Greece 6 Golden Age

ANCIENT GREECE
vi-The Golden Age

PERHAPS SILVER AGE WOULD
BE MORE APPROPRIATE
Athenian silver “owls” were the common currency of the Aegean world.*
At the beginning of the [Peloponnesian] war, Athens garnered 600
talents [1 talent=6,000 drachmas] of annual tribute, in addition to
perhaps some 400 talents of internal income generated through mining,
trade, overseas rent, and commerce. By 431 there were some 6,000
talents in reserve in the temple treasuries on the Acropolis. That pile was
the equivalent of 36 million man-days of labor….In this regard, tragedy,
comedy, and the Parthenon were not so much expressions of native
genius as reflections of lots of money.

Hanson, A War Like No Other, p. 27
* These Athenian silver coins, worth four drachmas (in terms of modern American currency, over $300), were stamped with the
helmeted head of Athena and on the reverse side her iconic owl.

εξ ϡ´

Τὀ ῏Εκτον Μάθηµα

PRINCIPAL TOPICS

I. Pericles

II. Art

III. Drama

IV. Philosophy

V. History

After Salamis [480 B.C.] the free Greeks would never fear any other foreign power
until they met the free Romans of the republic. No Persian king would ever again
set foot in Greece….Before Salamis Athens was a rather eccentric city-state whose
experiment with a radical democracy was in its twenty-seven-year-old infancy, and
the verdict on its success was still out. After Salamis an imperial democratic culture
arose at Athens that ruled the Aegean and gave us Aeschylus, Sophocles, the
Parthenon, Pericles, Socrates, and Thucydides. Salamis proved that free peoples
fought better than unfree, and that the most free of the free---the Athenians---
fought the best of all.

Hanson, Carnage and Culture, pp. 56-57

ΠΕΡΙΚΛΗΣ

I. PERICLES PERICLES

Anaxagoras and Pericles-- Augustin-Louis Belle (1757 – 1841)

His family's nobility and wealth allowed him to fully pursue his inclination
toward education. He learned music from the masters of the time ... and he is
considered to have been the first politician to attribute great importance to
philosophy. He enjoyed the company of the philosophers Protagoras, Zeno of
Elea and Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras in particular became a close friend and
influenced him greatly. Pericles' manner of thought and rhetorical charisma
may have been in part products of Anaxagoras' emphasis on emotional calm in
the face of trouble and skepticism about divine phenomena. His proverbial
calmness and self-control are also regarded as products of Anaxagoras'
influence.
Wikipedia

ENTERING POLITICS

born an aristocrat. His mother, Agariste, made him heir to “the curse of
the Alkmaeonidai”

spring 472-age 17 (?), first came to public notice as the patron (financier)
of Aeschylus’ Persians at the Greater Dionysia, a splendid public
Λειτουργία (liturgy)

Pericles' selection of this play, which presents a nostalgic picture of
Themistocles' famous victory at Salamis, shows that the young politician
was supporting Themistocles against his political opponent Kimon

Kimon’s aristocratic faction would succeed in ostracizing Themistocles
shortly thereafter

influenced by his upbringing to avoid lavish displays of wealth, Pericles
avoided banquets and maintained a frugal private life

THE MAN WHO GAVE HIS NAME TO
AN ERA

463-age 32 (?), again came to public notice in the failed
prosecution of the aristocratic leader Kimon

he was Ephialtes’ assistant in the democratic reforms of
the Areopagus, last stronghold of the aristocrats

461- two major events in the political struggles:

Kimon’s ostracism

the assassination of Ephialtes

460-429--elected one of the ten strategoi almost
without exception until his death at age 66 (?)

After Kimon's ostracism, Pericles continued to espouse and promote a populist
social policy. He first proposed a decree that permitted the poor to watch theatrical
plays without paying, with the state covering the cost of their admission. With other
decrees he lowered the property requirement for the archonship in 458–457 BC and
bestowed generous wages on all citizens who served as jurymen in the Heliaia (the
supreme court of Athens) some time just after 454 BC. His most controversial
measure, however, was a law of 451 BC limiting Athenian citizenship to those of
Athenian parentage on both sides.

Such measures impelled Pericles' critics to regard him as responsible for the gradual
degeneration of the Athenian democracy. Constantine Paparrigopoulos, a major
modern Greek historian, argues that Pericles sought for the expansion and
stabilization of all democratic institutions. Hence, he enacted legislation granting
the lower classes access to the political system and the public offices, from which
they had previously been barred on account of limited means or humble birth.
According to Samons, Pericles believed that it was necessary to raise the demos, in
which he saw an untapped source of Athenian power and the crucial element of
Athenian military dominance. (The fleet, backbone of Athenian power since the days
of Themistocles, was manned almost entirely by members of the lower classes.)

