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Greek Way

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Who were the ancient Greeks and why do they still move us? Their society is as alien to us as their language. Yet Greece still beckons us more than two millennia since the fall of Athens. The pinnacle of Greek culture lasted a mere century, yet it has left its mark on all of western society. The great intellectual institutions, such as philosophy, science and literature, originated in Greece. Beyond these marvels, however, lies a value so fundamentally important - and enduring - that a basic understanding of the Greeks is as important today as ever.

In The Greek Way, author Edith Hamilton covers the height of Greek culture in the 5th century BC. She begins by contrasting the east and west - an approach that becomes clear as one reads along. The east, according to Hamilton, stood for faith and force, while Greece embodied the opposite values of reason and freedom. Early in the book, Hamilton writes: "In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they (the Greeks) came forward as the protagonists of the mind." Thus, the Greeks introduced to the world the idea that the universe was orderly, that man's senses were valid and, as a consequence, that man's proper purpose was to live his own life to the fullest. These are discoveries that many westerners take for granted today, but not Edith Hamilton. Throughout the book, she constantly reminds the reader of the awe and beauty of the Greek spirit.

An important corollary of the Greek view that the world is knowable was their belief in the supremacy of independence. Hamilton paints a vivid portrait of the major Greek writers, statesmen and philosophers, all of whom possessed just such an intransigent commitment to independence. She writes: "Authoritarianism and submissiveness were not the direction it (the Greeks' spirit) pointed to. A high-spirited people full of physical vigor do not obey easily..." and further: "...each man must himself be a research worker in the truth if he were ever to attain to any share in it..."

5th century Athens was also the birthplace of political freedom. Though Hamilton does not provide a thorough analysis of this great development, she does offer hints throughout. In her chapter on the historian Herodotus, she explains his view of the Greeks during the war against the Persians: "A free democracy resisted a slave-supported tyranny." "Mere numbers were powerless against the spirit of free men fighting to defend their freedom." Why did Herodotus believe that free men were more powerful? Hamilton answers: "The basis of Athenian democracy was the conviction...that the average man can be depended upon to do his duty and to use good sense in doing it. Trust the individual was the avowed doctrine in Athens, and expressed or unexpressed it was common to Greece."

The Greeks, contrary to popular myth, were not a particularly religious people. While it is true that they had their gods, it is important to note that they did not place great importance on mystical beliefs. Indeed, what gods they did revere were the opposite of the Christian doctrine that man was made "in God's image." The Greek gods were made in the image of man. They were neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. Hamilton contrasts the Greek and eastern views of religion: "Before Greece, all religion was magical." She further illustrates that mystical beliefs were based on fear of the unknown, whereas the Greeks "changed a world that was full of fear into a world full of beauty."

A minor flaw in Hamilton's book is her overuse of examples, particularly in the chapters where she discusses the playwrights Aristophanes, Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Though she deftly contrasts the Greek way of writing with the eastern and modern approaches, the reader drowns in the minutiae. Hamilton was perhaps attempting to impress the reader with her depth of knowledge, but given the tone of the rest of the book, these examples disrupt her otherwise clear and concise writing.

The Greek Way is a joy to read. In it, Hamilton presents an integrated view of ancient Greece and the important legacy left for modern man. She successfully shows that the Greeks were rational, purposeful and happy people, intent on achieving their values in this world. If one could choose a single expression that characterizes the essence of Greek values, it is man worship. The Greeks worshiped man for what he was and what he could be. In Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way, we see that spirit shine brightly down through the ages.

" Little is left of all this wealth of great art: the sculptures, defaced and broken into bits, have crumbled away; the buildings are fallen; the paintings gone forever; of the writings, all lost but a very few. We have only the ruin of what was; the world has had no more than that for well on for two thousand years; yet these few remains of the mighty structure have been a challenge and an incitement to men ever since and they are among our possessions today which we value as most precious." A passage taken at random (page 18 of my Norton edition) which illustrates the strength of this remarkable book. Edith Hamilton writes beautiful prose which has been a joy to many since her book was first published in 1930.

She writes for an audience unfamiliar with ancient Greek culture. Her attempt to indicate the effect that Pindar achieved is perhaps bound to fail, but it is a noble attempt. She fares a little better with the dramatists, though hindered in that we are little equipped to appreciate verse drama in translation. The best sections are those dealing with prose writers: Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides. An important proviso though is that Hamilton is not primarily an analyst. She strives to pass on her own love and appreciation, not a critique. As such her work has always been welcomed by lay readers new to the subject.

