The three volumes under review are part of the Wonders of the World series edited by Mary Beard and produced by Harvard University Press. The expanding series covers the Alhambra, Westminster Abbey, and other major monuments. This series is designed not only to present the various monuments in their original contexts, but also to include the major events in their subsequent receptions throughout history. This important methodological choice allows for the assessment both of the material remains themselves and of how inflections from previous eras continue to shape present outlooks.

Even though Cathy Gere, Simon Goldhill, and Keith Hopkins and Beard write separately, in their own voices, and about completely different subjects, there is a surprising degree of similarity among the volumes. They are all written with the general public in mind while reaching effectively to satisfy the academic mindset of specialists. Also, while providing a concise yet thorough account of the specific monuments, each author takes the opportunity to meditate on broader issues of social, political, and religious history. Finally, each author treats her or his subject as, in Goldhill’s phrase, “monuments of the imagination” by describing not only the physical remains but also how those remains have been ordered, represented, falsified, poeticized, or otherwise manipulated into narratives. The volumes offer journeys of discovery during which every reader will surely find surprise and delight. Much of the praise for this achievement should go to Beard as series editor.

The first of these three volumes to appear was Goldhill’s work on the temple mount in Jerusalem. Goldhill introduces the temple as a set of imagined structures, sometimes corresponding to a physical reality, but more often solely as a lost ideal. “Anyone discussing the temple,” he says in the introductory chapter, “inevitably gets drawn into national and religious history” (16). The volume explores how the clash of cultures and religion has worked from the beginning to create both the physical fact and the abstract ideal of the temple. The eleven chapters that follow take the reader chronologically from clash to clash, starting with the construction and destruction of the Solomonic temple (ca. 950–586 BCE), through the Persian-dominated second temple of Zerubbabel (ca. 516–19 BCE), to the third and last actual temple of Herod the Great (ca. 19 BCE–70 CE). From here, the temple becomes a series of reconstructions by participants in what Goldhill calls a “politics of yearning.” Rabbis create a temple of texts; Christians replace it with their very bodies and build churches to echo it; Caliphs dream of journeys to heaven; crusaders make of it a god-given stronghold; artists and archaeologists struggle with its absence; and tourists seek the satisfaction of direct contact with the miraculous past. Goldhill closes with some observations on how the temple mount plays a role in contemporary conflicts between the Israeli state and the Palestinians. This quick recitation of topics cannot compare to the richness of Goldhill’s treatment, and I was struck throughout by his skillful maintenance of a respectful tone even as he offers refreshing skepticism in his framing of grand narratives.

The Colosseum, begun by Hopkins and finished by Beard after his untimely death, was the next to appear. It too is an enjoyable account of responses to an architectural wonder. Among the imaginations that monumentalize the Colosseum in its pages are those of Paul McCartney, Mark Twain, Ridley Scott, and the Roman senator Cassius Dio. Rather than present a straight chronology, Hopkins divides the chapters thematically—a structure that allows for a discussion of the gladiator phenomena from several angles (sport, crime and punishment, romance), for a gathering of the various periods of decay and of subsequent motives for renovation, and for an assessment of the role of the structure in tourism, literature, and popular culture. General readers will appreciate the authors’ methods of making the ancient context vivid, such as hiring a modern contracting firm to estimate the price for construction of a similar monument today. Scholars may appreciate the authors’ summary of the debate on whether or not mock naval battles were staged in the Colosseum, the contextualization of Christian martyrdoms, and the reconstructed program for a day’s gladiatorial games. I have one criticism concerning authorial tone, which at times seems flippant toward its topics (perhaps more toward other authors’ writing on its topics). On page 16, for example, appears the claim that “all modern reactions—this book inevitably included—turn out to be a combination of admiration, repulsion and a measure of insidious smugness.” The smugness that I found from time to time in this book, however, does not strike me as inevitable—as when the authors choose to describe archaeologists who have labored over the difficult problem of deciphering the building’s structural history as having “amused themselves for centuries” (122), or when they claim that scholars who attempt to interpret Etruscan paintings as depicting gladiatorial precursors “scurry off unconvincingly” (119), or when they put the brutality of mythologized public executions at arm’s length with jovial references to modern pornographic fantasy (47). Another flaw with this volume is the omission of any discussion of Mussolini’s use of the Colosseum—how the Via dei Fori Imperiali was cut through the existing city to provide clear sightlines between his office and the monument or how it was evoked in the Colosseo Quadrato at EUR. Nor is there mention of the urban-planning decision to run a subway line right beside the monument, grandly naming one of its stops after it while creating serious problems for its preservation.

Gere’s Tomb of Agamamnon is also about much more than the titular monument. Perhaps the most impressive of the three, Gere’s contribution treats the whole site of Mycenae (as experienced by visitors from Pausanias to the present), and lingers on the narratives of Atreid and Trojan myths, as well as the career of the polymath Heinrich Schliemann. These major topics are interwoven with supplementary explorations of British, French, German, and of course Greek nationalism that run in a fascinating variety of directions (one of them takes us through the wardrobe into Narnia). Gere writes with an engaging, easy flow—a style that seems to correspond perfectly to the patient excitement of a stratigrapher. Her chapters treat the subject chronologically, and are unified by the idea that in every age those interested in Mycenae have looked there for their heroes and antiheroes. Beginning with the archaeological discovery of the site, the book proceeds through Classical and Roman treatments of the city, to the contesting views of Ottomans and Europeans, weighs the hopes of Greek revolutionaries and intellectuals, and assesses the agendas of nationalist tyrants. The book ends with a humanized Mycenae that mirrors the ideals of the European Union. Perhaps, in the end, it is Gere’s Mycenae (as accumulated in this book) that is the most impressive version.

One of the most satisfying aspects of the Wonder of the World series is the choice to use material from all major periods between the construction of these monuments and the present moment—in short, they offer a chronological survey of reception. The general reader will be rewarded with the sweep of the narrative through time, while the specialist, who has probably encountered much of the material in haphazard fashion, will appreciate having it all assembled so intelligently. On the other hand, the separation of scholarly documentation (provided in chapter summaries at the end of each volume) will occasionally present problems for the scholar who wants to verify statements directly—as when Hopkins and Beard refer to the archaeologists who suggest that the fame of the Colosseum is a modern invention (23). Leaving them nameless allows the suspicion that the charge is overstated.

The rewards held within these studies may be illustrated by mentioning a few of my own favorites. From Goldhill, for example, there is a tale that seems to come out of espionage fiction concerning the temple scroll being stashed in a cigar box by a shady figure named Mr. X. Goldhill also touches effectively on the many religious fundamentalists who have become preoccupied with the temple—the horrifying dreams of some evangelical Christians, Talmudic sects, Muslim radicals, and Masonic eccentrics are difficult to face. The other books are generally permitted by circumstances to be less sober. Gere offers delicious moments as she pores over the luminous names in the guest registry of the Belle-Hélène hotel near Mycenae, or admires the self-promotional instincts of Schliemann. I particularly appreciated her account of the career of the Greek archaeologist Christos Tsountas, about whom I am sad to confess I formerly knew nothing. Gere also traces the fascinating iconographic history of the swastika. As for Hopkins and Beard, their book on the Colosseum presents satisfying tidbits culled from Hawthorne, Byron, and Wharton, and amusingly debunks many popular misconceptions, such as gladiators having to say to the emperor, “We who are about to die, salute you!”

In short, these three volumes are so impressive that I am sure other readers will join me in my eager anticipation of future installments in the series.