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Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company, in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial best-seller in its various available formats. Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.
With the clarity and grace for which she is admired, Edith Hamilton writes of Plato and Aristotle, of Demosthenes and Alexander the Great, of the much-loved playwright Menander, of the Stoics, and finally of Plutarch. She brings these figures vividly to life, not only placing them in relation to their own times but also conveying very poignantly their meaning for our world today.
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
In this compact yet comprehensive history of ancient Greece, Thomas R. Martin brings alive Greek civilization from its Stone Age roots to the fourth century BC. Focusing on the development of the Greek city-state and the society, culture, and architecture of Athens in its Golden Age, Martin integrates political, military, social, and cultural history in a book that will appeal to students and general audiences alike. Now in its second edition, this classic work now features updates throughout.
For thousands of years, Homer's ancient epic poem the Iliad has enchanted readers from around the world. When you join Professor Vandiver for this lecture series on the Iliad, you'll come to understand what has enthralled and gripped so many people.Her compelling 12-lecture look at this literary masterpiece -whether it's the work of many authors or the "vision" of a single blind poet - makes it vividly clear why, after almost 3,000 years, the Iliad remains not only among the greatest adventure stories ever told but also one of the most compelling meditations on the human condition ever written.
Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company, in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial best-seller in its various available formats. Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.
With the clarity and grace for which she is admired, Edith Hamilton writes of Plato and Aristotle, of Demosthenes and Alexander the Great, of the much-loved playwright Menander, of the Stoics, and finally of Plutarch. She brings these figures vividly to life, not only placing them in relation to their own times but also conveying very poignantly their meaning for our world today.
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
In this compact yet comprehensive history of ancient Greece, Thomas R. Martin brings alive Greek civilization from its Stone Age roots to the fourth century BC. Focusing on the development of the Greek city-state and the society, culture, and architecture of Athens in its Golden Age, Martin integrates political, military, social, and cultural history in a book that will appeal to students and general audiences alike. Now in its second edition, this classic work now features updates throughout.
For thousands of years, Homer's ancient epic poem the Iliad has enchanted readers from around the world. When you join Professor Vandiver for this lecture series on the Iliad, you'll come to understand what has enthralled and gripped so many people.Her compelling 12-lecture look at this literary masterpiece -whether it's the work of many authors or the "vision" of a single blind poet - makes it vividly clear why, after almost 3,000 years, the Iliad remains not only among the greatest adventure stories ever told but also one of the most compelling meditations on the human condition ever written.
Filled with tales of adventure and astounding reversals of fortune, The Rise of Athens celebrates the city-state that transformed the world - from the democratic revolution that marked its beginning through the city's political and cultural golden age to its decline into the ancient equivalent of a modern-day university town. Anthony Everitt constructs his history with unforgettable portraits of the talented, tricky, ambitious, and unscrupulous Athenians who fueled the city's rise.
Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.
Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall's Introducing the Ancient Greeks is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience, from the rise of the Mycenaean kingdoms of the sixteenth century BC to the final victory of Christianity over paganism in AD 391. Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history.
This is the incredible story of the world's greatest conqueror, a man who single handedly changed the course of history...and who was worshipped as a god. There have been many attempts in the 2,300 years since Alexander's death to tell the epic story of this enigmatic soldier. His deeds read like the stuff of legends. Of all the chroniclers of Alexander, and there have been many famous ones, including Plutarch and Ptolemy, none have given us a clearer and truer account than the one by Arrian.
Since it was first published more than 25 years ago, Robert Fitzgerald's prizewinning translation of Homer's battle epic has become a classic in its own right: a standard against which all other versions of The Iliad are compared. Fitzgerald's work is accessible, ironic, faithful, written in a swift vernacular blank verse that "makes Homer live as never before" ( Library Journal).
This famous work by Lucretius is a masterpiece of didactic poetry, and it still stands today as the finest exposition of Epicurean philosophy ever written. The poem was produced in the middle of first century B.C., a period that was to witness a flowering of Latin literature unequaled for beauty and intellectual power in subsequent ages. The Latin title, De Rerum Natura, translates literally to On the Nature of Things and is meant to impress the reader with the breadth and depth of Epicurean philosophy.
