There are at least four million plants and animals on earth, which means there are four million ways of staying alive. Yet, Cahill is devoting a series of books to the dubious proposition that only half-a-dozen or so really matter.The book expresses a basically good idea -- how did our modern world come to be? His hypothesis contends the Greeks invented it, he rounds up the usual collection of facts to prove his assumption. It's impressive, and it can't be denied the Greeks came up with some of the world's finest arguments to support democracy. But, they also came up with fine arguments against democracy; Plato's arguments for "rule by the best" hobbled the world for at least 2,500 years.
Plato tried to provide answers; for example, in ranking government from the finest to the worst, he ranked aristocracy as the best. Next came military rule, then a business oligarchy, then the rule by inexperts which he called democracy; and, worst of all, tyranny. It's hardly surprising church and secular leaders warmly endorsed Plato's views for the past 2,500 years.
The book is an interesting compilation of some Greek ideas. He writes, "fate was central to Greeks and Romans, hope is central to Jews and Christians." Yet, democracy is an exuberant expression of hope. Unfortunately, Cahill fails to reconcile a government based on hope with the idea the Greeks believed in fate. As in his narrow argument about the Irish saving civilization, he ignores the full panopoly of Greek ideas and accomplishments and the impact of non-Greek ideas.
Direct democracy failed in Greece. Modern representative democracy evolved in an unbroken but greatly tortured path from the equally ancient "althing" of Scandinavia. In the late eighteenth century, the debate in England and America about the nature of democracy cited Greece as a diffuse distant dim ideal to justify preserving and/or changing the status quo. On a practical basis in America, the Iroquois confederacy may have had more impact than anything from Greece. You'll never know from this book.
Life adapts itself to different environments, as Charles Darwin discovered when he saw finches. Likewise, democracy adapts itself to different environments, which is why England and the United States are equally democratic in profoundly different ways. You'll never know from this book.
Greek culture was inherited from Asia Minor, Crete, Phoenicia, and Egypt -- just as American culture is a world-wide amalgam. The tragedy of ancient Greece, still a destructive feature of the Balkans, is the inability to unite in any common cause except a passion to destroy each other. You'll never learn it from this book.
The ancient Greek genius was to question everything -- not to offer answers. Read "Antigone" and tell me the correct answer. It's a pity Cahill didn't focus on this issue, and leave the thinking and conclusions to the reader. Greek failures may well be of far more use to us today than their limited and brief successes.
Granted, near the end of the book in discussing the decline and fall of Greece, he outlines a disturbing parallel in modern politics, "Though the gods were more and more loudly invoked, the prayers rang hollow, the appeal to conscience turned mute, and any reference to social justice tended to be met with a knowing smirk."
The Greeks turned cynical as their society declined, just as many Americans are now cynical about their own "Smirker-in-Chief." The Greeks had no answer, Cahill offers none. If the Greeks really mattered, we could learn from them. If not, this book offers as much insight as comparing the first-class and steerage-class menus on the S.S. Titanic.
Our civilization is a lot more complicated than "one people solves all." You'll never learn it from this book.
I expected far more from the author of the other books in the "Hinges" series. I expected a synthesis of Greek contributions, thought and limitations but found it missing from the book. While the "How to . . ." structure interested me, the dialog slowly failed to go anywhere. The discussions mostly limited themselves to the Athenian portion of the Greek world and seemed to parrot the ideas of other Greek scholars, but in a manner less interesting than the original. The discussion on Greek art remided me of my own poor effort to describe the vast wealth in a college term paper.I agree with his fundamental thesis that the Hellenic world was a cosmopolitan place with the full spectrum of human nobility and infamy, which continue to influence the world today. However, he failed to fully develop, discuss and prove his topics. For example in his concluding chapter, he gives us a five page long quotation from Thucydides: "History of the Pelopenesian War". This crutch of failed historians is unworthy of the author of "How the Irish Saved Civilization". He seemed in a hurry to cover the material and get to some other place.
I was most disappointed at his attacks on President Bush over the Iraqi War. Lack of a universal coalition does not make the removal of a mass murdering thug hubris! The author is entitled to his opinion about the virtues of the war, but a scholarly work on the importance of the Greeks to 3500 years of Western history limits the wonder the book might have shown us.
Read the primary sources or books by Michael Grant for a better discussion of this topic.