Wikipedia

WAR AND POLITICS
Marathon was a victory for hoplites. It was the farmers, the middling group, and those
above them that had won that battle, but Salamis was a victory for the poor in Athens.
Of course that vast fleet was rowed by poor Athenians, and now they had the glory for
the victory and, of course, after the war, when the fleet became the basis of Athenian
strength and glory, it was the common man and the poorest of the Athenians, who was
involved in achieving that desirable status.
Kagan
...military strategy seldom operates in a vacuum. Themistocles was well aware that the
promotion of the naval service--well over 20,000 landless Athenian citizens may have
rowed at Salamis--the sacrifice of the Athenian countryside [in 480], public financing
of ship construction, and the accompanying of Athenian infantry, had considerable
domestic ramifications: a landed and conservative minority could no longer claim
monopoly on the city’s defense. From now on, in all Athenian-led democracies,
maritime power, urban fortifications, walls connecting port and citadel, and the
employment of the poor on triremes were felt to be essential to the survival of popular
governments…

Hanson, Wars of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 102-103

WAR AND POLITICS (CONT.)

From now on, in all Athenian-led democracies, maritime power, urban fortifications, walls connecting
port and citadel, and the employment of the poor on triremes were felt to be essential to the survival of
who would elect non-aristocrats like Themistocles--his mother was
popular governments...
probably not even Greek--to guide the city. Taxes and forced contributions would pay
for the investments. In times of national crisis the record of naval power at Artemisium
and Salamis apparently confirmed that ships were strategically invaluable and their
impoverished crews every bit as brave as hoplite landowners.

But to the agrarian conservative mind all this was anathema. All philosophers deplored
the naval triumphs of the Persian wars and were frightened by the bellicosity of the
rabble in the Athenian Assembly. Plato went so far as to say that the stunning naval
victory at Salamis that saved western civilization made the Greeks ‘worse’ as a people,
while Aristotle linked the sea-battles of the Persian wars with the rise of demagoguery
itself.

Hanson, Wars of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 102-103

“He knew the importance of keeping the
mass of the people gainfully employed,
Chryselephantine

“and, to quote Plutarch:

“It was his desire and design that the
undisciplined mechanic multitude should not go
without their share of the public funds, and yet
should not have these given him for sitting still
and doing nothing.”

“Funds for constructing the massive
buildings that still adorn the Acropolis
were obtained by the transfer of the
treasury of the Delian League to Athens

“Pheidias worked on the building for
nine years, from 447-438.”
Everyday Life in Ancient Times, pp.234-235

"Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we
have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and
far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses
might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at
the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our
daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable
monuments behind us."
Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides (II, 41) γ[›]

A modern conception of the acropolis as it was in the Age of Pericles

II. ART

Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends- Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.1868

Little is left of all this wealth of great art; the sculptures, defaced and broken into
bits, have crumbled away; the buildings are fallen; the paintings gone forever; of the
writings, all lost but a very few. We have only the ruin of what was...yet these few
remains of the mighty structure have been a challenge and an incitement to men
ever since and they are among our possessions to-day which we value as most
precious.

Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way, p.13

Aphrodite of Milos (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη τῆς
Μήλου, Aphroditē tēs Mēlou), better known
as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek
statue and one of the most famous works of
ancient Greek sculpture. It is believed to
depict Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) the
Greek goddess of love and beauty. It is a
marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size.
Its arms and original plinth have been lost.
From an inscription that was on its plinth, it
is thought to be the work of Alexandros of
Antioch; it was earlier mistakenly attributed
to the master sculptor Praxiteles. It is
currently on permanent display at the Louvre
Museum in Paris.
It was discovered by a peasant on April 8,
1820, inside a buried niche within the ancient
city ruins of Milos on the Aegean island of
Milos (also Melos, or Milo).
Wikipedia

The Discobolus of Myron ("discus thrower" Greek
Δισκοβόλος, "Diskobolos") is a famous Greek sculpture that
was completed towards the end of the Severe period, circa
460-450 BC. The original Greek bronze is lost. It is known
through numerous Roman copies, both full-scale ones in
marble or smaller scaled versions in bronze.
A discus thrower is depicted about to release his throw: "by
sheer intelligence", Sir Kenneth Clark observed "Myron has
created the enduring pattern of athletic energy. He has
taken a moment of action so transitory that students of
athletics still debate if it is feasible, and he has given it the
completeness of a cameo." The moment thus captured in the
statue is an example of rhythmos, harmony and balance.
The pose is said to be unnatural to a human, and today
considered a rather inefficient way to throw the discus. Also
there is very little emotion shown in the discus thrower's
face, and "to a modern eye, it may seem that Myron's desire
for perfection has made him suppress too rigorously the
sense of strain in the individual muscles," --Clark. The other
trademark of Myron embodied in this sculpture is how well
the body is proportioned, the symmetria.
Wikipedia
Roman bronze reduction of Myron's
Discobolus, 2nd century AD
(Glyptothek, Munich).

