humanities

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CONTINUITY&CHANGE Egyptian and Gr eek Sculpture

Freestanding Greek sculpture of the Archaic period—that is, sculpture dating from about 600–480 bce —is notable for

its stylistic connections to 2,000 years of Egyptian tradition. The Late Period statue of Mentuemhet [men-too-em-het]

(Fig. 1.26 ), from Thebes, dating from around 2500 bce , differs hardly at all from Old Kingdom sculpture at Giza (see

Fig. 1.23 ), and even though the Anavysos [ah-NAH-vee-sus] Kour os (Fig. 1.27 ), from a cemetery near Athens,

represents a signiﬁcant advance in relative naturalism over the Greek sculpture of just a few years before, it still

resembles its Egyptian ancestors. Remarkably , since it follows upon the Anavysos Kouros by only 75 years, the

Doryphoros [dor-IF-uh-ros] (Spear Bear er) (Fig. 1.28 ) is signiﬁcantly more naturalistic. Although this is a Roman

copy of a lost ﬁfth-century bce bronze Greek statue, we can assume it reﬂects the original’ s naturalism, since the

original’s sculptor , Polyclitus [pol-ih-KL Y-tus], was renowned for his ability to render the human body realistically .

But this advance, characteristic of Golden Age Athens, represents more than just a cultural taste for naturalism. As we

will see in the next chapter, it also represents a heightened cultural sensitivity to the worth of the individual, a belief

that as much as we value what we have in common with one another—the bond that creates the city-state—our

individual contributions are at least of equal value. By the ﬁfth century bce , the Greeks clearly understood that

individual genius and achievement could be a matter of civic pride.

Fig. 1.26 Montuemhet , from Karnak, Thebes, ca. 660 bce .

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Fig. 1.27 Anavysos Kouros , from a cemetery at Anavysos [ah-NAH-vee-

sus], near Athens. ca. 525 bce

Marble with remnants of paint, height 6 ′ 4 ″ . National Archaeological Museum, Athens;

Fig. 1.28 Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) , Roman copy after the original

bronze by Polyclitus of ca. 450–440 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Marble, height 6′ 6 ″ . Museo Archeològico Nazionale, Naples. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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congregated, debated the issues of the day , argued points of law , settled disputes, and presented philosophical

discourse. In short, it was the place where they practiced their politics.

Map 2.1 The City-states of Ancient Gr eece.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 bce ) described the Athenian polis in his Politics like this: “The partnership

ﬁnally composed of several villages is the polis; it has at last attained the limit of virtually complete self-sufﬁciency ,

and thus while it comes into existence for the sake of mere life, it exists for the sake of the good life.” For Aristotle,

the essential purpose of the polis was to guarantee, barring catastrophe, that each of its citizens might ﬂourish. W riting

in the fourth century bce , Aristotle is thinking back to the Athens of the ﬁfth century bce , the so-called Golden Age.

During these years the pursuit of what Aristotle called eudaimonia [yoo-day-MOE-nee-uh], “the good or ﬂourishing

life,” resulted in a culture of astonishing sophistication and diversity. For eudaimonia is not simply a happy or

pleasurable existence; rather, the polis provides the conditions in which each individual may pursue an “activity of

soul in accordance with complete excellence.” For Aristotle, this striving to “complete excellence” deﬁnes Athens in

the Golden Age. The polis produced a body of philosophical thought so penetrating and insightful that the questions it

posed—the relationship between individual freedom and civic responsibility , the nature of the beautiful, the ideal

harmony between the natural world and the intellectual or spiritual realm, to name a few—and the conclusions it

reached dominated Western inquiry for centuries to come.

This chapter traces the rise of Greek culture from its earliest roots in the pre-literary cultures of the Aegean Sea, from

whom the Greeks believed their own great culture sprang, through its Golden Age in the ﬁfth century bce , when

Athens rose to a place of absolute cultural ascendancy , and then ﬁnally tracing Greece’s cultural domination of the

Eastern Mediterranean world and beyond, until, in the ﬁrst century bce , Rome came to challenge Greek ascendancy

across the Mediterranean basin.

