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Greek authors
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The Greeks and Romans always thought that the legendary poet Homer
was the greatest author ever. However, we know hardly anything about the
man or men who composed the Iliad (a long epic on the wrath of the
warrior Achilles, which endangered the Greek expedition to Troy) or the
Odyssey
(an equally long poem on the difficult voyage home of Odysseus). At the
moment, most scholars agree that these texts were dictated to a writer
by a very capable bard, who used older, oral traditions, at the beginning
of the eighth century BCE. We do not know to what extent later poets have
made additions or changes to the two epics. |
British Museum, London
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In the mid-eighth century, a sailor settled at Ascra in Boeotia, where
his son started to write a poem on farming, Works and days. The
poet is usually called Hesiod,
after another Boeotian poet, who had composed a primitive but systematic
account of the history of the gods, full of dark forces, deities, and violence:
the Theogony. The ancients believed that both poems were written
by the same man, but many modern classicists agree that the author of the
Works
and days was influenced by Homer, whereas the author of the Theogony,
Hesiod, seems to have been Homer's contemporary. Both works are fascinating:
the younger because of its superior style, the other because it offers
an important introduction to Greek mythology. |
British Museum, London
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To a certain extent, the beauty of Sappho's
poetry is caused by the fact that it is fragmentary. Her poetry is quoted
by later authors, but most of these quotes are short and offer us a tantalizing
glimpse of what once must have been a poem of great quality. Unlike Homer
and Hesiod, Sappho and the other lyric poets tried to express private sentiments.
Because almost none of her poems is complete, it is hard to understand
them, and many interpretations tell us more about the classicist than about
the author, who lived c.600 in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Most scholars agree, however, that Sappho had a school where young aristocratic
women received education before marriage. Sappho is often called lesbian,
but this is in fact an oversimplification, because the Greeks had other
ideas about homosexuality
than we have. |
Musei Capitolini, Roma
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The name of the Boeotian poet Pindar
(518-438) will forever be connected with the Isthmian, Pythian, Nemean,
and Olympic games. Any victorious aristocratic athlete could rent the services
of Pindar, who would write an ode to his patron, whose victory was always
presented as a manifestation of the power of the eternal gods. These odes
are extremely formal poems, which make great demands on the poet's ability
to employ identical metres. Pindar's world was that of the old aristocratic
families, but in the second half of his life, this world was rapidly disappearing
when Athens became the leading power in Greece. Nevertheless, Pindar praised
the city that had twice warded off a Persian invasion with the famous words
that it was the "violet-crowned bulwark of Greece". And although he was
conservative in his opinions, Pindar was responsible for the introduction
of a new god in Greece: Zeus
Ammon. |
Musei Capitolini, Roma;
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Together with Sophocles and Euripides,
Aeschylus
(525-456) is one of the best-known Athenian tragic poets. In his plays,
he addresses complex theological problems. For example, in the trilogy
Agamemnon
- Choephoroi - Eumenides, he describes how the gods punish
a family for a series of murders. The Persians is a superb play,
in which the Athenian victory at Salamis
(480) is celebrated, written seven years after the event. Aeschylus was
highly esteemed; fifty years after his death, the comic poet Aristophanes
wrote a play, The Frogs, in which Aeschylus and Euripides are presented
as the greatest playwrights. Aeschylus himself did not care about his fame:
he wanted to be remembered not for his tragedies, but for the fact that
he had fought at Marathon. |
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Sophocles
(497-406) is the second of the three great Athenian tragic poets, and the
one with whose plays we are most familiar: the names of Ajax, Antigone,
and Oedipus are well-known. Of his 118 plays, however, only seven
remain, in which people are confronted with extremely difficult situations.
It is said that to express his ideas, he had to change the way tragedies
were played, by adding a third (and once even a fourth) actor, and enlarging
the chorus. Sophocles was also active in Athenian politics. In 441/440,
428, and 423/422 he served as army commander, and after the defeat
at Sicily,
he was given special responsibilities to lead Athens out of this crisis
(413). The playwright was a personal friend of Pericles
and Herodotus
of Halicarnassus. After his death, he received heroic honors. |
Musei Capitolini, Roma
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The last of Athens' great tragic poets is
Euripides
(485-406). His plays are more exuberant than those of Sophocles and Aeschylus;
often, he has the heroes and heroines face difficult choices, which are
finally solved by the sudden appearance of a god (deus ex machina).
