Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges of History)
by Thomas Cahill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas CahillEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-07-27
ISBN: 0385495544
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges of History)
Book Review: Rehabbing "Dead White Males" --a very good book in the Hinges of History Series
Summary: 5 Stars
Thomas Cahill is doing a great service in making the basic tenets of Western European history available, readable and enjoyable. After a few decades of trying so hard to right the wrongs of centuries in which non-white, non-Christian peoples were left out entirely, now it seems the pendulum of good intentions has gone too far back, thereby forgetting the contributions of the cultures of the so-called "Dead White Males".
Forgetting this part of our shared history and culture is a disservice to everybody. Cahill reminds us of the highlights of the shared cultural history for all of us who live in the Western world, no matter where our ancestors came from.
Picking his work apart, as some reviewers have done, and stating that he doesn't delve into this or that major battle or expound on, for example, the importance of the trireme...that is exactly the type of dry academic history that drives off the reader who is wants a book to be interesting and to learn something new, not to pass a test. At this Cahill is excellent. I could quibble too, having my favorite time periods or persons skimmed over, but the idea is for these 5 books, the "Hinges of History" series (How the Irish Saved Civilization, The Gifts of the Jews, The Desire of the Everlasting Hills, the Mysteries of the Middle Ages) to be light and quickly read.
This book on the Greeks gives us a quick look at their civilization, its arts, plays, (Homer rates a chapter unto himself as it should be, and in fact made me want to go read the translation by Fogle he quotes from extensively)...their warfare, recreation, philosophy, finally, how they "ended", when their they were conquered first by Alexander the Great and then by Rome. He then goes into how their unique culture was even further eradicated and extinguished by their absorption into Christianity which changed the uniqueness of what they were forever, for better or worse.
The Greeks invented democracy, not so little a thing when you think about it, and utilized it, really actually utilized it, for a long time. In group settings every "free male" (obviously very non-PC!) could talk, argue and vote. Nothing like it had ever been tried anywhere, so far as is known.
Eventually their political sytem too devolved into leadership by the "old patrician families" and then into a true tyranny, and then they were conquered by outsiders, but for a brief time in all of the long history of the past and among all cultures which have flourished on this planet, there was a small city-state which came up with this unbelievable idea, and put it into action. That, alone, would make them, as a people, memorable.
Yes, they had slaves, and treated women badly (no worse than most ancient cultures and many modern ones however.)
Their democracy--here Cahill is speaking only of Athen's and its' colonies for a span of about 200 years--- "Athens the world's first attempt at a democracy---a Greek word meaning "rule by the people"---still stands out as the most wildly participatory government in history. Never again would such a broadly based...model be attempted. And...it worked."
(Sparta, on the other hand,was "ruled by...a council of old men, was an airless, artless,nightmare of xenophobic military preparedness, the North Korea of its day.")
The Athenians idealized beauty, invented philosophical discussion, took mathematics and medicine from the ancient Egyptians and in the case of mathematics, kept on and on with it, tying it to philosophy and turning it something no longer earthbound, no longer just for the building of monuments for dead kings.
Rome which went on to rule much of the world and establish the western culture most of us are a part of, took many ideas from the early Athenians, used their theoretical mathematics to become the world's great engineers, and modelled the best of their culture on ancient Athens. In fact, in the ancient era to be able to speak Greek was to be able to communicate with most of the known world---Latin was for a long time a far distant second.
A worthwhile book, one that would hopefully introduce some people to the Greeks, reintroduce others, and perhaps help rehabilitate them again into our cultural legacy where they belong. Without them, none of us would be as we are, or live as we do.
Summary of Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges of History)
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.
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