This week concludes our reading of The Greek Way, and I'm glad to be putting this book back up on the shelf. Personally, I enjoyed Hamilton's prosody. Her structure and word choices were beautiful and her love of Greek culture is obvious. However, in the segments where she compares the Greeks to other cultures, I feel like she could've formed arguments that didn't insult other cultures as much.

Next week we will begin reading Theogony & Works and Days by Hesiod.

Chapter Summaries:

Chapter XV - The Religion of the Greeks

This chapter begins by stating that Greek religion is often confused with Greek mythology. While the Greek gods and Homer's Olympians are the same, Homer's deities have questionable morals and exhibit childish behaviour. Hamilton says that the Greeks have "no creed, no ten commandments, no dogmas" and they expressed their devotion to more benevolent gods through the highest forms of art. The example given is the statue of Zeus at Olympia - a quintessentially Greek work that inspires the beholder to contemplate the divine. Over time, the Greek's needed their gods to care for more than just the great and powerful people, which resulted in the creation and worship of more "gods of the earth" like Dionysus. Their need for a positive and inclusive belief system culminated with Sophocles idea that goodness and truth were fundamental realities and that when you moved past ignorance you can accept that there is purpose to life and that can help you find good in the darkness.

Chapter XVI - The Ways of the Greeks

In this chapter, Hamilton states that the Greeks thought the most important traits were those shared with all mankind. This outlook is the underlying cause of the differences between their artwork and modern artwork. It is most easily compared in Greek architecture, where temples were designed to be the most dominant but harmonious feature in their settings. This is contrasted by the haphazard placement of churches in the middle ages. The Greek's need to see everything in their environment in relation to the whole is the standout feature of Greek art and creation. Contrasting the infinite against human complexities, this way of thinking allowed the Greeks to simplify their perspectives. Human beings were chiefly alike to the Greeks. She further compares Aeschylus and Shakespeare, culminating in the notion that Greeks focused on actions, not feelings, and that all actions lead from one to the next. Ultimately, Hamilton says that the Greeks prized the ability to suffer unbroken. They accepted things in the moment, harmonized with their surroundings and they did not dwell in the past, rather they took action because of it.

Chapter XVII - The Way of the Modern World

The Western world wavers between the way of the spirit and the way of the mind, never reconcile their claims as to which is best. In the years since the fall of the Greek city state, the turn away from the pure contemplation of the invisible, the tendency to fall into the extremes (like self-mutilation) pushed learning and art aside in favour of misery and turning men away from the reality of life and freedom of thought. The pendulum did not swing back until the Italian Renaissance began to demand liberty and love of beauty at the cost of morality and ethics. By the time of the Reformation, the pendulum was swinging back in the direction that demanded morality and mans right to think for himself pushed beauty and art aside again. Never again has mankind achieved the balance of morality, freedom, and appreciation of beauty that the Greeks had.