The potential energy
expressed in this sculpture's
tightly-wound pose,
expressing the moment of
stasis just before the release, is
an example of the
advancement of Classical
sculpture from Archaic. The
torso shows no muscular
strain, however, even though
the limbs are outflung.
Wikipedia

Exekias (Εξηκίας, a Greek name)
was an ancient Greek vase-painter
and potter, who worked between
approximately 550 BC - 525 BC at
Athens. Most of his vases, however,
were exported to other regions of
the Mediterranean, such as Etruria,
while some of his other works
remained in Athens. Exekias
worked mainly with a technique
called black-figure. This technique
involves figures and ornaments
painted in black silhouette (using
clay slip) with details added by
linear incisions and the occasional
use of red and white paint before
firing. Exekias is considered the
most original and most detail-
orientated painter and potter using
the black-figure technique.

It shows Achilleus and Ajax, both identified by their names added in genitive. They
are sitting across from each other, looking at a block situated between them. The
game, which might be compared to modern backgammon, was played with dice.
According to the words written next to the two players Achilleus has thrown a four
while Ajax threw a three. Although the two of them are pictured playing a game, they
are clearly depicted as being on duty, wearing their body-armor and both holding a
spear. The rest of their weapons are situated in close proximity, suggesting that they
might head back into battle any moment. Apart from the selection of this very
intimate scene as a symbol for Trojan war, this vase-painting also shows the talent of
Exekias as an artist. The figures of both Achilleus and Ajax are decorated with fine
incised details, showing almost every hair.
Wikipedia

Exekias' signature as potter: ΕΧΣΕΚΙΑΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕ (“Exekias made [me]”),
ca. 550–540 BCE, Louvre F 53

THE CURSE OF THE
HOUSE OF ATREUS

THE CURSE OF THE
HOUSE OF ATREUS

Aegisthus
murders
Agamemnon

krater by the
Dokmasia painter

THE CURSE OF THE
HOUSE OF ATREUS

Orestes
murders
Aegisthus

krater by the
Dokmasia painter

LITERATURE AND ART
In nearly every respect we know more about life in the bustling city of Athens than we do
about how people lived in the other Greek poleis; but energy and talent were dispersed widely
throughout the Greek world, and much of it went into literature and the arts….During this
vigorous era of transition [from Archaic to Classical] talented poets, painters, architects, and
sculptors carried the traditions of the sixth century throughout the Greek world, while in
Athens the defeat of Persia was marked by innovations in tragic drama so striking as to
constitute a new art form.

Lyric poetry was a necessary precursor of tragedy….Simonides (c. 556-468 BC) is
remembered as the unofficial poet laureate of the Persian wars….his epitaphs for the war
dead became to Greek literature what the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg
Address are to Americans (only easier to remember, since they were in verse).

Pomeroy & al., Ancient Greece, p. 242

THE GREAT tragic artists of the world are four, and three of them are Greek. It is in
tragedy that the pre-eminence of the Greeks can be seen most clearly. Except for
Shakespeare, the great three, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, stand alone.
Tragedy is an achievement peculiarly Greek. They were the first to perceive it and
they lifted it to its supreme height. Nor is it a matter that directly touches only the
great artists who wrote tragedies; it concerns the entire people as well, who felt the
appeal of the tragic to such a degree that they would gather thirty thousand strong
to see a performance. In tragedy the Greek genius penetrated farthest and it is the
revelation of what was most profound in them.

Hamilton, The Greek Way, p. 165

The
Tragic
Trinity

AIΣΧΥΛΟΣ
ΑESCHYLUS
c. 525/524 BC – c. 456/455 BC

ΣΟΦΟΚΛΗΣ
SOPHOCLES
c. 497/6 BC – winter 406/5 BC

ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ
EURIPIDES
ca. 480 – 406 BC

Tragedy had a central role in the spiritual and intellectual life of Athens. Wealthy
citizens vied for honor and acclaim by undertaking the expense of training choruses,
and during the festival of Dionysus in March actors and audience alike needed
enormous stamina. Groups of actors performed four dramas in a day, and spectators
had not only to follow the intricate poetry of the choruses but to turn up the next day
and the day after that to compare the work of the different playwrights, to help
determine who should receive the prize. A significant proportion of the men--and
perhaps the women as well though this is uncertain--attended the plays and no doubt
continued among themselves a lively dialogue about the painful issues the dramas had
raised. Even in eras of comparatively high literacy, ancient cultures remained oral to a
considerable degree, and absorbing the complex imagery of tragic choruses was not as
difficult for people trained to listen and remember as it would be for most people today.
Nevertheless, the popularity of performances that demanded serious intellectual work
on the part of the audience tells us something about the richness of Athenian culture.

