G. E. R. Lloyd and Jingyi Jenny Zhao, eds., in collaboration with Qiaosheng Dong, Ancient Greece and China Compared. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Abstract

This collaborative volume derives from a conference celebrating G. E. R. Lloyd’s eightieth birthday on January 25, 2013. Lloyd took a leading role in editing the book, which adds several papers (unspecified) that were not delivered at the original conference and omits some that were. As it would not be feasible to provide a full account of each chapter,1 I shall aim here to convey the overall strengths and weaknesses of the collection. Ancient Greece and China Compared contains several original and useful case studies preceded by many pages of general remarks that are less compelling.2 An example of the latter is Walter Scheidel’s chapter, “Comparing Comparisons” (40–58). Although his intentions are clearly laudable (he regards comparison as valuable, among other reasons, “as a way out of parochialism” [41], a phrase that he borrows from Lloyd and Nathan Sivin), he does not reflect on the reasons why scholars have been wary of comparative history. Much of the resistance, I suspect, stems from the perception that previous historians did it badly. I am referring not only to the growing dissatisfaction, in the Post-War years, with universalist narratives like those of Spengler or Toynbee,3 but also, in our