From a historical point of view, I realize that every scrap of writing and every potshard is precious, especially when speaking of ancient and thinly documented society. But when I commented to a friend that otherwise, the Muslims need not have bothered preserving Greek philosophy, she was horrified. Especially that masterwork, Plato's Republic, which I have read and she has not, but which she knows is excellent. She emphatically recommended this book to me.

I think that Cahill fails in his stated goal: "to retell the story of the Western world as the story of ... those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singulartreasures that make up the patrimony of the West." It is a historical truism that Western cultural arises primarily from the interaction of of the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian. I cannot see why it is necessary to have yet another book that merely restates this without building a careful case to demonstrate it. To really do this, Cahill needs to show that the Greeks were so different from their contemporaries that history would have been altered without them. He also needs to show necessary links to later Western culture. He does neither of these very well.

In his chapter on philosophy, for example, Cahill contents himself with asserting, without demonstrating, that only the Greeks developed philosophy as a systematic study, and quoting Alfred North Whitehead: European philosophical tradition ... consists as a series of footnotes to Plato." (And if it does, in my opinion, so much the worse for Western philosophy!) Otherwise, the chapter consists of a brief history of Greek philosophy with a focus on a couple of works by Plato.

Indeed, the whole books works better as a brief survey of Greece with the usual short-comings. Athens is primary subject, with Sparta running a poor second and the rest of Greece as also rans. There is little on non-elites, especially the rural population. Cahill appears to have relied on art and literature, without using much other archeological information. This last is one of his problems with discussing other ancient cultures. Many of them are poorly documented either by writings or by artifacts, and he never addresses the hazards of assuming, in such cases, that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

A slight ambiguity in the book is the question of whether Cahill is tracing both good and bad influences. The issue of whether something has been an important influence is somewhat different from the question of whether or not it has been a good influence. In his introduction, Cahill seems find his "gift-givers" almost entirely beneficial. I question, however, whether the Christian theological disputes that he attributes to Greek influence were not mostly maleficial. Aristotle has been both a blessing and a bane for science and reason, although one could certainly make the case that he cannot be blamed if the Christian church turned his ideas into dogma.

In the end, I suppose that most readers will be left with the attitudes that they started with, so the book is recommended chiefly to established fans of ancient Greece.

The book includes an index, list of famous people, and bibliographical references. ( )

From Audible.com: Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture. Cahill credits the Greeks with creating Western militarism, shaping Christianity, and giving us the intellectual foundations on which we base everything from dictionaries to filing systems. Cahill ably demonstrates the fascinating uniqueness of ancient Greek culture, but also shows its startling reincarnations in contemporary contexts.

Cahill's object in this book is not to present a scholarly screed on the merits and demerits of the Ancient Greeks, but to transmit to the reader their humanity and personality in a way that veers from lyricism to a selective recitation of how they lived to influence the rise of the West. Not for him the weary recounting of kings and battles, but rather the enjoyment of their art, a meditation on their language, and an appreciation of their myths.
I, a relative novice in the historical arts, mired in the contemporary dogmas of multiculturalism, gained something from this book. It is that culture matters, and that not all cultures are equal at all times, for all times. The Greeks brought some unique materials to the table of a progressing civilization, and it merits some study to determine what the threads running through it were.

Their much celebrated discoveries of the practice of democracy, their penchant for skepticism, and invention of a heartless logic, all influence our own version of civilization in ways that we are hardly aware of, and that our pedagogues of today would have you believe came from everywhere but the Greeks.

Yes, the Greeks enslaved others, they killed one another endlessly, loved carelessly, believed in the merits of their race, and excluded women from their political palavers. But this is true of almost all civilizations everywhere at all times, and arguing that the Greeks are unworthy of our attention as a consequence, although fashionable in the current abominations of the academy, is as stupid as arguing that chemistry can be taught without acknowledging the centrality of the elements.

Cahill's sometimes excessively irreverent style, and his annoying attention to speculations on sexual matters, occasionally get in the way of his central message, but overall he has done a credible job here and produced a thought-provoking book that is worth reading, especially for multiculturalists with an open mind. ( )

some thought provoking points, more smutty classic porn than really necessary. ( )