The Greek Experience

by Cecil Maurice Bowra

Mass market paperback. "Here is the grandeur that was Greece -- its magnificent achievements in art, philosophy, government, science, religion... from the time of Homer to the fall of Athens. With 48 pages of b&w photographs.

Genres: History, Greece, Nonfiction, Classics, Ancient, Ancient History, Philosophy

223 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.

Reviews

[max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the last half century or so, many books have been published that provide a general overview of ancient Greek civilization, focusing on art, drama, literature, religion, architecture, philosophy, politics, etc. See, for example: The Greek Way, The Ancient Greeks, The Greeks, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter, The Ancient Greeks, The Classical Greeks. Written for non-specialists, these books might be said to fall into two categories: the ones that are written by journalists or amateurs, and the ones that are written by Greek scholars. This one is by an author in the second category, Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra (1898-1971), a distinguished professor of Greek at Oxford.

Bowra's scholarship, while not especially original or pathbreaking, was nevertheless sound and substantial. His style in this book is eminently readable, and you feel from the first page that you are in the company of a man whose knowledge and understanding of the full scope of Greek culture is unsurpassed. First published in 1957, the contents are as follows:

1. The Unity of the Greeks
2. The Heroic Outlook
3. The Gods
4. City and Individual
5. The Good Man and the Good Life
6. Myth and Symbol
7. Imagination and Reality
8. The Plastic Vision
9. The Place of Reason
10. Epilogue
Notes
Index

Throughout the book he liberally sprinkles quotations from the Greek authors to support the points he makes about what the Greeks believed. These quotations are carefully footnoted. There are numerous authors cited: Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, a wide range of poets (including the tragedians, Pindar, Bacchylides, Theognis, Anacreon, Simonides) and other writers. The abundance of quotations from such a broad range of Greek authors is impressive.

In his Preface, the author claims that he is not attempting to give a comprehensive treatment of the Greeks and their world. Instead, he states, his book "aims at assessing what is most characteristic and most striking in them." In this he succeeds admirably. In fact, his consistency in staying on this message is the book's chief virtue. Rather than offering up a boring recitation of the Greek achievement in a narrative that marches in lock step with history, he concentrates in his individual chapters on what the Greeks believed in and how these values (e.g., the heroic ideal and the "four cardinal virtues" of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom) were at work in their various accomplishments.

The book holds up remarkably well more than fifty years after its publication. I strongly recommend it to anyone wishing to gain a deeper insight into a civilization that has yet to release its powerful grip upon our intellectual life.

[Lucynell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books about the Greeks I ever read, possibly the best. This of course may mean that I've not read anywhere near enough, which is true, and also that most dealing with classical Greece are simply hard to read, which in my humble opinion is also true. This one covers the whole Greek achievement from the age of Homer to the fall of Athens in 404 BC and at 230 something pages it could only be a summary. Well, as summaries go, this one's hard to beat. It's not just the ground it covers and the depth it reaches or whatever, it's also and most importantly the delivery which is at times breathtakingly vivd and lucid. This guy must have been a terrific teacher. It's not a walk in the park, not for the uninitiated like myself, but i really don't know how any one could bring us any closer. Really, unmissable.

[John Ratliffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The experience of the ancient Greeks holds a special place for those who are interested in the history and development of western philosophy and knowledge, and the late Professor Bowra, a distinguished classical scholar, has skillfully led us down a different sort of path to understanding this fascinating civilization. This book is not a dry recitation of the chronological history of the Greeks, but rather a lively dance through their attitudes about the way to live and love. He provides exhaustive detail of their art, poetry, gods, and codes of honor. In some sense the detail sometimes becomes a little too heavy for popular reading, but anyone who has a strong interest will have it requited by absorbing as much detail as possible.

Sir Cecil closes the book with a brilliant epilogue summarizing the strong and weak points of this civilization and reveals the conditions requisite for both its rise and fall. There is much to learn here that relates to other societies including our own; that is, if we only care to pay attention.

Plus, I felt a deep satisfaction to see the following recommendation from one of the greatest British travel writers, Patrick Leigh Femor, who himself served World War II British intelligence in Greece, and built a beautiful house in Mani where he lived out his life:

"One has the compelling impression. on closing the book. of having finished a masterpiece."

My sentiments exactly.

[Edward Polson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up in a thrift store in Manitoba and read in the wine-chilled summer sun on the shores of the Lake during a week off work. A beautiful memory to look back on, now it is indeed a memory.

I know nothing of the author’s historical pedigree (other than that he was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, renowned in these fallen ages as a hive of woke Marxist poison), but in the opening pages the way in which he sets the scene reassures me that he understands well the vital importance of the Greeks:

“If they themselves lived in their own Mediterranean world, it has been so glorified by soaring fancy and emulous desire that it seems to have no place on our workaday planet.”

