Sailing the Wine-dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter

In the 4th volume of the Hinges of History series, Cahill brings his characteristic style to a 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 & philosophy, are widely celebrated. Other innovations & accomplishments, however, are underappreciated. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea explores the legacy, good & bad, of the ancient Greeks. From the origins of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European tribes into Attica & the Peloponnesian peninsula, to the formation of the poleis, to the birth of Western literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, art & architecture, Cahill makes the distant past relevant. Greek society is one of the two primeval influences on the Western world. While Jews gave us a value system, the Greeks set the foundation & framework for our intellectual lives. They’re responsible for our vocabulary, logic & categorization system. They provided the intellectual tools brought to bear on problems in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, physics etc. Their modes of thinking, considered in classical times to be the pinnacle of achievement, are largely responsible for the shape Xianity took. They left a less appealing bequest as well. They created Western militarism &, in making warriors the ultimate ideal, perpetrated the assumption that only males could be entrusted with citizenship. The consequences of their exclusion of women from the political sphere & the social segregation of the sexes continue to reverberate. 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’s made fresh translations of the Greek lyric poets.