Athens 429 BC: The Hellespont

 Tom Holland's first chapter is on Athens. Like Diarmaid MacCulloch, Holland begins with preparation of the back ground to many Christian assumptions. The chapter outlines the tension between governance by early democracy and the whims of the gods. Violence is a theme throughout the book. A page on Sophocles outlines how "many were brought to question the glaring contradictions that lay at the heart of how they conceived the gods" (p. 36).

It took me a little while to get into this book. I confess I was less than interested in Athens except to the extent that it reminded me of what I had been taught about the Greeks in high school. Holland would have been a good source for exam questions.

So he reviews the birth of philosophy, the lies of poets, and the emerging idea that the stars follow geometric laws, the rational - and hence divine - workings of the cosmos. So there was a god imagined as the unmoved mover. It seems that Aristotle was anticipating Newton. In this way Holland begins a thought that continues through the book and allows us to recapitulate several processes over the millennia. As is typical, Holland creates a quip that encapsulates the mood: 

The sublunar world, lacking as it did the inerrant order of the stars, and far distant from them, could hardly be expected to concern the unmoving mover (p. 39).

This chapter continues from Aristotle to Alexander, and the founding of the great library at Alexandria to the Roman dominance. He touches on Posidonius, Cicero, Zeno and the Stoics, and Fortune. Here he introduces almost as asides Greek words like parousia, the physical presence of a deity, syneidesis, conscience. Greece seems a mashup of ideas about god and gods, many of which provide a backdrop to the their usage in Christian theology.

Hollands first books are on this period of history, so in spite of my limited appreciation for the period, I was taken in to his summary preparation for the rest of the book. I think if I were to trace in more detail his thoughts I would find them framed by the Iliad. Always fight bravely, and be superior to others.