Thomas Cahill | Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea

Written by Thomas Cahill

Category: History
Imprint: Anchor
Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Pub Date: July 2004
Price: $14.95 (Can. $21.00)
ISBN: 0-385-49554-4
Also available as an abridged audio cassette, abridged audio CD, an abridged downloadable audiobook, hardcover, and in large print.

In the fourth volume of the acclaimed Hinges of History® series, Thomas Cahill brings his characteristic wit and style to a fascinating tour of ancient Greece.

The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft. Their achievements in art and philosophy are widely celebrated while others are unknown or underappreciated. In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill explores their legacy, good and bad.

While the Jews gave us our value system, the Greeks set the foundation and framework for our intellectual lives. They are responsible for our vocabulary, our logic, our entire system of categorization, and the intellectual tools we use in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the other sciences. Their method of thought, considered in classical times to be the pinnacle of human achievement, is largely responsible for the shape that the Christian religion took.

But the Greeks left a less appealing bequest in Western militarism and, in making the warrior the ultimate ideal, they perpetrated the assumption that only males could be entrusted with the duties of citizenship. The consequences of their exclusion of women from the political sphere and the social segregation of the sexes continue to reverberate today.

Full of surprising, often controversial, insights, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is a remarkable intellectual adventure--conducted by the most companionable guide imaginable. Cahill's knowledge of his sources is so intimate that he has made his own fresh translations of the Greek lyric poets for this volume.

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

“The best introduction to classical Greek culture yet written. . . . Learned, stylish and inspiring. . . . Well-informed, insightful and on the whole written in a sparkling style.” —Los Angeles Times

“Astonishing. . . . If anybody can get us reading about Homer, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Thucydides, Xenophon and more, Cahill will.” —Chicago Tribune

“Fascinating. . . . Commendable. . . . Cahill has an impressive knowledge of the Greek world. . . . His admirable skill at summing up movements
of enormous complexity surface throughout the book.” —The Seattle Times