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Editorial Review Product 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. ... Read more Customer Reviews (77) 
An Engaging Primer on the Conceptual Foundations of Western Civilization
SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA is an enjoyable overview of how ancient Greece shaped the conceptual paradigms which still guide Western society today. In war, in art, in culture, and in philosophy, the Greeks' categorizations and approach to describing the world provide the foundations of modern science, academia, philosophy, democracy, and ideals.
The book includes freshly-translated excerpts of "the classics" - the Illiad, the Odyssey, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, immersing the reader directly in the flavor and experience of ancient Greek culture and revealing that these streams of thought are very familiar to modern minds in the concerns of today. The Greek world was dominated by the concept of "arete," or excellence/perfection as the highest expression of human existence. However, in reality Greek society was composed of individual city-states each with their own civic persona (Athens - perfection in democracy and civic virtue, Sparta - perfection in war, Troy - perfection in impregnable defense.) These currents are examined in the light of literature, drama, and sculpture, as Greek literature and art begins to mock its own underpinnings through grotesque parody and excess, and is eventually overshadowed and appropriated by the workmanlike Roman culture, in addition to providing the linguistic and conceptual vehicle in which Christianity reached Western culture.
I found this book to be an enjoyable and engaging presentation of what has heretofore often been a dry, dusty subject.
Five stars, but only for the target audience
Oh come on.After reading a number of the reviews here I'm compelled to add one.This is not a work of scholarship.It is a short book designed to introduce this era/people/culture/art to contemporary readers who want a spirited and readable overview.It's also a great companion for anyone who is picking up the Iliad or Herodotus or some other Greek classic and wants a bit of context.
The notes section contains directions to more scholarly works if you want them. But this isn't one.
If you have a background in this material or want rigorous scholarship, don't buy this book.But if you are the target audience for it -- and legions of Americans are -- I have to say it will most likely fit your needs very well.It is quite readable, crisp, lucid, and just enough opinionated to keep things interesting.You can read it an afternoon and when you are done you'll know something you didn't when you started.
Just by the way: if you are new to this literature and reading it in English, go with Fagles in the drama, Lombardo in the epic (or Fagles for extra credit, but really -- check out Lombardo), maybe Waterfield in the Herodotus, I think the Landmark Thucydides, and probably anybody post-Grube in the Plato (I prefer Bloom or Warner).Aristotle, you are on your own!
Best understood in the context of the series
The best part of this book for me was Cahill's translation/interpretation of Pericle's Funeral Oration. It is seven pages in the copy I have. Every bit of it was fascinating. No question that Cahill has "jazzed it up" for the modern audience. Nevertheless, it is a magnificent speech, and it is clear that it must have had an impact on the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
It is important to remember in this series that Cahill is looking for those moments in time where people's perceptions and understandings changed. So he discusses how Greek mathematics was different from Egyptian mathematics even though concepts for measuring land (geometry) were developed in Egypt. But the Greeks seemed to have been good at abstraction.
His discussion of the development of sculpture is interesting. From imitations of the Egyptian style to the beautifully sculpted works of the golden age. And an interesting text on how radical it was to make a statue of a female form (Aphrodite)!
Yes, Cahill makes some errors of historical detail and has a lot of omissions. But he isn't writing a complete history in any of these books. Desire of the Everlasting Hills mentioned the importance of Greek concepts to the development of Christianity. This books tries to show how the Greeks got to that point.
Too much speculation presented as fact
I am enjoying this book, but have the same problem with it that I encountered in "Irish"; Mr. Cahill makes statements that are clearly speculative read as fact. I could make an extensive list, and these obvious to me...an uneducated dilettante with little scholarly inclination. It makes me question the veracity of the facts he presents that I am not familiar with. So, while I enjoy the imagery and (unlike most reviewers here) his irreverent, gleeful quotation of Greece's more "earthy" literary offerings, I am not sure how much I'm learning actual history as opposed to Thomas Cahill's version of how history SHOULD'VE been.
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
Thomas Cahill has done it again--he has taken a complex subject and made it understandable even to those who have no prior knowledge of it, in this case, Greek civilization, in all its beauty but without ignoring the warts.It's written in a down-to-earth fashion, with excellent photographs which Cahill folds very helpfully into the narrative.He also uses Greek terms repeatedly, but rather than assume the reader understands them, he always defines them, and demonstrates repeatedly the Greek origins of so many of our most-used words and most common concepts.
A warning to the reader:Cahill speaks candidly about Greek sexual practices (read, bisexuality) and occasionally does so in a vulgar fashion.While necessary to an understanding of Greek culture, this may be off-putting to some.
I would have given the book a higher rating except for Cahill's tendency to let his own biases creep into the narrative from time to time, with occasional unscholarly commentary which serves no useful purpose for the reader.
In closing, I should say that long ago I earned a Master's Degree in ancient Greek and Roman history and have some basis for saying that his grasp of Greek culture is unparalleled in a non-specialist.
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