Massively informed and informative on all these, James Davidson also surveys the lesbian world of the poetess Sappho and female weddings in Sparta. His conviction is no less sturdy than his scholarship. The trouble many readers may have is not with this book’s argument but with its often intolerable diffuseness. Courtesans and Fishcakes, his earlier study of Hellenic mores, though praised to the skies for its gusto and fresh thinking, struck me as rambling to a point at which any clear, conceptual spine became helplessly obfuscated. Similarly The Greeks and Greek Love would have been a still more dazzling performance with the aid of a stern editor, impervious to the charm (abundant throughout) of either the author or his style. Such incidental details as the precise identity of the mythological reliefs on the giant throne of Apollo at Amyclae, the nature of the practice known as oiph-ing, indulged in by the youths of Thera or the fact that the mixture of oil, sweat and dust scraped from boys in the gymnasium was sold as a beauty product, fascinating in themselves, are symptomatic of Davidson’s fatal penchant (an Achilles heel indeed) for too much information, weakening the force of an otherwise vital and outstanding study.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP