Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter

The Hinges of History #4

by Thomas Cahill

In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore "the hinges of history," Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining—and historically unassailable—journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.

In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation—yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Greece, Ancient History, Philosophy, Historical, European History

304 pages, Paperback

Published July 27, 2004

About the author

Born in New York City to Irish-American parents and raised in Queens and the Bronx, Cahill was educated by Jesuits and studied ancient Greek and Latin. He continued his study of Greek and Latin literature, as well as medieval philosophy, scripture and theology, at Fordham University, where he completed a B.A. in classical literature and philosophy in 1964, and a pontifical degree in philosophy in 1965. He went on to complete his M.F.A. in film and dramatic literature at Columbia University in 1968.

In anticipation of writing The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. He also reads French and Italian. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York.

Cahill has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University, served as the North American education correspondent for The Times of London, and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Prior to retiring to write full time, he was the Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday for six years. He and his wife, Susan, also an author, divide their time between New York and Rome.

—Wikipedia

Reviews

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rather thought, when I picked this book up, that it would provide a great number of little known facts about the Greeks, that it would draw clearly the often hidden connections modern life has to the earliest democracy, and that Cahill would underline the importance of studying Greek culture for what it can teach us today. Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter is not really that book. In fact, Cahill’s book is really a quick dip in the bath of well-known Greek history and art, a cultural CliffNotes.

Cahill, who became pop-famous for his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, detailing how Irish monasteries kept up writing and copying manuscripts throughout the Dark Ages, has parlayed that success into a series of pop histories he names Hinges of History. These hinges are points in which the whole world could have gone one way or the other and why they fell the way they did. Hinges hold up doors; they should slam this one shut. At no point does Cahill demonstrate that this moment constitutes a hinge nor does he actually go about proving that the Greeks matter.

Does he show us how we can use Greek thought in the current world? No. Does he dig up forgotten Greek wisdom of some staggering utility for now? No. What he does is jog through the history and culture of a time and occasionally mention how that notion sure came in handy once upon a time.

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea spends a great, great deal of its length quoting liberally, using Homer’s epic poems (replete with deus ex machina out the wazoo and anachronisms up the ying yang) as though they were historical documents on par with Thucydidies — who he also ladles out with heavy hand. For this mythical leaning one can thank his Jesuit upbringing/education which does the same thing substituting the Bible for The Iliad. As the book progresses, Cahill lifts from Joyce, Auden, Tennyson, and every third Greek writer of note, padding out the thinness of his own ideas with poignant bits of poetry.

When Cahill discusses the origins of the alphabet, first a Semitic-Phoenician accounting tool, then with vowels added by the Greeks, there are rather interesting tidbits and I smacked my lips in pleasure. This was all I got, however, tidbits. The book lacks anything like scope of ideology, just sampling here and there from the Greek culture platter.

For tidbits, we are treated to this fact: the earliest Greek inscription currently known is on the side of a cup and notes that the finest dancer will receive the cup as a prize. Cahill comments that this differs from the furrowed brow of the believer (the Jews) and the green-eye shade hardness of the accountant (the Phoenicians), the two previous possessors of language. Irreverence makes its first recorded appearance at 700BCE on a cup inscription recommending drinking and fucking. The more you learn of Greek history, the more it seems that had the Greeks remained dominant, Western society would sure be a lot more fun.

Cahill takes a moment here to laud Greece’s phonetic alphabet innovations as being the seed-germ of enlightenment. His observation that if we wrote in cuneiform today we’d still have slavery is hard to argue against, as it is so filled with supposition that there is no point in even making the observation. It’s like suggesting that if we drank more wine we’d have fewer reality TV shows. You can not prove such an argument nor can you prove it’s faulty. It’s a Jesuitical fallacy one wishes Cahill’s editor had sliced from his reasoning or at least his teachers had drummed out of him lo those many years ago.

As a natural result of discussing alphabets, Sailing sails on to literature, where Cahill skims the surface a good deal and never dives deep into this wine-dark sea. Instead, he suggests that we shouldn’t take the comedy of a society as a good representation of the morality of a society, yet he makes no end of other kinds of literature, such as epics and epithalamia. This is simply the intellectual abuse of comedy that I’ve grown increasingly tired of the older I’ve gotten, the kind of commentary exposes an author’s narrow thinking. If comedy is of no use in determining morality — after all, what is funnier than pricking pompous moralists and shocking delicate sensibilities? — then neither are epics or any other form of literature. One just might as well have said that abstract painting is no way to understand the psyche of an era, and out goes Picasso’s Guernica as any kind of commentary on war in general and war in specific.

The discussion of literature leads to drama, which does allow Cahill to waste time regaling us with an excruciatingly detailed account of the story of Oedipus, including giving away that hoary old chestnut, the riddle of the Sphinx, in the bargain. He dwells on non-textual issues like how the black blood gushes from Oedipus’ sockets after he gouges out his eyes, demonstrating that Cahill was at least quite struck by one stage production he saw. But why does he go into such complete and total detail? Has anyone over the age of seventeen not heard this story yet? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Oedipus Rex is taught in the grand majority of English-speaking high schools. I’d even go so far as to say that having to read Oedipus Rex is as much an adolescent rite of passage as getting over wanting to fuck your parents. (I suspect if you were to read his other books, like the one on the importance of the Jews, you’d be treated to such things as lengthy Biblical quotes and a summary of the story of the crucifixion.)

Drama of course leads to philosophy’s most dramatic writer, Plato. Cahill’s chapter on philosophy doesn’t provide any cohesive arrangement that moves along, demonstrating refinement and the various arguments still at the heart of philosophical debate today. Rather, he gives us one little anecdote and character after another. This guy says water’s at the heart of the universe, this guy says fire, this guy says seeds. Whew, thanks for clearing that up. The remainder of the chapter consists of several page long Socratic dialogues lifted directly and lengthy summaries of same. Let me save you the trouble of reading this chapter and simply direct you to read the introduction to any volume of Plato dialogues (which will almost certainly include snippets of the pre-Socratic schools of thought) then read the dialogues themselves.

The book’s sixth chapter is almost entirely without any recognizable merit. Cahill, instead of using this space to educate the reader or to quote the half of The Republic he left out of the philosophy chapter, lends his lyre to straining metaphors, letting us know that ancient Hebrew is a tense, terse language, as efficient and stubborn as a Jewish desert nomad while Latin is the language of precise farmers who’ve gone into real estate as empire and Greek is the language of ebullient self-lovers. This is followed up with airy speculation on kouros (Greek statuary) as a projection of the ideal. And a thumbnail sketch of a variety of sculpture, next to worthless in audio form as we only have Cahill’s maudlin descriptions to go on. Cahill proves a strident mind reader, filling us in on what the various characters in sculpture and pottery paintings are thinking as they go about their drinking, gaming, lusting. And apparently according to Cahill, the only way we can know that females were at some point well-considered or publicly considered was if any nude sculptures ever were made of them. Internet porn and beer advertisements have shown how well that turned out, yeah?

Moving on to politics, Cahill quotes the full text of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, a 3,000 word speech about how great democracy is and how noble those who die to support it truly are. This is followed by Cahill’s lengthy love letter to John F. Kennedy as a man who really knew his Pericles. Politics leads to the destruction of Greek culture and Cahill slanders various factions, none more in Greece than the Epicureans who he paints as no more than debauched gluttons, the usual ignorant depiction. And none outside Greece come in for more spanking than the Romans, who he falsely declares as having no spirituality or sense of religion save what they stole from Greece. As though they had no beliefs prior to usurping the Greek model. This is so obviously false I won’t go into schooling readers of Cahill, save to recommend any other book on Mediterranean history than this one.

Having barely introduced us to “the plodding Romans” Cahill rushes them off the stage to suggest that it was only the meeting of Greek culture and Judeo-Christianity that was of any value in the development of Western culture. I won’t deny how influential Greek ideas were in the development of Christianity, but the shabby treatment of the Romans is unbecoming of a historian. It is the expansion of the Roman Empire, the absorption of the local mythologies of those they conquered, that shaped the hierarchies and ceremonies of the Catholic Church and through them the Protestants. What happened to more Greek influenced Christianity? It became the hodgepodge of Byzantium iconography enslaved by the Ottoman Empire, a poor companion to the lusty life that Western Christianity experienced as the mistress of Roman Imperialism. Almost the whole of the Church calendar is of Roman derivation, not Greek.

Once you subtract Cahill’s lengthy quotations and lengthier plot summaries of Greek literature, you’re left with not much more than a pamphlet on why the Greeks matter. And they do matter: they gave us democracy and types of warfare and literature about people. They matter like any other sterile old manuscript, dusty with age. Ho hum. Cahill fails to prove his primary thesis, that the Greeks do matter.

[Ammie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the negative reviews of this book point out that Cahill never says anything particularly original about why the Greeks matter, but be that as it may, it was a good overview for those of us who don't know much history. Also of note: he occasionally throws in inappropriate slang, like "hard-ass" and "schlong", which amused me more than it should have.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

What to make of this book? It is, for the most part, a genial introduction into the ways the modern world was influenced by ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Judaism, and Rome, but especially Greece. It is useful for readers who want to occasionally step back and ask questions about what led our society to internalize behaviors like hair-trigger militarism, sexual predation, and winner-take-all conflict, while at the same time cherishing deep familial bonds, tolerance for the religious beliefs of others, and the elevation of education and intelligence to positions of great respect.

Thomas Cahill tries to answer these questions, and more, introducing the achievements of the ancient Greeks without glossing over their failings. Democracy, that treasured gift that Athens is renowned for, was in fact reserved for a small minority of native born males. Those born elsewhere, in Greece or some other place, along with women and slaves, were excluded. Slavery was considered a natural condition, with even Aristotle saying that some men were born to be slaves, and much of the wealth of Athens came from its silver mines, where slaves were worked to death in terrible conditions that made even callous Athenians ask questions about what it meant to be human, and whether we owe anything to those unfortunates.

We should not forget that all of the ancient cultures were profoundly different from our own in many respects. We have taken some of their best traits and adapted them to our situation, but they lived in a demon-haunted world that tried to make sense of the inexplicable through gods and ghosts, curses, oracles and omens.

For those with no background in ancient history Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea provides a way of thinking about how those long-ago societies are reflected in our own. Even for readers who have some knowledge of those times Cahill can sometimes make observations that lead to new perspectives. For instance, we tend to overvalue the Spartans as indomitable super solders, but Cahill is correct when he says, “Landlocked Sparta...ruled by its gerousia, or council of old men, was an airless, artless nightmare of xenophobic military preparedness, the North Korea of its day.”

He provides a good general grounding in Greek philosophy, and then manages to distill its abstractions down to thoughtful moments that are worth reflecting upon, such as:

The tides through which we move—the highs and the lows, the peaks and the troughs—tell us repeatedly that nothing lasts and that all life ends in death. Let us temper our excitement and agitation, whether for the ecstasy of battle or the ecstasy of sex, whether over great achievement or great loss, and admit to ourselves that all things have their moment and are gone. If we live according to this sober knowledge, we will live as well as we can.

As we face our own turbulent political times, we can hope that our leaders would draw some things of value from Solon, who “favored relative justice, attempting to be fair while always aware that perfect justice was beyond human possibility. His genius for political compromise, which saved Athens from many disasters, stemmed from his vision that human beings must make themselves satisfied with pieces of temporary happiness that can never be complete.”

Cahill also reflects on something one of my college professors emphasized, that we should show understanding rather than contempt for the world’s misguided minds, while never ceasing to fight against the wrongs they champion. In the Symposium Plato reminded us that “ignorant people don’t love knowledge or desire wisdom either, because the trouble with ignorance is precisely that if a person lacks virtue and knowledge, he is perfectly satisfied with the way he is. If a person isn’t aware of a lack, he can’t desire the thing which he isn’t aware of lacking.”

And yet, for all his wisdom Plato too would often overreach, imagining worlds which we, flawed and ignorant as we are, can never achieve:

Plato made the fatal error of equating knowledge with virtue and assuming that if one knows what is right he will do what is right. After so much additional history, after so many failed utopias, we should know better, we who should try to envision only pretty good societies—relatively balanced, more or less functioning societies in which happiness is made as general as possible without anyone (or any class) ever getting everything he wants.

There is an interesting parallel between Greece and the Sumerians from thousands of years earlier, though it is not mentioned in this book. “[T]he Greeks never thought to unite all Greek speakers in one political union. Because each Greek gloried in his singular excellence—and each Greek clan gloried similarly—it was hard enough to unite a city. Each city or polis—from which come our words politics, politician, metropolis—thought itself unrivaled in some essential quality and reveled in its reputation.” Like the Greeks, Sumerians could create cities but not a unified nation. The problem with this mindset, whether in Sumeria, Greece, or medieval Italy, is that it is untenable when confronting the power of nation-states, and the individual cities are suborned or conquered one by one, and absorbed into an alien empire.

And so Greece passed under the sway of Rome, which admired Greek culture but remained resolutely pragmatic in its approach to life.

Roman religion was basically a businessman’s religion of contractual obligations. Though scrupulous attention was paid to the details of the public rituals, which had been handed down from time immemorial, it was all pretty much in the spirit of “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”—rituals for favors….Religion for the Greeks, though certainly more exciting than the Roman variety, was a public exercise, a demonstration that at some level all Greeks were united in their reverence for the same gods—and it tended toward the bland predictability of a stadium of Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

As the gods of the classical ages faltered they started being replaced by more energetic cults from the East, promising remission of sins and paradise rather than an eternity as faint shadows in the underworld. Christianity was one of these transformative mystery religions, one of many at the time. “Whereas fate was central to Greeks and Romans, hope is central to Jews and Christians.”

Christianity’s early theorists owed much to Classical philosophy. “Paul and Luke, who together account for about fifty percent of the writings of the New Testament, display a familiarity with Greek philosophy and even an attachment to Stoicism. This philosophy of self-denial also taught the brotherhood of man, based on the Stoical belief that every human being without distinction possesses a spark of divinity that is in communion with God, who in the Stoical system is called Logos”

This book’s value lies in moments like these if you already know something of the history, literature, and philosophy in the classical world. Cahill manages to extract insight from his overview of those societies, and reflects it back to us to help make sense of our own troubled times. Those looking for new scholarship or in-depth analysis will not find it here, but for the curious or uninitiated in the ancient world’s influences on our own, it is a worthwhile place to start.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving this one by Tim Cahill 3/5 stars. An entertaining read focusing on the legacy of the Greeks but not going into very much depth about it.
A further point--the book concentrates on Athens, which is understandable. But I would like to see what the other Greek city-states were doing and what they contributed. It would not equal the Athenian achievements but the other Greeks are almost completely overlooked ( at least following the discussions about The Iliad and The Odyssey).

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter - Nevisande : Thomas Cahill - ISBN : 385495544 - ISBN13 : 9780385495547 - Dar 352 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2003

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book #4 in the Hinges of History series. I enjoyed it, but was also disappointed. When I think of all the Greeks were and did, and how much they influenced modern civilization, I grow almost dizzy. So I was giddily anticipating this book, but it fell short of expectation.

However, I was intrigued by the notion of the Greeks as intellectual scavengers, sailing the Mediterranean to various ports, bringing innovative ideas and inventions back to Athens and integrating them into their culture. Eventually, these ideas trickled or gushed into other cultures, and remain part of civilization today. Interesting!

I read the first four books in the Hinges of History series, starting book 1 almost 20 years ago. They stuck with me fairly well. Since then, Cahill wrote two more books, but I have not read them. This is not fiction, but rather quasi-history told in an accessible narrative style. Each book examines how a particular European people changed the world (sorry Asians and Africans). The four cultures (one per book): Irish, Jews, Christians, Greeks. I enjoyed them all. They are easy to read. Not a historian, so cannot adequately argue Cahill's points. He probably stretched the "story" to make a strong case for the particular "gifts" he suggests the culture brought to the world.

I cannot recall whether Cahill included the contributions women made. I think not.

The most memorable book in the Hinges of History series is #1, How the Irish Saved Civilization. It's set in the Dark Ages, after Rome fell, when Visigoths, Goths, and Vandals plundered, burning books, libraries, monasteries, etc. I found it riveting, but doubtless there are some holes in his argument that Irish monks "saved civilization" by saving classic writings from extinction (by burning). They did so by copying ancient Greek and Latin texts (Ptolmy, Euclid, Cicero, Plato, etc), as well as ancient Biblical scriptures, creating illuminated manuscripts. The author is Irish, and probably biased. His argument is not fully convincing, yet interesting. He embellished on history, but admits it.

According to The Gift of the Jews (book #2), the Hebrew people introduced various key concepts to Western Civ: hygiene, kosher, the written word (along with Phonecians, Greeks, Sumarians, etc), a code of law, and monotheism, including caring for widows and orphans via a tithing system -- much like paying taxes. That's all I remember.

Book 3 is Desire of the Everlasting Hills, about the contributions the message of Christ brought to modern society: principles of mercy, forgiveness, eleventh-hour second chances, and unconditional love (opposed to the eye-for-an-eye system of retribution). Cahill also attributes the eventual advance of literacy and the decrease in human sacrifices to Christian doctrine. I felt Cahill was a little scattered, but I still enjoyed it.

[Jennie · Rating 1 out of 5]

To me? This book seemed poorly organized, unnecessarily wordy, slightly arrogant, and frankly, dull. This book really didn't do much to convince the reader how, in fact, the Greeks actually do matter. Even though I know that already. I picked it up expecting to be motivated into more reading about the region and it's history. Guess I'll try again later with a different book as my starting point.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pure, unadulterated garbage. Cahill is not even an historian or a classicist. He aims these books at those unfamiliar with the subject matter, and then treats his audience like idiots. He has no respect for those reading the book, or the civilization he is writing about. He is arrogant and condescending. To use his own words, he is "bellicose, close-minded, pig-headed and absurd". He actually used these very words to describe either those who may not agree with his interpretation, or the Greeks that he so lovingly wants everyone to know about. This book is a vile misuse of the trust his readers have put in him.

He displays a disturbing lack of respect for religion in general, but especially the religous practices of the Greeks. He chooses selections from Greek poets, not for their historic value, but for shock value and tittilation. To me this was very (using another one of his terms) "distasteful". He seems to try to appeal to our basest natures--to celebrate all that's crude instead of noble about the Greek civilization.

Cahill tries to help the reader understand the situations he presents by comparing them to situations we, as modern readers, may be familiar. However, he is so flippant about the way he does this, that they are not helpful comparisons, but distortions of the past (see pg 98 on how he presents the symposia "You may, if you like, label this prayer, but it was from our perspecive a lot closer to a conga line").

The worst part about the whole book is that those to whom this book is targeted will not know that what they are reading is so very skewed that they are not getting an accurate version of history. I still can't figure out what he was actually trying to do in the book, because he is missing a thesis (unless you count the title), and his concluding paragraph is in opposition to what he wrote in the rest of the book.

[Teri-K · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish this. The author makes so many assumptions about the ancient Greeks; apparently he sees no need for scholarship or research, just whatever he thinks must be so. I got seriously annoyed at all the speculating without any basis and gave up.

[Cole Mrgich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll start with addressing the negative reviews this book has gotten. To the charge of not bringing anything new to the table regarding Ancient Greece; Cahill prefaces this in the opening lines of the book. The purpose of the book was not to add anything substantial or original. It was to emphasize how the Greeks have and continue to influence us today, and Cahill did a wonderful job at that.

The enthusiasm and appreciation of the Ancient Greeks is apparent and infectious. The book itself reinforced and somewhat reinvigorated my love for anything Ancient Greece. Almost every aspect of Ancient Greek culture was covered, warfare, art, philosophy, politics, religion, literature. This is a cornucopia of Greek knowledge, condensed into an entertaining and easily digestible book. While not groundbreaking, it did shine light on ways the Greeks influenced the formation of Western Civilization that I had not realized or noticed. This was an excellent book and one that I would recommend to like-minded individuals.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The foundations of what we call Western culture today seemingly sprung from one place, Greece, yet that is not the entire truth. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, the fourth volume of Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History, examines and explains the structure of Greek society and ideas as well as the reasons why it has permeated so much of what we know of Western culture. But Cahill’s answer to why the Greeks matter is two-fold.

Over the course of 264 pages of text, Cahill looks at all the features of Greek culture that made them so different from other ancient cultures. Through the study of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Cahill examined the Greek’s view of war and honor in their grand war epic then how the same man expressed how the Greek’s expressed their feelings. The contradiction of the Homeric works is part of a larger theme that Cahill explores in Greek poetry beyond Homer, politicians and playwrights, philosophers, and artists. Throughout each chapter, Cahill examines what the Greeks did differently than anyone else as well as relate examples that many will know. Yet Cahill reveals that as time went on the Greeks own culture started to swallow itself until stabilized by the Romans who were without the Greek imagination and then merged with newly developing Christian religion that used Greek words to explain its beliefs to a wider world; this synthesis of the Greco-Roman world and Judeo-Christian tradition is what created Western thought and society that we know today.

Cahill’s analysis and themes are for the general reader very through-provoking, but even for someone not well versed in overall Greek scholarship there seems to be something missing in this book. Just in comparing previous and upcoming volumes of Cahill’s own series, this book seems really short for one covering one of the two big parts of Western Civilization. Aside from the two chapters focused around the Homeric epics, all the other chapters seemed to be less than they could be not only in examples but also in giving connections in relevance for the reader today.

For the Western society in general, the Greeks are remembered for their myths, magnificent ruins, and democracy. Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea does reveal that ancient Greece was more than that and why a culture millennia old matters to us today. While not perfect, this book is at least a good read for the general reader which may be what Cahill is aiming for but for those more well read it feels lacking once finished.

[Rick Ludwig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Cahill's Hinges of History Series, having read the first three before reading this one. I found that this was my least favorite. The writing is still engaging and touches on the lasting effects the culture had on Western civilization, as in the first three books, but there was less Cahill here. There was a lot of Homer, a touch of Sappho, a lot of Plato, a bunch of Sophocles and Aeschylus, some Eurypides, and a big chunk of Pericles. Those of us who have read these classical works many times before wished he could have told us more about what they meant to him and his opinions of their impact.

There was a lot more earthy terminology here, which probably reflected the nature of Greek society. His earlier works avoided overdoing this to their credit. Maybe he was tired of having his texts used so often by church groups.

I will continue to enjoy the series and am moving on to the next installment with high hopes for something a bit more like the first three books.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complicated and uneven read. At turns fascinating and then mind-numbingly boring. Certainly the most explicit history book I've ever read. Also quite a bit more opinionated and rooted in modern society than I remember from the first two of the series. It tried very hard to convince me to pick up a true classic - so far to little success. I do expect to read the 3rd book in the series (this is the 4th and I own the 1st and 2nd). Call it 3.5 out of 4. But worth a reread.

[Br. Thanasi (Thomas) Stama · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent volume in Thomas Cahill's body of work from "the Gifts of the Jews" to "How the Irish Saved Civilization".

Now want to read one more in the series: "Desire of the Everlasting Hills".

Interesting statement of Thomas Cahill which I hope indicates he might tackle Orthodox Thought. "Sadly, its form of Christianity which came to be called Orthodoxy and is full of rarified spiritual insight, has never been well known in the West."

[Gary Chapin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to come to the defense of this book. What everyone else says is true: no new analysis, lots of quotations ... But all of that makes this a fantastic audio book experience. I have listened to it many times over. Sections of mythology and ancient lit followed by musings on same? Really love it.

[Olga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this "history for dummies" sort of book.
Very vivid writing style.
I picked it because I am currently in my "Ancient Greece" mood preparing for a trip to Greece (bucket list!). I have been reading modern novels retelling myths, so this book, with actual history was a great addition.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I question some of the scholarship in this book.

[Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating insights into just how much influence the Greeks have exerted into every facet of our modern lives - from philosophy to religion, from art to education and from enterprise to warfare.

[Cooper Ackerly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am in complete agreement with the author when it comes to his thesis -- that the Greeks still do, in fact, matter. Unfortunately, I am in almost complete disagreement with his arguments for this thesis.

Cahill criticizes Jared Diamond for claiming that geography determines the fate of human civilization (displaying, it should be noted, a rather shallow understanding of Diamond's work and not even managing to refute that properly). Yet Cahill himself makes claims like "had our laws been written in cunieform, we would undoubtably still have slavery," which exhibit a tendency towards overdeterminization compared with which even the most unfavorable depiction of Diamond's work pales in comparison, to say the least. The fact that the Greeks, in possession with an alphabet that is supposedly the great equalizer, were one of the most xenophobic peoples during the Axial Age seems to not have crossed Cahill's mind.

Mixed in with questionable and shallow observations about Greek culture (his treatment of Greek philosophy is particularly dreadful) are questionable and shallow generalizations about world history (including the claim that Alexander the Great's empire is the greatest the world has ever seen (the Mongols, Han, and Abassids would all beg to differ)). The Romans are completely dismissed as mere copiers who thankfully can be dismissed as soon as Greek and Judeo-Christian culture came into contact, an intellectual crime only surpassed by Cahill's further claim that Western civilization is composed merely of Greek and Judeo-Christian influences. In fact, if one were to merely read this book, one might assume that both Greek and Judeo-Christian cultures sprung fully formed from the head of some supreme being, destined to someday come into contact, produce Western civilization, and then perhaps meet their equal in the tactics of Al-Quaeda. Even Cahill's strange attempts at generalizating his oversimplifications to modern events cannot rival his misunderstanding of world history (although his liberal, superficial, and patently mercenary usage of great literature might).