This beautifully written book, both lofty and inspiring, yet inculcates a number of falsities about ancient Greece, once commonly held. It downplays Greek religion and magical and mystical beliefs, apparantly under the impression that the philosophical outlook (which survives in written form more so than religious texts) was the norm. On the contrary, one of the universal influences on all ancient Greeks (and it is suspected, on emerging Christianity, was the Eleusian mysteries. Greek oracular shrines, too, were enormously popular throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The book also overlooks the fact that the 'rationalist' school of philosophy initiated by Thales was an outcrop of Persian philosophical thinking.

Hamilton's book contrasts Persian (tyrannical and slave based) with Greek (freedom loving) society, oblivious that Greece was a slave based society (as most ancient cultures were) and that many Persians were fanatically loyal to their 'King of Kings'. Little is said of the oligarchic governments of poleis such as Thebes, Sparta or Corinth, nor of the excesses of Athenian democracy; the list of great names who succumbed to democratic reigns of terror is a sad one: Themistokles, Aristedes, Alkibiades, Socrates...

The subjective feeling is that the Greeks were fighting something similar to Nazism in their Persian Wars. Scholarship is yet another expression of the time in which it was written.

Yet of course all this is little in comparison to the book's great virtues. Don't read it as an example of penetrating scholarship: there is plenty of more up-to-date material freely available. Read it if you need to know why the ancient Greeks are important, have been in the past, and hopefully will always be.

Edith Hamilton's book, The Greek Way, tells the amazing story of how the Greeks in the small city of Athens developed a new way of life in the western world around 500BC. Some of the highlights of her fascinating story are as follows:

In a world where tyrants and the irrational played the chief role, the Greeks in the city of Athens believed in the supremacy of the mind in the affairs of men. The Athenians lived in a "reasonable" world because they used their reason on the world.

For a brief period, extraordinary creative activity blossomed in Athens because the Athenians combined the clarity of reason with spiritual power.
 The ancient Egyptians left tombs (Pyramids) as their monuments to death.
 The ancient Athenians left theaters, statues, and plays as their monuments to life.

The Athenians were different from most other ancient peoples because:
 The mountains of Greece helped to create a physically vigorous people who resisted submitting to despots.
 The Athenians looked at the world closely and had an intense desire to understand what they saw. They were the first "scientists" and delighted in making the obscure clear and finding system, order, and connection in the world.
 The Athenians loved reason, knowledge, and play.
 The Athenians were not oppressed by governments, religions or superstitions and were free to use their minds to examine whatever they wished.
 The Athenians, unlike many ancient or modern cultures, found the world a beautiful and delightful place in which to live and they found happiness in using their vital powers in the pursuit of excellence.
 In Greece, the mind and the spirit met on equal terms.

Greek writing is plain writing, direct and matter-of-fact. It depends no more on ornament than does Greek architecture. For example, the following shows the same idea expressed both in the New Testament and by the Greek writer Aeschylus:
 In the New Testament
Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you: For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
 By the Greek writer Aeschylus
Men search out God and searching find him.

The Greek's universe is rational and well ordered without the worship of the powers of darkness. Socrates believed that goodness and truth were the fundamental realities, and that they were attainable. He believed that in the seeming futility of life there is a purpose which is good and that men can find it and help work it out.

In a century or two, Greek scientists remade the ancient view of the universe. They leaped to the truth by an intuition, they saw a whole made up of related parts, and with the sweep of their vision the old world of hodge-podge and magic fell away and a world of order took its place.

A thouroughly enjoyable introduction to the beginnings of Western culture. Edith Hamilton brings to life the greatest minds dating back well before the birth of Christ. Only after reading this book did I begin to appreciate the complexities of the tragedy, a truly Greek innovation. If you love to learn you will love this book as you discover that the first stirrings of the logical acceptance of the world around us began with the courageous zest for life that the Greeks first invented. Highly recommended for those few remaining individuals who truly love to learn for the sake of learning.

The Greek Way, scholar Edith Hamilton's first book, is about the unification of body and soul-or, in Hamilton's terms, mind and spirit. Hamilton argues that this unification was achieved in a variety of areas in ancient Greek culture. Furthermore, this achievement is almost unique in world history.

Various individuals, including Socrates, Xenophon, Aeschylus, and Pindar, are discussed. Hamilton finds unexpected parallels between people, such as Aristophanes and William S. Gilbert. These parallels provide fascinating contexts. They help the reader appreciate why and how notable historical Greeks represent and transcend their time and place.