In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years' War - long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution - takes on a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain's empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution. Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountry involving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville, Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to world conflagration.
The fighting that raged in the East during the First World War was every bit as fierce as that on the Western Front, but the titanic clashes between three towering empires - Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany - remains a comparatively unknown facet of the Great War. With the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war in 2014, Collision of Empires is a timely expose of the bitter fighting on this forgotten front - a clash that would ultimately change the face of Europe forever.
Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.
Traditionally, Robert F. Kennedy has been viewed as either the "Good Bobby", who saw wrong and tried to right it, or the "Bad Bobby" of countless conspiracy theories. Evan Thomas' achievement is to realize RFK as a human being, to bring to life an extraordinarily complex man who was at once kind and cruel, devious and honest, fearful and brave. The portrait that emerges is unvarnished but sympathetic, packed with new details about Kennedy's early life and his behind-the-scenes machinations.
In The Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. The action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War, only to be treacherously slain by his own wife. It ends with the trial of their son, Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge her treachery - a trial with the goddess Athena as judge, the god Apollo as defense attorney, and, as prosecutors, relentless avenging demons called The Furies.
Translated by W. E. D. Rouse, The March of the Ten Thousand is one of the most admired and widely read pieces of ancient literature to come down to us. Xenophon employs a very simple, straightforward style to describe what is probably the most exciting military adventure ever undertaken. It is an epic of courage, faith and democratic principle.
Based on a thorough study of Greek life and civilization, of Greek literature, philosophy, and art, The Greek Way interprets their meaning and brings a realization of the refuge and strength the past can be to us in the troubled present. Miss Hamilton's book must take its place with the few interpretative volumes which are permanently rooted and profoundly alive in our literature.
Where does The Greek Way rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I like to read Edith Hamilton. However, if your annoyed by the "compare and contrast" method of scholarship (I think its very outdated myself) you wont like this. Mrs Hamilton has a strong need to compare cultures and thus extract the truth shes looking for from the contrasts. The problem is that the generalizations she must inevitably make for this type of approach can be wide sweeping and fairly wild, and thus the conclusions she reaches based on these generalizations become merely subjective. Often you may find yourself disagreeing with her.
One area in particular I disagree with is Hamilton's conclusions regarding Ancient Egypt. Explaining the Egyptians preoccupation with death (as she puts it), she attributes this to the fact that Egypt was mostly a place of misery and toil, thus producing in the culure a certain yearning for the next life and a certain salvation in death. Whereas, on the other hand, you have Hamilton's Greeks, portrayed here as a youthful, playful and life affirming culture, centered on the here and now.
This is wildly inaccurate. The Greeks themselves -Solon, Euclid, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodotus-who traveled there at different times, and acknowledged Egypt as the richer, deeper and more profound culture in every case. The Greeks who made their way to Egypt returned to "revolutionize" their respective fields of science. However, they were merely translating the knowledge of the Egyptians. The Greeks saw themselves more as children when they compared themselves to the Egyptians. All of her sciences had their origins in Egypt, the Greek Gods themselves had their origin in Egypt. Egypt was several thousand years old by the time the Greeks came into their ascendancy. Far from misery and toil, the Egyptian land was abundant, the society was rich and vibrant. Why do you thing Egypt was the breadbasket for the entire Mediterranean even into Roman times? She was the hub of Mediterranean trade. The view of slaves toiling to build the pyramids is so outdated to be comical now days. Egyptian concepts around death were not the attempts of a desperate people to escape the chains of misery, but a highly developed science of the soul which revealed a deep understanding of the nature and immortality of the soul and the possibility for perfection in this life and the next.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but that's one example that I can provide to show the dangers of this type of compare and contrast history. Still, its a fun listen. Nadia May is great, the book is immersive, and there is still a lot of great info in here.
