The greek way edith hamilton pdf

The Greek Way Study Guide The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton (c)2015 BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved.

Contents The Greek Way Study Guide ....................................................................................................... 1

Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Plot Summary .............................................................................................................................. 4

Chapter 1, East and West ............................................................................................................ 6

Chapter 2, Mind and Spirit ........................................................................................................... 8

Chapter 3, The Way of the East and the Way of the West in Art ................................................ 10

Chapter 4, The Greek Way of Writing ........................................................................................ 12

Chapter 5, Pindar: The Last Greek Aristocrat ............................................................................. 14

Chapter 6, The Athenians as Plato Saw Them ........................................................................... 17

Chapter 7, Aristophanes and the Old Comedy ........................................................................... 19

Chapter 8, Herodotus: The First Sight-Seer ............................................................................... 20

Chapter 9, Thucydides: The Thing That Hath Been Is That Which Shall Be .............................. 22

Chapter 10, Xenophon: The Ordinary Athenian Gentleman ....................................................... 25

Chapter 11, The Idea of Tragedy ................................................................................................ 27

Chapter 12, Aeschylus: The First Dramatist ............................................................................... 28

Chapter 13, Sophocles: Quintessence of the Greek .................................................................. 30

Chapter 14, Euripides: The Modern Mind .................................................................................. 32

Chapter 15, The Religion of the Greeks ..................................................................................... 34

Chapter 16, The Way of the Greeks ........................................................................................... 37

Chapter 17, The Way of the Modern World ................................................................................ 38

Characters ................................................................................................................................. 39

Objects/Places ........................................................................................................................... 44

Themes ...................................................................................................................................... 47

Style ........................................................................................................................................... 49

Quotes ....................................................................................................................................... 51

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Topics for Discussion ................................................................................................................. 53

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Plot Summary Twelve chapters of the book were published in 1930 under the Title "The Greek Way." In 1942, five new chapters were published with the original twelve under the title "The Great Age of Greek Literature." Current editions have retained the original title for the complete book and included the preface to the 1942 edition.

"The Greek Way" is an attempt to present to the modern reader an understanding and appreciation of the unique and distinctive cultural, intellectual and artistic achievements of Classical Athens. In particular, Hamilton focuses on fifth-century Athens, a time of significant political, social and intellectual change.

The unique and unparalleled achievements of fifth-century Athens are defined and delineated against both the intellectual, cultural and religious life of surrounding nations and the changing struggles and needs of Athenian culture itself. Comparison with other nations and cultures of the period emphasizes the distinction Hamilton draws between the life of the mind and the life of the spirit, between the rational and the irrational responses of human culture to pain, sorrow and fear. Comparison of Athenian writers of the period allows her to sketch changing responses to changing circumstances in Athenian society during this period.

Hamilton's intention in writing the book is clearly stated in the Preface to the 1942 edition as providing "a picture of Greek thought and art at the time of their highest achievement." Her goal is to provide to the modern reader a "perception of the breadth and depth and splendor of the intellectual life in fifth-century Athens."

Although the intention behind the book might have been originally more purely academic, as she wrote the Preface to the 1942 edition Hamilton was acutely aware of the abiding value of the Athenian intellectual achievement for later generations as they struggled to cope with difficult, confusing and frightening times. Indeed, much of the world was overwhelmed with confusion, fear and suffering in 1942.

There is, perhaps, no clearer statement of the abiding value of an understanding of the culture and art of fifth-century Athens for later generations than that contained in Hamilton's Preface. "We have many silent sanctuaries in which we can find a breathing space to free ourselves from the personal, to rise above our harassed and perplexed minds and catch sight of values that are stable, which no selfish and timorous preoccupations can make waver, because they are the hard-won and permanent possession of humanity."

The singular achievement of fifth-century Athenian culture was a unique intellectual balance in thought and life. These Athenians, she says, were uniquely able - throughout all of human history - to achieve the balance of mind and spirit, of intellect and religion that is the hallmark of human sanity. These Athenians were able to ascend to the intellectual heights that understood the importance of both the individual and the

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community and place both in proper perspective within the larger scheme of human existence.