“Behind the power and pomp of Rome men felt [...] a driving, daemonic force, a sunlit ideal, a perfection of achievement, which was somehow not ROman, even if it accounted for everything that mattered most in Rome.”

Quite so. Whilst he is incorrect in asserting that “the Greeks of historical times were physically a mixed people” [indeed, he is a lot less convincing when talking about ‘society’], he raises some interesting theories about how the Greek landscape itself shaped the Greek experience:

“The quality of light [...] is unlike that of any other European country, brighter, cleaner, and stronger. It sharpens the edges of the mountains against the sky, as they rise from valleys or sea; it gives and ever-changing design to the golds and hollows a the shadows shift on or off them; it turns the sea to opal at dawn, to sapphire at midday, and in succession to gold, silver, and lead before nightfall; it outlines the dark green of the olive-trees in contrast to the dusty or ochre soil; it starts innumerable variations of color and shape in unhewn rock and hewn stonework. The beauty of the Greek landscape depends primarily on the light, and this had a powerful influence on the Greek vision of the world. [...] Such a landscape and such a light impose their secret discipline on the eye, and make it see things in contour and relief rather than in mysterious perspective or in flat spatial relations.”

Those who have been to Greece will be able to relate exactly to what he writes. Looking out over powerful verdant headlands through the haze of the sun, you are able to imagine yourself a soldier in the Peloponnesian War, almost sense the surging boats of the enemy approaching…

Bowra is also good on ‘The Heroic Outlook’:

“The essence of the heroic outlook is the pursuit of honor through action. The great man is he who, being endowed with superior qualities of body and mind, uses them to the utmost and wins the applause of his fellows because he spares no effort and shirks no risk in his desire to make the most of his gifts and to surpass other men in his exercise of them. His honor is the center of his being, and any affont to it calls for immediate amends. He courts danger gladly because it gives him the best opportunity of showing of what stuff he is made.”

“Since man has a certain nature, this nature finds its fulfillment in certain ends. [...] This is to develop his arete, or inborn capacities, so far as he possibly can.” Greeks for this reason doubted “whether a slave can have arete in any real sense, since he is not free to be himself as he would wish to be.”

“Honor is more positive than negative; its obligations are more to the fore than its prohibitions [...] Pericles even applies this to the making of money: ‘As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it; the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it.’”

“Just as the hero differs from the common run of men in the unusual degree of his dynamis, or innate power, so a city displays its vitality by exerting the same force over other cities.”

This reader has very little to add to these curated passages, and Bowra expresses well heroic attitude of the Homeric Greeks.

Next, he covered religion. “A people gets the gods which it deserves”, so says Bowra, and so too did Emperor Julian in his treatise Against the Galilleans. The Greek gods uniquely represent its people: their religion has “no eminent propher or law-giver who expounded the nature of the gods, no sacred books whose authority is final on doctrine or morals, no central organization for its hierarchy, no revealed cosmology, no conception of a dedicated religious life, no insistence on orthodoxy, no agreed eschatology, no accepted scheme of redemption. Greek religion shows its essentially Greek character by not conforming to any plan and by its generous freedom and inclusive tolerance.”

The Greek religion and conception of the gods mirror their own conception of freedom and liberty as being at the center of life. It is the ambition of all Greeks to emulate through heroic action the Olympians. Bowra quotes Pindar: “We can in greatness of mind / Or of body be like the Immortals, / Though we know not to what goal / By day or in the nights / Fate has written that we shall run.” This exaltation of youthful body and mind is central to the Greek experience. “Theognis complains that men are fools to weep for the dead and not for the flower of youth as it perishes.”

The Gods were not active agents in the lives of the Greeks, nor were they evoked to browbeat and harang the independent spirited, as would later become the case with Christianity:
“A man felt that he owed certain obligations to himself, to his own idea of what he ought to be, and that if he carried these out, he was satisfied and asked for no further required. Even if he believed that the gods watched his actions and approved of them, he still acted from his own inner promptings and found in the gods the kind of approval which he thought to be natural in such a case.” To demonstrate this, Bowra quotes the Athenians to the Melians: “So far as the favor of the gods is concerned, we think we have as much right to that as you have [...] Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men leads us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule wherever we can.”

All of this is underscored by a fundamental pessimism which again is unique to these people. The “Greeks had a certain melancholy perspective on world: their zest for life was countered by a sense that nothing is worth doing and that it is best not to be born. [...] They accepted [...] that much of life is indeed frail and unsubstantial and that even the greatest endeavors might fail, but they believed that it could suddenly be enhanced and illuminated and made full and wonderful. [...] At such times a man realizes his full nature and , if the gods are willing, enjoys an exalted happiness, which is indeed like their own in its celestial completeness.”

