The Life of Greece

Summary

The Life of Greece, published in 1939, is the second volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization. Its long subtitle promises a history of Greek government, industry, manners, morals, religion, philosophy, science, literature and art from the earliest times to the Roman conquest, and the book keeps that promise by refusing to separate politics from the rest of life. Durant begins not in Athens but on Crete, with the palace at Knossos that Arthur Evans had been excavating since 1900, and then moves to Mycenae, Troy and the world reflected in the Homeric poems. From there he follows the rise of the city-states: Sparta's military discipline under the laws credited to Lycurgus, Athens under Solon's reforms and the tyranny of the Peisistratids, and the scattering of Greek settlements from the Black Sea to Sicily and southern Italy, where the first philosophers and lyric poets appear. The Persian Wars, told largely through Herodotus, bring the Greeks to a moment of shared danger and victory. The center of the book is fifth-century Athens under Pericles. Durant describes the democracy and its exclusions, the economy of free labor and slaves, the Parthenon and the sculpture of Phidias, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the comedy of Aristophanes, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the medicine of the Hippocratic school, and the sophists who unsettled inherited belief. The Peloponnesian War, with the plague at Athens and the debacle in Sicily, appears as a self-inflicted catastrophe, and the trial and death of Socrates as its moral epilogue. The fourth century brings Plato and Aristotle, the oratory of Demosthenes, Philip of Macedon's conquest and Alexander's campaigns to the Indus. The last part surveys the Hellenistic kingdoms, the Museum and Library at Alexandria, the mathematics and astronomy of Euclid, Archimedes, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes, the anatomists of Alexandria, the rival schools of Zeno and Epicurus, and finally Rome's absorption of Greece. Durant writes as an open admirer who regarded Greece as the fountainhead of Western reason and art, but he does not idealize it. He records slavery, the seclusion of citizen women, pederasty, factional massacres and the endless wars between cities, and he treats the failure of the Greeks to unite as the root of their loss of freedom. His religious judgments reflect the naturalistic outlook he held at the time, and his scholarship is that of the 1930s, before the decipherment of Linear B in 1952 changed the picture of Mycenaean Greece. For students, the book is best used as an orientation that sends them to the sources it narrates: Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, the tragedians, Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch.

Plot or Argument

• Crete, Mycenae and the Homeric world

  Durant opens with the Minoan palace culture of Crete as revealed by Evans's excavations, then turns to Schliemann's finds at Troy and Mycenae and to the society of kings, warriors and household slaves pictured in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

• Sparta, Athens and the scattered cities

  The rise of the polis is told through two contrasting models, Spartan military communism and Athenian constitutional change under Solon and Cleisthenes, followed by a tour of the Greek settlements of Ionia, Sicily and southern Italy where Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and the lyric poets worked.

• Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis

  The Persian invasions unite the quarrelsome cities long enough to defeat an empire, and Durant uses the victory to explain the confidence of the generation that followed.

• The Periclean summit

  The longest section portrays Athens at its height: the assembly and courts, work and trade, the Acropolis building program, drama, history writing, Hippocratic medicine and the sophists, with constant attention to how ordinary citizens, women, metics and slaves lived.

• War among the Greeks and the death of Socrates

  The Peloponnesian War, the plague of 430 B.C., the revolution at Corcyra, the Melian episode and the Sicilian expedition lead to Athens' defeat in 404 and to the trial of Socrates in 399, which Durant presents as the city turning on its own conscience.

• Plato, Aristotle and the Macedonian conquest

  Fourth-century philosophy flourishes while the cities exhaust one another; Demosthenes warns against Philip, Chaeronea ends independent Greek politics, and Alexander carries Greek culture across Persia to India.

• The Hellenistic dispersion and the coming of Rome

  Under the successor kingdoms Greek learning moves to Alexandria, Pergamum and Rhodes, science reaches a height not matched for centuries, Stoics and Epicureans offer private consolations, and Rome gradually absorbs the Greek world.

Characters

• Will Durant, author and narrator-historian

  Philosopher turned popular historian whose enthusiasm for Greek reason and beauty colors every chapter.

• Solon, Athenian lawgiver (early sixth century B.C.)

  Reformer who cancelled debt-slavery and reshaped Athenian classes; Durant treats him as the model of moderate statesmanship.

• Lycurgus, legendary Spartan lawgiver

  Figure to whom Sparta's austere military constitution was credited; Durant notes how little is securely known of him.

• Pericles, Athenian statesman (died 429 B.C.)

  Leader of the democracy at its height and patron of the Acropolis program, who died in the plague early in the great war.

• Phidias, sculptor

  Overseer of the Parthenon sculptures, whose work stands in the book for the classical ideal in art.

• Sophocles and Euripides, tragic poets

  Contrasting dramatists of the Athenian stage, the one reverent and balanced, the other questioning and psychological.

• Thucydides, historian and general

  Chronicler of the Peloponnesian War and of the Athenian plague, on whom Durant relies for the war's central episodes.

• Hippocrates of Cos, physician

  Name under which a body of Greek medical writing survives, presented as the beginning of medicine grounded in observation.

• Socrates, philosopher

  Questioner of Athens condemned in 399 B.C. for impiety and corrupting the young, whose death Durant narrates largely from Plato.

• Plato and Aristotle, philosophers

  Founders of the Academy and the Lyceum, given extended chapters on politics, ethics and science.

• Demosthenes, Athenian orator

  Opponent of Philip of Macedon whose speeches urged Athens to resist before Chaeronea.

• Alexander the Great, king of Macedon (336-323 B.C.)

  Conqueror of the Persian Empire whose campaigns open the Hellenistic age.

• Archimedes, mathematician and engineer of Syracuse

  Representative of Hellenistic science, killed when the Romans took his city in 212 B.C.

Lessons

• Why the cities could not unite

  Durant repeatedly returns to a single weakness: Greek freedom rested on small independent cities that could not stop fighting each other. Students can follow the theme from the rivalries after the Persian Wars through the Peloponnesian War to Philip's victory at Chaeronea and weigh whether the same independence that made Greek creativity possible also made Greek conquest inevitable.

  • Which moments in the book show the Greek cities acting together, and what made those moments possible?
  • Does Durant blame Athens, Sparta or the city-state system itself for the Peloponnesian War?
  • Was Demosthenes right to urge resistance to Philip, or was a larger union under Macedon the wiser course?

• The trial of Socrates as a test of a city

  Durant presents the condemnation of Socrates as a defeated and anxious democracy striking at a man it blamed for unsettling the young. Reading his account beside Plato's Apology lets students separate the charges, the political setting after 404, and the philosopher's own defense, and ask what a community owes to a citizen whose questions it finds threatening.

  • What political events of the years just before 399 B.C. does Durant use to explain the trial?
  • How does Socrates in the Apology answer the charge of impiety, and does Durant give that answer full weight?
  • Can a city be just in its laws and still unjust in a particular verdict?

• Glory beside slavery and exposure

  The Periclean chapters set the Parthenon and the tragedies beside slave labor, the confinement of citizen wives, and the exposure of unwanted infants. Durant reports these practices plainly and mostly without sermon. Students should practice holding admiration and moral judgment together, distinguishing what Durant describes, what he excuses, and what Scripture and the Greeks' own moralists said about such things.

  • Where does Durant describe Athenian slavery, and how does he connect it to Athenian leisure and culture?
  • Did any Greek writers in the book question slavery or infant exposure? What reasons did they give?
  • How did early Christians respond to infant exposure in the Greco-Roman world, and why?

• From the gods of Olympus to the schools of philosophy

  Durant traces a movement from civic religion and the mysteries through the sophists' skepticism to the Stoic and Epicurean schools, which offered individuals peace of mind once the free city no longer gave life its meaning. Students can compare this story with Paul's address to the Athenians in Acts 17, where Stoics and Epicureans meet the Christian proclamation.

  • What does Durant think Greek religion offered citizens, and what did it fail to provide?
  • Why did philosophies of private tranquility flourish after Alexander, according to the book?
  • How does Paul in Acts 17 use what the Athenians already believed, and where does he break with it?

Context

The Life of Greece appeared in 1939, in the year war returned to Europe, and its story of brilliant free cities destroying one another in a generation of war had obvious resonance for readers who had lived through 1914-18. Durant was a former philosophy lecturer whose Story of Philosophy (1926) had made him famous, and his admiration for Greek rationalism, art and civic life reflects the humanist and secular convictions he held then. The archaeological picture he drew of Crete and Mycenae depended on Evans and Schliemann and predates Michael Ventris's 1952 decipherment of Linear B as an early form of Greek.

Composition

Published by Simon & Schuster in 1939 as Volume II of The Story of Civilization, four years after Our Oriental Heritage (1935). Will Durant is the sole credited author; Ariel Durant's contribution as researcher was acknowledged in later volumes, and she was first named co-author on Volume VII (1961). The book remains in print and was reissued as an ebook in 2011.

