In this massive tome of nearly 600 pages Zeruneith takes his reader on an exhilarating journey from Homer’s work on the Iliad and the Odyssey right up to the beginning of philosophy in the work of the Pre-Socratics, and finally to (Plato’s) Socrates himself. It is the breadth and depth of Zeruneith’s learning informing the structure of his story that makes this book so compelling and informative.

Zeruneith must of course make many assumptions to formulate his interpretation of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the relation he sees to exist between them and the wider Greek society through their early history. Chief amongst these is his (Hegelian) view that rationality is interwoven with the Greek myths and that is history is one of the increasing emergence of that rationality right up to the explicit rational self awareness of Plato’s philosophy. (p.123&506ff) He does not of course claim that any understanding given in myth is the same as that found in more rational (later) times such as in philosophy. But even given that there are major differences, and that for instance, the understanding of Eros is different over the centuries, there is enough (etymological) evidence to see a continuity of concern with the same phenomena over that long period of time.

Two further main structures informing the book are the ideas that starting from the Iliad and the Odyssey, Greek thought was concerned with the quest for the just (utopian) society, and for greater self-understanding. These concerns were coeval with the time that their society was undergoing upheavals that challenged received wisdom. It is of course possible to see these two quests as one and the same. But by seeing them as separate, the scope of the inquiry is widened to include more phenomena. Indeed it is Zeruneith’s self-appointed task to show that these two tasks exercise the Greek mind in such a fertile way that over the period “from 700-450 B.C. virtually every genre arises in Greek culture … : epic, choral and lyric poetry (including philosophical poetry), philosophical prose and dialogue as well as tragedy and comedy.” (p.280)

In accord with the two ideas above, Zeruneith points out that the Olympian gods were developed by Homer ( approx. 1180 BC), prior to Hesiod (700 BC), as a patriarchal reaction to the older female chthonic fertility gods. (p.86) This development of the new gods was one of the aspects of the Ionian enlightenment that also included the development of philosophy along with new forms of social organisation. However, whilst Homer was actively engaged in furthering this change, he was also subtly undermining the very gods he was installing because of the very nature of the behaviour of Odysseus, one of the main protagonists in the Iliad. He did this by showing on the one hand that the Iliad is ostensibly a story about heroism, that of Achilles in particular. In telling the story of Odysseus’s feats in battle he was also able to show how on the other hand, those very (heroic) qualities that Achilles embodied, were being eroded by the more subtle, decidedly unheroic qualities of Odysseus’s more self-consciously aware use of his own individual, intellectual abilities. (p.21) It is this ever-growing self-consciousness that Zeruneith sees as both the underlying lesson of “The myth of the Wooden Horse”, and as the key to the inter-connection between the Iliad to the Odyssey.

In support of this view he contends that the two armies fought for ten years, as the Iliad reveals, without fully conscious strategies. Their goal was simply to over-power their opponent through courageous physical strength – heroically. According to such a view, physical force and intelligence were not understood as separate qualities, but as unified in mythical thought in such a way that the individual did not stand out reflectively separate in self awareness from the events around them. Zeruneith contrasts this understanding with that portrayed in the Odyssey where Odysseus is able, unlike the heroic protagonists in the Iliad, to control his inner impulses and so not fall into their delusive power. (p.28, 45) Instead of blind fate ruling his life, and that of his men, Odysseus sees instead the need to weigh the pro and con of different courses of action for which he will bear personal responsibility. (p.29) It is this marked emergence of self-understanding that Zeruneith sees as the main, very telling, difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Hesiod differs from Homer in that he wrote in a period of social decay after the times of the Heroic code. Like Homer, however, he also sought to show the presence of gods (of justice in particular) in everyday life. To do so he drew on Homer’s work, but was also, Zeruneith claims, able to make progress towards the eventual conceptualisation of human values and traits. (p.282 ff) Whilst his Theogony claims inspiration from the Olympian muses, as does his Works and Days, the process of authorial self-awareness is so strong that Zeruneith notes how Hesiod is comfortable ending the latter by substituting his own voice for that of Zeus. (p. 286) The two works have a mutual and driving concern with justice. The Theogony seeks through allegory, to account of how the world came in to existence from chaos. Works and Days the other hand seeks to show how to live the best (day to day) life. Broadly speaking, these two concerns are no different than those that informed Homer’s work in both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The final poets of whom Zeruneith writes are Archilocus and Sappho. Again there are distinctly common threads in his work and that of his forebears – Hesiod and Homer. Whilst Hesiod was a peasant who gave up shepherding to write poetry, Archilochus was both a soldier and a poet. (p.299) He was not a poet of the heroic however, but of the individual, self-reliant soldier whose pride in being a good soldier does not include heroic honour. He sees that life itself is worth more than external honours and that it is up to the individual to cultivate their own inner self understanding in their given circumstances. (p.303) This self-understanding gave rise to the expression of his own passions, of hate no less than love, as something for which he is responsible. In this he comes close to Sappho whose work Zeruneith sees as the expression of personal passion, and hence a poetry of subjectivity. (p.306 ff)