Medea
is probably his most famous play, and the Trojan Women can be interpreted
as a protest against warfare. At the end of his life, he settled in Macedonia,
where he wrote the Bacchae, a shockingly strange tragedy, which
has been interpreted in many ways. His greatness was recognized by the
comic poet Aristophanes, who gives Euripides many appearances in his plays
and often parodies scenes from his tragedies. |
Antikensammlung, Berlin
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The comedies of the Athenian playwright
Aristophanes
(c.445-c.380) are a bit like our cabaret, full of jokes about actuality
and politicians (especially Cleon),
and parodies of contemporary literature (Euripides and Herodotus
are among Aristophanes' victims). The jokes are not very subtle. Usually,
someone comes up with a crazy plan (a private peace treaty, curing the
blindness of the god of wealth...), and after some complications there
is a happy ending with a nice dinner. Aristophanes' most famous play is
the Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece decide not to have
sex with their husbands, unless they end the war between Athens and Sparta.
In another play, The Clouds, the philosopher Socrates
is ridiculed. In The Frogs, Euripides and Aeschylus are debating
who is the better poet. It is the world's oldest piece of literary criticism. |
Musei Capitolini, Roma
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The comedies of the Athenian playwright Menander
(342-291) are completely different from those of Aristophanes. Classicists
distinguish the Old and New Comedy. In the plays of Menander, the story
is more or less credible (if one is willing to accept doppelgänger
and frequent cases of mistaken identity and misunderstanding) and the characters
are realistic. Often, the comedy also contains a tragic element, which
makes it even more convincing. Unfortunately, only one play, The bad-tempered
man, survives, together with considerable portions of a further five.
However, many of Menander's comedies were translated into Latin and adapted
by authors like Terentius and Plautus, and these plays have survived. During
the Renaissance, several of them were translated into modern languages. |
Archaeological Museum
of
Selçuk
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Callimachus
was born in Cyrene
in c.310, and moved to Alexandria,
where he lived at the court of the Ptolemaic
king Ptolemy
II Philadelphus, a great patron of the arts. Here, Callimachus
innovated poetry, and it is not much exaggerated to state that it was at
Alexandria
that literature as we know it was invented: quite useless but entertaining.
Callimachus' contribution consisted of no less than 800 books, but almost
everything is lost, including his
Pinakes, a classification of Greek
literature in 120 books. However, we can reconstruct his Origins
(of several religious rituals), Iambic poems, a short epic called
Hekale,
and six Hymns to several gods. In these works, Callimachus presents
himself as a scholar who delights in surprising his reader with unexpected
turns, learned literary allusions, and technical refinement and sophistication.
Among his students were Apollonius of Rhodes and Eratosthenes
of Cyrene. |
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Callimachus of Cyrene had avoided writing long poems, comparing them
to a muddy river, but his student
Apollonius
of Rhodes chose exactly this genre. His epic Argonautica,
which deals with Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, is written, like
Homer's
Iliad and
Odyssey, in hexameters and is comparable
to these epic poems. Often, Apollonius paraphrases the old master. There
is a big difference with Homer, however: Callimachus' heroes and heroines
are, from a psychological point of view, more complex and credible. |
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In his own age, the Delphian
oracle priest Plutarch
of Chaeronea (46-c.122) was immensely popular because he
was, like Posidonius
of Apamea, able to explain philosophical discussions to a general audience.
Among his Moral treatises are treatises like Checking anger,
the useful The art of listening, the fascinating How to know
whether one progresses to virtue, and the charming Advice to bride
and groom. Plutarch also wrote double biographies, in which he usually
compared a Greek to a Roman (e.g., Alexander
and Julius
Caesar). In the epilogue, he analyzed their respective characters.
The result is not only an entertaining biography, but also a better understanding
of a morally exemplary person, which the reader can use for his own progress
to virtue. |
Museum of Delphi
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Herodes
Atticus (c.102-177) was living in the past. Under the Roman
empire, many Greeks felt that their culture was very special, and they
hated the fact that they were powerless. The only way to cope with their
own irrelevance was to exaggerate the Greek past. People like Herodes Atticus,
the richest man in Athens, took to the stage, where they delivered speeches
on famous historical subjects: Leonidas inspires his men to fight until
death,
Wounded Athenian soldiers ask their comrades to kill them
or Pericles
asks the Athenians to declare war on Sparta. It was a celebration of
a great past. This cultural activity is sometimes called the Second
Sophistic, and Herodes Atticus was considered to be the greatest of
these orators. Almost none of his speeches has remained, which is disappointing
because of his immense cultural influence. |
Louvre, Paris
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No text has had more influence on the development of the study of classical
archaeology than the Description of Greece by Pausanias.
He was probably born c.125 and wrote his travel guide between 155 and 180.
The author takes us on a tour trough the mainland of Greece, and describes
all buildings of some importance. We are fortunate that he did so after
the building boom at the beginning of the second century and before the
economic crisis of the third century. Pausanias has a serious interest
in the cults of the Greek countryside, which were in his age in the process
of being slowly replaced by oriental religions. His often melancholic Description
of Greece is therefore not only a treasury for classical archaeologists,
but also for students of ancient religion. |
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