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The wisdom of Greece

Other generations, specially people born between 1850 and 1920, had a different vision of ancient Greece than the one we have now. People born during that period suffered from all the crises brought by the industrialisation, then the first world war, the great depression, the advent of nazism. Life was dark for many people, future was uncertain. Many saw ancient Greece like the lost paradise. Greece, in their eyes, had nothing dark: the art was perfect, human representations were beautiful, democracy existed, people were wise and free of superstition. Of course, the last part is not true, because humans are the same everywhere and nothing is perfect. The books on ancient Greece in my parents library never mentioned "details" such as the rights of women or the existence of slavery. Or maybe they did in footnotes. After all, the condition of women and non-white people was not that good during the 1850-1920 period!
You might get a truer look at ancient Greece by reading this intelligent book : You Wouldn't Want to Be a Slave in Ancient Greece by Fiona MacDonald, David Salariya, and David Antram. It is a book for children (from the series "You would not want to be"), well informed, well illustrated, interesting to read, because it is not oversimplified. Some books in that series are excellent, some are just not worth it. This is a good one.
The basic basics about Greece run like this:
- 800 What was going on all around the Mediterranean sea at the time of the great poet Homer? In a very simplified way, you can imagine that in 800 BC (or BCE, it is the same date) Greek towns develop not only in Greece, but around the Mediterranean, for instance in what are now Italy and Spain. These towns will grow into powerful business centers. It is also the start of the Olympic games. In Italy there is a strange but powerful population: the Etruscans (not "Romans" yet) In the rest of Europe, Celt tribes already use iron. In many towns around the Mediterranean sea, there are sacred bulls and bulls represented with wings. A Phoenician city is created on the African coast: Carthage. Wine starts to be produced in places like southern France. The holy temple of Jerusalem had been built by King Solomon about 200 years before that period. We are in the period of the Kings and prophet Isaiah.
Homer: my parents use to tell me, translate to me, read to me passages of the Iliad and Odyssey, so I never thought it was too complicated for children(essential books).
Before you buy the books, check what people say about the translation; the Italians say traduttore, traditore: translator, traitor. Some books are known to be better in translation than the originals: Cyrano de Bergerac is even better in Croatian than in French and Robert Standish is better in French than in English. But it is rare feast: a style you dislike can put you off. So watch it.
The two books are long poems which describe first the war against the town of Troy (in what is now Turkey), which happened some centuries before Homer time, all because of a beautiful woman; the second book details the long return home of one of the heroes of that war, Ulysses. Almost nobody knew how to write at the time of Homer, so these long poems were transmitted orally, by people who would quote or sing them to their own children. If you ever hear them read in Greek, they are very rythmic: you can tap your foot (tam, tatatam...) and it certainly helps remembering the verses.
As a kid, this is the story I preferred: when Ulysses finally comes home after an absence of ten years, nobody recognizes him, except an old blind dog that he left as a puppy. The old dog dies from the emotion of meeting with his master again, and Ulysses cries. Then he is told that this has been a very wonderful dog indeed. A French author, Roger Grenier, wrote a small book of memoirs inspired by the tears of Ulysses (it is the French title). The English translation comes under the title The difficulty of being a dog; It is a good read. There is a lot more in the adventures of Ulysses: some people believe that it is a secret book on navigationfor the sailors of the Mediterranean sea. So,this is what we could do: buy a shortened version of the whole story, such as The Tale of Troy: Retold from the Ancient Authors by Roger Lancelyn Green and Pauline Baynes, but it may be a shame not to read the whole story. Buy at the same time the book of the famous sailor Tim Severin: The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey. Severin is a many things, but mostly an astute sailor, there is no doubt about that, and his reconstruction of Ulysses' voyage is lovely: it should be a companion to the Odyssey.
- 400 If we make a jump of 400 years (400 BC or BCE) Greece towns are at the top of Western civilization, producing philosophers and mathematicians. It would be a shame if you were not interested in geometry! Here is a serious book for interested people: Wilbur Richard Knor, The Evolution of Euclidean Elements. For more geometry books, check the science link in the right handside column.
It is also the time of the most admired sculptor of ancient times, Praxiteles. So is born the sculpture of Aphrodite, the goddess of love! It is easy to see all his sculptures on the web (Google image search: Praxiteles) and if you are not blown away, there must be something wrong with you. At the same time, the philosopher Socrates is condemned to death in Athens. Socrates had a method to make you think: he asked your opinion about something, then he asked more questions, and pretty soon you would contradict yourself and be forced to think a little more and be more careful about your first answer. He also thought that wise people should rule Athens (not the average ignorant voter). We all want that, but we never agree on who is wise!
The good side of democracy is that you can vote for the other side when the ruling side gets too corrupt: given time, any ruling party becomes corrupt, it is human nature - please note that I do not say "any person"; just any group which keeps the power for a long time.
Here come two books for kids on Socrates that I did not read: Socrates for Kids by S. Sage Essman and Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socrates by M. D. Usher and William Bramhall. We do not have anything written directly by Socrates, he appears mainly in the philosophy of Plato and some writings of the unreliable and boring Xenophon. For may centuries, there will be only two philosophies in Europe: that of Plato and that of Aristotle, who influenced the Catholic religion.
The political scene of that time is not pleasant: Greek towns fight each other, we now view Athenians as the "good guys" and we view the whole town of Sparta as a bunch of nazis. Romans beat the Etruscans and are on their way to power. Two more generations, and you will get Alexander the Great

- 200 Two more centuries, and Carthage has become an important commercial center and this will lead to the most boring battles in the history of the world, between the Greeks and the Carthaginians. I know that, because I had to study the whole darn thing. These wars are called the Punic wars and the issue decided that, in the end, Europeans would have power for a long time rather than North Africans. It is therefore an important subject, but nobody bothered to explain it to me and it was no fun to study, except at the end, when Hannibal crosses the Alps with his elephants of war and his whole army gets weakened by the delights of life in the town of Capua, So instead of rushing to Rome and crush it, his army stays in Capua and negotiates with a double face enemy. In the end, Rome will win and conquer the world! Two good novels compete for your attention if you are a fan of battles and historic wars. In a very simplified way, here is the difference. The first one is for people who like epic stories (the hero is the one who fights well, no matter for what): Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire (An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae); the second book differentiates the good and the bad guys and looks at the sad sides of the war: The Isle of Stone ( A Novel of Ancient Sparta) by Nicholas Nicastro. I have not found a book I liked about Hannibal, sorry about that! I will keep looking. In the meantime, you can rejoice in an American fantasy of Hannibal's war: an old movie with Victor Mature that comes as DVD. Do not get confused and look for Hannibal Lectar instead!

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