Part Two – The Classical Legacy
Introduction
I. Time Period – 500 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. Greece and Rome
A. Influence on humanistic tradition long and lasting
the literary expressions of the Western World
a. drama
b. the epistle
c. lyric poetry
d. satire
e. historical narrative
fundamentals of philosophical and scientific inquiry
development of civic and judicial law
formulation of aesthetic norms in art, music, architecture
persisted over nearly two thousand years
B. Term ‘Classical’ means
1. first-ranking, enduring, best of its kind – ex. classic cars, films
2. characteristic of a phase of a culture or a civilization
3. Greece and Rome as models for Western cultures
a. Greco-Roman architecture
b. Chinese learning of the Han dynasty 200 B.C.E. – 200 C.E.
4. stylistic: mode of expression from Greece’s Golden Age
a. 5th century
b. clarity, harmony, balance, simplicity or moderation
C. Emergence at western end of Asian landmass
1. north and west of Egypt and Mesopotamia between 1200 and 750 BCE
a. city states emerge on islands and peninsulas, coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey), and southern tip of Italy
b. all this known as the Hellenes and called itself Hellas
c. with Alexander the Great, culture permeated all of Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, northern Africa
d. veneer of Greek culture and language
2. Rome: two phases
a. the Republic: 509 – 31 BCE
b. the Empire: 31 BCE – 476 CE
c. engineering, architecture, literature, young faith called Christianity
I. Introduction: The Quality of Human Life
A. Greeks’ deep concern
B. Commitment to the individual intellect, destiny of the community
C. Humanists of the Ancient World: worldliness, optimism
II. Bronze Age Civilizations of the Aegean (3000 – 1200 BCE)
A. Minoans
1. discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann of ancient Troy
2. Mycenaeans – on Greek mainland 1600 BCE
3. pre-Greek civilization: island of Crete
a. Minoan, King Minos
b. Minoan civilization 2000 – 1400 BCE
c. Palace of Minos at Knossos
4. prosperous, seafaring culture
5. no protective walls around the palace complex
6. masonry structure, dozens of rooms, central courtyard
7. frescoes
8. cult of the bull—ancient symbol of virility, bull-vaulting
9. ancient fertility cults (??): goddess with snakes
10.writing, Linear A not deciphered yet, but Linear B is a precursor of Greek
11.legend of the Minotaur – half man, half bull
12.legend of Theseus threading his way to monster, freeing Athens from some ancient bondage to Minoans
13.earthquake devastation
B. Mycenaean Civilization ca. 1600 – 1200 BCE
1. militant, aggressive people: warships, citadels
2. master stonemasons, beehive tombs
3. Agamemnon’s tomb; led Greeks against city of Troy
4. ten year long war context of the Iliad and the Odyssey
III. The Heroic Age (1200 – 750 BCE)
A. Birth of Greek Culture
1. Dorians, from north, iron-bearing, swept from north
2. oral transmission of epic and legend; ninth century transcription; 6th century present form as national poems of ancient Greece
B. Epics united Greek-speaking peoples; literary authority
1. Homer, blind poet, oral recitation
2. The Iliad: story of Achilles, death of Patroclus by Hector, and movement to full victory over Trojans
3. The Odyssey: long voyage home by Odysseus to Penelope and his son: quest for individual honor and glory
4. importance of heroic action in proving virtue, excellence, proper action
5. similes, epithets, catalogs
C. The Greek Gods
1. family of immortals who intervened in lives of human beings
2. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, Dionysus, Athena, Aphrodite
3. Hades, Demeter (Ceres), Persephone: winter
4. Mount Olympus (Mt. Parnassus)
5. no sacred scripture, doctrines→free intellectual inquiry
IV. The Greek City-State and the Persian Wars ca. 750–480 BCE
A. The End of the Homeric Age and Rise of the City-States
1. rural colonies grew into urban communities
2. geographic conditions encouraged development of city-states:
- rocky terrain, mountains and valleys, narrow rivers
- overland travel and trade difficult
- the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Seas were the highways of the ancient world
- 200 city states emerged (from 2 miles to 400 miles square)—Athens a “small” one!!
