GREEK TO US

The glory that was.

This lively survey by Davie, a former Oxford lecturer, traces the enduring impact of ancient Greek culture on modern life and literature. Greek city-states fostered a new way of looking at, and talking about, the world. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and their heirs observed daily life to explain and question how we live and why. Homer has influenced anyone wanting to tell a story. Sappho taught us how to love. Aristophanes taught us how to laugh. And yet, all was not glory. Early Greek society, for all its claims to participatory democracy, was highly stratified. Perhaps the most important chapter in this book is that on slavery. “Slavery was fundamentally important to the democracy in Athens,” Davie writes. “A man had to be seriously impoverished not to own a slave.” But, he adds, “Athenians seem to have treated their slaves better than did most other people in the ancient world.” The author tries to reconcile the gifts of Greece with ownership of human beings: “Perhaps we should not be too quick in condemning ancient societies as uncivilized for practicing slavery.” Other classicists have been more nuanced in their understanding of these contradictions in Greek life. And classics, as a discipline, is now looking not West but East—to the Black Sea and the Middle East—as the true home of Greek-speaking culture. For general readers, however, this book affirms Western culture’s debt to the Greek world. It makes you feel good about being smart and educated. It makes you want to lead an examined life. If it papers over the cracks in that Parthenon of the imagination, at least it gets you in the door.

An uplifting survey of our deep debts to ancient Greece, emphasizing civic life and the literary imagination.