Reception

The volume reached a wide general audience and became, with the other installments, a fixture of American home libraries. Classical scholars generally treated it as a readable synthesis rather than original research. Later work on Bronze Age Greece, Athenian democracy and Hellenistic society has corrected many details, and readers should expect its discussion of Greek religion and of early Christianity's debt to Greek thought to reflect Durant's own interpretive commitments.

Comparisons

• The Histories

  Herodotus is Durant's main source for the Persian Wars and for much of his color about early Greek and Near Eastern customs; reading Herodotus shows how much of the story Durant retells and how much of Herodotus's wonder and piety he leaves out.

• The History of the Peloponnesian War

  Durant's chapters on the war, including Pericles' funeral speech, the plague, Corcyra, Melos and Sicily, follow Thucydides closely; students can compare Thucydides' austere analysis of power with Durant's more moralizing summary.

• The Republic

  Durant gives Plato's political philosophy a long chapter; the Republic itself lets students test his summary of the guardians, the noble lie and the critique of democracy against the dialogue's actual argument.

• The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives

  Plutarch's lives of Agesilaus, Pelopidas, Dion, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Phocion and Alexander cover the fourth century Durant narrates and supply many of his anecdotes about Philip and Alexander.

• The Theban Plays

  Durant presents Sophocles as the poet of classical balance and reverence; the Oedipus plays and Antigone show students the tragic material behind that judgment.

• Hippocratic Writings

  Durant's pages on Greek medicine summarize the Hippocratic corpus; the writings themselves, especially On the Sacred Disease and Airs, Waters, Places, show what natural explanation of disease meant in practice.

• Our Oriental Heritage

  The first volume covers Egypt, the Near East, India, China and Japan; together the two volumes show Durant's thesis that Greek civilization built on older eastern foundations rather than appearing from nothing.

• Caesar and Christ

  The third volume begins where this one ends, with Rome's rise and its absorption of the Greek world; Durant's judgment on Greek disunity here sets up his later account of the Roman Republic's own collapse.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening on Crete. Notice how much Durant builds from archaeology alone, and remember that his picture predates the 1952 decipherment of Linear B.
• The paired portraits of Sparta and Athens. Track what each city demanded of its citizens and what each gave up to get it.
• The Periclean chapters. List the groups that did not vote in the Athenian assembly and see where Durant mentions each one.
• The plague and the Sicilian expedition. Ask how Durant, following Thucydides, connects suffering, fear and political folly.
• The Hellenistic chapters. Watch how the center of Greek life shifts from the citizen's city to the king's capital and the philosopher's school.

Key terms and names

Polis

The self-governing Greek city-state, including its citizens, territory, gods and laws.

Hoplite

A heavily armed citizen foot soldier fighting in the close formation called the phalanx.

Ostracism

An Athenian vote that sent a leading citizen into exile for ten years without trial or loss of property.

Metic

A free resident alien in Athens who paid taxes and served in war but could not vote or own land.

Sophist

A paid teacher of rhetoric and practical wisdom in fifth-century Greece, often accused of making the weaker argument appear the stronger.

Hellenistic

The period from Alexander's death in 323 B.C. to the Roman conquest, when Greek culture spread through the kingdoms of his successors.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Where does Durant begin the history of Greece, and what kinds of evidence does he use for that earliest period?
2. Comprehension What did Solon change in Athens, and why did both rich and poor complain?
3. Comprehension Which battles of the Persian Wars does Durant describe, and what role did Athens and Sparta each play?
4. Interpretation Durant admires Periclean Athens deeply. Which facts in his own account make that admiration harder to sustain, and how does he handle them?
5. Interpretation Why does Durant think Athens condemned Socrates, and is his explanation more political or more religious?
6. Interpretation What did Alexander's conquests give to Greek culture, and what did they take from Greek political life?
7. Big Question Can a people produce lasting beauty and wisdom while practicing serious injustice, and what would it mean to inherit the Greek achievement faithfully?

Faith Connections

• Acts 17:16-34 (Scripture)

  Paul in Athens debates Stoics and Epicureans and cites a Greek poet on the Areopagus, the very schools and city Durant describes, so the chapter shows the gospel meeting the culture this volume narrates.

• Daniel 8:5-8, 20-22 (Scripture)

  The vision of the he-goat whose great horn is broken and replaced by four is interpreted in the chapter itself as the kingdom of Greece; readers often connect it with Alexander and the division of his empire that Durant narrates.

• Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10 (Church Fathers)

  Justin treats Socrates as a man who, by reason, partly saw the truth and was condemned for it, offering an early Christian reading of the death Durant recounts.