Pomeroy & al., Ancient Greece, pp. 244-245

490- Marathonomachos-he fought at
Marathon

he died in Sicily after a long life, during
which he wrote perhaps seventy plays--seven
have survived!

he famously added the second actor

“This innovation made possible real conflict
and moved tragedy beyond tableau into the
realm of drama.” Pomeroy, p. 254

AIΣΧΥΛΟΣ his three famous plays, the Oresteia, “ is the
ΑESCHYLUS only Attic trilogy that escaped destruction.”
c. 525/524 BC – c. 456/455 BC Ibid.

...he was first and foremost the born dramatist, a man who saw life so dramatically
that to express himself he had to invent the drama. For that is what he did. Until he
came there was only a chorus with a leader. [The leader had been added by Thespis
at the time of Peisistratus.] He added a second character, thus contriving the action
of character upon character which is the essence of the drama….not only the
founder of [drama], but an actor and a practical producer as well. He designed the
dress all Greek actors wore; he developed stage scenery and stage machinery [the
θεος εκ µηχανης/deus ex machina, a god introduced by means of a crane in ancient
Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome]; he laid down the lines for
the Attic theater.

Hamilton, pp. 181-182

FORMALITIES OF SEVERAL KINDS

the classical unities:

action-no subplots

time-”one revolution of the sun” Aristotle, Poetics

place-a single physical space

no violence on stage

FORMALITIES OF SEVERAL KINDS

the classical unities:

action-no subplots

time-”one revolution of the sun” Aristotle, Poetics

place-a single physical space

no violence on stage

the masks

“Finally, the author had to contend with the challenges posed by the
intricate meters of tragic verse” Pomeroy, op. cit.

“He is direct, lucid, simple, reasonable.

“...the quintessential Greek….”-Hamilton

the Theban plays, each from a different tetralogy

Oedipus

Antigone

his addition of of a third actor further reduced
the importance of the chorus

he also developed his characters to a greater ΣΟΦΟΚΛΗΣ
extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus
SOPHOCLES
c. 497/6 BC – winter 406/5 BC

Such times [the Peloponnesian War] as those he lived in test the temper of men. To
the weaker spirits they bring the despair of all things. The starry heavens are
darkened and truth and justice are no more. But to men like Sophocles outside
change does not bring the loss of inner steadfastness. The strong can keep the
transient and the eternal separate. Sophocles despaired for the city he loved…; but,
as he saw life, outside circumstance was in the ultimate sense powerless; within
himself, he held, no man is helpless. There is an inner citadel where we may rule
our own spirits; live as free men; die without dishonoring humanity. A man can
always live nobly or die nobly, Ajax says. Antigone goes to her death not
uncomforted: death was her choice, and she dies, the chorus tells her, “mistress of
her own fate.” Sophocles saw life hard but he could bear it hard.

Hamilton, p. 189

of more than ninety plays eighteen survive

there are also substantial fragments of most
of the rest

more of his work survived than that of the
other two together

partly by accident, partly because his
popularity grew as theirs declined

in the Hellenistic age, he became a
ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ cornerstone of ancient literary education
EURIPIDES along with Homer, Demosthenes, and
ca. 480 – 406 BC
Menander
Wikipedia

The years of his manhood were the years of the great war between Athens and
Sparta….He looked at war and he saw through all the sham glory to the awful evil
beneath and he wrote the Trojan Women [415]--war as it appears to a handful of
captive women waiting for the victors to carry them away to all that slavery means
for women. The fall of Troy, the theme of the most glorious martial poetry ever
written, ends in his play with one old broken-hearted woman, sitting on the
ground, holding a dead child in her arms.

Hamilton, p. 200

Euripides soon found a new direction in his wartime tragedies---perhaps starting
with the horrific bloodletting in his Medea (431)---that for nearly three decades
would serve as moral commentary on the ongoing and increasingly barbaric war.


Aeschylus disregarded the current religion; Euripides directly attacked it. Again
and again he shows up the gods...as lustful, jealous, moved by the meanest
motives, utterly inferior to the human beings they bring disaster upon, and he will
have none of them:
Say not there are adulterers in Heaven,
Long since my heart has known it false.
God if he be God lacks in nothing.
All these are dead unhappy tales.

His final rejection, “If gods do evil then they are not gods,”….Aristophanes’
indictment of him in the Frogs [405] is summed up in the charge that he taught
the Athenians “to think, see, understand, suspect, question, everything.”


