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.

Customer Review: Why it's all Greek to us

Many of us had our first and our only exposure to Greek culture and thought somewhere around October of our sophomore year Western Civ class. The ancients seemed dry, dusty and far removed from the hurly burly of our modern concerns. Tom Cahill gives us a not very deep survey of Greek life, but he does a nice job of making their world positively lively, seeing much of the passion and complexity that animates our own. That said, "Why the Greeks Matter" sometimes seems tedious, sounding more like Cahill's personal (if informed) judgment about the Greeks. About 2/3 of the way through, I wasn't sure I'd bother to finish.

Taking his starting point as the myths they fashioned and the stories they told (with emphasis on the Iliad and Odyssey) Cahill draws a male-oriented, martial culture whose women lived at the margins of a world dominated by husbands, sons and brothers. Cahill sketches Greek attitudes toward ruling, partying and thinking. Whether under a hereditary ruler called a balileos (chieftain) or a non-hereditary tyrannos (only later take as pejorative), the entire population of Athens gathered weekly to empanel juries and voice opinions on matters large and small. The Symposion, originally a drinking party, started (opines Cahill) as a way for the aristocracy to forget their state of constant warfare, and evolved toward wineless erudition. The great Greek comedic and tragic playwriting evolved from worship services into citywide contests and safety valve for societal pressures. Even Plato's dialogs owe much to the forms and conventions of the stage.

The chapter on writing was particularly interesting. Greek's vowel-rich accessibility allowed children, women and slaves to read, and may have encouraged a tolerance for disputation that led to democratic forms of government. Cahill's exposition of the Odyssey is a tender reappraisal of Homer as a writer. I'm not privy to the great debate on whether Homer existed, or whether he was literate, but Cahill makes a good case that the Odyssey -- with all its weepiness and longing for home -- is an old man's reflection on the more martial, young man's spirit of the Iliad.

Cahill parades Greek philosophers and scientists, whose semi-theological and contradictory notions laid the foundation for the more systematic thinking of later scientific eras. Pre-Socratic philosophers, unfettered by prior teachings, began to lay out the scientific field on which we now play. Pythagoras's explorations into the divine basis for all things, leading him to discover the theorem about right angles that bears his name. Cahill gives us Socrates, gadfly and incisive questioner, seen through the lens of his disciple Plato, who used a theatrical device, the dialog, to frame his prose thoughts. Cahill gives an overview of the development of Greek sculpture, from the Egypt-inspired, stylized nude koroi, to the more adventuresome forays into nude male and female sculpture. Cahill's description of the hyper-bawdy Greek theater, with it's aroused satyrs and comically over endowed choruses, gives us a different

The book's weakness, I think is threefold. One, Cahill seems to be giving us his personal opinion much of the time. In one sense, this is helpful, in that it allows us to see a wide swath of time with a single viewpoint, with Cahill fulfilling the role of omniscient judge of quality. On the other hand, the opinions are only his. Secondly, the subject matter is so broad, complex and unruly. We're talking about making unified sense of a culture that spanned Plato to Euripides to Pericles to Demosthenes -- and those were the smart folks. Third, Cahill the question of why Greek war making (or philosophy or partying) matters would require us to know more about what other cultures felt about these human pursuits. While there is much about Greek life, as put forth by Cahill, that seems familiar to us, is that because of a unique Greek contribution or because we and the Greeks share common humanity and worldview? The accumulation of these problems made picking up the book sometimes seems daunting.

Cahill ends with a discussion of the decline of Greek thinking. Having lost a number of wars with Sparta, being colonized by Rome and tames by Christianity, the Greek impetus for curiosity and experimentation fizzled out. But it was a great ride while it lasted".

"Why the Greeks Matter" may have fallen short in answering the question posed by the title, but it at least made the Greeks lest of a dusty lot, and more alive and relevant. Mission accomplished, I should say.

Customer Review: Sailing the wine Dark Sea

Thomas Cahill write excellent history of all Europe. Read most and still reading another, but he makes everything interesting, and real. Too much history can be killed by the authors, but not Cahill. He brings it light and fun to read. I am reading all his histories.

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