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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea |
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Sailing
the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter
by Thomas Cahill
Book
Description
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.
About
the Author
THOMAS
CAHILL is the author of the three previous volumes
in the Hinges of History series: How
the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story
of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome
to the Rise of Medieval Europe.
The
Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads
Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels,
and
Desire
of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and
After Jesus.
They
have been bestsellers, not only in the United
States but also in countries ranging from Italy
to Brazil. Cahill was recently invited to address
the U.S. Congress on the Judeo-Christian roots
of moral responsibility in American politics.
He and his wife, Susan, also a writer, divide
their time between New York and Rome. |
Editorial
Reviews
 |
From
Publishers Weekly
In
this elegant introduction to Greek life
and thought, Cahill provides the same
majestic historical survey he has already
offered for the Irish, the Jews and the
Christians. He eloquently narrates the
rise of Greek civilization and cannily
isolates six archetypal figures representative
of the development of Greek thinking.
He opens with a consideration of Homer's
Iliad and its glorification of the warrior
way as an exemplum of life in the Greek
state. Cahill then proceeds to offer an
evolutionary look at the rise and fall
of Greece by examining the wanderer (Odysseus),
the politician (Solon), the playwright
(Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides), the
poet (Sappho), the philosopher (the pre-Socratics,
Plato, Aristotle) and the artist (Praxiteles).
These figures provide lessons in how to
feel, how to rule, how to party, how to
think and how to see. For example, Cahill
contends that Odysseus reveals longing
and desire for love, domestic peace and
his homeland, while the rage of Achilles
offers us lessons in the way to fight
for one's homeland. The book is full of
whimsical characterizations, such as the
depiction of Socrates as a "squat,
ugly, barefoot man who did not bathe too
often." The author includes generous
portions of the original writings in order
to provide the flavor of the Greek way.
Once again, Cahill gracefully opens up
a world that has provided so much of Western
culture's characteristic way of thinking.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information,
Inc.
From
Booklist
This is Cahill's fourth volume in his
Hinges of History series, and three more
are planned. He begins with a discussion
of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and how these
two epic poems relate to the history of
Greece. He then focuses on such themes
as the Greek alphabet, literature, and
political system, and its playwrights,
philosophers, and artists. A final chapter
examines the effects that Greco-Roman
and Judeo-Christian traditions had on
each other. "Despite its exceedingly
Jewish roots, Christianity became a player
in the Greco-Roman world, a world shaped
by Greek culture and Roman power,"
he says. He points out that Greek, not
Hebrew, became the language of Christianity,
that its sacred writings--which came to
be known as the New Testament--were written
in Greek, and that the gospel was preached
throughout the ancient world inthe Greek
tongue. Like his other books, this one
is a moving history of an ancient culture.
George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association.
All rights reserved
Back
Cover
Praise for Desire
of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before
and After Jesus
“Each
of [Thomas Cahill’s] books offers
moments of genuine insight into the workings
of culture, literature, and the human
heart.” —Commonweal
“A
popularization, but in the best sense
of the word. With grace, skill and erudition,
he summarizes obtuse semantic and historical
arguments, highlights the findings most
relevant to lay readers and draws disparate
material together in his portraits of
Jesus, his mother, Mary, and the apostle
Paul.” —Washington Post Book
World
“A
deft march through time and through theology
in the making . . . [Cahill’s] own
gift-giving is his ability to climb inside
the scholarship and enliven it.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
Praise for The
Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert
Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks
and Feels
“Captivating
. . . persuasive as well as entertaining
. . . Mr. Cahill’s book is a gift.”
—New York Times
“Cahill’s
clearly voiced, jubilant song of praise
to the gifts of the Jews is itself a gift—a
splendid story, well told.” —Boston
Globe
“Cahill
exalts his ancient subjects, their hearts,
minds and experiences resonate in his
compelling contemporary narrative.”
—Chicago Tribune
Praise for How
the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold
Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the
Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
“Charming
and poetic . . . an entirely engaging,
delectable voyage into the distant past,
a small treasure.” —New York
Times
“A
shamelessly engaging, effortlessly scholarly,
utterly refreshing history of the origins
of the Irish soul and its huge contribution
to Western culture.” —Thomas
Keneally
“Cahill’s
lively prose breathes life into a 1,600-year-old
history.” —Boston Globe
“When
Cahill shows the splendid results of St.
Patrick’s mission in Ireland—among
them, the preservation and transmission
of classical literature and the evangelization
of Europe—he isn’t exaggerating.
