Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea

by Thomas Cahill

  Chief among theorists of the cultural consequences of orality versus literacy are Marshall McLuhan (The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media), and his disciple Walter J. Ong (Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word). Though I am broadly sympathetic to their approaches, I find them at their best as interpreters of the change from medieval commonalty to the print culture of the Reformation, rather than as assessors of the cultural impact made by divergent writing systems in antiquity.

  “Ulysses” by Tennyson is widely available in many collections; the quotation from “Ithaca” by Cavafy is taken from Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy, newly translated by Theoharis C. Theoharis (New York, 2001); “The Wanderer” by Auden is from W. H. Auden: The Complete Poems (New York, 2003). The quotation from Samuel Johnson first appeared in The Rambler for November 10, 1750. The entire essay is well worth one’s attention as it is, in its exaltation of the pleasures of private life over those of public adulation, a milestone in the evolution of Western sensibility.

  III: THE POET

  The quotation from Hesiod’s Theogony is from the translation by Richmond Lattimore (Ann Arbor, 1959), though I have taken the liberty of altering Lattimore’s spellings of Greek proper names (for example, Helikon to Helicon) to conform to the style of my text.

  I confess to a lifelong love affair with the Greek lyric poets; and finding no one else’s translations completely to my taste, I have ventured to make my own. The one exception is the Sapphic fragment that begins “The moon has set.…” That translation has been rattling around in my head for so many decades that I can no longer recall where I first saw it. The translations from Eubulus and Aristophanes are also mine.

  The mechanisms that drive this poetry—highly specified varieties of set rhythms appropriate to different moods and occasions, tonal values (now lost to us) associated with long and short syllables, musical modes—are so different from most of the mechanisms available in modern English that every translator must despair of re-creating a semblance of the original textures of Greek poetry in English. What is necessary is to live inside the Greek long enough so that one has a chance of making a new English poem that can convey similar sense and feeling by the instruments available to us: the ways in which words may be chosen and combined through stress and rhythm, alliteration and assonance, and rhyme. Though this last is never employed in Greek lyric poetry, it is a useful English tool for binding elements together that in Greek are bound by other means. Readers who wish to push further may find helpful Anne Pippin Burnett, Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (London, 1983).

  The connection I make between homosocial societies and homoerotic activity, though perhaps shocking to some simple souls, is well attested in literature, as well as in current news stories. Less known, at least in the West, is the homoerotic thread in upper-class Japanese life, well exposed, for example, in Eiko Ikegami’s The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA, 1995). Examples of Islamist homosexuality are attested in many recent journalistic reports (see, for instance, Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Education of a Holy Warrior,” New York Times Magazine, June 25, 2000).

  An essential work for understanding Athenian social life is James Davidson’s delightful Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (London, 1997), though I found myself disagreeing with Davidson on certain aspects of his interpretation of the relationship—or nonrelationship, as he sees it—between Greek sexual practices and male political power. The standard work on that subject is K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA, 1978), which I find convincing. Two books by Italian writers also proved helpful: Secondo natura (Rome, 1988) by the legal scholar Eva Cantarella, now available in English as Bisexuality in the Ancient World (New Haven, 2002), and Compagni d’amore: Da Ganimede a Batman: Identità e mito nelle omosessualità maschili (Verona, 1997) by the psychiatrist Vittorio Lingiardi, now available in English as Men in Love: Male Homosexualities from Ganymede to Batman (Chicago, 2002).

  IV: THE POLITICIAN AND THE PLAYWRIGHT

  The translations of Solon’s poetic fragments are mine. For Greek democracy, I relied largely on the standard study by J. K. Davies, Democracy and Classical Greece (Cambridge, MA, 1973). Though I present Solon as laying the foundations of Athenian democracy, I am of course aware that later figures—Cleisthenes, Ephialtes, Pericles—are responsible for establishing its functioning. But since they belong to the actualizing moments rather than to the drama of origination, I have (largely from space considerations) left them out of this part of my narrative. In addition to Davies, I have been much taken with Volume I, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York, 1991), of Orlando Patterson’s monumental study Freedom. I am finally unpersuaded by his fundamental proposition that the Greek articulation of freedom began in slavery: it seems to me that it began in Greek conversation and general Greek opinionatedness and that the evidence for this is to be found as far back as the Iliad, which preceded the burgeoning of Athens’s slave population by nearly two centuries. But Patterson’s study remains breathtaking in its admirable originality and magisterial sweep.

  For drama, The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, edited by P. E. Easterling (Cambridge, 1997), helped bring my own scholarship up to date. The lines from Clytemnestra’s speech in Agamemnon are taken from the Fagles translation in Aeschylus: The Oresteia (London and New York, 1977). The passages from Oedipus Tyrannos are taken from the Fagles translation in Sophocles: Three Theban Plays (London and New York, 1982), the passage from Medea from the spritely vernacular translation by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish (London, 1994). The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in which Sigmund Freud presents his theory of the Oedipus complex, is available in many editions, as is Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872).