BRONZE AGE CUL TURE IN THE AEGEAN

The Aegean Sea, in the eastern Mediterranean, is ﬁlled with islands. Here, beginning in about 3000 bce , seafaring

cultures took hold. So many were the islands, and so close to one another , that navigators were always within sight of

land. In the natural harbors where seafarers came ashore, port communities developed and trade began to ﬂourish.

The later Greeks thought of the Bronze Age Aegean peoples as their ancestors—particularly those who inhabited the

islands Cyclades, the island of Crete, and Mycenae, on the Peloponnese—and considered their activities and culture as

part of their own prehistory. They even had a word for the way they knew them— archaiologia [ar -kaee-oh-LOH-

ghee-uh], “knowing the past.” They did not practice archeology as we do today , excavating ancient sites and

scientiﬁcally analyzing the artifacts discovered there. Rather, they learned of their past through legends passed down,

at ﬁrst orally and then in writing, from generation to generation. Interestingly , the modern practice of archeology has

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The Cyclades

The Cyclades are a group of more than 100 islands in the Aegean Sea between mainland Greece and the island of

Crete. They form a roughly circular shape, giving them their name, from the Greek word kyklos [kih-klos], “circle”

(also the origin of our word “cycle”). No written records of the early Cycladic [sih-KLAD-ik] people remain, although

archeologists have found a good deal of art in and around hillside burial chambers. The most famous of these artifacts

are marble ﬁgurines in a highly simpliﬁed and abstract style that appeals to the modern eye ( Fig. 2.3 ). The Cycladic

ﬁgures originally looked quite dif ferent because they were painted. Most of the ﬁgurines depict females, but male

ﬁgures, including seated harpists and acrobats, also exist. The ﬁgurines range in height from a few inches to life-size,

but anatomical detail in all of them is reduced to essentials. W ith their toes pointed down, their heads tilted back, and

their arms crossed across their chests, the fully extended ﬁgures are corpselike. Their function remains unknown, but

some scholars suggest they were used for home worship and then buried with their owner .

By about 2200 bce , trade with the larger island of Crete to the south brought the Cyclades into Crete’ s political orbit

and radically altered late Cycladic life. Evidence of this inﬂuence survives in the form of wall paintings such as the

Miniature Ship Fr esco , a frieze at the top of at least three walls, suggests a prosperous seafaring community engaged

in a celebration of the sea ( Fig. 2.4 ). People lounge on terraces and rooftops as boats glide by , accompanied by leaping

dolphins. The painting was discovered in 1967 on the island of Thera (today known as Santorini [san-tor -EE-nee]), at

Akrotiri, a community that had been buried beneath one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 10,000 years.

About seven cubic miles of magma spewed forth, and the ash cloud that resulted during the ﬁrst phase of the eruption

was about 23 miles high. The enormity of the eruption caused the volcano at the center of Thera to collapse,

producing a caldera, a large basin or depression that ﬁlled with seawater . The present island of Thera is actually the

eastern rim of the original volcano (small volcanoes are still active in the center of Thera’ s crescent sea).

The eruption was so great that it left evidence worldwide—in the stunted growth of tree rings as far away as Ireland

and California, and in ash taken from ice core samples in Greenland. With this evidence, scientists have dated the

eruption to 1623 bce . In burying the city, it also preserved the city of Akrotiri. Not only were the community’ s homes

elaborately decorated—with mural paintings such as the Miniature Ship Fr esco , which was made with water -based

pigments on wet plaster, and which extended across the top of at least three walls in a second-story room, suggesting a

prosperous, seafaring community—but its citizens also enjoyed a level of personal hygiene unknown in W estern

culture until Roman times. Clay pipes led from interior toilets and baths to sewers built under winding, paved streets.

Straw reinforced the walls of their homes, protecting them against earthquakes and insulating them from the heat of

the Mediterranean sun.

Minoan Culture in Crete

Just to the south of the Cyclades lies Crete, the lar gest of the Aegean islands. Bronze Age civilization developed there

as early as 3000 bce . Trade routes from Crete established communication with such diverse areas as T urkey, Cyprus

[SY-prus], Egypt, Afghanistan, and Scandinavia, from which the island imported copper , ivory, amethyst, lapis lazuli,

carnelian, gold, and amber . From Britain, Crete imported the tin necessary to produce bronze. A distinctive culture

called Minoan [mih-NO-un] ﬂourished on Crete from about 1900 to 1375 bce . The name comes from the legendary

king Minos [MY-nos], who was said to have ruled the island’ s ancient capital of Knossos [NOSS-us].