IV. PHILOSOPHY
ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ

SOCRATES

1: Zeno of Citium 2: Epicurus 3: (Federico II of Mantua?) 4: Boethius or Anaximander or
Empedocles? 5: Averroes 6: Pythagoras 7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great? 8: Antisthenes
or Xenophon? 9: unknown [12] (Francesco Maria della Rovere?) 10: Aeschines or Xenophon?
11: Parmenides? 12: Socrates 13: Heraclitus (Michelangelo) 14: Plato (Leonardo da Vinci)
15: Aristotle 16: Diogenes 17: Plotinus (Donatello?) 18: Euclid or Archimedes

Pre-Socratics Socratics Post-Socratics non-philosophers “moderns”

Some scholars refer to the Archaic Period as the Greek
Renaissance, analogous to the Renaissance in Italy.

There's something to [this], because things happened then that are
revolutionary--in the arts, in the thinking of people. Philosophy is
going to be invented in Miletus probably in this sixth century.

Miletus was on the main routes to all of the places where advanced
knowledge could be found, Mesopotamia, Egypt. Anybody who
looks at Greek mythology and Greek poetry, and Greek stories sees
there is a powerful influence from the Mesopotamian direction.
Anybody who looks at the earliest Greek art---sculpture and temple
building---will see the influence of Egypt, enormous powerful.

The Greeks are sopping up tremendously useful information,
talented immigrants, skills, all sorts of things that help explain
what's going to be coming.
Kagan, drastically revised

Thales
of Miletus
late 7th-mid 6th c

Wikipedia

Relationships Among the Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Thales
of Miletus
late 7th-mid 6th c
Pythagoras
of Croton
early 6th c

Wikipedia


Thales
of Miletus
late 7th-mid 6th c
Pythagoras
of Croton
early 6th c

Heraclitus
of Ephesus
late 6th-early 5th c

Wikipedia


Thales
of Miletus
late 7th-mid 6th c
Pythagoras
of Croton
early 6th c

Parmenides
of Elea Heraclitus
early 5th c
of Ephesus

Wikipedia


Thales
of Miletus
late 7th-mid 6th c
Pythagoras
of Croton
early 6th c

Parmenides
of Elea Heraclitus
early 5th c
of Ephesus

Socrates
of Athens Wikipedia
late 5th c
-399 BC


Thales--science and philosophy vs. religion-σκεπσις vs belief

“the Cosmos is water”

Anaximander--he doubts the doubter!

“the Cosmos is air”

and so the dialogue begins

“There are indeed two attitudes that might be adopted towards the unknown. One is to
accept the pronouncements of people who say they know, on the basis of books, mysteries
or other sources of inspiration. The other way is to go out and look for oneself, and this is
the way of science and philosophy.” Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the West, p. 6

Pythagoras and his followers salute the sunrise-Fyodor Bronnikov, 1869

little reliable is known about his life

c. 530-having travelled (to Egypt?) he settled at
Croton and founded an ascetic religious sect

did he teach “ the Cosmos is number”?

most famous for his Pythagorean theorem

said to be the first to call himself a philosopher,
φιλοσοφς (φιλειν to love & σοφια wisdom)

Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάµιος
Pythagorean ideas had a marked influence on
Pythagóras ho Sámios
"Pythagoras the Samian" Plato and through him on Western Philosophy
about 570 – about 495 BC

It is the Pythagorean preoccupation with mathematics that gave rise to what we
shall later meet as the [Platonic] theory of ideas, or as the theory of universals.
When a mathematician proves a proposition about triangles, it is not about any
figure drawn somewhere that he is talking; rather, it is something he sees in the
mind’s eye. Thus arises the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible.
Moreover, the proposition established is true without reservation and for all time.
It is only a step from this to the view that the intelligible alone is the real, perfect
and eternal, whereas the sensible is apparent, defective and transient. These are
direct consequences of Pythagoreanism that have dominated philosophical
thought as well as theology ever since.

We must remember too that the chief god of the Pythagoreans was Apollo….It is
the Apollonian strain which distinguishes the rationalistic theology of Europe from
the mysticism of the East.

Russell, p. 23

“THE BIG THREE”

Socrates
c.469-399 BC

Plato
427-387 BC

Aristotle
384-322 BC

THE “SOCRATIC
QUESTION”
[Socrates] can never be separated from Plato. Almost all Plato wrote
professes to be a report of what Socrates said, a faithful pupil’s record of
his master’s words; and it is impossible to decide just what part belongs
to each. Together they shaped the idea of the excellent which the classical
world lived by for hundreds of years and which the modern world has
never forgotten.

Hamilton, The Greek Way, pp. 217-218

tradition has assigned thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters as written by Plato

the first of nine tetralogies are the biographical dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito
and Phaedo. Their themes are:

what is piety? Socrates’ defense against the charges (1) impiety & (2) corrupting the youth;

How can the oracle of Delphi say that Socrates is the wisest man of
Athens? He tries to solve the riddle...

...in the strongest description he gives of his mission, he is a stinging
gadfly and the state a lazy horse, "and all day long I will never cease to
settle here, there and everywhere, rousing, persuading and reproving
every one of you."
Wikipedia

How can the oracle of Delphi say that Socrates is the wisest man of
Athens? He tries to solve the riddle...

