This is her first book where she tries to place the context of intellectual life in 5th C Athens from which so much influential poetry, theatre and philosophy will be born. It feels like you are walking down the lane in front of the Parthenon with the plunging view of Athens seeing Socrates pass by with a gaggle of students around him, Aristophanes on the side of a building looking up at a flock of birds, Edith Hamilton is my favourite writer when it comes to describing ancient Greek mythology. moreĮdith Hamilton is my favourite writer when it comes to describing ancient Greek mythology. The New York Times called The Greek Way a "book of both cultural and critical importance.". A retired headmistress when she began her writing career in the 1930s, Hamilton immediately demonstrated a remarkable ability to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introducing that world to the twentieth century. What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpasses and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world."Ī perennial favorite in many different editions, Edith Hamilton's best-selling The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievements of Greece in the fifth century B.C. Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit today are different. What was then produced of art and of thought has never been s "Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far western border of the settled and civilized world, a strange new power was at work. "Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far western border of the settled and civilized world, a strange new power was at work.