Bowra then covers the Greek conception of the Good: I was interested to read his criticism of the Greek conception of the good man, that “it applies almost exclusively to the naturally gifted and leaves the rest out of account. It demands not only intelligence but inborn qualities of courage and even temperance, which are not given to everyone. [...] For them [being good] was a privilege allotted by the gods, just as the gods allotted good and bad fortune. [...] They felt not indeed that every man is free to fashion his own destiny, but that, being what he is, he should make the most of himself, and in this sense Heraclitus was right when he said ‘Character is destiny’.”

Finally, Bowra considers the Greek arts and science. Poetry is portrayed as an extension of warfare and athletic feats as being something which in moments is able to transfigure human life to Olympian glory: “Poetry not only warms the heart but sheds a special radiance of the subjects which it celebrates, a celestial brightness which somehow brings man nearer to the enduring brilliance of the gods.”

The themes of Greek poetry and drama are typically the heroic warfare, athletic competitions and drinking festivals discussed previously. The “Greek artists were drawn to any subject which possessed life and movement and embodied dynamis of inherent power.” This Apollonian art of violence and death evokes “an exalted delight”, for further consideration of which one need look no further than Nietzsche’s (The Birth of Tragedy) - indeed, are there any other quotes in this review which make you think of Nietzsche at all?

Interestingly, it is suggested that the development of science is linked and even derived from Greek excellence in the arts: “Because their sharp eyes were trained on the visual arts and took pleasure in noticing details, the Greeks were naturally keen observers and regarded observation as a human activity which called for no apology.”

Bowra concludes by tying the decline of classical Greece to “a diminution of vitality and confidence, a tendency to question much that has before been taken for granted, and a refusal to attempt tasks which did not offer immediate results” which this reader cannot argue with, though perhaps some further detail on the “diminution of vitality” would be welcome.

In the meantime, we are left with a comprehensive adumbration of, as was noted in the introduction, a unique people upon whose achievements civilization was built and who still represent the gold standard of human potential.

A people who experienced in such profusion eros, qua “intellectual and spiritual passion”, as a “power which drived a man to throw his full personality into what he does, which sustains him in powerful exertions and impels him to unusual efforts, which sets his intelligence fully and actively to work and gives him that unity of being, that harmony of his whole nature, which is the spring of creative endeavor. It not only removes many doubts and hesitations but by concentrating all a man’s faculties on a single point sharpens his vision of it and enriches his understanding. If the complete force of a man’s nature works as a single power, he is a full man, and no Greek of the great days would have denied that this was the right and natural way to behave.”

Would strongly recommend it for anyone who wants a primer on various aspects of life in Ancient Greece, although take some of the social, political and moral observations with a pinch of salt. Nietzsche will help you with this.

[Stuart Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the Ancient Greeks, from the time of Homer to the fall of Athens in 404 B.C. Not a history nor a display of Greek life, but an investigation into the people themselves. How they became a solidified group, due to their geographical isolation, the poor aspect of the land, and the easy access to the sea, which allowed for commerce throughout Greece. How their common language and beliefs influenced their culture. The Greeks were made a tough people by their rugged land, they valued heroic performance in battle and their Gods reflected that opinion. Each Greek valued himself on his dedication to self-improvement, in body and mind, and everyone was expected to produce something of value for the community. The city-state was second only to the family, and all did what they could to improve it. All endeavored to live the good life, and their poetry, philosophy, and sculpture all showed the ideals of their goals.

Well written and easy to follow, a valuable work for those who would like to know the minds of the Ancient Greek.

[Kalinda Vathupola · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book that attempts to reconstruct answers to the questions: “What did the Greeks think?” and “Why?”

It left a profound impact on me, tumbling me down a path of distaste with our current, American society. Coinciding with my move to Seattle, I’ve come to question if a society, like that of the Greeks, based on virtue ethics is preferable to an individualistic one where the citizenry fattens itself in a hamster wheel of wealth accumulation and consumption, so much so that it becomes self-consuming. In a way, it’s ironic how similar the zoloft-popping woman with ballooning lips is to the homeless man smothering his face in drug-laced foil: just buy happiness. So goes my quest for meaning…

[ultraman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terminé de leerlo y me fui a uno de los departamentos de Fantino que figura en la causa Independiente

[Noa Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad and diverse book which does well to cover the range of greek society. Worth a read if only the first half.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the important texts for those interested in the Greeks.