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Chapter 1, East and West Chapter 1, East and West Summary and Analysis In this critical chapter, the author establishes her assessment of the unique and eternal achievements of fifth Century BCE Athenian culture. In this chapter, she also introduces several basic dichotomies that will prevail and define her understanding of the various writers and events of the period in the ensuing chapters.

Her assessment of the intellectual and cultural achievement of Athenian culture is clearly stated: "Something had awakened in the minds and spirits of the men there which was so to influence the world that the slow passage of long time, of century upon century and the shattering changes they brought, would be powerless to wear away that deep impress. Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit to-day are different. . . . What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and very rarely equaled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world."

One of the basic themes of the book is immediately introduced - that the thought and the art of classical Athens "is full of meaning" for people of later generations. In particular, it is "full of meaning" for nations, cultures or societies beset by broad-scale and profound social and political change and the accompanying confusion and fear produced in the minds and souls of human beings. Why are the intellectual achievements of Athenian culture in the fifth century BCE so important? Because, Hamilton says, "it is ever to be borne in mind that though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience."

Indeed, throughout the history of human civilization people have struggled with the same questions, the same confusions, the same hopes and the same fears. The context in which profound change occurs will differ, but the struggles and questions of the human mind and heart remain consistent. New answers will be offered, to be sure, but Hamilton believes the core of meaningful answers to these recurrent philosophical and religious and life questions can always and uniquely be discovered in the literature and the art of this culture.

The first question Hamilton addresses is "What gave rise to such an unprecedented and unique achievement?" "What precipitated the maturing of a unique outlook upon life, the world, and the nature and importance of the individual?" To answer this question, she says, the reader must understand prevailing thought of the ancient world. Only then can the uniqueness of Athenian thought be appreciated. Part of this understanding rests upon recognition of the dichotomy between East and West in the thought and lifestyle of the ancient world.

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All other societies in the ancient world, she says, reflected the same social and political structure: "a despot enthroned, whose whims and passions are the determining factor in the state; a wretched, subjugated populace; a great priestly organization to which is handed over the domain of the intellect." In these societies, intellect and reason played almost no role, particularly in the lives of the majority of the populace. Truth was determined, defined and handed down by rulers and priests. The people lived in fear and in perpetual struggle to survive. When they looked around, there was nothing to give them hope of a better or an easier life. People looked at the world around them and saw only more of the same strictly limited life and opportunity.

In a society that offers no hope of happiness or release from struggle and suffering, people quite naturally begin to place their hopes elsewhere. They respond to their condition by hoping for something that lies outside the conditions and constraints they cannot control or influence. Religion becomes some kind of hope for rescue from life. Religion responds by offering either internalization to a spiritual realm or an external hope of a better world and a better life beyond the pale of death.

In the East, people feared what they did not understand. Nature and the whims of their rulers offered many phenomena they did not understand. People were told to placate the forces of nature, perhaps even to anthropomorphize those forces and to pay homage to them in an effort to escape natural forces and their effects. Sacrifice, ritual, and propitiation of incomprehensible deities and natural forces were deemed the appropriate responses. Fear prevailed; and with it, the belief that if magic could not control these inconceivable forces, there would be something better beyond this life of suffering.

In sharp contrast, Athenian culture embraced this world, even in the face of struggle or fear. They embraced the power of the human intellect to make sense of the world and to discover meaning in present existence without deferring all hope beyond the grave. Indeed, these Athenians turned the power of the human intellect upon the world and the deepest struggles of life, analyzed it, and pondered it in a search for truth.

The East - Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and the rest of the known world - was characterized by societies in which the common people had no recourse, no opportunity, no escape from the whims and the control of the rulers and the priests who pointed them away from their misery to a brighter and better world of the spirit. Athens - the West - unshackled the human intellect and turned it upon present reality in order to bring people to an intellectual recognition that there is a common human condition that can be understood by the human mind and that can inform the human spirit and allow it to break free.