Fig. 2.3 Figurine of a woman from the Cyclades. ca. 2500 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Marble, height 15¾ ″ Nicholas P. Goulandris Foundation. Museum of Cycladic Arts, Athens. N. P . Goulandris

Collection, No. 206. Larger examples of such ﬁgurines may have been objects of worship.

Fig. 2.4 Miniature Ship Fresco (detail from the left section), fr om Room 5,

West House, Akr otiri, Thera. Befor e 1623 bce .

Height 15¾” National Archaeological Museum, Athens. The total length of this fresco is over 24 feet. Harbors such as

this one provided shelter to traders who sailed between the islands of the Aegean Sea as early as 3000 bce .

View the Closer Look on the Miniatur e Ship Fr esco (“Flotilla Fr esco” ) on myartslab.com

Many of the motifs in the frescoes at Akrotiri, in the Cyclades, also appear in the art decorating Minoan palaces on

Crete, including the palace at Knossos. This suggests the mutual inﬂuence of Cycladic and Minoan cultures by the

start of the second millennium bce . Unique to Crete, however , is emphasis on the bull, the central element of one of 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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the best-preserved frescoes at Knossos, the Tor eador Fr esco (Fig. 2.5 ). Three almost nude ﬁgures appear to toy with a

charging bull. (As in Egyptian art, women are traditionally depicted with light skin, men with a darker complexion.)

The woman on the left holds the bull by the horns, the man vaults over its back, and the woman on the right seems to

have either just ﬁnished a vault or to have positioned herself to catch the man. It is unclear whether this is a ritual

activity , perhaps part of a rite of passage. What we do know is that the Minoans regularly sacriﬁced bulls, as well as

other animals, and that the bull was at least symbolically associated with male virility and strength.

Female Deities

The people of Thera and Crete seem to have shared the same religion as well as similar artistic motifs. Ample

archeological evidence tells us that the Minoans in Crete worshipped female deities. W e do not know much more than

that, but some students of ancient religions have proposed that the Minoan worship of one or more female deities is

evidence that in very early cultures the principal deity was a goddess rather than a god.

Fig. 2.5 Bull Leaping ( Toreador Fresco ), fr om the palace complex at

Knossos, Cr ete. ca. 1450–1375 bce .

Fresco, height approx. 24½”. Archaeological Museum, Iráklion, Crete. The darker patches of the fresco are original

fragments. The lighter areas are modern restorations.

It has long been believed that one of the Minoan female deities was a snake goddess, but recently , scholars have

questioned the authenticity of most of the existing snake goddess ﬁgurines. Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941), who ﬁrst

excavated at the Palace of Minos on Crete, identiﬁed images of the Cretan goddess as “Mountain Goddess,” “Snake

Goddess,” “Dove Goddess,” “Goddess of the Caves,” “Goddess of the Double Axes,” “Goddess of the Sports,” and

“Mother Goddess.” Evans saw all of these as different aspects of a single deity, or Great Goddess. Arthur Evans was

the archeologist responsible for the ﬁrst major excavation on Crete in the early twentieth century . A century after he

introduced the Snake Goddess ( Fig. 2.6 ) to the world, scholars are still debating its authenticity. In his book Mysteries

of the Snake Goddess (2002), Kenneth Lapatin makes a convincing case that craftspeople employed by Evans

manufactured artifacts for the antiquities market. He believes that the body of the statue is an authentic antiquity , but

the form in which we see it is largely the imaginative fabrication of Evans’ s restorers. Many parts were missing when

the ﬁgure was unearthed, and so an artist working for Evans fashioned new parts and attached them to the ﬁgure. The

snake in the goddess’s right hand lacked a head, leaving its identity as a snake open to question. Most of the goddess’ s

left arm, including the snake in her hand, were absent and later fabricated. When the ﬁgure was discovered, it lacked a

head, and this one is completely fabricated. The cat on the goddess’s head is original, although it was not found with

the statue. Lapatin believes that Evans, eager to advance his own theory that Minoan religion was dedicted to the

worship of a Great Goddess never questioned the manner in which the ﬁgures were restored. As interesting as the

ﬁgure is, its identity as a snake goddess is at best questionable. We cannot even say with certainty that the principal

deity of the Minoan culture was female, let alone that she was a snake goddess. There are no images of snake

goddesses in surviving Minoan wall frescoes, engraved gems, or seals, and almost all of the statues depicting her are

fakes or imaginative reconstructions.