In "The Greek Way of Writing," one of the book's best chapters, Hamilton writes, "The Greek poet lifts one corner of the curtain only. A glimpse is given, no more, but by it the mind is fired to see for itself what lies behind. The writer will do no more than suggest the way to go, but he does it in such a fashion that the imagination is quickened to create for itself."

Much as it this is perhaps true of ancient Greek writers, I find it an especially accurate description of Hamilton's own method. Behind every one of the book's carefully chosen words is the assumption that our lives can be beautiful, if we will make them that way.

Hamilton is a classicist in the word's deepest sense: she believes in the continual validity and vitality of certain ideas. Whether achieved in the realms of art, politics, or philosophy, insights into the nature and meaning of human existence never loose their power. These ideas do what they have always done: they invite access, reflection, and application.

Great book on the Greek mind and culture, not overly detailed and self explanatory, dealing with their art, writing, historians, playwrights, comic and tragic poets and religion. I think this is a great book to read along with H.D.F. Kitto's book, The Greeks.

Hamilton goes into the Eastern way of quietistic retreat and denial of the external world of the Egyptians in the culture that worshiped the dead and interior spirit world, how they reduced to nothingness all that belongs to man and this world. Man is annihilated into the ways of nature. The Hindus also traveled within the interior selves, and in art, expressing themselves in decorative and elaborate art and writing. conglomeration of adornments ornaments and decorations. While the Greeks honored this world, this life, seeing the divinity and sacredness in this world, involving themselves in excellence, in the Olympic games, having gods and goddesses that resembled the beauty of humans and human existence. This was alien to mysticism and the vanishing of the self. Unlike other civilizations where the intellect belonged strictly to the priests, the Greeks as a whole pursued rationalism, truth, simplicity and meaning in existence. Life was lived to its fullest, but not in excess, as the two inscriptions over the Oracle of Apollo in Delphi reads as: "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess."

On page 20 "That which distinguishes the modern world from the ancient, and that which divides the West form the East, is the supremacy of mind in the affairs of men, and this came to birth in Greece and lived in Greece alone of all the ancient world. The Greeks were the first intellectualists. In a world where the irrational had played the chief role,they came forward as the protagonists of the mind."

In art, in writing, in the gods, there was simplicity, lucid clarity that shied away from symbolism. This can be seen in the architecture and the poetry. The Gothic cathedral was raided in in awe of an Almighty God, humanity far below in reverence, while the Parthenon was raided in triumph, to express the beauty and the power and the splendor of man.

Hamilton goes intuit the style and and aristocracy of the poet Pindar, into the freedom and amount of leisure in the culture for persons to seek out truth and rational development, the Symposium dinner party of the upper class and dinner party of Xenophon and working men and women. The writings of the extensive traveling and experiences of Herodotus and his attitude towards other cultures, both of this world and in religious allegorism. How the freedom allowed the comic poet Aristophanes to speak freely and question the intentions and actions of the most important figures without any back lash. In this she compares this to sixteen century England and Gilbert.

A summary of the account of the historian Thucydides, the exiled general and his observance of a great democracy that defeated the Persians in a new era and later their power, strength and greed corrupting her, finally falling to the oligarchy and tyranny of Sparta. The Peloponesian War caused great strain on the culture and paranoia developed. The rule of the one, of the few, of the many, each is destroyed in turn because there is in them all an unvarying evil - the greed for power - and no moral quality is necessarily bound up with any of them. There is a real parallel today the current imperialistic powers, the U.S., that once based their ideals on democratic freedoms, but even from the start not without severe contradictions..

A good discussion is made on the idea of tragedy, a Greek creation from a free society, the spirit of inquiry in poetry, the dignity in the suffering and significance of human life. The three tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The mystery of suffering and sense of the wonder of human life, its beauty and terror and pain and the power in meant to do and to hear in the words of Aeschylus. The structure and form of Sophocles in the idea of helpless fate and the power of man to ally himself with the good in suffering and dying nobly. And the criticism as in our modern day of Euripides, who both attacked all of the foundations, an indictment of evil and at the same time looked at the tender compassion of the unfortunate and the sense of the worth of human life.

Other thoughts are conveyed on the birth of the newer god, Dionysus, needed for the substance for Apollo to balance, to allow the ecstasy and nothing in excess. Nobel self restraint must have something to restrain. And subsequently the importance of Demeter and addition of Dionysus in the Eleusinian mysteries. Each new idea would always threaten the old, but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone. This was the case with Socrates in the attempt to attain truth, goodness and fundamental realities. The book ends in a small comparison of the unbalance of the modern world from the Greeks.