"That which distinguishes the modern world from the ancient, and that which divides the West from the East, is the supremacy of mind in the affairs of men, and this came to birth in Greece and lived in Greece alone of all the ancient world. The Greeks were the first intellectualists. In a world where the irrational had played a chief role, they came forward as the protagonists of the mind."

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Chapter 2, Mind and Spirit Chapter 2, Mind and Spirit Summary and Analysis Mind and Spirit is the second dichotomy Hamilton emphasizes to explain the uniqueness of the Athenian cultural achievement in the ancient world. The particular achievement of Athenian life and thought was, for Hamilton, the ability to achieve perfect balance and integration of mind and spirit in human life. Perhaps it would be better to think of mind and spirit as antithetical and of the Athenian achievement as the discovery of the resolution of the antithesis.

What these Greeks discovered in the fifth century was recognition of beauty in the world and joy in life. Indeed, Hamilton points out, they were (as far as we know) the first people in the world to play. They discovered a new way to look at life and a new way to live. "To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction. The joy of life is written upon everything the Greeks left behind."

To be sure, as their literature amply demonstrates, they knew sorrow and suffering. "The Greeks knew to the full how bitter life is as well as how sweet. Joy and sorrow, exultation and tragedy, stand hand in hand in Greek literature, but there is no contradiction involved thereby. Those who do not know the one do not really know the other either."

The Athenians looked at the world and the events around them with what moderns would call a "critical" eye. They examined everything. They analyzed everything. They questioned everything. With this view of life comes recognition of individuality and of the freedom of the individual from tyranny and from superstition. The idea of individual freedom to think, to decide and to act is recognized in this society. When individuals are free, they demand the right to think for themselves - another hallmark of this new understanding of life.

In sharp distinction to the Eastern point of view "ruled by the irrational, by dreadful unknown powers, where a man was utterly at the mercy of what he must not try to understand, the Greeks arose and the rule of reason began." Everything in their world was subjected to intellectual analysis and to reason.

The author points out some very interesting facts about ways in which the very language of the Greeks demonstrates a unique understanding of life. The English word for school is derived from the Greek word for leisure. For these intellectualists, leisure would logically be used for thinking, investigating, and learning about things. Philosophy, rather than an arcane and esoteric pursuit of abstract knowledge, in Greek referred to a "love" of knowledge and the effort to understand everything.

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The life of the mind was vital to every Greek of every walk of life. One very important observation in this chapter will be echoed in a later discussion. This is the observation: "They could never leave anything obscure. Neither could they leave anything unrelated. System, order, connection, they were impelled to seek for. An unanalyzed whole was an impossible conception for them."

These Greeks were delighted by the life of the mind - by observation, investigation, reflection, and above all by discussion. Ideas and thoughts were discussed openly and honestly, anywhere and at any time. Indeed, conversation and discussion are the format chosen by Socrates to teach and by Plato to relate the teachings of Socrates. Such an intense and insatiable desire to know about everything must be discussed when people gathered.

This frame of mind also shaped the art of the period. Their statues were efforts to portray the perfect human, the perfect animal, the perfect true image. These Greeks might also be characterized as the first true realists. In all of the art of this period - literature, sculpture, and architecture - there is a new and unique realism that recognizes the profound beauty of the natural world and of the human form.

Again, Hamilton finds in the art of Greece the resolution of the antithesis between beauty and rationality and between mind and spirit. "The spiritual world was not to them another world from the natural world. It was the same world as that known to the mind. Beauty and rationality were both manifested in it.

Finally, Hamilton explains her analysis of how mind and spirit came into balance in the religion of these Athenians. Did they actually accept Homer's stories of the gods and goddesses at face value? They most certainly did not. Their reason and intellect enabled them to read the stories of Homer and penetrate the surface presentation to discern the essential truth beneath them. Hamilton finds this truth summarized by Socrates at the time when he was condemned to death: "Think this certain, that to a good man no evil can happen, either in life or in death." Again, Hamilton points to the essential core of Greek thinking: the control of emotion by reason and the achievement of balance between mind and spirit.