• Plato, Apology (Great Conversation)

  Socrates' own defense is the primary text behind Durant's chapter on the trial and lets students weigh the historian's explanation against the philosopher's words.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Greek civilization grew from older Aegean and eastern foundations into free, competitive city-states whose independence fostered unprecedented achievements in politics, art, drama, history, medicine, science and philosophy; that same independence bred constant war among the cities, culminating in the Peloponnesian War that exhausted Athens and in Macedonian conquest; Greek culture then spread across the Hellenistic world and was absorbed by Rome; therefore the Greeks' greatest gift and their political ruin sprang from the same root.

Rhetorical device: panoramic cataloguing. In the Periclean chapters Durant moves from the assembly to the workshop, the theater, the gymnasium and the household, piling up details of daily life so that the age's art and thought appear inside a whole society.

Debate: Resolved: The independence of the Greek city-states was a greater benefit than harm to Greek civilization.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Durant describes both Sparta and Athens as societies that shaped their citizens. Compare the kind of person each city tried to form, using his chapters and one primary source such as Plutarch's Lycurgus or Pericles' funeral speech in Thucydides, and argue which formation better prepared citizens for hardship.

Comparison with The History of the Peloponnesian War: Read Thucydides' account of the plague and of the Corcyraean revolution beside Durant's retelling. Argue what Durant gains and loses by summarizing, and which account better explains why the war corrupted the Greeks.

Medical Lens

A general history with recurring medical episodes rather than a history of medicine. Durant's chapters on fifth-century Athenian science describe the Hippocratic physicians, their rejection of supernatural explanations for disease, case-history method and humoral theory, alongside temple healing at shrines of Asclepius. The plague of Athens in 430 B.C., known chiefly from Thucydides, enters the narrative of the war and killed Pericles; its identity remains debated, and any modern diagnosis is a reading, not a fact. Socrates' death by hemlock in 399 B.C. is narrated from Plato's Phaedo. The Hellenistic chapters describe Alexandrian anatomy under Herophilus and Erasistratus, whose human dissections (and the ancient report that they vivisected condemned criminals) are among the earliest known. The Stoic and Epicurean schools appear as philosophies of tranquility for troubled souls. All medical claims reflect 1930s secondary scholarship and should be checked against Thucydides, the Hippocratic texts and modern histories of ancient medicine.

• Chapters on science and medicine in Periclean Athens

  Hippocrates of Cos and the Hippocratic writings, the Oath, the doctrine of the four humors, and the contrast between observational medicine and the incubation cures of Asclepian temples.

  Ancient Medicine Physicians Doctors Humoral Medicine
• Account of the Peloponnesian War, early years

  The plague that struck crowded Athens in 430 B.C., its symptoms and social effects as Thucydides described them, and the death of Pericles.

  Plague Epidemic Death Dying
• Chapter on Socrates' trial and death

  The execution of Socrates by a draught of hemlock, narrated after Plato's account of his last day.

  Pharmacology Poisons Death Dying
• Chapters on Hellenistic science at Alexandria

  Herophilus and Erasistratus, their study of the brain, nerves and vessels by human dissection, and the ancient report of vivisection of criminals.

  Anatomy Dissection Ancient Medicine
• Chapters on Stoicism and Epicureanism

  Zeno and Epicurus offering disciplines for freedom from fear and disturbance in the unsettled Hellenistic world.

  Philosophy AS Therapy

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation in the summer of 430 B.C. between a Hippocratic physician and a priest of Asclepius as the plague spreads through Athens, each explaining what is happening and what should be done.

• Essay

  Durant treats the Peloponnesian War as a disaster the Greeks brought on themselves. Using Thucydides' Melian Dialogue or the revolution at Corcyra, argue whether that judgment is fair to the Athenians or the Spartans.

• Classroom

  Make a map of the Greek world from Massalia to the Black Sea and mark each city where a figure in Durant's chapters on early philosophy and poetry lived, then discuss why so much began at the edges rather than in Athens.

• Fiction

  Tell the story of a slave in an Athenian household during the year of the Parthenon's dedication, using Durant's descriptions of daily work, the market and the festival.

Further Reading

• The Greeks, H. D. F. Kitto

  Brief, lively interpretation of the Greek character and the polis, first published in 1951.

• The Decipherment of Linear B, John Chadwick

  Account of the 1952 discovery that revised the Mycenaean world Durant described.

• Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen, Jacques Jouanna

• The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

• The Last Days of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo), Plato