- shared same language, traditions, religion
- each polis governed itself, own coinage, own military
- autonomous, in contrast to the monolithic Egyptian state
- fierce competition and rivalry
- united against Persia in self-defense
B. The Persian Wars
1. Persia conquered most of Asia to the western edge of India plus Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor [Turkey]
2. when Ionia revolted, the Greeks came to their aid
3. Persia sent military armies to quell and punish
4. 490 B.C.E on the plains of Marathon, forces met
5. news of the victory was brought to Athens by the runner: 26 miles [messenger fell dead after the run]
B. The Need for a Strong Navy, Combined Defenses
1. ultimate defeat of the Persian armada at Salamis
2. land force defense
C. Herodotus ( ca. 485 – 425 BCE)
1. first historian
2. used sprawling narratives, hearsay, anecdotes, digressions, travelogues
3. gives us detailed view and sources of information
4. early investigator into comparative cultures
5. followed Homeric poems by 300 years
V. Athens and the Greek Golden Age (480 – 430 B.C.E.)
A. Athens Claims the Crown of Victory in Persian Wars
1. political dominion over city-states
2. commercial supremacy in the Aegean Sea
3. Golden Age of drama, philosophy, music, art, architecture
4. one of the most creative periods in the history of the world
5. civic patriotism
1. originally an oligarchy: government by elite minority [usually older male citizens]
2. between 600 and 500 B.C.E., reforms placed increasing authority in the hands of citizens
3. Solon (638 – 558 B.C.E.), an Athenian statesman, abolished custom of debt slavery and encouraged members of the lower classes to serve in public office
4. Popular Assembly of Citizens operated alongside of the Council of Five Hundred and the Board of Ten Generals [an elected body] by 550 B.C.E.
5. within 40 years the Popular Assembly acquired the right to make laws
6. therefore, Athens became the first direct democracy in the history of the world
7. word democracy from demos [people] and kratos [power]
a. in ancient Athens, citizens exercised political power directly
b. in modern U.S., power rests in elected representatives of the people
c. in Athens, citizens themselves make laws, approved state policy
d. however, citizenry limited to landowning males over the age of eighteen [approx. 40,000 people compared to about 200,000 population as a whole]
e. slaves were the result of warfare or debt, not race
f. Hellenes [Greeks] were superior to barbaros [non-Greeks, barbarians]
8. commitment to legal equality of participants: votes,
9. offices
10. responsibility: responsible action in the interest of the common good
11.Assembly met four times a month to make laws
12. the Agora, open-air market
Note: Contrast Golden Age Athens with the ancient civilizations whose rulers, as representatives of the gods, held absolute power while individuals held none.
13.contrast even with Sparta, the largest polis on the Peloponnesus
a. an oligarchy of five officials
b. society of males trained from age 7 to be soldiers
c. all labor by unfree workers called helots, captives of Sparta’s frequent local waras
d. strict social order; no creativity to match Athenians
1. Pericles (ca. 495 – 429 B.C.E.), dominant leader
2. sweeping domestic reforms, public audits, offices by lottery (egalitarian)
3. foreign policy of defensive alliance of Greek city-states: the Delian League
4. Peloponnesian Wars (431 – 404 BCE); Athens defeated and Golden Age ended
1. assessed causes and effects of events of the wars
2. concepts of humanism and individualism presented
“The greatness of Athens, according to Pericles, lies not merely in its military might and in the superiority of its political institutions, but in the quality of its citizens, their nobility of spirit, and their love of beauty and wisdom” (Fiero, The Humanistic Tradition, Book I, The First Civilizations and the Classical Legacy, 2002).
Reading 1:12 From Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars: Pericles’ Funeral Speech (ca. 410 BCE)
1. athletic contests, Panhellenic [all Greek], begun 776 BCE, held every four years
2. 200-yard sprint in stadion [stadium]
3. games harkened back to Minoan traditions
4. competed gymnos [naked]; received laurel wreaths
5. women’s own events of prowess
1. imitation of action; worship of vegetation, seasonal regeneration
2. orig. dialogue between two choruses or leader/chorus
3. poet Thespis [534 BCE?]: actor, chorus, witnesses
4. tragedy: decay and death of crops? Comedy: rebirth?
