The Greek Way

Edith Hamilton reads ancient Greece through its writers, arguing that what the Greeks valued explains what they made. The Greek Way moves between Homer, Pindar, the tragedians, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato and Xenophon, treating each as a way into the Greek mind rather than as a name to be memorised. Hamilton compares Greek habits of thought with those of neighbouring civilisations and with the modern West, and she shows how tragedy, comedy, history writing and philosophy each grew out of a particular attitude to human life. No prior classical training is assumed, and the argument runs on clear English rather than technical vocabulary. What the volume holds: • Chapters organised around individual Greek authors • An explanation of how tragedy and comedy took shape • Discussion of the roots of democracy and free inquiry • Written for general readers without a classics background A useful starting point for students of the classics and for general readers of history, available from Boipoka.