  Two excellent books that span much of the material in this chapter and the next are Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1986), and Simon Hornblower, The Greek World 479–323 B.C. (London and New York, revised 1991).

  V: THE PHILOSOPHER

  All of Nietzsche’s works are available in a variety of editions. The new theory on why he went mad is to be found in Richard Schain, The Legend of Nietzsche’s Syphilis (Oxford, 2002). A more rational approach to the irrational may be found in the classic by E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951). The translations from Hesiod and Aristophanes are mine. The classic study of Greek religious beliefs is Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA, 1985).

  The passages from Plato’s Republic were translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford, 1993), as were the passages from Plato’s Symposium (Oxford, 1994); nor can I too highly recommend Waterfield’s introductions and notes to these volumes. The translation of the passage from the New Testament (Mt 5:43–48) is mine. For readers who wish to delve more deeply into the multifaceted subject of Greek philosophy, there are three books I would especially propose: Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (New York, 2000), for its amazing clarity and wit; Melissa Lane, Plato’s Progeny: How Plato and Socrates Still Captivate the Modern Mind (London, 2001), an accessible introduction to ancient philosophy’s contemporary influence; and Volume I (New York, 1962) of Frederick Copleston’s masterful nine-volume History of Philosophy, still the standard treatment in English, clear if dense and only for the dedicated student. None of these, however, had as much influence on me as a Plato seminar I was fortunate enough to take forty years ago with the legendary J. Giles Milhaven, who loved Plato much more than I but helped me to see what he was about and even to appreciate somewhat the ins and outs of Platonic prose.

  An excellent new translation of Herodotus has been made by the always reliable Robin Waterfield in Herodotus: The Histories (Oxford, 1998). The quotation from Thucydides is from his History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (Lon
don, 1972). The last two sentences, however, are my translation. For those who would plumb the depths of Athenian history, Mark Munn, The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates (Berkeley, 2000), makes an articulate guide. A compact and enlightening consideration of the differences between Herodotus and Thucydides may be found in T. J. Luce, The Greek Historians (London, 1997).

  VI: THE ARTIST

  The passages from Ovid are from his Metamorphoses, translated by Allen Mandelbaum (New York, 1993).

  There are many fine studies of Greek art. Among the best are John Boardman, The Oxford History of Classical Art (1993), and Martin Robertson, A Shorter History of Greek Art (Cambridge, 1991). But the book that gave me the most to think about was Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1997). I stuck very close to his interpretation of the treatment of women in Greek art. It was in Stewart that I found the quotation from Terry Eagleton, which he took from Eagleton’s Literary Theory (Minneapolis, 1983).

  VII: THE WAY THEY WENT

  Robert Graves made a terrific translation of The Golden Ass by Apuleius (New York, 1951). For Greek religious beliefs, you may wish to consult—in addition to Burkert, cited in Chapter V—Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? (Chicago, 1988). For the passage from Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannos, see the notes to Chapter IV.

  For the funeral oration of Pericles, I could find nothing that truly suited my needs, all the available translations being either too inappropriately colloquial or too out-of-date. The speech is beautifully constructed, and I could not bear to have Pericles sound either banal or antiquated. In the end, I used the well-wrought translation contained in the old Oxford edition of Thucydides by Richard Livingstone (1943), a translation that was made long, long ago by Richard Crawley and revised long ago by Richard Feetham—but I, in my turn, have revised it so considerably that I doubt Crawley’s shade would recognize it as his own. By starting with a language of dignity (and with an eye on the Greek), I found it fairly easy to recast the whole in a contemporary idiom. The quotation in the note on “The Melian Dialogue,” however, is from the Rex Warner translation (see Chapter V). Harvey Cox’s immensely influential study The Secular City (New York, 1965) was revised in 1966 and republished in an anniversary edition in 1990.

  I am aware that in speaking of “being,” the Ionian Presocratics used the term physis (nature) rather than ousia (substance). But ousia was also used, and the terms, as used at least by philosophers, were virtually interchangeable. By the time of Plato, ousia had become the preferred term; by the time of Aristotle it had become the technical term.

  The last part of the last chapter comes from too many sources to name here, though not a few of these are named in these notes and in the endnotes to previous volumes in this series. For the deep cultural divide between Jews and Greeks, the best authors to begin with may be Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (London and New York, 1960), and Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (Tübingen, 1973), currently available in English translation as Judaism and Hellenism from the Eugene, Ore. publisher, Wipf and Stock—though I’d have to say the best beginning is immersion in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek classics. The landmark study of Byzantium is by John Julius Norwich in three volumes under the series title Byzantium (New York, 1988, 1991, 1995), now digested as A Short History of Byzantium (New York, 1997). The Oxford History of Byzantium (2002), however, a compilation by many hands, is considerably easier to tackle—and full of wonderful pictures. Another excellent study is Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), edited by G. W. Bowersock, the invaluable Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar. The classic study of the impact of Greco-Roman attitudes on early Christianity is by Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1966).

  The extract from “The Hag of Beare” comes from the translation from the Irish by John Montague in his Tides (Dublin and Chicago, 1971). The translation of the Sappho fragment is mine.