He’s rejoicing.” —The
New Yorker |
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Excerpt
from Chapter 1 - copyrighted material
Zeus,
who controlled rain and clouds and held in his
hand the awful thunderbolt, was Lord of the
Sky and greatest of the gods, but not the oldest.
He and the eleven other Olympians-the gods and
goddesses who dwelt in the heaven at the top
of Mount Olympus, Greece's highest mountain-had
been preceded in their reign by the elder gods,
the Titans, whom they had overthrown. The Titans
had been formed by Father Heaven and Mother
Earth, which had existed before any of the gods,
having emerged from the primordial Chaos, whose
children, Darkness and Death, had given birth
to Light and Love (for Night is the mother of
Day), which made possible the appearance of
Heaven and Earth.
Zeus, son of the deposed Titan Cronus, was perpetually
falling in love, wooing and usually raping beautiful
women, both immortal and mortal, who would then
give birth to gods and demigods, complicating
considerably family relations on Olympus. Hera,
Zeus's wife and sister, was perpetually jealous,
scheming to best one rival after another with
cruel retribution. But all the goddesses, even
the virginal ones, were prone to jealousy; and
it was this fault that helped bring on the Trojan
War-which began, like Eve's temptation in Eden,
with an apple.
There
was one goddess, Eris, not an Olympian, whom
the gods were inclined to leave out of their
wonderful celebrations, for she was the Spirit
of Discord. True to her nature, when she found
she had not been invited to the wedding of King
Peleus with the sea nymph Thetis, she hurled
into the Olympic banqueting hall a single golden
apple with two words on it, Toei kallistoei
(to the fairest). All the goddesses wanted to
claim it, but the three most powerful were finally
left to fight over it: the cow-eyed goddess
Hera, the battle goddess Athena-the child of
Zeus who had sprung from his head-and Aphrodite,
whom the Romans called Venus, the laughing,
irresistible goddess of Love, born from the
foam of the sea.
Zeus
wisely declined to be judge of this beauty contest
but recommended Paris, prince of Troy, who had
been exiled as a shepherd to Mount Ida because
his father, King Priam, had received an oracle
that his son would one day be the ruin of Troy.
Paris, Zeus averred, was known as a judge of
female beauty (and of little else, he might
have added). The three goddesses lost no time
appearing to the astounded shepherd-prince and
offering their bribes, Hera promising to make
him Lord of Eurasia, Athena to make him victorious
in battle against the Greeks, Aphrodite to give
him the world's most beautiful woman. He found
for Aphrodite, who gave him Helen, daughter
of Zeus and the mortal Leda.
There
was one small complication: Helen was married
to Menelaus, king of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon
of Mycenae, Greece's most powerful king. But
with Aphrodite's help, Paris was able in Menelaus's
absence to spirit Helen away from her home and
bring her to Troy. When Menelaus returned and
found out what had happened, he called on all
the Greek chieftains, who had previously sworn
an oath to uphold Menelaus's rights as husband
should just such a thing as this occur. Only
two were reluctant-shrewd, realistic Odysseus,
king of Ithaca, who so loved his home and family
that he had to be tricked into signing up for
the adventure; and Greece's greatest warrior,
Achilles, whose mother, the sea nymph Thetis,
knew he would die if he went to Troy but who
joined the Greek forces in the end because he
was fated to prefer glorious victory in battle
to a long life shorn of pride. Thus did the
many ships of the Greek kings, each vessel bearing
more than fifty men, set sail for Troy in pursuit
of a human face, Helen's-in Marlowe's mighty
line, "the face that launched a thousand
ships."
How
different in feeling the Judgment of Paris from
the Sorrows of Demeter. If the earlier story
is genuine myth, dramatizing recurrent, inexorable
tragedy at the level of cosmic nightmare, the
later seems a sort of old-fashioned drawing
room melodrama about the characteristic foibles
of male and female, in which matters spin monstrously
out of control and end in tragic farce. If Demeter
takes us back to an agricultural way of life
that imagined Earth and its manifestations as
aspects of maternal nurturing, the strident
gods of Olympus, challenging and overthrowing
one another, males always primed for battle
and sexual conquest, females seizing control
only by wheedling indirection, are projections
of a warrior culture that set victory in armed
combat above all other goals-or at least seemed
to, for there are always, deep within any society,
dreams that run in another, even in a contrary,
direction from its articulated purposes. But
first let's examine the obvious: the visible
surfaces of this bellicose society of gleaming
metals and rattling weapons.
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