Literature of ancient Greece

Drama, such as comedies and tragedies, was meant to be performed as an active presentation, while many other forms of literature were written to be read and spoken out loud as recitals. The early Homeric poems were written from earlier spoken poems and were continued to be read and spoken throughout the Greek period. Aristotle is even to have given his star pupil, Alexander the Great, an annotated copy of the Iliad.

The various literary works can be approached thematically to provide a general overview of the extensive works. Epic poetry, that of the Homeric poems and Hesiod, occurred in the Archaic Age and provide an important link between the oral histories of the Dark Ages and the Classical era. The other types of literary works included history, philosophy, and minor treatises.

One of the most important new genres of literature developed by the Greeks was history. Coming from the Greek word istoria, meaning “inquiry,” histories were meant to describe the evolution of a subject presenting the material after a systematic exploration and analysis of the facts to present an accurate account. The first historian was Herodotus (484-425), from the city of Halicarnassus, who set out a detailed account of the origins and development of the Persian Wars from both sides. Very little is known of him, but it has been established that although born in Halicarnassus, he emigrated to Athens and traveled extensively.

He may have left Athens and died in Macedon. He delved into the origins of the Persians using local stories and traditions interlaced with gossip and mythology. He described the lives of the Persian kings Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes. In all of his treatments, he interlaced morality to account for particular instances. For example, when Xerxes is moving toward Europe and his bridge across the Hellespont is destroyed, Xerxes orders the sea to be whipped so that the seas were subject to the Persians; and after the Battle at Thermopylae, he mutilates the body of the dead king Leonidas. These acts, in Herodotus’s view, were signs of Xerxes’s hubris: outrageous pride or arrogance.

But Herodotus was not content to just describe basic historical events such as the battles and reigns of the leaders; he spent a considerable amount of time describing the geography, ethnography, and cultural and local historiographical traditions of regions. Thus, he provided a wealth of information (whether true or not) and told local stories about a region. Although criticized for inventing stories for pure entertainment, Herodotus stated that he was merely reporting what he had seen himself and was told by people, and he even sometimes said that he did not believe them. Many of his presentations have subsequently been shown to be accurate, or at least have a foundation in truth, by archaeologists and historians.

Although Herodotus may not have been the first author to write events in a systematic and chronological order, his was the first complete work to survive. Other works said to have been written before his tended to be mere chronicles or slightly annotated lists of events. He clearly took some of his ideas and sources from earlier works, and being close to contemporary events, he could interview many who took part in the wars. He clearly knew of Aeschylus’s work The Persians, as many of his accounts echo those of the playwright.

His critics included the Athenian historian Thucydides, who viewed Herodotus as a mere storyteller. In antiquity, he was viewed as a purveyor of unreliable fables and myths. Many scholars, ancient and modern, believe that Herodotus invented some of his stories, especially concerning the Persians and Egyptians, so that they neatly coincided with Greek mythology and history. Many of his so-called sources did not seem to know their own histories. Nevertheless, Herodotus is often the primary source for the Persian Wars, and in some cases the only source.

His use of stories tended to amplify an event to make the moral point more important. While many of his stories, especially as they relate to the areas outside Greece, are questioned, his accounts for the battles in the wars themselves are said to have been based on eyewitnesses. For Herodotus, one of the most important elements to his account was causality—why did the Persian Wars happen? To him, the war was about the East versus the West and the civilized Greeks against the “Barbarian Persians,” with the Greeks winning because of their political freedom.

While Herodotus may have held the title “father of history,” his younger contemporary Thucydides (460-400?) was the “father of scientific history.” His work on the Peloponnesian War and his claim to have gathered and analyzed material in a systematic and unbiased way set the standard for future historians. Although he was an Athenian general, he was often critical of the Athenians. He is also credited with the idea of political realism, where fear and self-interest provide the driving force of events for individuals and states.

His Melian Dialogue is still studied as an example of political reality, and his Funeral Oration of Pericles is examined by rhetoricians and politicians, and it was said to influence Abraham Lincoln when writing his Gettysburg Address. He also examined how people reacted and explained such calamities as the plague, civil war, and atrocities.

Like Herodotus, little is known of Thucydides except from his own accounts and other snippets. He was an Athenian; he contracted the plague; and due to his inability to quell a rebellion in Thrace, he was exiled by the Athenian democracy. This exile allowed him to travel throughout Greece, including the Peloponnese, to gather information and meet individuals involved in the great war. His account abruptly ends in the middle of 411, suggesting that he may have died at this time. He presented the evidence in an evenhanded manner, going so far as to show the negative results of his campaign in Thrace; he admired Pericles, but he attacked those who followed, who were radical democrats such as Cleon.

Thucydides clearly viewed the war as a great event and began to write his work with its outbreak in 431. His writings, divided later into eight books, describe the events with no reference to divine intervention, unlike Herodotus. He consulted documents and interviewed individuals and, in his works, gave speeches that he said were not verbatim records but rather impressions of what he or others heard. This allowed him to retain the oral records or impressions of them. For example, Pericles’s Funeral Oration not only commemorates the dead, but more important, it justifies democracy, which Thucydides admired, especially under Pericles’s leadership.

This is then contrasted with the horrors of the plague, of which Thucydides gave an almost modern scientific description. He did not describe art, music, literature, or culture, as this would be outside his purpose—namely, to describe the events of the war.

His work was often critical of the Athenian imperialism of the fifth century, but he was also a participant in this growth. His condemnation of the Melos situation and the Sicilian disaster only heightened his concept that the war was turned into folly by the recklessness of demagogues who moved Athens away from the intent of Pericles. Both works were forgotten during the Middle Ages due to the inability in the West to read Greek. They were only rediscovered during the Renaissance.

The next writer who bridged history and philosophy was Xenophon, another Athenian. Xenophon wrote a history called Hellenica, which extended Thucydides’s work from 411 down to 362, with the defeat of Thebes at Mantinea. The early part, Books 1 and 2, describe the events in the Peloponnesian War until the defeat of Athens. Books 3 through 5 discuss the Spartan attempt to control Greek affairs during the Corinthian War and the war against Thebes in the Boeotian War. Book 6 covers the period of the Spartan defeat by Thebes at Leuctra, while Book 7 describes the end of Theban hegemony at Mantinea. Xenophon’s other major work was the Anabasis, (March of the Ten Thousand).

This was not only a history of his retreat from enemy territory, but also a history of the campaign by Cyrus against his brother, his death, and Xenophon’s takeover. The Anabasis is also a military treatise of tactics on retreat and survival encompassing scorched-earth tactics, living off the land, and fighting against larger forces. Xenophon also produced biographical works that can be seen both as historical and moral works. These included Cyropaedia (Education of Cyrus the Great). This was a part fictional, part historical tale of the rise of Cyrus and the Persian Empire. While it may not have been completely historically accurate, the work attempted to show how an ideal leader ruled over his willing subjects as a despot.

Xenophon also wrote a work on the constitution of Sparta, which describes not just the political institutions of Sparta, but its customs and practices. The first thirteen of the fifteen books describe the institutions that made Sparta great, while the last two relate the events leading to its decline. Chapters 1 through 5 discuss the education of Spartan children. Chapters 6 through 8 show how the Spartans had communal egalitarianism, with disdain for money and adherence to the laws. Chapters 9 through 13 describe Spartan military life, why the Spartans were great soldiers, and their military ethos. Chapters 14 and 15 show how the state became corrupt, and through this corruption, Sparta declined. Xenophon also wrote a series of philosophical works that showed his connection with Socrates, his former teacher.

These included works defending Socrates, writing about his trial, and another work on economics in the form of Socrates discussing the running of the household. In his work titled Hiero, he writes on the idea of happiness as a dialogue between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, and the poet Simonides of Ceos. He also wrote treatises on specific subjects such as horsemanship, the duties of a cavalry officer, how to hunt with dogs, and the ways and means of how Athens should deal with a financial crisis. Xenophon thus bridged the literary works from history to specific treatises, as well as philosophical works seen in Plato.

Traditionally, Plato wrote thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters, although not all of these are seen as authentic. Although the exact order is unknown, his works have been classified into early, middle, and later works. The early works include “Apology,” “Charmides,” “Crito,” “Euthyphro,” “Gorgias,” “(Lesser) Hip- pias (minor),” “(Greater) Hippias (major),” “Ion,” “Laches,” “Lysis,” and “Protagoras.” The middle works included “Cratylus,” “Euthydemus,” “Meno,” “Parmenides,” “Phaedo,” “Phaedrus,” “Republic,” “Symposium,” and “Theaetetus.” His later works include “Critias,” “Sophist,” “Statesman,” “Timaeus,” “Philebus,” and “Laws.” Plato wrote about ethics, law, politics, justice, and morality. One of the major themes that he wrote about was the trial of Socrates and his death, as witnessed in the “Apology,” and “Crito” and “Phaedo” were written about Socrates’s time in prison. He wrote on metaphysics, including science and religion, love and sexuality.

One aspect of Platonism was based on the theory of forms, which denies the reality of the world, viewing it only as a copy of the real world. There are two worlds: the apparent or concrete, seen through senses that can change; and the unseen or abstract, which is perceived from pure reason. Plato also argued for the immortality of the soul. He examined ethics and the ideas of justice and vice. In both works Politics and Laws, he describes the various components of political life. He rejected the idea of the Athenian democracy that existed in his day, in part because of the execution of Socrates and the degeneration of the state due to demagogues.

He presents the ideas of the philosopher-king, a wise ruler who values the benefit of his people over his own and seeks truth. But it is under the rule of the aristocracy, the elite and wise families that the state functions best. It, however, devolves into timocracy, where rule is done by honorable individuals who are wealthy. This then declines to oligarchy, or rule of a few, which is replaced by democracy, or rule of the people, which finally produces tyranny, or rule of the tyrant.

The last major philosopher was Aristotle (384-322), who wrote an extensive catalog of works. His surviving works probably relate to the lectures he gave at Athens. His most important and famous works are Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics, On the Soul, and Rhetoric, all of which allowed for the development of political history, as well as the basis of ideas for literary criticism and ethics. His surviving works include those in logic or organon: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations. In the area of physics or natural philosophy, the surviving works include On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, On the Soul, Sense and Sensibility, Memory, Sleep, Dreams, Divination in Sleep, On Length and Shortness of Life, On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, Respiration, History of Animals, Movement of Animals, Parts of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and Problems. In the area of metaphysics, the work Metaphysics survives.

In ethics and politics, there remains the Nicomachean Ethics, Great Ethics (authorship disputed), Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Economics (authorship disputed) and the Constitution of Athens (authorship disputed), which describe political developments and ethics. The final area, Rhetoric and Poetics contain these two works. There are many other works that have not survived, but they attest to Aristotle’s encyclopedic knowledge and breadth.

The literary works of the ancient Greeks would set the stage and dominate future inquiries. These literary pieces provide for the transmission of Greek culture and knowledge to the modern age.