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Credited as one of the founders of
Western philosophy, Socrates is an
enigmatic figure known only through
the classical accounts of his students.
Plato's dialogues are the most
comprehensive accounts of Socrates to
survive from antiquity. Through his
portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates
has become renowned for his
contribution to the field of ethics, and
he lends his name to the concepts of
Socratic irony and the Socratic method. The latter remains a
commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of
pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw
individual answers, but to encourage fundamental insight into the
issue at hand.
Socrates chose to die for several reasons:
He believed such a flight would indicate a fear of death, which he
believed no true philosopher has.
If he fled Athens his teaching would fare no better in another
country as he would continue questioning all he met and
undoubtedly incur their displeasure.
Having knowingly agreed to live under the city's laws, he
implicitly subjected himself to the possibility of being accused
of crimes by its citizens and judged guilty by its jury. To do
otherwise would have caused him to break his "social contract"
with the state, and so harm the state, an act contrary to
Socratic principle.
The full reasoning behind his refusal to flee is the main subject of the
Crito.
Socrates' death is described at the end of Plato's Phaedo. Socrates
turned down the pleas of Crito to attempt an escape from prison.
After drinking the poison, he was instructed to walk around until his
legs felt numb. After he lay down, the man who administered the
poison pinched his foot. Socrates could no longer feel his legs. The
numbness slowly crept up his body until it reached his heart.
Shortly before his death, Socrates speaks his last words to Crito:
"Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the
debt." Asclepius (uh-sklee-pee-uhs) was the Greek god for curing
illness, and it is likely Socrates' last words meant that death is the
cure—and freedom, of the soul from the body. The Roman
philosopher Seneca attempted to emulate Socrates' death by
hemlock when forced to commit suicide by the Emperor Nero.
Plato was a Classical Greek
philosopher, mathematician,
writer of philosophical dialogues,
and founder of the Academy in
Athens, the first institution of
higher learning in the Western
world. Along with his mentor,
Socrates, and his student,
Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the
foundations of natural
philosophy, science, and Western
philosophy. Plato was originally a
student of Socrates, and was as
much influenced by his thinking
as by what he saw as his teacher's
unjust death.
Detail of Plato (left) and
Aristotle (right) from:
By:
Plato imagines a group of people who have lived chained in a cave
all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows
projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind
them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to
Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality.
He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed
from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the
wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true
form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.
The Allegory is related to Plato's Theory of Forms, wherein
Plato asserts that "Forms" (or "Ideas"), and not the material
world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest
and most fundamental kind of reality. Only knowledge of the
Forms constitutes real knowledge. In addition, the allegory of the
cave is an attempt to explain the philosopher's place in society.
A student of Plato, Aristotle shared his
teacher’s reverence for human knowledge but
revised many of Plato’s ideas by emphasizing
methods rooted in observation and experience.
Aristotle surveyed and systematized nearly all
the extant branches of knowledge and
provided the first ordered accounts of biology,
psychology, physics, and literary theory. In
addition, Aristotle invented the field known as
formal logic, pioneered zoology, and
addressed virtually every major philosophical problem known
during his time. Known to medieval intellectuals as simply “the
Philosopher,” Aristotle is possibly the greatest thinker in Western
history, and historically, perhaps the single greatest influence on
Western intellectual development. It has been suggested that
Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was
to be known in his own time.
Aristotle gestures to the earth,
representing his belief in knowledge
through empirical observation and
experience, while holding a copy of his
Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst
Plato gestures to the heavens,
representing his belief in The Forms.
“There is nothing in the intellect,”
he wrote, “that was not first in the
senses.”
---Aristotle
Aristotle taught that to achieve the
good life, one must live a balanced
life and avoid excess. This balance,
he taught, varies among different
persons and situations, and exists as
a golden mean between two vices –
one an excess and one a deficiency
The theatre of ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a
theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550
and c. 220 BCE. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant
cultural, political and military power during this period, was its
center, where it was institutionalized as part of a festival called the
Dionysia, which honored the god Dionysus. Tragedy, comedy, and
the satyr play were the three dramatic genres to emerge there.
Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies and allies in
order to promote a common cultural identity. Western theater
originates in Athens and its drama has had a significant and
sustained impact on Western culture as a whole.
The mask is known to have been used since the time of
Aeschylus and considered to be one of the iconic
conventions of classical Greek theatre.
Aeschylus was the earliest of the great tragic poets of Athens. As
the predecessor of Sophocles and Euripides, he is called the
father of Greek tragedy.
