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Sailing the Wine Dark Sea

Why the Greeks Matter

by Thomas Cahill

Summary

In this accessible and often entertaining survey, historian Thomas Cahill reviews the achievements of Classical Greece and its huge influence on Western civilization. Beginning with an overview of Greek history-partly as Homer presented it in the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY-he goes on to focus on the other early figures who have most influenced Greek civilization (including Sophocles, Sappho, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) and to explore their contributions to modern attitudes toward, for example, war, philosophy, literature, government, and religion. He also writes about the interrelationships between Greek and Roman ways of thinking, and the influence of Christianity on the Greeks, and vice versa.

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Media Reviews

"Like having a worldly, well-versed, and imaginative uncle tell you a good story...."

"[Cahill] is a talented writer, and his tour of Greek culture is a triumph of popularization: extraordinarily knowledgeable, informal in tone, amusing, wide-ranging, smartly paced. We learn much from him about Greek achievements, from Homer's epic vision to the importance of free speech, from the development of the disciplined war machine the Greeks called the phalanx to Plato's love of reason. Cahill has produced an updated version of Edith Hamilton's beloved GREEK WAY of 75 years ago...."    -- Joy Connolly

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Anchor Books
Published date: 2004
Size: 5.25 x 8.25 inches
Weight: 0.75 pounds
Pages: 352

Publisher's Notes

In the fourth volume of the acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill brings his characteristic wit and style to a fascinating tour of ancient Greece.

The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft. Many of their achievements, particularly in art and philosophy, are widely celebrated; other important innovations and accomplishments, however, are unknown or underappreciated. In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill explores the legacy, good and bad, of the ancient Greeks. From the origins of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European tribes into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, to the formation of the city-states, to the birth of Western literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, art, and architecture, Cahill makes the distant past relevant to the present.

Greek society is one of the two primeval influences on the Western world: While Jews gave us our value system, the Greeks set the foundation and framework for our intellectual lives. They are responsible for our vocabulary, our logic, and our entire system of categorization. They provided the intellectual tools we bring to bear on problems in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the other sciences. Their modes of thinking, considered in classical times to be the pinnacle of human achievement, are largely responsible for the shape that the Christian religion took.

But, as Cahill points out, the Greeks left a less appealing bequest as well. They created Western militarism and, in making the warrior the ultimate ideal, perpetrated the assumption that only males could be entrusted with the duties of citizenship. The consequences of their exclusion of women from the political sphere and the social segregation of the sexes continue to reverberate today.

Full of surprising, often controversial, insights, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is a remarkable intellectual adventure—conducted by the most companionable guide imaginable. Cahill’s knowledge of his sources is so intimate that he has made his own fresh translations of the Greek lyric poets for this volume.

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