Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization

by Bruce S. Thornton

In the classics departments of today’s universities, Bruce Thornton says, the Greeks are accused of stealing their achievements from black Egyptians, of oppressing their wives and daughters, and of hypocritically speculating about freedom while holding slaves. Most of all, classic Greek culture has come under attack precisely because its glorious achievement, extended into history, is what defines the West and makes it distinct. In Greek Ways, Thornton clears away these misconceptions. Writing with wit and erudition, he discusses in fascinating detail those areas of Greek life - sexuality and sexual roles; slavery and war; philosophy and politics - that some modern critics have made into “contested sites.” Perhaps more importantly, he also reclaims the importance of those core ideas the Greeks invented, ideas about human fate and purpose that have shaped the modern world. Nearly seventy years ago, Edith Hamilton published The Greek Way, a book that educated two generations of readers about the debt we owe the handful of city-states that developed “the spirit of the West” some 2500 years ago. Bruce Thornton’s Greek Ways is for our time what Hamilton’s book was for a prior era: a classic inquiry holding up a mirror to Greek culture in which we can see ourselves.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Greece

198 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2000

About the author

Bruce S. Thornton grew up on a cattle ranch in Fresno County, California. He received his B.A. in Latin from UCLA in 1975, and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature: Greek, Latin, and English, from UCLA in 1983.

Thornton is currently Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University in Fresno, California. He is the author of eight books and numerous essays and reviews on Greek culture and civilization and their influence on Western civilization. He also has written on contemporary political and educational issues, as well as lecturing at venues such as the Smithsonian Institute, Hoover Institution and the Air Force Academy, as well as numerous colleges and universities.

He was a 2009-2011 Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he currently is a research fellow.

Reviews

[James Magrini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thornton’s book, listed as an instance of “historical-cultural” critique, sits between Thomas R. Martin’s historical study, “Ancient Greece” and Jean-Pierre Vernant’s philology/cultural anthropology, “The Greeks”. Thornton’s expressed views are far more consistent with Bernard Knox’s scholarship than the scholarship of Edith Hamilton. Ultimately, it appears that Thornton owes a heavy debt to Jacob Burckhart’s ideas contained in the monumental study, “History of Greek Culture.” Indeed, Thorndale concludes the text by paraphrasing Burckhardt, “We must listen to the Greeks not because they will give us the answers, but because they first formulated the questions and problems [we continue to confront] …to do otherwise…is to accept our own decline” (p. 198).

The 7th century (BCE) lyric poet Archilochus wrote, in a preserved fragment, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big, great thing.” Undeniably, the author of “Greek Ways” (Bruce Thornton) is an archetypal representative of Archilochus’ latter classification. For there is a single, powerful idea or theme running through the entire analysis, providing coherence and unity to this admirable study, namely, the understanding of and the ability to find a virtuous middle path (moderated mean) between the “vices” or sins (hamartia) of excess and deficit - hence stressing, in an Aristotelian manner, the rational Greek mind as embracing, exercising, and instantiating the virtue of “moderation” or sophrosynē, and such a difficult skill or gift, is in great part responsible for the “Greeks creating Western civilization.”

The wisdom and message of the book in its essence, is contained in and conveyed by the Sophoclean choral ode - “Ode to Man” (Stasimon 1 - Antigone) - and this is quoted by Thornton: With a sense of tragic irony, humans are both “wonderous” (capable of many great things) and at once “terrible” and dangerous - the Greek term “deinon” can mean both things - capable of destroying themselves and the world around them. Humans, displaying rational thought and good judgement, must uphold sanctioned laws and embrace an unwavering sense of justice, all the while keeping hubristic (overly, blind passionate) drives in check that hold the dangerous potential for utter destruction, e.g., think of King Oedipus here. Again, the path of “moderation” and the acknowledgement and understanding that human potential is vast, but always tempered by limits, is required to achieve personal and ultimately cultural greatness.

This theme is the thread readers follow like Theseus to find a way out of the dark labyrinth of nihilism we now find ourselves in. Thornton, guiding the way, takes us in fine detail through issues relating to the archaic/ancient Greeks’ unique and complex views on love (eros), woman, slavery and the roots of emancipation, war, politics and “zōon politikon,” rational man (zōon logon echon), and autonomy with the related notions of personal, civic, and philosophical freedom - all contributing to the Greeks’ “critical spirit,” which is our Western inheritance from the ancients, that is, if we wisely and courageously choose to embrace it!

All the chapters are well-organized, well-written, and presented with an overabundance of sources ranging from secondary scholarship to primary sources, i.e., ancient Greek historians, poets, tragedians, statesmen, philosophers, sophists, and the early historical biographers, Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius, to name but two.