The most complete tetralogy of Aeschylus' work that still exists is the
Oresteia (458 BC), of which only the satyr play is missing. In fact, the
Oresteia is the only full trilogy of Greek plays by any playwright that
modern scholars have uncovered. The trilogy consists of
Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides. Together,
these plays tell the bloody story of the family of Agamemnon, King
of Argos.
Agamemnon describes his death at the hands of his wife
Clytemnestra, who was angry both at Agamemnon's sacrifice of
their daughter Iphigenia and at his keeping the Trojan prophetess
Cassandra as a concubine. Cassandra enters the palace even though
she knows she will be murdered by Clytemnestra as well, knowing
that she cannot avoid her gruesome fate. The ending of the play
includes a prediction of the return of Orestes, son of Agamemnon,
who will surely avenge his father.
The Libation Bearers continues the tale,
opening with Clytemnestra's account of
a nightmare in which she gives birth to
a snake. She orders Electra, her
daughter, to pour libations on
Agamemnon's tomb (with the assistance
of libation bearers) in hope of making
amends. At the tomb, Electra meets
Orestes, who has returned from
protective exile in Phocis, and they plan
revenge upon Clytemnestra and her
lover Aegisthus together. They enter the
palace pretending to bear news of
Orestes' death, and when Clytemnestra
calls in Aegisthus to share in the news,
Orestes kills them both.
Orestes, Electra and
Hermes in front of
Agamemnon's tomb
Immediately, Orestes is beset by the Furies, who avenge patricide
and matricide in Greek mythology.
The Eumenides
The final play of The Oresteia addresses the question of Orestes'
guilt. The Furies pursue Orestes from Argos and into the
wilderness. Orestes makes his way to the temple of Apollo and begs
him to drive the Furies away. Apollo had encouraged Orestes to kill
Clytemnestra, and so bears a portion of the guilt of the act. But the
Furies belong to the older race of the Titans, and Apollo is unable to
drive them away. He sends Orestes to the temple of Athena, with
Hermes as a guide. There, the Furies track him down and, just
before he is to be killed, the goddess Athena, patron of Athens, steps
in and declares that a trial is necessary. Apollo argues Orestes' case
and, after the jury splits their vote, Athena decides against the
Furies. She also renames them the Eumenides, or kindly ones, and
declares that thereafter all future hung juries should result in
acquittal, since mercy should take precedence over harshness. The
Eumenides specifically extols the importance of reason in the
development of laws, and, like The Suppliants, lauds the ideals of a
democratic Athens.
Orestes pursued by the Erinyes) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Art Nouveau
Among Sophocles' earliest innovations was
the addition of a third actor, which further
reduced the role of the chorus and created
greater opportunity for character
development and conflict between
characters. Aristotle credits Sophocles with
the introduction of skenographia, or scenerypainting. It was not until after the death of
the old master Aeschylus in 456 BCE that
Sophocles became the pre-eminent
playwright in Athens.
Oedipus and the Sphinx,
by Jean Auguste
Dominique Ingres
Each of the plays relates to the tale of the mythological Oedipus, who
killed his father and married his mother without knowledge that
they were his parents. His family is fated to be doomed for three
generations.
In Oedipus the King, Oedipus is the protagonist. He becomes the
ruler of Thebes after solving the riddle of the sphinx. Before solving
this riddle, Oedipus had met at a crossroads a man accompanied by
servants; Oedipus and the man fought, and Oedipus killed the man.
Oedipus continued on to Thebes to marry the widowed Queen, who
was, unknown to him, his mother. Oedipus eventually learns that his
mother and father gave him up when he was just an infant in fear
that he would kill his father and fulfill the Delphic Oracle's prophecy of him. Upon learning of the completed prophecy, his mother,
Jocasta, realizes the incest and commits suicide; Oedipus, in horror
of what he has seen, blinds himself and leaves Thebes. The couple
had four children, who figure in the remaining plays of the set.
In Oedipus at Colonus, the banished Oedipus and his daughters
Antigone and Ismene arrive at the town of Colonus where they
encounter Theseus, King of Athens. Oedipus dies and strife begins
between his sons Polyneices and Eteocles.
In Antigone the protagonist is Oedipus' daughter. Antigone is faced
with the choice of allowing her brother Polyneices' body to remain
unburied, outside the city walls, exposed to the ravages of wild
animals, or to bury him and face death. The king of the land,
Creon, has forbidden the burial of Polyneices for he was a traitor
to the city. Antigone decides to bury his body and face the
consequences of her actions. Creon sentences her to death.
