Thomas W. Hodgkinson

Can the ancient Greeks really offer us ‘life lessons’ today?

Adam Nicolson thinks so. But his liveliest stories are about Pythagoras, who lived in a hole in the ground, and Thales, who fell into a well while studying the night sky

‘Pythagoras emerges from the Underworld’, by Giovanni Ghisolfi. [Fine Arts Images/Heritage Images/ Getty Images]

Adam Nicolson’s seductive new book –a voyage around early Greek thought – opens with a lovely passage. Moored with his wife off the island of Samos, Nicolson rises at first light, with ‘only the cats awake’, to find that other boats have come in during the night and laid their anchor lines over his.

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