The Greek WayEdith Hamilton buoyantly captures the spirit and achievements of the Greek civilization for our modern world. In The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton captures with "Homeric power and simplicity" (New York Times) the spirit of the golden age of Greece in the fifth century BC, the time of its highest achievements. She explores the Greek aesthetics of sculpture and writing and the lack of ornamentation in both. She examines the works of Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides, among others; the philosophy of Socrates and Plato’s role in preserving it; the historical accounts by Herodotus and Thucydides on the Greek wars with Persia and Sparta and by Xenophon on civilized living. |
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Page 9
... poet Pindar, for instance, put by the Greeks themselves in the same class with Æschylus; the two historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, still foremost among the historians of the world. There cannot, indeed, be any real perception of the ...
... poet Pindar, for instance, put by the Greeks themselves in the same class with Æschylus; the two historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, still foremost among the historians of the world. There cannot, indeed, be any real perception of the ...
Page 10
... poet and thinker, Goethe. How noble and how tranquilizing. The eternal perspectives open out, clear and calm. Intolerance, hatred—how false they look and how petty. “Beyond the last peaks and all seas of the world” stands the serene ...
... poet and thinker, Goethe. How noble and how tranquilizing. The eternal perspectives open out, clear and calm. Intolerance, hatred—how false they look and how petty. “Beyond the last peaks and all seas of the world” stands the serene ...
Page 25
... poet—strove for an honor so coveted as hardly anything else in Greece. An Olympic victor—triumphing generals would ... poets were glad to write. Thucydides, the brief, the severe, the historian of that bitter time, the fall of Athens ...
... poet—strove for an honor so coveted as hardly anything else in Greece. An Olympic victor—triumphing generals would ... poets were glad to write. Thucydides, the brief, the severe, the historian of that bitter time, the fall of Athens ...
Page 26
... poet that did not warm both hands at that flame. Often in the midst of a tragedy a choral song of joy breaks forth. So Sophocles, of the three tragedians the soberest, the most severe, sings in the Antigone of the wine-god, “with whom ...
... poet that did not warm both hands at that flame. Often in the midst of a tragedy a choral song of joy breaks forth. So Sophocles, of the three tragedians the soberest, the most severe, sings in the Antigone of the wine-god, “with whom ...
Contents
| 9 | |
| 13 | |
| 24 | |
The Way of the East and the West in Art | 40 |
The Greek Way of Writing | 52 |
The Athenians as Plato Saw Them | 78 |
Pindar The Last Greek Aristocrat 64 | 94 |
Herodotus The First Sightseer | 122 |
The Idea of Tragedy | 171 |
Æschylus The First Dramatist | 179 |
Sophocles Quintessence of the Greek | 195 |
Euripides The Modern Mind | 205 |
The Religion of the Greeks | 215 |
The Way of the Greeks | 229 |
The Way of the Modern World | 253 |
References | 259 |
Thucydides The Thing That Hath Been Is That x Xenophon The Ordinary Athenian Gentleman 155 | 139 |
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Common terms and phrases
achievement Æschylus Agathon Alcibiades ancient world aristocratic Aristophanes Aristotle artist Athenian Athens beauty chorus Clytemnestra comedy completely dead death deeds defeat delight DEMOSTHENES Dionysus drama earth Egypt Euripides evil expression eyes fact father feel fight forever freedom genius Gilbert give gods greatest Greece Greek heart heaven Hecuba Herodotus Homer human idea important individual kill knew life’s live look lover Macbeth man’s mankind matter Megara Melians men’s mind MNESILOCHUS mother mystery nature never Orestes pain passion Peloponnesian War Periclean age Pericles Persian picture Pindar pity Plato play poet poetry priests reason religion Salamis seen sense Shakespeare slaves Socrates song Sophocles soul Sparta speak spirit stand story strange suffering talk tell temple things thou thought Thucydides to-day tragedian tragedy tragic true truth turn victory words writes wrote Xenophon young Zeus
Popular passages
Page 57 - The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of
Page 56 - Come, gentle night; come, loving black.brow'd night. Give me my Romeo: and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the world will be in love with
Page 197 - No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall—I will do such thingsWhat they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth. You think
Page 79 - say that Athens is the school of Greece and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace”—that last word a touch so peculiarly Greek.