For renowned classicist Edith Hamilton, the Greek way was one of the spirit and the mind. To illustrate a fulsome picture of 5th century Athens, she tours the world of the arts and humanities. Through reflections on Aristophanes and Euripides, Thucydides and Pindar, Hamilton tells us that we can understand much of how the citizenry thought about the world. Though this may be less directly didactic then interpretations of Plato, Hamilton's task is a different one: she endeavors to assemble an entire collage so that a portrait of the whole society might be seen.
And what is revealed? Thucydides shows us a people tragically bound to the whims of men and societies seeking power, while Xenophon hopes for a better tomorrow. Herodotus journeys fair afield in the Mediterranean, seeing much that is noteworthy in the wisdom of others. Sophocles casts an unblinking eye on the tragic aspect of the human condition, noting how we live uncertain, and remain riven between that which men hope for, and that which men must do. Finally, in the works of Plato, and in the development of Greek religion, Hamilton shows us a people vested in the hope that the individual has to make the most of himself, not because some orthodoxy tells him so, but because he has taken hold of life and found that what is best is bound to everything that we hope to achieve.
While the work is little more than a cursory overview (and falters before the likes of Kitto's The Greeks), it does convey the unity underlying the seeming contradiction of Greek thought and action. It was excellence, Aristotle saw, that was "much labored for by the race of men." Through the application of the mind the world could be made sensible, and men could finally pursue that which is best. It was in this pursuit that the Greeks left their stamp upon the world.
