In anticipation of writing The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. in film and dramatic literature at Columbia University in 1968. in classical literature and philosophy in 1964, and a pontifical degree in philosophy in 1965. He continued his study of Greek and Latin literature, as well as medieval philosophy, scripture and theology, at Fordham University, where he completed a B.A.
Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.īorn in New York City to Irish-American parents and raised in Queens and the Bronx, Cahill was educated by Jesuits and studied ancient Greek and Latin. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation-yet they kept slaves.
In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore "the hinges of history," Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining-and historically unassailable-journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.
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