As a former educator and perennial learner, I found Chapter six (“The Birth of the Rational Man”) most informative. It highlights - although rightly avoiding a definitive judgement - the historical split or chasm developing for the Greeks between logos and mythos, and in the process the author focuses on the Greeks’ crucial move to embrace abstract thought: “As far as we know,” observes Thornton, “they [the Greeks] invented an explicit theoretical and abstract view of nature” (p. 141), e.g., as we encounter in the pre-Socratics, the ancient “physikoi” (naturalists).

The Greeks demonstrate, and here the ancients’ logos-and-bios/ergon are united, that “Learning…is the most valuable activity for a human” (p. 145). Aristotle claims that all human beings, due to their nature, inhabit the world in a way in which they are “stretched out to the condition of learning,” for there is a natural (physis) desire, an exigent ontological need, so to speak, to question and interrogate our lives and the world (Metaphysics, 980a). The early pre-Socratic Heraclitus (“The Obscure One”) also recognizes this, stressing that the lovers of wisdom (philosophers), if indeed they are lovers of wisdom, must launch inquiries into many things concerned with wide ranging subjects (Fr. 35).

This notion of “learning as critical, ever-renewed inquiry” (because the limits of human wisdom/finitude much be acknowledged) might be productively related to envisioning a novel and vital re-conceptualized view of contemporary education, for as Thornton rightly observes, “Today…a trite anti-rationalism has been institutionalized in our culture” (p. 160). Standardization, scripted curriculum, quantitative achievement, mind-mapping, critical thinking templates, etc. are all powerful reasons that contemporary educators might benefit greatly by engaging the Greek wisdom found in “Greek Ways”.

The Greeks offer us a view of humans (students!) as free, critical, and productive individuals and never mere “products” of an education system to be forged, stamped, and churned out with dizzying monotony. “Learning,” in our contemporary models, is literally determined in advance when the objectives and standards of achievement are employed to determine the very learning-process itself - instead of “dialogue” our students experience an “authoritarian” form of “monologic” education, where students are treated like empty vessels (inferiors) to be filled by the learned authorities (superiors) - those in the possession of knowledge. Socrates is clear in the Symposium when speaking to Agathon that authentic learning never happens in such an impersonal manner (“additive learning”), i.e., through rote transfer, and instead Socrates stresses, as Thornton highlights, a view of philosophical “dialogue” (dialogic learning) that more resembles a vital and dynamic model of education that we now know as “integrative learning”.

In 1959 William Barrett (“Irrational Man”) warned of the mind-rotting dangers associated with rising “anti-intellectualism.” Thornton, in 2000, responds to the similar, seemingly endlessly repeating, crisis of “anti-rationalism,” and observes, regarding those who would hubristically flout the tragic wisdom of Sophocles, “The West has also been at times appallingly destructive, magnifying the powers of the evil inherent in all human beings” (p. 198). In this contemporary era, at the time of this review (2026), not only is anti-rationalism prevalent, but there is also a radical and ramped distrust in science, situating us in a uniquely bleak and dark, disturbing epoch of “destitution,” as Heidegger was fond of saying.

The ancient Greeks that Thornton vividly brings to life for readers, should serve as inspiration, offering a “prescription” for the maudlin “diagnosis” described above, gifting us works that stand the test of time, writings that are rife for emulation, potentially contributing to a much needed course correction before we run out of road and find ourselves careening off the cliff, launching ourselves into the abyss of history.

I close with Thornton’s wise remarks: “The critical consciousness inherited from the Greeks has been the key to the remarkable ascendency of the West. Science, technology, individualism, liberal democracy, natural rights…All are ultimately the precious cargo of the Greek way of looking at the world” (p. 196).

I recommend Thornton’s highly readable and deeply researched book; much can be drawn from it.

Dr. James M. Magrini
Former: Philosophy/College of DuPage

[Mike Yell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alright, so I am a history teacher and love reading history. But this book goers beyond history into thoughtful historical interpretation and demonstrates how the Greeks (basically the ancient Athenians) are responsible for our civilization. The Greeks were indeed the crucible of the Western world.

[Doug J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. Americans need more Latin and Greek instruction.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly good book about the Greek foundations of Western Civilization, marred perhaps only by the author's insistence on a Christian worldview that has little to do with the Greek classics, and attempts to downplay Greek sexuality other than heteronormative notions reinforced by that Christian worldview. The author seems to have a bit of a blind spot about his own biases in these areas, but other than this, the book is quite scholarly and well-written.

[Paul Brandel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a little surprised so few people have read and rated this fine book on what we Western s owe the Greeks.
I'm proud to an cultural descendent of those amazing Greeks.

[Tim Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting examination of the influence of Greek thought.

[Rob Squires · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtfully written and well-organized dialectic. If you're interested in learning what our culture owes to the Greeks, but don't want the their flaws and vices to be whitewashed, then this is worthwhile.

I only gave it four stars since the final two pages were rather simplistic and wrong-headed, in contrast to the rest of the book.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a very informative book. Explaining how Modern Civilization is indebted to acient Greece for Democracy.