The Life of Greece

The Story of Civilization, Volume 2

By: Will Durant

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

The second volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize - winning series The Story of Civilization. Volume 2 chronicles the history of ancient Greek civilization. Here Durant tells the whole story of Greece from the days of Crete's vast Aegean empire to the final extirpation of the last remnants of Greek liberty, crushed under the heel of an implacably forward-marching Rome. The dry minutiae of battles and sieges, of tortuous statecraft of tyrant and king, get minor emphasis in what is preeminently a vivid recreation of Greek culture, brought to the listener through the medium of supple, vigorous prose.

In this masterful work, listeners will learn about:

• The siege of Troy
• The great city-states of Athens and Sparta
• The heroes of Homer's epics
• The gods and lesser deities of Mount Olympus
• The teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
• The empire of Alexander the Great

©1966 Will Durant (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

masterpiece!

a must read, Will Durant's labor of love educated and moved me. the detail is stunning, the perspective is enlightening, the epilogue is made of the kind of stuff for which I read.

"A big book, is a big evil" - Callimachus.

This one, however, is worth the effort. Will Durant is a scholar of the first order, who clearly loves history.

Approachable and Enjoyable

The content is fantastic and the narration is fine. Enjoy this audiobook and the others in the series!

details

it did not adequately credit Eastern civilizations contribution to Greek civilization. specifically that off Babylonian Persian and Indian.

Civilization is always older than we think.

"Civilization does not die, it migrates; it changes its habitat and its dress, but it lives on. The decay of one civilization, as of one individual, makes room for the growth of another; life sheds the old skin, and surprises death with fresh youth."
- Will Durant, The Life of Greece

Will Durant, during his strongest moments in book 2, transfers his love of Greek history, philosophy, art, and civilization elegantly to the reader. He captures the history of Greece, but also places Greece firmly within the greater context Western Civilization, history, and our current philosophy, science, and art. He is weakest when he aggregating and acting as an art historian or literary critic; he both tries to summarize the work AND the artist and excels at neither.

Durant's approach (and with Hellenic Civilization it is difficult to find a perfect approach) takes the reader from city-state to city-state (which often yo-yos the reader in time). Like with Book 1, I loved Durant's imagry, metaphors, and well-formed lines. Here is just a sample from Book 1 of the Story of Civilization 2: The Life of Greece:

"It is as difficult to begin a civilization without robbery as it is to maintain it without slaves" (10).
"But we must not mistake our guessing for history" (15).
"...the patient perfecting of litttle things" (16).
"...a nation is born stoic and dies epicurean" (21).
"By a hundered channels the old civilization emptied itself out into the new" (23).
"Civilization is always older than we think" (27);
"...but faith survives every desolation" (33).
"We shall assume that the major leggends are true in essence, imaginitive in detail" (38).
"A myth is often a bit of popular wisdom personified in poetic figures...legend is often a fragment of history swelling with new fictions as it folls down the years" (43-44).
"society is a rumbling cart that travels an uneven road; and no matter how carefully the cart is constituted, some of the varied objects in it will sink to the bottom, and others will rise to the top" (47).
"Precedent dominates law because precedent is custom, and custom is the jealous older brother of law" (54).
"Art (to vary Aristotle) may make even terror beautiful -- and so purify it--by giving it significance and form" (56).