http://newramblerreview.com/book-reviews...imaginings
EXCERPT: [...] Though Whitmarsh’s book moves chronologically, from the time of the Homeric poems down to Byzantium, much of the (slight) evidence for what he calls the “atheist revolution” in Athens is simply passed down, repeated and repackaged over the years.
He also subscribes to the proposition, put forward by David Sedley, of an “atheist underground”. Again, the evidence is slight, the argumentation interesting, but conclusions uncertain. It all depends on whether or not Plato’s—or rather his character the Athenian stranger’s—exclusion of atheists from the ideal city (not Athens) in Book 10 of the Laws reflects an Athenian reality around 350 BCE. There is simply no way of knowing, and Sedley and Whitmarsh both seem to want to find what they do in fact find, card-carrying atheists to serve as progenitors of those moderns whose voices have been heard in recent years. Whitmarsh develops this supposed underground into “virtual networks” of atheists connected across the centuries. In reality the same names keep being brought up, with one or two additions, suggesting that the candidates are fairly limited....
EXCERPT: [...] Though Whitmarsh’s book moves chronologically, from the time of the Homeric poems down to Byzantium, much of the (slight) evidence for what he calls the “atheist revolution” in Athens is simply passed down, repeated and repackaged over the years.
He also subscribes to the proposition, put forward by David Sedley, of an “atheist underground”. Again, the evidence is slight, the argumentation interesting, but conclusions uncertain. It all depends on whether or not Plato’s—or rather his character the Athenian stranger’s—exclusion of atheists from the ideal city (not Athens) in Book 10 of the Laws reflects an Athenian reality around 350 BCE. There is simply no way of knowing, and Sedley and Whitmarsh both seem to want to find what they do in fact find, card-carrying atheists to serve as progenitors of those moderns whose voices have been heard in recent years. Whitmarsh develops this supposed underground into “virtual networks” of atheists connected across the centuries. In reality the same names keep being brought up, with one or two additions, suggesting that the candidates are fairly limited....