the archaeological work is getting very promising. Oxford is even trying to put together a chair on Etruscan studies. Even the treatment of "Barbarians" has changed dramatically, as seen on this very forum. It's a positive, obviously 100-200 years from now people will look back on the work we do now and laugh but Rome wasn't built in a 20 minute coffee break.