Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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101 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Loving Ode to the Greek Spirit, April 3, 1999
By A Customer
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.
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Greek Way is one of my favorite books, April 11, 2005
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.
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Inspiration We All Need, October 20, 2005
" 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.
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