...in the strongest description he gives of his mission, he is a stinging
gadfly and the state a lazy horse, "and all day long I will never cease to
settle here, there and everywhere, rousing, persuading and reproving
every one of you."
Wikipedia

[to his jury] “Be of good cheer and know of a certainty that no evil can
happen to a good man either in life or after death. I see clearly that the
time has come when it is better for me to die and my accusers have done
me no harm. Still, they did not mean to do me good---and for this I may
gently blame them. And now we go our ways, you to live and I to die.
Which is better God only knows.

Plato, Apology, quoted in Hamilton, The Greek Way, p. 218



what is piety? Socrates’ defense against the charge; why he would not escape; what
happens after death



what is piety? Socrates’ defense against the charge; why he would not escape; what happens
after death

among the other thirty-two, two examine political questions:



after death


ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ (The) Republic--what is justice? how can it be developed in the individual? the state?

ΝΟΜΟI (The) Laws--musings on the ethics of government and law, the longest, written in his old age



after death


ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ (The) Republic--what is justice? how can it be developed in the individual? the state?

ΝΟΜΟI (The) Laws--musings on the ethics of government and law, the longest, written in his old age

others ask, what is beauty? truth? friendship? are words arbitrary symbols or do they
have intrinsic relationship to what they signify? what is knowledge? what is real? &c

Athenian aristocrat, founder of the
Academy, the first institution of higher
learning in the Western world

Πλάτων, Plátōn
428/27 BC – 348/347 BC

The Academy was located to the northwest of the city

Athenian aristocrat, founder of the
Academy, the first institution of higher
learning in the Western world

“The safest general characterization of the
European philosophical tradition is that it
consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do
not mean the systematic scheme of thought
which scholars have doubtfully extracted from
his writings. I allude to the wealth of general
ideas scattered through them.”--A.N. Whitehead

Plato's dialogues have been used to teach
a range of subjects, including philosophy,
logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics

knowledge passes between teacher and
Πλάτων, Plátōn
pupil like a spark of electricity--Socratic 428/27 BC – 348/347 BC
method of teaching, dialogue

Platonic Idealism--theory of Forms

The relationship of appearance to reality in Plato’s worldview can perhaps
be best grasped in the context of mathematics. A ring...or the perimeter of
a hoplite shield might seem to the casual observer to be a circle, but these
round objects are not circles in the same sense that the locus of all points
in a given plane equidistant from a given point is a circle. They only look
like circles; if you were to put them under a magnifying glass you would
see that they were not circles at all, merely objects vaguely circular in
appearance that bring to mind the Form of the circle. Only the circle
depicted in the mathematical definition is a circle. Some people might say
that these concrete objects are real circles whereas the geometrical concept
is imaginary, but Plato is not one of these people. For Plato, only the
concept is real. The tangible objects are debased copies, feeble imitations
of the ideal Form.

Pomeroy et al. Ancient Greece, pp. 389-390

Some people might say that these concrete objects are real circles whereas
the geometrical concept is imaginary, but Plato is not one of these people.
For Plato, only the concept is real. The tangible objects are debased copies,
feeble imitations of the ideal Form. Plato, in other words, was an idealist
and a dualist. He believed in an opposition between the physical world of
appearances, which are deceptive, and the intellectual universe of ideas,
which represent reality and provide the only reliable basis for moral and
political action The first is tawdry and serves only to distract people from
ultimate truth; the second is noble, and to contemplate it ennobling.

Plato was a revolutionary….For most Greek men, reputation [τιµη], power
[κρασις], and material success [πλουτος] were central to happiness. Like
Socrates before him, who preferred being right to being alive, Plato
identified values that were more important than being well liked or envied.

Ibid, p. 390

In The Republic, his dialogue on government and education, he raised a
key question about justice….if you had a magic ring [the ring of Gyges] that
would make you invisible, would you practice justice, or would you take
the opportunity to grab as much as you could?

...Socrates decides to...explore justice in the state in order to discover
justice in the individual writ large….an ideal state of Plato’s imagining. It is
a state divided into three classes, corresponding to Plato’s conception of
the tripartite nature of the soul.

Ibid.

Passion
Silver
Reason Appetite
Gold baser metal

In The Republic, his dialogue on government and education, he raised a
key question about justice….if you had a magic ring [the ring of Gyges] that
would make you invisible, would you practice justice, or would you take
the opportunity to grab as much as you could?

...Socrates decides to...explore justice in the state in order to discover
justice in the individual writ large….an ideal state of Plato’s imagining. It is
a state divided into three classes, corresponding to Plato’s conception of
the tripartite nature of the soul.

Ibid.

