# Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea - Author: [Thomas Cahill](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill.md) - Quotes: 37 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea ## Quotes > ...the turns of the screw that Sophocles administered throughout the play [Oedipus Tyrannos] must have been received with sharp pain... because these cocky, princely, Oedipal Greeks were being made to feel acutely the limitations of human society—in which no political leader, no matter how gifted or courageous, can remain a savior forever, in which every man must come to know that he is no hero but essentially a flawed and luckless figure and that "the pains we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-turns-of-the.md) > Dour, anxious Hesiod writes about the daily round of farming and the effects if the seasons on rural life but also speaks in his Works and Days about the value of festal competitions with "potter against potter, carpenter against carpenter... poet against poet." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/dour-anxious-hesiod.md) > The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklēsia, the same word used in the New Testament for Church (and it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word, which connoted equal participation in all deliberations by all members, came to designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia—which would have seemed patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times, who believed themselves to be equal members of their Assembly.) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-word-the.md) > Solon was a sort of Athenian Franklin D. Roosevelt... He was an aristocratic reformer who understood instinctively that the aristocracy's monopoly on power had to be loosened and some power given to the lesser orders if social peace was to be shored up. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/solon-was-a-sort.md) > The philosophy of self-denial also taught the brotherhood of man, based on the Stoical belief that every human being without distinction possesses a spark of divinity that is in communion with God, who in the Stoical system is called Logos (Word, Reason, Meaning)—the word John's Gospel uses to describe Jesus. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-philosophy-of-self-denial.md) > Like fish who do not know they swim in water, we are seldom aware of the atmosphere of the times through which we move, how strange and singular they are. But when we approach another age, its alienness stands out before us, almost as if that were its most obvious quality... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/like-fish-who.md) > Only when we step back can we see that we have been reassembling something that can stand in the wind. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/only-when-we-step.md) > The [Greek] myths were... attempting—at a deeper level—to feel the intangible and say the unsayable. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-greek-myths.md) > Pericles' words are echoed in other critical speeches of later Western history... Lincoln at Gettysburg... Churchill's... repeated promise to the British people... of "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." And no wonder, for both orator's knew their Thucydides and knew this speech [Funeral Oration over the Athenian dead in the first year of the Peloponnesian War]. ...the most obvious later parallel is the 1961 presidential address of John F. Kennedy. ...When he told of the sacrifices yet to come, like Pericles he pulled no punches. ...In neither case is there a confession of atheism, just an implied acknowledgement that a politician is no oracle and has no business speaking on behalf of heaven. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/pericles-words-are.md) > To be without music was, for the ancient Greeks, to be already dead... Ancient Greece was a culture of song. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/to-be-without.md) > The idea of physical resurrection struck them [the Greeks] as ghoulish. ...Matter is the very principle of unintelligibity [or lack of intelligence]. Best to be done with it. For the Jews, who had little of no belief in the immortality of the soul, only salvation in one's body could have any meaning. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-idea-of-physical.md) > The terms of this new religion, though based on Hebrew models, were Greek terms. Christ, Ekklēsia (Church), Baptism, Eucharist, Agapē (Lovingkindness)—all of Christianity's central words were Greek words. Christian patterns of thought... could indeed be traced to their origins in the coastal Levant, but they often shone with a Greek patina. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-terms-of-this.md) > In another of history's terrible ironies, the barbarian influence on Western Christianity enlivened it beyond anything the diluted Greeks of Byzantium were now capable of. The mad barbarians pushed Western Christianity into retaining some of the plastic abundance, the inventive plasticity, the fathomless versatility that had once been incomparably characteristic of the Greeks. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/in-another-of-historys.md) > This hamartia (tragic flaw, the same word that early Christians will use for "sin," especially for original sin, the sin we are born with, the sin beyond any human being's control) is not incidental to Oedipus but is, rather, essential to his admirable character. He is strong, courageous, self-possessed, taking charge and striding boldly where others fear to go—the very qualities that foretell his undoing. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/this-hamartia-tragic.md) > The Greek world will continue in almost constant cultural revolution from the time of Homer to the day Rome brings Greece to its knees in the second century B.C. ...the longest trajectory of fluid development in any society known to history. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-greek-world.md) > The five-hundred-bushelers... were on average five, at most ten, times as rich as the thetes, the lowest grade of citizen. ...Today, the gap between, say, a municipal bus driver and a Fortune 500 CEO approaches infinity. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-five-hundred-bushelers-were.md) > If we could save one word from Greek civilization, it would have to be aretē, excellence. The aristocrats gave themselves their name, the aristoi (the best). It is an open question whether anyone considered himself a member of the kakoi (the worst, the craven, the dumb shits). though this put-down prances everywhere in the surviving literature. ...that shame—the paralyzing fear of being numbered among the kakoi—is the hidden engine that ran Greek life. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/if-we-could.md) > As... Greek philosophy split into scores of yip-yapping schools, the Greeks became more and more puzzled. They had lost their way philosophically—and the Romans, who were just aping them, had nothing original to propose by way of saving them all from their dilemmas. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/as-greek-philosophy.md) > Even the special appurtenances of Christian monasticism—silence, meditation, chanting, distinctive costumes, beads, incense, kneeling, hands raised in prayer—all too likely go back to the Pythagoreans and beyond them to their influences, the Indian Buddhists and their predecessors. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/even-the-special.md) > Just as the Judeo-Christian world had learned the Greek language and internalized Greek categories, the Greco-Roman world gradually abandoned its dying gods and became monotheistic. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/just-as-the.md) > Unfortunately, much of the post-Homeric poetry—called lyric poetry because it was usually sung to a lyre—was lost in the upheavals of subsequent centuries, especially in the depredations and decay that would follow the barbarian incursions into the Greco-Roman world in the fifth century A.D. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/unfortunately-much-of-the.md) > They [the Greeks] had become an essentially secular people. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/they-the-greeks.md) > For the most part, in the union of Greco-Roman with Judeo-Christian, the Greco-Roman turn of mind combined with Judeo-Christian values. While the outward form of the Western world remained Greco-Roman, its content became gradually Judeo-Christian. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/for-the-most.md) > Whatever we experience in our day, whatever we hope to learn, whatever we most desire, whatever we set out to find, we see that the Greeks have been there before us, and we meet them on their way back. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/whatever-we-experience.md) > We can understand Greek religion because, it operates on the same internal dynamic that fuels all (or certainly almost all) religion. The aboriginal Christian prayer Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) is a Greek prayer far more ancient than Christianity. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/we-can-understand.md) > For me, the historian's principal task should be to raise the dead to life. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/for-me-the.md) > It is... ironic that, given its subsequent history of Jew-hatred, Christianity should become the vehicle by which Jewish values entered the mainstream. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/it-is-ironic.md) > Human beings never know more than a part, as "through a glass darkly"; and all knowledge comes to us in pieces. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/human-beings-never.md) > Athenian democracy was different from the much later American form, not only because it was the expression of a single city-state but because it was a direct [democracy], rather than a representative democracy. To us, looking backwards, it may seem imprudent to invite all citizens to vote on all major initiatives, but Solon was right to appreciate that no Athenian freeman could allow himself to be left out of anything. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/athenian-democracy-was.md) > Of the many people's of the earth, the Romans may have had the most boring religion of all. ...basically a businessman's religion of contractual obligations. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/of-the-many.md) > The worldview that underlay the New Testament was so different from that of the Greeks and the Romans as to be almost its opposite. It was a worldview that stressed not excellence of public achievement but the adventure of a personal journey with God... by imitating God's justice and mercy. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-worldview-that.md) > These symposia may have been, as much as anything, occasions to release the pent-up anxieties of a society always at war—"the father of all, the king of all," "always existing by nature," as the Greek philosophers expressed it. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/these-symposia-may.md) > No longer did philosophers aspire to the deep spiritual insights and broad moral vision of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They divided into conflicting schools and wandered through the Greco-Roman world as permanent immigrants, picking up tutoring jobs as they could. ...the upshot was a debased intellectual climate, fragmented and agnostic. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/no-longer-did.md) > Though the poems of Homer and his successors were recorded, there will be no Greek reading public till we reach the fifth century B.C. ...There was instead, a hearing public that formed responsive audiences at festivals and contests. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/though-the-poems.md) > When Donald Rumsfeld, a practical imperialist if ever there was one, took over the Pentagon, he commissioned a study of how ancient empires maintained their hegemony. Might he more profitably study how they lost all they had gained? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/when-donald-rumsfeld.md) > This paucity of actors on the stage reflects the liturgical roots of Greek theater, which continued to stick close to its religious origins. … [A] machine, called the mēchanē, was a sort of crane that swung an actor playing a god over the parapet of the skēnē and out above the stage (thus the Latin phrase deus ex machina for a solution from nowhere, an unforeseen answer to prayers). [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/this-paucity-of-actors.md) > The Greeks never thought to unite all Greek speakers in one political union. Because each Greek gloried in his singular excellence—and each Greek clan gloried similarly—it was hard enough to unite a city. Each city or polis—from which come our words politics, politician, metropolis—thought itself unrivaled in some essential quality and reveled in its reputation. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-cahill/sailing-the-wine-dark-sea/the-greeks-never.md)