Greek Way

Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable introduction to the greatest of the Greeks.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Refreshingly clear
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: AN EXCELLENT OVERVIEW OF GREEK THOUGHT AND CULTURE
Review: E. HAMILTON'S LOVE OF CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE IS CONTAGIOUS .THE READER WILL ALSO DEVELOP A GOOD GENERAL APPRECIATION OF WESTERN CIVILISATION'S LINKS TO CLASSICAL GREECE. BUT IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A DETAILED DISCUSSION ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY OR THOUGHT , YOU WILL NOT GET IT FROM THIS CHARMING AND WELL WRITTEN OVERVIEW.

Rating:
Summary: The Light of Greece
Review: Edith Hamilton explains, in beautiful, flowing prose, the context of the ancient world in which the Greeks appeared , in order to compare and highlight the vast difference between their culture and thinking from those of ANY previous peoples. This background and setting of that ancient world is important to understand in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the Greek accomplishments. The thought and "way" of the Greeks is so incredible, that each time their works are brought to light, a renaissance from darkness appears once again. ha

Rating:
Summary: The Light of Greece
Review: Edith Hamilton explains, in beautiful, flowing prose, the context of the ancient world in which the Greeks appeared , in order to compare and highlight the vast difference between their culture and thinking from those of ANY previous peoples. This background and setting of that ancient world is important to understand in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the Greek accomplishments. The thought and "way" of the Greeks is so incredible, that each time their works are brought to light, a renaissance from darkness appears once again. ha

Rating:
Summary: a passionate ode to the ancient Greek intellect
Review: Edith Hamilton points out that our word "school" comes from the ancient Greek word for "leisure", implying that the Greeks believedleisure 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.

Rating:
Summary: a passionate ode to the ancient Greek intellect
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Just the antidote you need.
Review: For those enmeshed in the academic world, this book provides a brilliant and decidedly non-academic analysis of Greek culture. This latter point often results in unfounded criticism of this marvelous book (which reads as easily as a novel, by the way). Rather than endless footnotes and a fear of over-generalizing, Hamilton makes bold and forceful statements unlike what you'll find in the modern university classroom. Moreover, she doesn't kowtow to any multiculturalist notions of cultural relativism. She's very clear in her loyalties to the Greeks and their world-centered, life-embracing culture while describing the torturous lifestyles elsewhere (e.g. Egypt and India) with such vivid language, that one wonders how mysticism ever persisted into the modern epoch at all. I recommend this book for anyone interested in learning about the Greek spirit and its unique and proper place at the cornerstone of our modern, technological, world-centered world.

Rating:
Summary: Greatest Human Freedom & Its Power Corrupting Downfall
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Too dull to bother
Review: I had to read this book for a college course I'm taking. I find Greek culture very interesting but I found this book to be very dry and also quite confusing. The order of chapters seemed off to me and it was hard to follow who the auther was speaking about. If you want to learn about greek philosophy in a fun way I suggest Sophies world. It makes history far more interesting.