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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks…
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges of History) (original 2003; edition 2004)

by Thomas Cahill

Series: Hinges of History (4)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,752209,720 (3.61)46
"In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his latest bestselling work of popular 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 ancient Greece, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader and encouraged civil discussion--yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad 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 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."… (more)
Member:camainc
Title:Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges of History)
Authors:Thomas Cahill
Info:Anchor (2004), Paperback, 352 pages
Collections:Your library
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Sailing the Wine-dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill (2003)

  1. 00
    The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World by Charles Freeman (gmicksmith)
    gmicksmith: These two volumes, although different in treatment and scope, do cover similar ground and make an interesting comparison.
  2. 00
    Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths by Bruce Feiler (BookshelfMonstrosity)
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» See also 46 mentions

English (20)  Slovak (1)  All languages (21)
Showing 1-5 of 20 (next | show all)
Cahill points out why some parts of history stand out. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 11, 2023 |
I've always been a fan of demotic erudition, and that's Cahill all over. Lots of fun, doubtless real historians might be given fits by some of Cahill's stretches, but heck . . . it's probably the most exercise they've had all day. A genuinely learned man's personal take on some things he's thought about a lot. ( )
  AnnKlefstad | Feb 4, 2022 |
A decent general introduction to Greek history and culture. It is populated with interesting insights and nifty stories that help elucidate the culture of the Greeks, how it evolved, and how modern Western society inherited it. The book suffers, though, from Cahill's every-now-and-then intruding opinions, which are generally of a leftist nature (for instance: boo George W. Bush [pp. 46, 250n], hooray John F. Kennedy [pp. 247-248]). It reads, sometimes, as a paean to hedonism. ( )
  tuckerresearch | Jun 23, 2019 |
Nothing that I didn't already know before, actually - I lived in Greece for three years, but this book is a splendid introduction for anyone just getting started on rediscovering the classics. ( )
  CeliaHayes | Dec 30, 2017 |
The foundations of what we call Western culture today seemingly sprung from one place, Greece, yet that is not the entire truth. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, the fourth volume of Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History, examines and explains the structure of Greek society and ideas as well as the reasons why it has permeated so much of what we know of Western culture. But Cahill’s answer to why the Greeks matter is two-fold.

Over the course of 264 pages of text, Cahill looks at all the features of Greek culture that made them so different from other ancient cultures. Through the study of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Cahill examined the Greek’s view of war and honor in their grand war epic then how the same man expressed how the Greek’s expressed their feelings. The contradiction of the Homeric works is part of a larger theme that Cahill explores in Greek poetry beyond Homer, politicians and playwrights, philosophers, and artists. Throughout each chapter, Cahill examines what the Greeks did differently than anyone else as well as relate examples that many will know. Yet Cahill reveals that as time went on the Greeks own culture started to swallow itself until stabilized by the Romans who were without the Greek imagination and then merged with newly developing Christian religion that used Greek words to explain its beliefs to a wider world; this synthesis of the Greco-Roman world and Judeo-Christian tradition is what created Western thought and society that we know today.

Cahill’s analysis and themes are for the general reader very through-provoking, but even for someone not well versed in overall Greek scholarship there seems to be something missing in this book. Just in comparing previous and upcoming volumes of Cahill’s own series, this book seems really short for one covering one of the two big parts of Western Civilization. Aside from the two chapters focused around the Homeric epics, all the other chapters seemed to be less than they could be not only in examples but also in giving connections in relevance for the reader today.

For the Western society in general, the Greeks are remembered for their myths, magnificent ruins, and democracy. Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea does reveal that ancient Greece was more than that and why a culture millennia old matters to us today. While not perfect, this book is at least a good read for the general reader which may be what Cahill is aiming for but for those more well read it feels lacking once finished. ( )
1 vote mattries37315 | Mar 29, 2017 |
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Epigraph
'One can achieve his fill of all good things, even of sleep, even of making love...' Homer
'Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.' William Butler Yeats
Dedication
To Madeleine L'Engle and Leah and Desmond Tutu and in memory of Pauline Kael mentors and models of life and art
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History must be learned in pieces.
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"In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his latest bestselling work of popular 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 ancient Greece, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader and encouraged civil discussion--yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad 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 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."

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