Alongside, perhaps informing, the development of individual self-consciousness there was, as a result of successful colonisation, the rise of a powerful merchant class that exercised its political influence by reason of financial strength rather than inherited privilege. (p.271) At this time Zeruneith claims, the aristocracy became self-indulgently degenerate and decidedly unheroic as luxuries flowed in from the colonies. The shifts in power and wealth over the centuries may be traced in the change in what “tyrant” meant first (perhaps) to Homer and what it means now- notably that the early tyrant’s were aristocrats who were able to rule with the co-operation of large portions of their society, such as the farmers, and an army consisting of citizens who could arm themselves. Such “tyranny” was in fact the beginnings of democracy. The last such tyrant may have been as late as the 500 B.C. For by the fourth century B.C. “tyrant” had come to mean much as it does today – the very opposite to democratic endeavour. (p.272-273) (Zeruneith’s recognition of the likely influence of such events on the development of ideas is perhaps a nod in the direction of the treasure trove of further insights that might be found in a full blown history of ideas as a compliment to his own ‘idealist’ study.)

From Sappho’s writings Zeruneith turns towards the Presocratic philosophers whose work from Thales in 600 B.C. onward sought to develop rationality as an alternative to the mythological tradition of thought. He approaches them using a schema that includes the main representatives of different schools according to their views on: (1) the origin or genesis of the cosmos (2) Physis, or how everything in nature is formed from air, water, earth and fire (3) Metamorphosis, or how things in the natural world change (4) Causality, or inquiry into what drives events in the natural world (5) Monotheism, the Presocratics attributed a divine principal as the original cause (6) Thought about, (a hermeneutics concerning), how to go about proper philosophical inquiry (7) The psyche, the centre of human subjectivity. (p312 ff) Though necessarily lacking in detail, Zeruneith’s systematic and highly readable synopsis yields enough background information to give an indication of the developing power of their thought, and of where it fits in with the development of increasing human self-awareness.

Following his account of the rise of self-consciousness in Greek philosophy Zeruneith turns attention to the remarkable development of tragedy by giving a nod to the role of the development of different social structures in giving rise to new ideas that tragedy embraced. In doing so he gives a passing reference to Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy before setting out in greater detail the more conservative views of Aristotle. (pp.330-343) He then goes on to give an account of what he sees to be the important ideas in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

He points out that Aeschylus started out writing just at the time when following the battle of Salamis, Athens flourished and there was a need to forge a new understanding of the individual’s place in their changing society. There was at this period a peace that lasted for fifty years before Tragedy was to lose its poetic strength, probably Zeruneith suggests, because of the debilitating effects of the Peloponnesian War and plague (p.336)

Zeruneith suggests that the three major tragedians, (who he looks at), can be seen as following a line of development. First is Aeschylus, whose work shows action and reflection as not yet clearly separate. Then the work of Sophocles shows an increasing self-awareness that leads to a more developed sense of identity and hence of the separation between action and identity. Lastly Euripides’ work demonstrates that “the values formulated by his predecessors are broken down”. (p.343) This line of development not-with-standing, the three writers never the less can be seen to borrow from and develop new ideas from each other. (Ditto)

With the disruption of the city’s years of peace and the effects of the plague Zeruneith sees there to have arisen a loss of spiritual vitality issuing in a pragmatic and spiritually degenerate outlook. It would seem that the only cultural force left in the wake of the departure of tragedy as a vitally cohesive social force, was philosophy, and in particular, the philosophy of Socrates (as written by Plato).

There is much that Zeruneith writes that could be disputed. His interpretation of Plato for instance, is monolithic and seems limited to one or two texts. Any in depth understanding of the complexity of Plato’s work is thereby smoothed over. The same necessarily applies to the other major texts used, the Iliad and the Odyssey included. Once the reader begins to take Zeruneith’s interpretation of a text to task at a scholarly level, then I believe his interpretative assumptions would also come under serious question. But then that is the nature of the subject material. There can be no doubt that The Wooden Horse is an insightful and skillfully woven synopsis of a complex and important time in the history of the Western mind.