At the top are the guardians, who represent reason. Their supreme rationality,
inculcated by years of education, qualifies them to govern. After them come the
auxiliaries, who are characterized by a spirited temperament that suits them for the
duties of soldiers. Lats come the majority [hoi polloi, the many], who correspond to
desire in the soul: they are not especially bright or brave and live only to satisfy their
own material yearnings. They will do all the jobs in the state other than governing and
fighting….

The only classes that require much education are the top two, and the education and
lives of the guardians soon become the focus of Plato’s attention. They will study for
many years, approaching the understanding of the Forms by applying themselves to
mathematics. Plato...and other Socratics believed the soul has no sex: women and men
have the same potential. In the society envisioned in The Republic, the guardians will be
of both genders, and Plato advocates a unisex education for them.

Ibid, p. 390

SOME CONCLUDING
OBSERVATIONS

Plato’s social origin is apparent in his distain for hoi polloi

only the Many in the Republic have conventional families. The Guardians
and Auxiliaries mate in periodic festivals to produce “superior” offspring
which are then raised by the state

his admiration for aristocracy and a state which resembles Sparta is at least
partly in reaction to the democracy which lost the war and executed his
beloved teacher

he practiced what he preached about women. Axiothea of Phlius read the
Republic and presented herself at the Academy. She was admitted to study,
but she did have to wear men’s clothing!

“philosopher and polymath, student of
Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great

“many subjects, including physics,
metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic,
rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government,
ethics, biology, and zoology

“together with Plato and Socrates ,
Aristotle is one of the most important
founding figures in Western philosophy

“Aristotle's writings were the first to
create a comprehensive system of
Western philosophy, encompassing Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs
morality and aesthetics, logic and science, 384 BC – 322 BC

politics and metaphysics” Wikipedia

Unlike Plato, Aristotle never leaves the tradition in which study of the
natural world, and its systematic explanation, are normal philosophical
tasks. The Physics, the De generatione et corruptione [About coming to be
and passing away] and the De Caelo [About the heavens] explain natural
events in terms of highly theoretical principles, and give an account of the
structure and physical constitution of the universe….

Aristotle is a collector of facts; but he is far from being just that. In all his
major works his treatment of the facts is informed by consciousness of
philosophical issues, and it is here that he is most aware of belonging to a
long tradition of philosophy and developing it further.

Julia Annas, ‘Classical Greek Philosophy,’ in Boardman et al. Greece and the Hellenistic World, pp.240-241,

...it is standard for him to begin a discussion by running through previous
positions, and pointing out what in them is systematically promising or
mistaken. He has been attacked as though this were arrogant cannibalizing
of previous philosophy in the interest of his own ideas, but this is
mistaken. His attitude in fact shows profound intellectual humility:
No-one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand,
we do not collectively fail, but everyone says something true about the
nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing
to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
(Metaphysics 993 31-34)

Ibid. p. 241

Whereas Plato had developed a framework for discussing politics so
theoretical that scholars are often puzzled about what real states he might
have had in mind, Aristotle approached the question of human community
by amassing and analyzing a tremendous amount of data. In this project
he was assisted by his students at the Lyceum, where 158 essays on
constitutions of various poleis were drawn up. That all these have
disappeared except for The Athenian Constitution is an incalculable loss to
the study of Greek history.

Pomeroy et al. Ancient Greece, p.p. 394-395

Aristotle’s political philosophy differed from Plato’s in two key respects.
First, Aristotle believed in collective wisdom: a mass of people who are
individually unwise, he argues, may surpass the wisdom of the few best
men, just as potluck dinners may prove to be tastier than those hosted by a
single individual….For this reason, he is open to a compromise similar to
that of Solon: poor people in his ideal state would be allowed to choose
officials and hold them to account, but not to hold office. Second, Aristotle
had such a belief in natural hierarchies---free over slave, Greek over non-
Greek, adult over child, male over female---that he reprised with some
frequency the theme of the inferiority of women to men.

Ibid. p. 395

V. HISTORY
ΗΡΟΔΟΤΟΣ

HERODOTUS

HERODOTUS
FATHER OF HISTORY

the first Greek geographer and historian whose works
have survived

the greatest traveler of his day; Egypt, Cyrene,
Babylon, Susa (the Persian capital), the Black Sea

447-he came to Athens, lectured for money, began his
history from earliest times to the close of the Persian
Wars

he included much dubious material:

“I am under obligation to tell what is reported, but I am
not obliged to believe it; and let this hold for every
narrative in this history.” Ἡρόδοτος (Hēródotos) born in Halicarnassus,
Caria (modern day Bodrum, Turkey)
5th century BC (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC)

“when Herodotus depends on his own
observation, he is fairly reliable, although his
patriotism leads him to exaggerate the
numbers of the Persian army

“ and probably to minimize the numbers and
losses of the Greeks who withstood them.