Fig. 2.6 Snake Goddess or Priestess , from the palace at Knossos, Cr ete. ca.

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Faience, height 11 ⅝″ . Archaeological Museum, Iráklion, Crete. Faience is a kind of earthenware ceramic decorated

with glazes. Modern faience is easily distinguishable from ancient because it is markedly lighter in tone.

It is likely, though, that Minoan female goddesses were closely associated with a cult of vegetation and fertility , and

the snake is an almost universal symbol of rebirth and fertility. We do know that the Minoans worshipped on

mountaintops, closely associated with life-giving rains, and deep in caves, another nearly universal symbol of the

womb in particular and origin in general. And in early cultures, the undulations of the earth itself—its hills and

ravines, caves and riverbeds—were (and often still are) associated with the curves of the female body and genitalia.

But until early Minoan writing is deciphered, the exact nature of Minoan religion will remain a mystery .

The Palace of Minos

The Snake Goddess was discovered along with other ritual objects in a storage pit in the Palace of Minos at Knossos.

The palace as Evans found it is enormous, covering over six acres. There were originally two palaces at the site—an

“old palace,” dating from 1900 bce , and a “new palace,” built over the old one after an enormous earthquake in 1750

bce . This “new palace” was the focus of Evans’s attention.

As the reconstruction drawing make clear, the palace at Knossos was only loosely or ganized around a central, open

courtyard ( Fig. 2.7 ). Leading from the courtyard were corridors, staircases, and passageways that connected living

quarters, ritual spaces, baths, and administrative ofﬁces, in no discernable order or design. W orkshops surrounded the

complex, and vast storerooms could easily provide for the needs of both the palace population and the population of

the surrounding countryside. In just one storeroom, excavators discovered enough ceramic jars to hold 20,000 gallons

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Fig. 2.7 Reconstruction drawing and ﬂoor plan of the new palace complex

at Knossos, Cr ete.

The complexity of the labyrinthine layout is obvious.

View the Closer Look on the Snake Goddess on myartslab.com

Hundreds of wooden columns decorated the palace. Only fragments have survived, but we know from paintings and

ceramic house models how they must have looked. Evans created concrete replicas displayed today at the W est

Portico and the Grand Staircase ( Fig. 2.8 ). The originals were made of huge timbers cut on Crete and then turned

upside down so that the top of each is broader than the base. The columns were painted bright red with black capitals ,

the sculpted blocks that top them. The capitals are shaped liked pillows or cushions. (In fact, they are very close to the

shape of an evergreen’s root ball, as if the original design were suggested by trees felled in a storm.) Over time, as the

columns rotted or were destroyed by earthquakes or possibly burned by invaders, they must have become increasingly

difﬁcult to replace, for Minoan builders gradually deforested the island. This may be one reason why the palace

complex was abandoned sometime around 1450 bce .

Representations of double axes decorated the palace at every turn, and indeed the palace of Minos was known in

Greek times as the House of the Double Axes. In fact, the Greek word for the palace was labyrinth, from labrys,

“double ax.” Over time, the Greeks came to associate the House of the Double Axes with its inordinately complex

layout, and labyrinth came to mean “maze.”

The Legend of Minos and the Minotaur

The Greeks solidiﬁed the meaning of the labyrinth in a powerful legend. King Minos boasted that the gods would

grant him anything he wished, so he prayed that a bull might emer ge from the sea that he might sacriﬁce to the god of

the sea, Poseidon [puh-SY-dun]. A white bull did emer ge from the sea, one so beautiful that Minos decided to keep it

for himself and sacriﬁce a dif ferent one from his herd instead. This angered Poseidon, who took revenge by causing

Minos’s queen, Pasiphae [P AH-sif-eye], to fall in love with the bull. T o consummate her passion, she convinced

Minos’s chief craftsperson, Daedalus [DEE-duh-lus], to construct a hollow wooden cow into which she might place

herself and attract the bull. The result of this union was a horrid creature, half man, half bull: the Minotaur .

