A few years ago, conservatives in Australia supported a push to get courses on Western Civilisation into universities, with generous funding from the Ramsay Foundation. They wished to combat what they saw as an overemphasis on the evils of colonialism and postcolonial exploitation and to reinstate a history proclaiming the benefits of European culture. At first glance, Roeck’s book matches this agenda. It retells, in updated form, the grand narrative of a sublime ancient Greek culture – described as ‘an unparalleled achievement of the human mind’ – transmitted by the Romans, then rediscovered and enhanced by the Renaissance, that ultimately brought the benefits of democracy and European science to the world. Its heroes (the word recurs repeatedly) are male thinkers, artists, and inventors, and its ‘modernity’ is exclusively European.