The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (5).

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Time, Inc. 1930 (5).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

Ideas:

“Aristocracy: authority in the hands of the disciplined best.” P. 76. ………. “…nobility of birth has no connection with spiritual nobility.” P. 77. ………. “It has often been pointed out that the perfect expression of anything means that that thing has reached its culmination and is on the point of declining.” P. 77. ………. “Can excellence be learned?” p. 81. ………. “Power, of poetry or anything else, comes to a man be birth; it cannot be taught in the public schools.” P. 81. ………. “A gentleman will not join the staring crowd.” P. 83. ………. Pindar prays: “May God give me to aim at that which is within my power.” ………. 85. ………. “Civilization…is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the things of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling.” P. 89. ………. “…the height of civilization attained with undiminished power to act.” P. 89. ………. “We, to whom poetry, all art, is only a superficial decoration of life….”p. 91. ………. “The Greeks were preeminently realists.” P. 91. ………. “The Greeks were not tempted to evade facts.” P. 91. ………. “…it is always to be borne in mind that the Greeks did not only face facts, they had not even a desire to escape from them.” P. 93.

To be continued.