5. theater at Epidaurus dedicated to god of medicine
a. open air theaters built into hillside
b. proscenium, skene, orchestra, altar
c. seating for 13,000 – 27,000
d. music, dance, masks, corthurnus [buskins]
6. performances/contests of drama lasted several days
7. tragedies: human conflict
a. individual [protagonist] vs. fate, gods, community
b. often an antagonist
c. tragic flaw [hamartia]
d. suffering, fall from high estate
e. purgation [katharsis]
8. comedies: incongruity, unexpected, satire, parody
9. Aristophanes: Lysistrata
10. only 44 survive by four playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
VI. The Individual and the Community
A. The Case of Antigone
A. third of a group of plays including Oedipus Rex, city-state of Thebes
1. family
2. drama: burial of Antigone’s brother
3. conflicts: rights of individual and laws of the state; dedication to family and loyalty to community; personal and political obligations; willpower and authority; human law and divine law
4. reconciliation of human passion, will of the gods, sovereignty of the polis: heroic idealism
5. unswerving dedication to ideals of justice yet duty to honor family: public good, private conscience
6. grandeur of human beings and their frailties
Reading 1.13: Antigone
B. Aristotle on Tragedy
1. how events work – Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE)
2. “imitation of action that arouses pity and fear”
3. unity of action and time [place added later]
4. single incident: rash decision of Creon
5. Question: Who is the tragic hero here??
Reading 1.14: From Aristotle’s Poetics
VII. Greek Philosophy: The Speculative Leap
A. “Lovers of Wisdom”
1. laid grounds for scientific and philosophic inquiry:
- began to study nature instead of worshipping it
- challenged myths
2. differed from the ancient Chinese and India where order and oneness in the universe were stressed
3. Greeks analyzed nature
- rational, objective
- contrasted with Hebrew concept of unswerving faith
- reason and faith have competed for supremecy since
B. Naturalist Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics
1. from Miletus on coast of Asia Minor, questions:
2. What is everything made of?
3. How do things come into existence?
4. What permanent substance lies behind the world of appearance?
5. Thales (ca. 625-ca. 547 BCE) “father of philosophy”:
6. water? Air? Fire? Primordial elements
7. Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 540 – 480 BCE): universe in constant process or flux
8. change itself the basis of reality
9. underlying Form or Guiding Force (logos)
10.Leucippus of Miletus: physical reality made of minute particles, moving ceaselessly – atoms
11.atomic theory of matter
12.Democritus (460-370 BCE): mind consists of same indivisible physical substances
13.then forgotten for two thousand years; modern physics
14.Pythagoras (580-500 BCE): proportion, discovered through numbers, true basis of reality
15.numbers eternal, unchanging; founding father of pure mathematics + musical harmonics/numbers
16.pre-Socratics stripped nature of all supernatural
17.accurate predictions of solar and lunar eclipses; astronomical charts (inherited from pyramid builders of Egypt and astrologers, engineers of Babylon?)
18.influenced by theories of India and China??
19.Hippocrates: illness and imbalance of body; father of medicine; belief in the four humours
“The separation of the natural from the supernatural was essential to the birth of medical science and speculative philosophy. … laid groundwork and methodology for the rational investigation of the universe . . . beginnings of Western science and philosophy (Fiero 95).”
VIII. Humanist Philosophy
A. The Sophists
1. physical reality in terms of unity behind human perceptions??
2. turn to the world of the mind: metaphysics
3. abstract thought: what do we know about nature? How do we know what we know?
4. traveling scholar-teachers called Sophists
5. masters of formal debate; define limits of human knowledge
6. Protagoras (485-410 BCE): “Man the measure of all things.”
7. Gorgias: reality incomprehensible, can’t describe
8. skepticism, truth and justice relative
B. Socrates and the Quest for Virtue
1. Socrates (ca. 470-399 BCE) opposed Sophists
2. universal truths, unchanging moral order
3. can’t find truth by argumentation (sophistry); virtue a condition of the psyche (soul), seat of moral and intellectual faculties of the individual
4. right conduct; “What is the greatest good?”
5. rigorous question/answer style of teaching –dialectic
6. wealth doesn’t produce excellence; excellence produces wealth
7. “Know thyself”
8. specific examples to general principles: inductive
9. from individual to all
10.disfavor with the reactionary regime, brought to trial
11.sentenced to death by drinking hemlock; preferred death to dishonor
12.immortality through human deeds
13.Plato’s Crito
C. Plato and the Theory of Forms
1. Socrates’ student; asked in The Republic
“What is the meaning of justice? What is the nature of a just society?”