“in Athens during the great period of Pericles’
leadership, he visited the Acropolis many
times while the work on the Parthenon was
going on.

“he tells of a four-horse chariot group of
bronze that was set up on the Acropolis to
commemorate a victory of the Athenians over
the Boeotians and the people of Chalcis about
sixty years before (506 BC)

“For the text [of the statue’s inscription] we are
dependent on Herodotus, who is seen here, on
a rainy day in autumn, studying it which he is
to record later in his history.

“Nearby is the base of the bronze statue of
Athena Promachos.”

Everyday Life in Ancient Times, p.233

Herodotus is a shining instance of the strong Greek bent to examine and prove or
disprove. He had a passion for finding out. The task he set himself was nothing
less than to find out all about everything in the world. He is always called the
“father of history,” but he was quite as much the father of geography, of
archaeology, of anthropology, of sociology, of whatever has to do with human
beings and the places in which they live. He was as free from prejudice as it is
possible to be. The Greek contempt for foreigners--in Greek, “barbarians”--never
touched him. He was passionately on Athens’ side in her struggle against Persia,
yet he admired and praised the Persians. He found them brave and chivalrous
and truthful. Much that he saw in Phoenicia and Egypt seemed admirable to him,
and even in uncivilized Scythia and Libya he saw something to commend. He did
not go abroad to find Greek superiority. An occasional inferiority quite pleased
him. He quotes with amusement Cyrus’ description of a Greek market as “a place
apart for people to go and cheat each other on oath.”


His book is really a bridge from one era to another. He was born in an age of deep
religious feeling, just after the Persian Wars; he lived on into the scepticism of the
age of Pericles; and by virtue of his kindly tolerance and keen intellectual interest
he was equally at home in both….

Only the last part of the History has to do with the Persian Wars. Two-thirds of
the book are taken up with Herodotus’ journeys and what he learned on them.


“ Of the marvels to be recorded the land of Lydia has no great store as compared
to other lands…but one work it has to show which is larger than any other except
only those in Egypt and Babylon: for there is there the sepulchral mound of
Alyattes the father of Croesus, of which the base is made of larger stones and the
rest of the monument is of earth piled up. And this was built by contributions of
those who practiced trade and of the artisans and the girls who plied their traffic
there; and still there existed to my own time boundary-stones five in number
erected upon the monument above, on which were carved inscriptions telling how
much of the work was done by each class; and upon measurement it was found
that the work of the girls was the greatest in amount. For the daughters of the
common people in Lydia practice prostitution one and all, to gather for
themselves dowries, continuing this until the time when they marry; and the girls
give themselves away in marriage [as opposed to the parents arranging
marriage--the common custom]….Such is the nature of the monument.”

Herodotus, History, bk i, section 93, 103-107

“...THE PROFUNDITY OF THOUGHT AND THE SOMBER
MAGNIFICENCE OF THUCYDIDES.”- EDITH HAMILTON

κτηµα ἐς ἀεί--a possession for all ages

“The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract
somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by
those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past
as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the
course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect
it, I shall be content.

“In fine I have written my work not as an essay with which
to win the applause of the moment but as a possession for
all time.” -- The Peloponnesian War, Jowett translation

Mycalessus proved horrific precisely because the Thracian mercenaries
sought no real military objective other than the psychological terror of
slaughtering children at school--the ancient version of the Chechnyan
terrorist assault on the Russian school at Beslan during early September
2004, which shocked the modern world and confirmed Thucydides’
prognosis that his history really was a possession for all time, inasmuch
as human nature, as he saw, has remained constant across time and
space.


His history is more than a narrative of now obscure battles and
massacres. Instead, as he predicted, it serves as a timeless guide to the
tragic nature of war itself, inasmuch as human character is unchanging
and thus its conduct in calamitous times is always predictable….

Thucydides---and this is why he is a truly great historian---is too
discerning a critic to reduce strife down simply to perceptions about
power and its manifestations. War itself is not a mere science but a more
fickle sort of thing, often subject to fate or chance, being an entirely
human enterprise. The Peloponnesian War, then, is not a mere primer
for international relations studies, and the historian does not believe that
“might makes right.” Tragedy, not melodrama, is his message.


ΕΠΙΛΟΓΟΣ
EPILOGOS
Epilogue

The flowering of genius in Greece was due to the immense impetus given when
clarity and power of thought was added to great spiritual force. That union made
the Greek temples, statues, writings, all the plain expression of the significant; the
temple in its simplicity; the statue in its combination of reality and ideality; the
poetry in its dependence upon ideas; the tragedy in its union of the spirit of
inquiry with the spirit of poetry. It made the Athenians lovers of fact and of
beauty; it enabled them to hold fast both to the things that are seen and to the
things that are not seen in all that they have left behind for us, science,
philosophy, religion, art.

Hamilton, p. 243

Greece 6 Golden Age

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