The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton Book 24 of 2022

Edith Hamilton wrote a series of books on Greece and Rome.  This is the third I have read. The first two:  The Roman Way and The Greek Way are about the culture of these two empires at their height and their influence through the last two millennia.  

This book could a "WTF Happened?" to the the great culture of Greece. How did it fall so far so fast never to rise again?  The book answers the question by explaining 4th Century BC Greece in sharp contrast to the glories of the century before.  

The book begins by explaining the freedom that came into being in Athens in the 5th Century, something unique in the world up to that time.  Then she explains how Athens fell, the death of Socrates coming at about the same time as the defeat of Athens by Sparta.  

Then there is a chapter or part of a chapter on Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, Demosthenes, the stoics and finally Plutarch--a lovely homage to Plutarch's very famous Lives. 

Hamilton is witty, brilliant, and loves the ancient world. I recommend her books to anyone who cares about the culture of Greece and Rome. 

On freedom:  

Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.

Fundamental to everything the [ancient] Greeks achieved was their conviction that good for humanity was possible only if men were free, body, mind, and spirit, and if each man limited his own freedom. A good state or work of art or piece of thinking was possible only through the self-mastery of the free individual, self-government.

Freedom was born in Greece because there men limited their own freedom.... The limits to action established by law were a mere nothing compared to the limits established by a man's free choice. 

On God:

Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

First 23 books of 2022:

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen