Peak Greek
Introducing the Ancient Greeks
By Edith Hall (The Bodley Head 305pp £20)
Lists about ancient history - 'Twelve Habits of Effective Emperors', 'Attila's Eight Steps to Success' - abound in popular culture. Historical biographies seek to psychoanalyse their long-dead subjects. Meanwhile social scientists devise questionnaires to check the validity of regional personality stereotypes, finding, for example, Londoners 'less agreeable' than Scots and 'neurotic tendencies' in Wales. There are enumerations of the strategies of great commanders of antiquity and 'biographies' of cities such as Munich and Paris.
But can one write a collective biography of an ancient civilisation? 'Ten Traits of Classical Greeks' - is it possible to assess the personality of an entire historical culture of geographic diversity and long duration? This is Edith Hall's bold ambition in Introducing the Ancient Greeks. Such a task would be unthinkable for, say, the nomadic Scythians or the Carthaginians, whose traces survive only in what others reported in antiquity and in what modern archaeologists can excavate. As Hall proves, however, in the right hands and for a deeply reflective culture with a robust self-identity, a heavy epigraphic habit and a massive repository of literature and art, such a project is worth pursuing. There are, of course, daunting challenges. Greek society was extremely complex and continually developing. Greeks scattered themselves across the Mediterranean and Eurasia, from Spain and North Africa to India. Hellenic civilisation stretched over two millennia.
Hall sets out to discover the distinctive ingredients of the efflorescence of classical art, literature, poetry, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, democracy and science that remains so luminous and awe-inspiring today. Rejecting old claims of Greek ethnic superiority, special genius or miraculous exceptionalism, Hall thoughtfully explains her conviction that a 'cluster of brilliant qualities' somehow concentrated in Greece and set Greeks apart from contemporaries. In ten chapters, she distils the essence of Greekness into ten characteristics shared by most Greeks most of the time. Ten is the magic number: Hall breaks down the historical and social context of the ten Greek characteristics into ten periods, beginning with the Bronze Age Mycenaeans (1600-1200 BC) and ending with Christianity's triumph over paganism (AD 400). She also tracks the shifting centres of 'Greek cultural gravity', localised in ten disparate geographical regions.
Hall's Greeks were inquisitive, broad-minded and supremely articulate. Highly competitive, individualistic rebels who distrusted authority, they took joy in physical pleasure and jokes, and also prized excellence in all things. Through these qualities flowed a powerful current of restless movement and exchange, defining their culture and identity. An adventurous people, the Greeks were sailors, masters of the seas. There were notable exceptions. The 'inscrutable Spartans' were not into travel, sailing or trade; they were neither 'curiosity-driven' nor unabashed sensualists. They did evince grim humour, 'emotional honesty' and a strong competitive spirit. Most Greeks were 'cultural amphibians', remarks Hall, 'at home on land and sea'. Alexander and his Macedonians, another exception, were most at home on land (they epitomise Greek rivalry and competition in Hall's book).
The Greek love and awe of the rewards and perils of the sea made it the medium for great accomplishments and flourishing. Going down to the sea, swimming, diving, fishing, trireme-building, rowing and sailing - these activities provide rich metaphors for every aspect of Greek life: gaining knowledge was a voyage and vice versa; profound thinkers were deep divers; Greek city-states arranged themselves like frogs around a pond; philosophers were navigators; the imagination was a far-sailing ship. The majority of Greek cities were on the coast or only few miles from the shore. Gazing at boundless horizons encouraged ever-expanding exploration of sea frontiers. Keen curiosity about non-Greek speakers in exotic places fostered a willingness to import desirable customs and technologies from afar.
Hall's scintillating style, combined with her erudition, makes this book a remarkable guide to what made the classical Greeks so consistently 'Greek'. So well chosen are the narratives that well-known stories take readers by surprise in Hall's telling and novel insights evoke an unexpected sense of familiarity. Hall is especially good at revealing the Greek ability to express paradox and maintain contradictory concepts, finding unity in opposites and using dialectics to seek balance and reason. Just as the sea was both benevolent and tempestuous, for example, so knowledge itself could be a gift and a danger. Greek mythic figures were anti-heroes capable of terrible as well noble acts, more examples of 'emotional honesty'. Another double-edged blade lay in the uninhibited pleasure-seeking of the Greeks. Hall's approach to Greek hedonism is at first startling - her final chapter plunges the reader into dour early Christian texts. But this turns out to be atour de force description of grand cultural collision, pitting the frowning Church Fathers against the exuberant pagans' pursuit of happiness.
Notably, Aristotle declared that no society can be truly happy if half of the population - namely women - are unhappy. Hall dips into Greek males' ambivalence about women and inequality in patriarchal Athens, but does not attempt to gauge Greek women's happiness quotient. Rich material survives in, for example, Greek tragedies, however, with fierce declarations of unhappiness by Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Antigone and Medea. Sharp contemporary social commentaries about gender and egalitarian ideals appear in Aristophanes's comedies starring Lysistrata and her army of women on 'sex strike' and the Assemblywomen who take over Athens's government because the men have made a mess of it. The wild popularity of Amazon stories and images is another indicator of Greek exploration of new territories and concepts. Even Plato was moved to include women as soldiers in his ideal Republic, inspired, he claimed, by the Amazons of myth and the real nomad women of the steppes first described by Herodotus in the fifth century BC.
The Father of History is one of Hall's Greek heroes. Herodotus's inquiring mind, insatiable curiosity, travel to distant lands, humour and open-minded outlook were quintessentially Greek, as was his 'revolutionary form of inquiry'. Hall describes the beautiful prose and colourful narratives in his 'path-breaking manifesto' as a 'sheer joy'. Herodotus's stated goal was to record for posterity 'the great and marvellous works produced by both Greeks and barbarians'. 'For anyone interested in classical Greece,' comments Hall, 'Herodotus ... is the ideal escort.' Indeed, Herodotus's Histories could have been subtitled 'Introducing the Barbarians'. Now 21st-century readers eager to understand the glorious contributions of the ancient Greeks have their own ideal escort in Edith Hall
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