Nothing about the new way of thinking came from centrality or long-instituted authority; every one of its qualities derived from conditions found on the edges of power, where fusion, manoeuvrability, thievery, deceit, eclecticism and openness were aspects of a vitalized, at times anxious and often predatory life. It’s a tale full of opposites: worldly and otherworldly, laughter and seriousness, Earth and the heavens, the sublime and the ridiculous. The author succeeded in showing that an open trade and migration across the nations from Italy, all the way to Persia during that period influenced and fertilized the mines of inhabitants and thought leaders in various cities along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

Adam Nicolson has produced an impressively knowledgable and accessible read to explore Ancient Greece and help us dig deeper into a time of philosophical development that is still has its impact on us today. I think the title suggests a bit more of a self-help book and thus slightly mis-represents this mix of philosophy and history. It is important to recenter the story and not deny the east Mediterranean their central and the evolution of philosophy, government, political theory, and finally how to live. Nicholson shows how ideas evolved and were articulated for the first time in recorded human history by various ancient Greek philosophers, dramatists, and poets—and how those ideas still influence us to this day.With many vicissitudes, the river empires persisted until about 1300 BC, when for reasons that remain opaque the long-fixed pattern of power started to fray and erode. This dazzling passage of writing argued that engagement with the environment is always a philosophical act, and that the close looking of the naturalist is more similar than we might think to the work of the philosopher. Much of what he finds is now silted, silent, heron-pecked, but Nicolson is alive to the telling detail: the peninsula that allowed for a double harbor; the shallow beach that was once a quay for unloading enslaved people. All the goods of the world, wines and ivories, spices and scents, fine timbers, precious metals and exquisite goods were drawn in towards them.

That being said, I have no doubt that people who have a lot of background knowledge on Greek history will enjoy this book. From about 900 BC onwards, the Greeks began to insinuate themselves into this Phoenician network, trading to what is now the coast of Syria and to the Italian peninsula (leaving their ceramics as evidence), where the Etruscans were also playing their part in a vortex of change and rivalry. The philosophical ideas are not scholarly exercises in disputing the meaning of life but are clearly explained in an easy-to-understand way, with numerous rather brilliant examples. The author explains things like this because his point is that maritime trade and the cultural mixing of people and goods it implies was the dynamic motor of change.It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. The warrior-kings at Mycenae in mainland Greece were first the acolytes and then imitators of the Cretans, and after about 1450 BC their conquerors.

You could portray them either as pirates or as seaborne entrepreneurs, independent, resourceful and inventive. If the texts in which they recorded their thoughts had not disappeared, would this book have been about them?He is an English aristocrat, though he does not use his title — Heraclitus would approve — and is the grandson of Virginia Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West (and Sir Harold Nicolson).