2. two level reality: perfect forms; imperfect copies
3. allegory: literal meaning implies figurative, hidden meaning: “The Allegoryof the Cave”
4. chained mortals,shadows on the walls, ascent to light
5. idealism: reality lies in the realm of unchanging immaterial ideas; knowledge of the good
· spiritual “spark” with which humans are born must be kindled and cultivated
· ** the mind’s ascent to knowledge as a prerequisite to individual well-being and attainment of the good life here on earth
6. life of contemplation: philosopher-kings
7. all educated to the ability, determine place in society
8. Plato had little use for democracy nor for private property nor for withdrawing from the world: practical
D. Aristotle and the Life of Reason
1. Plato’s student at the Academy
2. tutored Alexander the Great, son of Philip of Macedonia
3. interests: biolgoy, politics, poetry, drama, logic, ethics
4. empirical method: knowledge based on experience
5. syllogism: two premises, conclusion drawn; deductive
6. ethics: examination of human values
E. Aristotle and the State
1. questioned viability of the democratic state
2. questioned power in the hands of great masses
3. best government is a constitutional one ruled by the middle class
F. Readings
IX. Summary
A. Aegean Civilizations of Crete and Mycenae
1. laid foundations for Greek life and legend
2. Homeric epics: vigorous individualism vs. devotion and loyalty to community
B. Values of Emerging Greek City-States
1. heroic ideal of Pericles and civic context
2. freedom is not a gift but active engagement of the individual in society and life of the community
C. Speculative Leap to Reason
1. natural explanations of the universe
Chapter Five: The Classical Style
I. Introduction: Define ‘Classic’ or ‘Classical’
A. Clarity, Harmony, Proportion, Order (480 – 400 B.C.E.)
B. Carried by Alexander the Great
1. across northern Africa, Middle East, to India
2. Romans absorbed Greek culture, imitated, copied
3. remains and relics of so very, very much
C. Styles, Translations, Study of Greek Again
1. during Renaissance times in Italy
2. in France after Revolution, under Napoleon
3. in the United States
II. Key Features of the Classical Style
A. Order and Proportion
1. observe proportion both geometric and numerical
2. sound → music: sound, pitch, octaves
3. natural symmetry
4. canon: a set of rules for determining standards
a. measurement: chin to top of forehead = 1/10 body
b. symmetry: correspondence of opposite parts in size, shape, position (ex. the human body)
c. Polycleitus, DaVinci
Reading: On Symmetry: In Temples and in the Human Body
B. Humanism, Realism, Idealism
1. humanism: focuses on actions of human beings
2. realistic: faithful to nature
3. idealisizaiton: effort to achieve perfection that surpasses nature
4. Greek painting has disappeared; decorated vases remain: Geometric Period (ca. 1200–700 BCE)
5. Water jars, storage vessels, drinking cups, bowls
6. sheer joy of everyday activities; no physical setting
7. interplay of light and dark areas of figure and ground
8. selected and combined most beautiful details
III. The Evolution of the Classical Style
A. Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period (ca. 700-480 BCE)
1. rigid stiff male youth: stiff, blocklike kouros
2. more lifelike animals
3. Kroisos: energy
B. Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period (480-323 BCE)
1. natural positioning, weight shift (contraposto)
2. Kritios Boy, Doryphorus (Spear-Bearer)
3. lost-wax method of bronze casting
4. vigorous action of late Classical Age (430-323 BCE)
5. female figure, the kore
C. Greek Architecture: The Parthenon
1. temples united religious and secular domains
2. dedicated to Athena, goddess of war, arts, wisdom
3. no mortar to fasten marble segments
4. post and lintel, colonnaded walkway
5. inner porticos, cella, orders: Doris, Ionic, Corinthian
6. Golden Section? 8:5??
D. The Sculpture of the Parthenon
1. pediments, metopes, frieze
2. harmonious reconciliation
E. The Gold of Greece
1. goldworking techniques from Persia, Scythians
2. deocrative, jewelry
IV. The Classical Style in Poetry
A. Ode, Epic, Lyric
1. hymn, accompanied by lyre
2. Sappho: love, pensiveness
3. Pindar: glories of youth against adversities of age
V. The Classical Style in Music and Dance
A. Mathematical Ratios of Music
1. modes, scales, preserved in early Christian music
2. Gregorian Chant
3. monophonic
4. Pythagoras: planets as spheres moving through space produce a harmony, music of the spheres
B. Music as inseparable from individual, well-being of community
VI. The Diffusion of the Classical Style: The Hellenistic Age (323-30 BCE)
A. Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great
1. ambition, imagination, military genius
2. Alexander’s empire
B. Hellenistic Philosophic Thought
1. more unsteady, impersonal
2. schools of thought: Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, Stoics
3. all placed needs and emotions of individual over good of community
C. Hellenistic Art
1. architecture more monumental, colossal
2. Pergamon & the Altar of Zeus (ca. 180 BCE)
3. high relief figures
4. exaggerated draperies of clothing
5. twisting bodies: the Laocoon