After decades of cultural relativism and postmodern ignorance about the achievements of the classics, it is refreshing to see a bold defense of Western culture as initiated by the Greeks. Written about 1950, the author doesn't need to apologize for her points of view. Instead, she makes the case with forceful examples and deep erudition. I'll never forget Pericles and his generals discussing "fine points of literary criticism" before a battle. Examples like this enlighten the book from the beginning to the end and make great arguments for the author's theses. Apparently, it's a book about literature, but even those (like me) with a poor background on the topic and only a light interest on classical literature will enjoy the philosophical and historical aspects of the book.

Edith Hamilton points out that our word "school" comes from the ancient Greek word for "leisure", implying that the Greeks believed leisure should be used for thinking and learning. Hamilton's introduction to the world of Greek thought is a beguiling way to spend a few hours of one's leisure time.
Hamilton was clearly infected by her subjects' love of life, beauty, and thought. Her fascination communicates itself to the reader in her effortless prose and enthusiasm. She provides a highly readable introduction to the history and culture of the era, while giving the reader a closer look at some of the key intellectual figures that make up ancient Greek thought.
The only criticism I have of the book is a function of its datedness. Hamilton is very critical of "Eastern" or "Oriental" thought. She is quick to contrast the "logical" way of the Greeks and their intellectual descendants(the Western world) with the "illogic" of the ancient (and modern) East. Her cursory analyses (and subsequent dismissal) of the intellectual life of the East are undoubtedly a product of her time.
It's clear from my review that I was very affected by the book. When I wasn't turning to people around me and saying, "Listen to this!", I found myself jotting notes on subjects and authors to pursue further, in a spirit of inquiry that I hope Hamilton and the ancient Greeks would have approved of. Hamilton was a lifelong schoolteacher. Like the work of any really inspirational teacher, her lessons about life and learning transcend her subject matter. We carry her lessons with us long after we've finished her class.

The first thing one encounters when reading Edith Hamilton's 'The Greek Way' is her love and even exuberance for her subject. Her opening remarks describe the classical greek worldview; an ability to grasp the world as it is, and still find it to be beautiful. This grasp this people had on reality would allow them to create the pictorial art, the art of the stage, here not including the dialogue and the dinner/drinking party, all still enjoyed much in the same manner today as the greeks enjoyed them in 500 b.c.e.

Plato and Socrates, and the way they experienced gentlemanly society, are highlighted as the crowning achievements of greek philosophy. It is the Ideal, Hamilton seems to say implicitly, that the greeks envisioned and carried forward philosophically, that would later influence western civilization in the way it did.

Later, comparisons are drawn between Aeschylus and Shakespeare, where the influence of the former on the latter is striking by the examples Hamilton presents. Hamilton here defines trajedy, elucidates pathos, and the differences between the two. She goes on to draw similarities between Virgil and Sophocles in their poetry and subjects, a valid comparison, she makes it seem.

Between this first and last, Herodotus is presented as a wide-eyed surprisingly objective first reporter who documents the cogitations and remarks of subjects as diverse as the delphic priestess and Cyrus the Great of Persia.

Freedom is won in the face of the Persian threat, and is the singular hallmark of the classical greeks in Hamilton's view. It affects everything the personalities Hamilton brings to light accomplish. Every work of art, every stage play, every dialectical argument can be viewed either as being in the presence of, or having the lack of freedom and democracy.

There is no question, Hamilton rightly defines the greatness of these greeks as a free, democratic people. But at the close of her book, Greece has become imperialistic and desires empire. Sophocles, the old conservative guardsman, documents poetically the zeitgeist of the former and current states of things, and a new era is dawning.

But Hamilton wisely leaves off here, having presented a wonderful picture of a wonderful people during a wonderful time.

Edith Hamilton, graecophile supreme, published this summary of life and culture in fifth- and sixth-century (B.C.) Greece (most importantly, Athens) in 1930. It remains a superb introduction to classical Greek life and culture.

Hamilton's forte was not detailed scholarship; it was insight at a more general level. In this book, she delineates the differing ways in which Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides excelled at tragedy, drawing illuminating parallels with Shakespeare to make her points. She shows how Aristophanes's comedy was echoed more than two millennia later by W.S. Gilbert, and, in the process, teaches us much about Aristophanes. Perhaps most important, she demonstrates the uniqueness of the Greek commitment to freedom and equality. At the same time, she devotes plenty of attention to the failings of Athens as it caused its own downfall by its pursuit of empire.

This is an excellent summary, and one that has inspired me to do a great deal of further reading. I can think of no higher praise for a book of this sort.