Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter

By Thomas Cahill

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization takes us on a journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.

"A triumph of popularization: extraordinarily knowledgeable, informal in tone, amusing, wide ranging, smartly paced." --The New York Times Book Review

In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation--yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and 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 freely flowing 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385495544
• ISBN13: 9780385495547
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

This is my Greek reference book

There are so many great segments of this book. It is a complete education in each part. I can pick it up anytime to re-llearn the things I thought I knew. It is better than a humanities course in college. A quick answer for so many questions. I just keep it on hand as a reference for most things Greek.

Cahill's Erudition is a Pleasure

Most educated people have some idea about the important contributions the Greeks have made to Western Civilization. We usually learn of their deeds in a hodge podge fashion. We learn about Pythagoras in Geometry Class or Socrates or Plato in an Introduction to Philosophy class. We know the Greeks are important but most of us know this in a scattered sort of way. The beauty of this book is that Thomas Cahill gathers all...

Lighten up already

I almost didn't purchase this book after reading other customer reviews. So glad I took a chance. It's interesting that this book incites such emotional and critical responses. It's not meant to be an encylopedia or a text book on ancient Greece. As Cahill explains in the introduction, "you will find no breakthrough discoveries, no cutting-edge scholarship, just, if I have succeeded, the feeling and perceptions of another...

Enlightening, entertaining and left me hungry to know more.

Take it from one of the masses. I listened to the Olympia Dukakis-narrated CD version during a long night-time trip on interstate highways. To be honest, I use such opportunities to broaden my literary experience with books I might not be disciplined enough to pursue during my bubble-baths. Having limited knowledge of the classics but lots of curiosity, dating back to high school and my fascination with antiquities at the...

Putting it all together

I was surprised by the relatively cool evaluations of this book! I have a bushel of fragments about Greek civilization beginning with Durant's Life of Greece in the eighth grade, but Cahill has sorted my fragments into a coherent mosaic which also brings it into the perspective of contemporary life. How many references I have in my "bushel" to Pericles's Funeral Oration, but why had I never read it complete, and freshly...