  CHRONOLOGY

  3000–1100 B.C. The Bronze Age in Greece: the Minoans and Mycenaeans.

  1600–1400 The Golden Age of the Minoans in Crete.

  c. 1400 The destruction of palaces on Crete.

  The Mycenaeans appear to take over in Crete.

  1184 The traditional date for the fall of Troy.

  1100 The beginning of the Iron (or Dark) Age in Greece.

  800–600 The period of Greek colonization.

  750 The founding of Ischia.

  750–700 Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

  621 Draco and the first written laws in Athens.

  Beginning of the archaic period in architecture.

  c. 612 Sappho born on the island of Lesbos.

  594 Solon (c. 640–560) given extraordinary powers in Athens.

  Economic and political reforms.

  560–527 The tyranny of Pisistratus in Athens.

  499 The revolt of Ionian Greek cities against Persia.

  The beginning of the Persian War.

  490 The Athenians defeat the Persians at Marathon.

  480 The Persians win at Thermopylae.

  479 The Persians are defeated at Plataea and Mycale. The end of the Persian War. Beginning of the classical period in architecture.

  460–430 The Golden Age of Pericles in Athens.

  Pericles builds up Athens and strengthens democracy.

  Athens becomes increasingly antagonistic to Sparta.

  The three tragedians: Aeschylus (525–456), Sophocles (496–406), Euripides (485–406).

  431–404 The Peloponnesian War.

  431 The first year of the war ends with Pericles’s funeral oration.

  430 The plague at Athens.

  429 The death of Pericles from the plague.

  416 The Athenian attack on the island of Melos.

  The “Melian Dialogue” of Thucydides.

  413 The Athenian expedition to Sicily.

  Athens defeated.

  411 The oligarchic revolution at Athens: despotic committee of four hundred.

  410 Athens restores democracy.

  404 Athens surrenders to Sparta; oligarchy returns to Athens.

  404–371 Period of Spartan dominance.

  403 Democracy restored to Athens.

  399 The death of Socrates at Athens.

  359–336 The reign of Philip II of Macedon.

  347 The completion of Plato’s Republic.

  336–323 The reign of Alexander the Great.

  335 Aristotle (384–322) founds the Lyceum.

  323 The death of Alexander the Great.

  323–146 The Hellenistic Age.

  148 Macedonia becomes a Roman province.

  146 Achaea becomes a part of Macedonia.

  A.D. 330 Byzantium becomes the capital of the Roman world; named New Rome or Constantinople.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To faithful friends who read the first draft of the manuscript—Susan Cahill, John E. Becker, William J. Cassidy III, Michael D. Coogan, Gary B. Ostrower, Burton Visotzky, Jane G. White, and Robert J. White—I am most grateful, for I owe them much by way of corrections large and small, though what errors remain are mine alone. As the series has progressed, these stalwarts have come to form a kind of familiar repertory theater of critics: there is the one who demands clarity beyond my ability to provide it, the one who manages to cite historical exceptions that overturn my best generalizations, the one who provides punch lines I never thought of, the ones—all of them—whose learning is deeper and broader than I could ever hope to match. For this volume, Bob White, a friend of nearly fifty years, was especially invaluable. In addition to his editorial fine-tooth comb, he is responsible for the pages on the Greek alphabet, the Pronouncing Glossary, and the Chronology.

  I am grateful as well to so many at Doubleday for their unflagging enthusiasm and support: Nan A. Talese above all, but also Katherine Trager, Stephen Rubin, Michael Palgon, Jacqueline Everly, John Pitts, Nicole Dewey, Lorna Owen, Judy Jacoby, Rex Bono
melli, Kim Cacho, Marysarah Quinn, Terry Karydes, Rebecca Holland, Sean Mills, Amy de Rouvray, and the entire, never-to-be-underestimated sales force (as well as freelancers Kathy Kikkert, Barbara Flanagan, Chris Carruth, Deborah Bull, and Jennifer Sanfilippo). The supportive team at Anchor—Martin Asher, Anne Messitte, LuAnn Walther, and Jennifer Marshall—is similarly deserving of praise. This time special thanks is owed to CEO Peter Olson, more bellicose than I—at least in his reading—without whose recommendation I might have missed the work of Victor Davis Hanson. Nor can I omit recalling my perennial gratitude to my literary agent, Lynn Nesbit, and her able colleagues Bennett Ashley and Cullen Stanley, to my assistant Diane Marcus, and to Andrea Ginsky, research librarian of the Selby Public Library in Sarasota, Florida.

  Modern Greeks and Greek Americans join hands with their ancient ancestors in the immense value they assign to the pleasures of good conversation. For conversations full of intimate insight, I must thank Athenian friends—Makis Dedes, Despina Gabriel, Nikos Megapanos, Lykourgos V. Papayannopoulos, Takis Theodoropoulos, and Louisa Zaoussi—as well as Olympia Dukakis in New York, and Tedoro and Hera on the great isle of Lesbos.