Books like The Greek way by Edith Hamilton

Nausicaa, a Sicilian princess who survived the plague in the eighth century B.C., reflects on her life and explains how she became the author of Homer's Odyssey, blending history with myth.

Nietzsche’s first book explores Greek tragedy, Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and Wagner’s music, arguing that the fusion of Apollonian order and Dionysian ecstasy creates the highest art and offers insight into suffering.

"Nearly 70 years ago, Edith Hamilton published The Greek Way, an immediate classic that educated two generations of readers about the debt we owe the handful of Greek city-states that developed the "spirit of the West" some 2500 years ago. Now, in Greek Ways, Bruce Thornton has written a book that is for our time what Hamilton's was for a prior era - a reassertion of the Greeks' crucial role in creating Western civilization and in developing the core concepts that continue to shape our assumptions about human identity and human good.". "Greek Ways is above all an impassioned act of scholarship covering a wide range of works - from Homer and Hesiod to Aristotle and Demosthenes - in a fascinating discussion about the nature of sex, love, war, politics and philosophy in ancient Greece. Thornton shows what Greeks actually said about these subjects, and, more importantly, what their ideas have meant for the West.". "By the end of this narrative, the reader will find it difficult to disagree with Bruce Thornton that "the course the Greeks charted for humanity is the one that has the best likelihood, on this earth and in this life at least, of leading us to our highest fulfillment as human beings." His achievement in Greek Ways is to hold a steady mirror up to Greek culture and allow us to see ourselves."--BOOK JACKET.

An overview of Greek life in the 4th century, examining the types of men produced and pivotal events that shaped the civilization.

What is the nature of theatre's uneasy alliance with literature? Should theatre be viewed as a preliterate, ritualistic phenomenon that can only be compromised by writing? Or should theatre be grouped with other literary arts as essentially "textual," with even physical performance subsumed under the aegis of textuality? Jennifer Wise, a theatre historian and drama theorist who is also an actor, director, and designer, responds with a challenging and convincing reconstruction of the historical context from which Western theatre first emerged. Wise believes that a comparison of the performance style of oral epic with that of drama as it emerged in sixth-century Greece shows the extent to which theatre was influenced by literate activities relatively new to the ancient world. These activities, foreign to Homer yet familiar to Aeschylus and his contemporaries, included the use of the alphabet, the teaching of texts in schools, the public inscription of laws, the sending and receiving of letters, the exchange of city coinage, and the making of lists. Having changed the way cultural material was processed and transmitted, the technology of writing also led to innovations in the way stories were told, and Wise contends that theatre was the result. The art of drama appeared in ancient Greece, however, not only as a beneficiary of literacy but also in defiance of any tendency to see textuality as an end in itself.

Introduces the history, culture, and people of ancient Greece and examines its many contributions to the development of Western society.

v, 135 p., [6] leaves of plates : 22 cm