So much about the society that is now emerging in the twenty-first century bears an astonishing resemblance to the most prominent features of what we call the classical world
- its institutions, its priorities, its entertainment, its physics, its sexual morality, its food, its politics, even its religion. The ways in which we live our rich & varied lives correspond
- almost eerily so
- to the ways in which the Greeks & Romans lived theirs. Whether we are eating & drinking, bathing or exercising or making love, pondering, admiring or enquiring, our habits of thought & action, our diversions & concentrations recreate theirs. It is as though the 1500 years after the fall of Rome had been time out from traditional ways of being human. This eye-opening book makes us look afresh at who we are & how we got here. Full Circle is not only wonderfully witty & brilliantly astute, but also profound & often disquieting. Ferdinand Mount effortlessly peels back 2000 years of history to show how much we are like the ancients, how in ways both trivial & crucial we are them & they are us.