![]() ![]() We too strive for the resourcefulness of Odysseus, tempered by “the ability to sympathize, to mourn, and to cherish familial relationships,” elevated for the Greeks by the influence of wonderful Sappho. ![]() Americans, too, are a blend of circumstances and the refinement or debasement thereof: still a warrior culture (“males always primed for battle and sexual conquest”), still a bellicose society ready for war (“terrible but innate to civilization”), still Greek-dependent for our views of morality and justice in a fated universe ruled by passion. It might be hard for us retroject ourselves into the Greek consciousness, suggests Cahill ( How the Irish Saved Civilization, 1995, etc.), who proceeds to make it simple, situating many of our most knee-jerk responses to social, political, religious, and ethical life within the orbit of the Greek worldview. In highly readable fashion, Cahill explores the Greeks’ great gifts to Western civilization, along with some less benign bequests that continue to grieve us. ![]()
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