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Book Review
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter
by
Thomas Cahill
Nan A. Talese (Doubleday) 2003
336 pages $37.95
This review, which has been prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, is in the public domain and
may be used by anyone, in whole or in part, without permission and without
charge, provided the source is acknowledged.
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
Why do
the Greeks matter? Prima
facie, there are two ways of handling this question. The first is simply to invite the questioner to look at the
legacy, the astonishing treasure of works which continue (more so than ever
before) to delight, challenge, and inspire. The
second, more complex approach is to trace the influence of the Greek legacy on
the development of Western Culture, something requiring a very delicate and
sensitive hand, because although the Greek experience has always been
remembered and celebrated (often very guardedly), for most of the history of
Western Culture the works themselves have not been available, and our
understanding of the Greeks has been derived from sources which appropriated
that legacy, reinterpreted it decisively, and frequently offered it to us in
very non-Greek ways. The
Trojan War, for example, has always been one of our most popular and inspiring
narratives, but until modern times our access to it has been through Roman and
Christian re-interpretations. So can we
assign the enormous influence of some of these appropriations (for example, in
Virgil or Ovid or Dante or Shakespeare) to the Greeks? Is Brad Pitt’s Achilles a product of Greek influence?
Thomas
Cahill’s new book sets out to provide both sorts of answer at once. What he has to say is clearly directed at those almost totally
unfamiliar with classical Greek culture, and he is very keen that they share
his excitement about and enthusiasm for particular works. But he also wants us to understand that historically the Greeks
have played a vital role in developing our understanding of ourselves. The merit of the book stems from his relative success with the
first of these answers; its problems emerge from his generally inadequate
treatment of the second.
The heart
of Cahill’s historical argument is that the Greeks taught us six specific
things: how to fight, how to feel, how to party, how to rule, how to think, and
how to see. He
devotes a chapter to each of these, and in each section of his argument takes a
close look at particular texts. Typically
he begins with a historical introduction to the author and the work, then
introduces us to the text (with very generous quotations from recent
translations and a great deal of summary), and leads us towards his historical
conclusion.
The most
consistently interesting parts of the book are the sections dealing with the
cultural context of particular works. Cahill is obviously very well read but
wears his scholarship with a light elegance, so that it never
intrudes. There is a wealth of interesting detail, and some of his
ruminations are fascinating (especially on the nature of language). Though anyone familiar with the classical Greeks will not find
anything very new here, for the neophyte the introductions to the different
aspects of ancient Greek culture are clear, interesting, fluent, and eminently
readable throughout.
The
treatment of the texts also works well for the most part, mainly because we get
such generous access to them. The interpretative commentary is at times
rather haphazard and flippant, much of it a series of scattergun remarks
without any sustained argument (e.g., the real hero of the Iliad is
Hector, Sophocles’ Oedipus
the King provides
a “vicarious comeuppance” for the audience, Aristotle is really not much in
comparison with Plato, the Romans are mere plodders, and so on). But Cahill coveys well his genuine delight in a way which is hard
to resist and which should (one thinks) encourage many readers to pick up the
texts and start reading.
The
historical claims, however, are for the most part unpersuasive. In some cases they seem rather empty (e.g., how to feel, how to
party); at other times, too simplistic. And a
neat list of six clear “lessons” invites us to wonder why some more important
and obvious legacies are not more central to his argument.
Cahill,
for example, wants us to believe that the Iliad influenced us by teaching us our most important tactical military
doctrine—get there first with the most troops. Hence, our devotion to huge citizens
armies and massive strikes against smaller numbers is part of Homer’s gift, a
bold and potentially interesting suggestion. But Cahill’s case amounts to little more than a quote or two from
the Iliad (referring to the closely-packed formation of Achaean troops and
to council discussions), a passing reference to Alexander, and a nod in the
direction of that willful and woeful misinterpreter
of the classics, Robert Kaplan—a very cursory argument in defence
of a major historical claim.
That the Iliad (and the
figure of Achilles—who, Cahill has just informed us, is not the real hero of
the poem, but at this stage of his argument that is, one assumes, beside the
point) has played a role in our military history no one will deny. But to make the quick leap to the conclusion that we owe the
Powell Doctrine to this influence raises many more questions than it answers. After
all, there’s a reason the Americans nicknamed George Washington Cincinnatus
rather than Achilles or Alexander. Perhaps
there’s a case to be made that Roman or Christian military tactics were
decisively shaped by the Greek tradition, but if there is, Cahill doesn’t make
it here, as he himself acknowledges in a rather limp conclusion at odds with
his previous assertiveness—maybe what he’s been saying is all nonsense and
(quoting Dr. Seuss) events just “happened to happen.”
One also
wonders why, if it’s a matter of one particularly important thing we have
learned from a celebrated Greek writer (not a particular good way to proceed,
in my view, but that’s what Cahill has decided to do), he overlooks the most
obvious “lesson” of the Iliad and the Odyssey, both
for the ancient Greeks themselves and for countless later readers, that is, the
importance of “How to excel.” For
Homer, more than any other writer, established a
tradition of excellence through individual competition in all facets of life as
the basis for human virtue. And many
Western thinkers, including figures as different as John Stuart Mill and
Friedrich Nietzsche, have drawn on that tradition (once it re-emerged with its
authentic Greek voice) for very different purposes, as a way of countering the
more powerful Western Christian tradition encouraging conformity and enforced
equality. Cahill briefly acknowledges the importance of competitiveness later
in the book, but in much too flippant a manner, given that it is central to the
enormously important (and, via Aristotle, influential) notion of pagan virtue
(he calls it the “fucker-fuckee” aspect of Greek
life). Nor is he interested in pursuing what we may have learned from it.
Reinforcing
this sense of some extremely cursory and misleading historical snap judgments
is Cahill’s habit of trying to collapse the gap separating us from the Greeks
by pithy comparisons to “modern” personalities. Perhaps this is an attempt to
win over younger readers (although references to FDR, Cole Porter, Liza Minelli, and others make one wonder about just what
readership he has in mind). Perhaps
that’s the reason he also likes to inject slang unnecessarily into his prose
(statues with giant “schlongs,” philosophy
degenerating into “yip yapping schools,” Christianity perceived as a “woo-woo
wave,” and so on) and to go out of his way to emphasize that the Greeks were
“classically classist, sexist, and racist” (which at times reads like his
attempt to establish his credentials with a modern undergraduate readership).
One
senses his purpose here, as with his easy leaps to modern issues, is to make
inexperienced readers feel more comfortable and at home with the ancient
works. But many
of these books matter precisely because they are strange and different: they
make us feel uncomfortable and challenge what we want to believe about
ourselves. We need
to read them not because they have made us what we are but because they remind
us of what we would prefer to ignore or forget about what we have become.
After
all, few things are more potentially disturbing to a complacent faith in a
divinely providential history or its secular equivalents (and in our privileged
position at the cutting edge of history) than an immersion in Greek tragic
fatalism (something which helps to account for the fact that the longest
lasting Western approach to the Greek legacy, from Origen right up to modern
scholars and, in places, to Cahill himself, is ruthlessly to moralize
disturbing pagan visions of tragic fate into reassuring Christian allegories of
divine providence or punishment or consoling studies of maladjustment). Perhaps that’s the reason why Cahill’s treatment of the stranger
texts (Homer and the tragedians) is the least satisfactory part of the book and
why he tends to fare better with those texts where our separation from the
Greeks is less immediately evident (especially Plato).
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