What about Nadia May’s performance did you like?
Shes great always
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
One reaction, see above
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I will thwart the trend of obsequious unreflective praise of The Greek Way, probably because I have read it's original thesis in The Echo of Greece.
Essentially, TGW includes more tragedy and Comedy than did EOG and much more of the inessential in the bargain.
EOG focuses on that which is essential about ancient Athens: her philosophy and her sense of what a democracy is supposed to be. Nothing else really matters in conparison, no matter how many ruminations Hamilton makes on the supposed Greek core sensibility and the like. Hamilton, it pains me to say as a fellow admirer of ancient Athenian culture, is unduly biased toward all things Greek. Her work was worthwhile, but Echo is the better and miore lasting testament to the Ancient Athenians we are all thinking of. Pound for pound, there is certainly no comparison. Echo hands down more efficiently and elegantly defines the ancient Athenian ethos that Americans and Europeans (and all students of democracy of philosophy) look back to for inspiration and guidance.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
I heard of this work in a quite different audible book, Landslide by Jonathan Darman, about Reagan and LBJ in the mid-1960s. In that book it was related that, after JFK was shot, brother Robert found much solace in The Greek Way. (I'm fascinated by the whole Kennedy saga, though by no means a fan of the main characters.) What the heck, thought I, I can always use a bit of solace, and a bracing visit with my western heritage, etc., by an unapologetic author, as a contrast to the cheap shots constantly heard nowadays. And I suppose this fills the bill. It is in its way probably a mirror of the sort of Homeric, heroic tone one might have heard directly from these intensely enthusiastic Greeks. And there is much artistry and beauty in it, if a big helping of that is what is desired. It depends on what a listener wants. Edith Hamilton was no slouch at composing a sentence or bringing some uplifting sentiment or sparkling and inspiring image to these scenes. I guess I am spoiled at present though, preferring a less strident ease of declaring what is what (and leaving out various troubling facts known better to more modern scholarship); I want the whole story and a balanced one, and I like a more patient scholarship that builds its case with implacable logic.
But I do consider it vital that, in my own university days, I had at least a few great professors of this sort. Because that energizes everything else, all the later paths that can open to a person who has exulted in these sorts of things. A LOVE of scholarship, I owe to earlier exposure to people like this.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
i found this book, to be more than i expected. i found very fascinating. i was looking for a book on mythology and got the entire of greek history and it's relavance to our modern western beliefs.
This is a must buy for study the Golden Age of Greece. As with all study or simple enjoyment of history, context is important. This book provides a good insight to the ancient Greek mindset and then an understanding how / why they reacted.
being a person profoundly interested in the history which resulted in the oposing directions that eastern foundational world view and the western christian mysticism world view had come about,this book is a treasure..let me explain....Our world today labels anyone who publicly compares one culture[if western] as being higher or more true or correct IN TRUTH over another ,as a bigot and uncompationate...If the comparison is IN FACT correct then this political correctness actualy destroys any acces to TRUTH..it may be kind to someones feelings but the hight of cruelty to all who seek reality...this being said,I simply could not understand why the eastern religions all have at root this terrible world view of non cosmic reality and the evil of personality and so forth,,I know these men and women are not bad or evil people..so Why give in to this wretched view...my attempts in modern writers to find the history of these nations resulted in there cowardly hiding any comment at all on this.....until edith Hamiltons great histoical books...Being she wrote before todays tyranical political correctness and her obvious love of western attitudes,clear and honest insights flow wonderfuly.I have found this and her other books the finest written on early western civilisation as compaired to the poor eastern civilisations.please understand,it is all the countlesss people who have had to live in these fatalistic civilisations that my heart weeps for.thank God they are begining to be freed from the terrible spiritual bondage that pantheism inevitably results in..For all the westerners who Chose to run to the east for spiritual reality I can only say enjoy the fruits of your choices.....Anyway, all who love the joy of creation and personality and life lived to its full with all its colors,you will love this and all this writers books....enjoy
4 of 8 people found this review helpful