Eventually, Creon is convinced to free Antigone from her
punishment, but his decision comes too late and Antigone commits
suicide. Her suicide triggers the suicide of two others close to King
Creon: his son, Haemon, who was to wed Antigone, and his wife
who commits suicide after losing her only surviving son.
Euripides was the youngest of
the three great tragedians of
classical Athens (the other two
being Aeschylus and
Sophocles). Euripides' greatest
works include:
Also considered notable is
Cyclops, the only complete
satyr play to have survived.
Euripedes' Medea opens in a state of conflict. Jason has abandoned
his wife, Medea, along with their two children. He hopes to advance
his station by remarrying with Glauce, the daughter of Creon, king
of Corinth, the Greek city where the play is set. All the events of
play proceed out of this initial dilemma, and the involved parties
become its central characters. Outside the royal palace, a nurse
laments the events that have lead to the present crisis. After a long
series of trials and adventures, which ultimately forced Jason and
Medea to seek exile in Corinth, the pair had settled down and
established their family, achieving a degree of fame and
respectability. Jason's recent abandonment of that family has
crushed Medea emotionally, to the degree that she curses her own
existence, as well as that of her two children. Fearing a possible plot
of revenge, Creon banishes Medea and her children from the city.
After pleading for mercy, Medea is granted one day before she
must leave, during which she plans to complete her quest for
"justice"--at this stage in her thinking, the murder of Creon,
Glauce, and Jason. Jason accuses Medea of overreacting.
By voicing her grievances so publicly, she has endangered her life
and that of their children. He claims that his decision to remarry
was in everyone's best interest. Medea finds him spineless, and she
refuses to accept his token offers of help. Appearing by chance in
Corinth, Aegeus, King of Athens, offers Medea sanctuary in his
home city in exchange for her knowledge of certain drugs that can
cure his sterility. Now guaranteed an eventual haven in Athens,
Medea has cleared all obstacles to completing her revenge, a plan
which grows to include the murder of her own children; the pain
their loss will cause her does not outweigh the satisfaction she will
feel in making Jason suffer. For the balance of the play, Medea
engages in a ruse; she pretends to sympathize with Jason (bringing
him into her confidence) and offers his wife "gifts," a coronet and
dress. Ostensibly, the gifts are meant to convince Glauce to ask her
father to allow the children to stay in Corinth. The coronet and
dress are actually poisoned, however, and their delivery causes
Glauce's death. Seeing his daughter ravaged by the poison, Creon
chooses to die by her side by dramatically embracing her and
Medea kills her son,
red-figure amphora,
ca. 330 BC, Louvre
absorbing the poison himself. A
messenger recounts the gruesome details
of these deaths, which Medea absorbs
with cool attentiveness. Her earlier state
of anxiety, which intensified as she
struggled with the decision to commit
infanticide, has now given way to an
assured determination to fulfill her plans.
Against the protests of the chorus, Medea
murders her children and flees the scene
in a dragon-pulled chariot provided by
her grandfather, the Sun-God. Jason is
left cursing his lot; his hope of advancing
his station by abandoning Medea and
marrying Glauce, the conflict which
began the play, has been destroyed, and
everything he values has been lost in the
deaths that conclude the tragedy.
Title: Jason and Medea
Artist: John William Waterhouse
Painting Date: 1907 Pre-Raphaelite
Title: Medea
Artist: Eugene Delacroix
Painting Date: 1838
Location: Louvre, Paris
Known as the Father of Comedy and
the Prince of Ancient Comedy,
Aristophanes has been said to recreate
the life of ancient Athens more
convincingly than any other author.
His powers of ridicule were feared and
acknowledged by influential
contemporaries - Plato singled out
Aristophanes' play The Clouds as
slander contributing to the trial and
execution of Socrates although other
satirical playwrights had caricatured
the philosopher.
Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of
north African descent. His comedies were performed for
the first time around 170–160 BC, and he died young,
probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome. Terentius
Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a
slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities,
freed him. All of the six plays Terence wrote have survived.
Adelphoe (The Brothers) (160 BC)
Andria (The Girl from Andros) (166 BC)
Eunuchus (161 BC)
Heauton Timorumenos (The SelfTormentor)
Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law) (165 BC)
Phormio (161 BC)
Famous quotes from Andria:
Moderation in all things; Charity begins
at home
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian who lived in the
5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in
Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his
materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and
arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. He is almost
exclusively known for writing The Histories, a record of his
"inquiries" into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which
occurred in 490 and 480-479 BC—especially since he includes a
narrative account of that period, which would otherwise be poorly
documented; and many long digressions concerning the various
places and peoples he encountered during wide-ranging travels
around the lands of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Although
some of his stories were not completely accurate, he claimed that he
was reporting only what had been told to him.
Thucydides and his immediate
predecessor Herodotus both exerted a
significant influence on Western
historiography.
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author of the History of the
Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war
between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has
been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict
standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and
effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in
his introduction to his work.
Hippocrates (ca. 460 BC – ca. 370
BC) was an ancient Greek
physician of the Age of Pericles
(Classical Athens), and is
considered one of the most
outstanding figures in the history
of medicine. He is referred to as
the Western father of medicine in
recognition of his lasting
contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of
medicine. This intellectual school revolutionized medicine in ancient
Greece, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields that it
had traditionally been associated with (notably theurgy and
philosophy), thus making medicine a profession.
Galen (born 129—died 216) was Arguably the most accomplished
of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen contributed greatly to
the understanding of numerous scientific disciplines. He became
chief physician to the gladiators in 157. Later, in Rome, he became
a friend of Marcus Aurelius and physician to Commodus. Galen
saw anatomy as fundamental and, based on animal experiments,
described cranial nerves and heart valves and showed that arteries
carry blood, not air. However, in extending his findings to human
anatomy he was often in error. Following Hippocratic concepts, he
believed in three connected body systems—brain and nerves for
sensation and thought, heart and arteries for life energy, and liver
and veins for nutrition and growth—and four humours (body
fluids)—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm—that needed to
be in balance. A revival of interest in the 16th century led to new
anatomical investigations, which caused the overthrow of his ideas
when Andreas Vesalius found anatomical errors and William
Harvey correctly explained blood circulation.
Archimedes (290–280BC—212/211BC) was a legendary Greek
inventor and mathematician. His principal discoveries were the
Archimedes screw, an ingenious device for raising water, and the
hydrostatic principle, or Archimedes'principle(a body immersed in a
fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced
fluid). His mathematical proofs show both boldly original thought
and a rigor meeting the highest standards of contemporary
geometry.
In his native city, Syracuse, he was
known as a genius at devising siege
and countersiege weapons. In one
story, he was asked by Hiero II to
determine whether a crown was
pure gold or was alloyed with
silver.
(Continued next slide)
Archimedes was perplexed, until one day, observing the overflow of
water in his bath, he suddenly realized that since gold is more dense
(i.e., has more weight per volume) than silver, a given weight of gold
represents a smaller volume than an equal weight of silver and that a
given weight of gold would therefore displace less water than an
equal weight of silver. Delighted at his discovery, he ran home
without his clothes, shouting "Eureka," which means "I have found
it." He found that Hiero's crown displaced more water than an equal
weight of gold, thus showing that the crown had been alloyed with
silver (or another metal less dense than gold). In the other story, he is
said to have told Hiero, in illustration of the principle of the lever,
"Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world." Archimedes'
many contributions to mathematics and mechanics include
calculating the value of π and devising a mathematical exponential
system to express extremely large numbers (he said he could
numerically represent the grains of sand that would be needed to fill
the universe).
A Boeotian of aristocratic birth, Pindar
was educated in neighboring Athens and
lived much of his life in Thebes. Almost all
his early poems have been lost, but his
reputation was probably established by
his later hymns in honor of the gods. He
developed into the greatest lyric poet of
ancient Greece, respected throughout the
Greek world. Of his 17 volumes,
comprising almost every genre of choral
lyric, only four have survived complete,
and those lack his musical settings. The
extant poems, probably representing his
masterpieces, are odes commissioned to
Pindar (518-438 BC),
celebrate triumphs in various Hellenic
Greek poet, generally
athletic games. Lofty and religious in tone, regarded as the greatest
they are noted for their complexity, rich
lyric poet in Greek
metaphors, & intensely emotive language.
literature
The term Pindaric ode refers to a verse form used primarily in
England in the 17th and 18th century. The form, based on a
somewhat faulty understanding of the metrical pattern used by
Pindar, originated with Abraham Cowley in his Pindarique Odes
(1656) and was later used by John Dryden, among others. It is
characterized by irregularity in the rhyme scheme, length of the
stanzas, and number of stresses in a line.
Quotes:
"A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.“
"Learn what you are and be such."
"Whatever is beautiful is beautiful by necessity."
"Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and
often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed."
"The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses."