Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

By the fifth century, the inquiring Greeks of Ionia and Italy had essentially formulated the great questions that underpin ancient and much modern science and philosophy: What is the nature of the world and of existence? How do we learn things and know them for certain? How do we explain human behavior? They had questioned the existence of the Olympian gods, at least as Homer and Hesiod portrayed them, and the effectiveness of traditional ritual; they had invented natural science and advanced the understanding of mathematics. A fascinating combination of circumstances made sixth-century Ionian culture produce men who articulated these questions head-on, without waiting for a god to tell them the answers: their observations of change in the landscape; the advances made in medicine in nearby cities and islands; their sense of affiliation