The content and impact of ancient Greek culture
Review of The Greek Achievement: 1550 BC to 600 AD from Mycenae to the Byzantine Empire by Charles Freeman
This book is a delightful and challenging introduction to the Greeks of antiquity, covering what they did and thought, with an eye to how their legacy shaped western civilization. Though covering an immense range of subjects – not just the city state, but the births of democracy, philosophy, history, drama, and new forms of representational art – it is dense, never over-simplifies, and eminently readable. While awestruck and respectful, Freeman is also critical and reveals the many contradictions that set Greek societies apart from the world of today. This is a masterpiece of popular history that I think was a life-long labor of love.
The story begins with the Bronze Age kingdoms, the citadels in Crete and Mycenae. These were autocracies that dominated their landscapes, reaping the fruits of peasant slaves and participating in a vast trading network that spanned the Mediterranean and included Egypt, the Hittites, and Mesopotamia. Some time around 1200 BCE, this common culture mysteriously crashed nearly everywhere. A long dark age ensued in Greece.
From the 8th century BCE, the Greeks began to reemerge, this time organized into city states. These were smaller, relatively self-sufficient units that revolved around a city with a supporting countryside. Each city had its founding myths and variations of pagan religion, competing for resources with its neighbors and experimenting with internal organization and security; they had elaborately developed and varied cultures. While there were tyrants and strong men, more flexible arrangements also emerged. Most strikingly, in their perpetual armed disputes, the Greeks developed a new form of warfare, the Phalanx, which Freedman argues had a deep impact on city state function, dependent upon the participation of peasant soldiers to engage in limited warfare under leaders chosen as much for their ability as their pedigree. Eventually, this led to oligarchical and even quasi-democratic arrangements, such as Athens in the Classical Age, but also military states like Sparta; some great leaders, such as Cleisthenes and Solon appeared at this time.
When faced with an external threat (the Persian Empire), the city states were able to cooperate in self-defense, leading to larger organization. Taking center stage, Athens founded the Delian League, in which Sparta refused to participate, a mechanism that enabled Athens to funnel enormous resources to public projects, spawning in the process an unprecedented dynamism of culture. This was the Periclean Age, when the Parthenon was built and a democracy of sorts was formed.
The cultural inventiveness of Athens cannot be exaggerated. First, there were the institutions. Free men (not women or slaves, it should be noted) were expected to contribute to the city's advancement, not as a democracy to promote individual freedom per se, but as a collective enterprise. This is where Athens differed from modern democracy as we know it: duty was to the state, not as a way for individual self expression or personal development.
Second, there was Socrates, who inspired Plato's philosophy of transcendent ideals and later the more observational philosophy of Aristotle. These men set the conceptual basis for the rational acquisition and evaluation of knowledge that was not dependent on the capricious actions of gods. Indeed, one could argue that Plato and others developed the concept of a theoretical, abstract and deeper reality behind appearances that philosophers were best equipped to know. In contrast, Aristotle concentrated on the notion that observations and evidence needed to supplement theory. If this never coalesced into modern scientific methodology, it was a major step forward.
Third, several critical historians published investigations of periods that transcended hero tales and epic poems, at once looking for deeper causes and motivations while empathizing with cultures beyond their city states. With his travels and investigations into alien cultures, Herodotus may be said to be the father of anthropology. Of greater consequence was Thucydides, whose documentation of the Peloponnesian War was the first critical, multi-sourced history ever written.
Fourth, dramatists became a vital part of the fabric of society, reformulating myths to address the concerns of society in new ways; this was a new art form in both tragedy and comedy, with multiple characters and occasionally even contemporaries.
Fifth, Athenians developed a wide array of figurative art forms, in particular realistic (if heroically ideal) sculpture and painted pottery scenes.
Taken together these developments offer a seductive vision of inchoate modernity, an ideal that was taken up in the Renaissance that formed the basis of elite classical education until the end of the 19th century CE. Freeman is highly critical of this idealization, which is a useful counterpoint.
The war between Athens and Sparta effectively ended this civilization, or at least its great impulse to invention, opening the way for Alexander the Great to erase city-state autonomy. This inaugurated the time of massive, autocratic kingdoms and later the hegemony of the Roman Empire. Nonetheless, with Hellenistic developments (the 200 years following Alexander’s death, when 3 of his generals governed vast territories), Greek culture remained vital. Philosophers turned away from the big questions of ultimate truth and societal organization and turned inward, looking to the happier life, e.g. Epicurus, the Stoics, and Cynics, all of which were enormously influential, in particular for the Christian era. Ironically, the Pax Romana encouraged the spread and flowering of Greek cities in the eastern Mediterranean.
Freedman concludes with a quick examination of the impact of Greek culture and writings on the development of Christianity. Not only did Plato and his followers infuse many of the Christian conceptions on the nature of God and Christ, but Greek was the language in which the New Testament was written. I am not sure I got my head around a lot of this section and will need to read it again, perhaps in other sources, but that is more my deficiency than the book's. Some critics denounce Freeman’s take as simplistic, but they seem to mistake this book as more academic than it is intended to be: it is not for narrow specialists, but a sweeping overview for lay readers; it cannot solve anything definitely like recondite theological debates, but is a vivid portrayal of general currents with a critical eye.
For me, this book is a dazzling synthesis, encapsulating a culture that provided much of the basis of western civilization and all the permutations it went through up to present. It can be read as a basic introduction, a holistic vision, or an intelligent review for aficionados. Academics beware: it is for the intelligent and curious general reader. That being said, the author is wonderfully erudite, indeed he probably read several books for each paragraph, so this is not at all a lightweight treatment.
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