Arguably, the only redeeming parts of this book are those where Cahill quotes verbatim from Greek texts (which he does extensively); unfortunately, the value of these sections is completely canceled out by Cahill's nearly-maudlin summaries of the exerpts that he quotes, combined with the fact that he is seemingly under the impression that a scattering of choice epithets throughout one's writing displays a true familiarity with a text.

One merely hopes that no bright prospective classics student ever encounters this book, for it is one of the most compelling arguments against merely studying the Greeks without any training in critical thinking (which, supposedly, the Greeks gave us, not that one would believe that from this book) that I have ever read.

[Rebester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good, short, overview of Greek culture for those of us who haven't been introduced through school, or have only seen a few references to myths that we don't quite understand. And for those of us who _are_ students of Greek (and, by association, Roman) history, it draws some interesting conclusions, and allows us to step back somewhat from the slightly narrower focus of university courses and see certain aspects of Greek (or I should say, rather, Athenian, for the most part) culture in its actual _context_. Both before its supposed peak and after. Something professors often either cannot include in their lectures, or decline to.

I enjoyed this book a lot - I recognized things I had forgotten about, and found new territory to explore in the bibliography. I look forward to that voyage (if not on the wine-dark sea, then certainly on waters that flow from it).

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun fast read - a bit vulgar at some points - the point of which I couldn't determine, but the author does justice to the topics he tackles in this survey of Greek Culture. I would especially single out his discussion of Plato and the values in the Dialogues compared to some of the values of Homeric characters. He does a very good job of highlighting Plato's inadequacies (as far as I am concerned).

[Jim Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great read! And what a revelation for someone like myself, who (like many of my generation) never had what used to be termed a "classical education". Cahill opens up the world of antiquity in a highly accessible and entertaining way while maitaining a high degree of authenticity. A fascinating journey into the origins of western civilization.

[Maddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

my favorite part was when the author inserted a picture of a bust of Alexander the Great and captioned it: "Alexander the Great, who probably did look this good".
This book was a decently comprehensive and approachable guide to everything ancient Greek, except why so many modern male historians have a thing for Alexander! alas, that remains a mystery to me.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not as good as How the Irish Saved Civilization.

[DoRena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a casual, easy read (similar tone to some of Bill Bryson's books). I enjoyed the myths and stories used to open each chapter, use of quotations from poetry, plays, speeches, etc., and the cultural context provided for reading these works. I also appreciated the clear summarization of Greek philosophers and their teachings.

The connections to present-day America were interesting, though some felt notably dated (ie, multiple references to the Bush administration).

This includes more detail about Greek sexuality than I felt I needed, and some of his language on this topic is quite crass, not gratuitous but unexpected. For this reason I probably won't have my teen read this, though otherwise it could be a helpful, accessable resource for high school.

I would enjoy reading the rest of the series, and this has me intreguiged to read more on several related topics, but I'm also content to return it to the library and probably won't re-read.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this less than I thought I would. The book covers very wide ground: war, politics, philosophy, art, etc. Some of this material felt very informative and fresh in its presentation. Curiously, the section on "thinking" and "seeing" felt very undirected or laborious in their presentation.

What is a little disconcerting is that the author intersperses comments throughout that do not seem to contribute to the book at all. Overall, the author does a good job of putting things into context, but comes across as too intimate and flippant.

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview of Ancient Greek culture. It doesn’t really deliver on the promise of the subtitle in explaining /why/ the Greeks were important. But it gives a lot of great info on what the ancient Greeks were like. If not for the language sprinkled throughout this book, I would be heavily considering adding it to my ancient literature high school curriculum as required reading for my students. As-is, while it serves more as an introductory overview than anything else, it fulfills that role quite splendidly.

Rating: 4.5 Stars (Very Good).

[Adam Goff · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting book but I thought that it would be more about the history of the Greeks. Instead the author wrote about the Greeks and there contributions to modern society. Some parts of it were hard to understand.

[Connie Kronlokken]

Valuable overview, if idiosyncratic.

[Dave Godfrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable history of the greeks.. Not sure I agree w/ all his conclusions (his comment that people don't wear beards today because of Alexander the Great seemed questionable at best).