From the Book - First edition.
Reason, the irrational and the danger of hubris
Hesiod and the cosmic origin of the world
Greek art : reason versus passion
From mythology to philosophy
Pythagoras : the divine reason and the immortal soul
The myth of the rational West versus the irrational East
Splendor and contradiction of the classical age
The achievements of theater, rhetoric and philosophy
From Plato to Aristotle : the empowering wisdom of philosophy
The Roman Republic : history and myth
Augustus and the empire : the theater of politics and power
The decline of the empire and the rise of Christianity
Augustine's tale of two cities
Part three: The early Middle Ages
The triumph of Christianity and the demise of the rational mind
The symbolic discourse of art
The new vocabulary of faith and spirituality
Latin West versus Greek East
From the iconoclastic revolt to the splendor of Byzantine art
Charlemagne and feudalism
Part four: the later Middle Ages
Church authority versus state authority : a difficult balance of power
Cities and universities : the dawn of a new cultural era
A new art for a new sensibility
Wealth and power versus poverty and humility : the two faces of Christianity
The rehabilitation of man within the ordered universe of God
The gradual secularization of culture
Dante's summa : The Divine Comedy
Part five: Humanism and the Renaissance
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries : the historical context
Petrarch's literary humanism
Florence : the city of splendor
Lorenzo the Magnificent and his court
The gathering clouds of disenchantment and cynicism
The Roman Renaissance : glory and ambiguity
The Protestant Reformation and the sack of Rome