To appease the monster ’s appetite for human ﬂesh, Minos ordered the city of Athens, which he also ruled, to send him

14 young men and women each year as sacriﬁcial victims. Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens, vowed to kill the

Minotaur . As he set sail for Crete with 13 others, he promised his father that he would return under white sails (instead

of the black sails of the sacriﬁcial ship) to announce his victory . At Crete, he seduced Ariadne [a-ree-AD-nee],

daughter of Minos. Wishing to help Theseus, she gave him a sword with which to kill the Minotaur and a spindle of

thread to lead himself out of the maze in which the Minotaur lived. V ictorious, Theseus sailed home with Ariadne but

abandoned her on the island of Naxos, where she was discovered by the god of wine, Dionysus, who married her and

made her his queen. Theseus, sailing into the harbor at Athens, neglected to raise the white sails, perhaps intentionally .

When his father, King Aegeus, saw the ship still sailing under black sails, he threw himself into the sea, which from

then on took his name, the Aegean. Theseus, of course, then became king.

Fig. 2.8 Grand Stair case, east wing, palace complex at Knossos, Cr ete, as

reconstructed by Sir Arthur Evans. ca. 1500 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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The staircase served as a light well and linked all ﬁve stories of the palace.

The story is a creation or origin myth, like the Zuni emer gence tale (see Reading 1.1 ) or the Hebrew story of Adam

and Eve in Genesis. But it differs from them on one important point: Rather than narrating the origin of humankind in

general, it tells the story of the birth of one culture out of another . It is the Athenian Greeks’ way of knowing their

past, their archaiologia . The tale of the labyrinth explained to the later Greeks where and how their culture came to

be. It correctly suggests a close link to Crete, but it also emphasizes Greek independence from that powerful island. It

tells us, furthermore, much about the emer ging Greek character, for Theseus would, by the ﬁfth century bce , achieve

the status of a national hero. The great tragedies of Greek theater represent Theseus as wily , ambitious, and strong. He

stops at nothing to achieve what he thinks he must. If he is not altogether admirable, he mirrors behavior the Greeks

attributed to their gods. Nevertheless, he is anything but idealized or godlike. He is, almost to a fault, completely

human.

It was precisely this search for the origins of Greek culture that led Sir Arthur Evans to the discovery of the Palace of

Minos in Crete. He conﬁrmed “the truth” in the legend of the Minotaur. If there was no actual monster, there was

indeed a labyrinth. And that labyrinth was the palace itself.

Mycenaean Culture on the Mainland

When the Minoans abandoned the palace at Knossos in about 1450 bce , warriors from the mainland culture of

Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, quickly occupied Crete (see Map 2.1 ). One reason for the abandonment of Knossos

was suggested earlier—the deforestation of the island. Another might be that Minoan culture was severely weakened

in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption on Thera, and therefore susceptible to invasion or internal revolution. A third

might be that the Mycenaean army simply overwhelmed the island. The Mycenaeans were certainly acquainted with

the Minoan culture some 92 miles to their south, across the Aegean.

Minoan metalwork was prized on the mainland. Its ﬁne quality is very evident in the Vaphio Cup, one of two golden

cups found in the nineteenth century in a tomb at V aphio [VAH-fee-oh], just south of Sparta, on the Peloponnese ( Fig.

2.9 ). This cup was executed in repoussé [ruh-poo-SA Y], a technique in which the artist hammers out the design from

the inside. It depicts a man in an olive grove capturing a bull by tethering its hind legs. The bull motif is classically

Minoan. The Mycenaeans, however , could not have been more different from the Minoans. Whereas Minoan towns

were unfortiﬁed, and battle scenes were virtually nonexistent in their art, the Mycenaeans lived in communities 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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surrounding fortiﬁed hilltops, and battle and hunting scenes dominate their art. Minoan culture appears to have been

peaceful, while the warlike Mycenaeans lived and died by the sword.

The ancient city of Mycenae, which gave its name to the lar ger Mycenaean culture, was discovered by German

archeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) in the late nineteenth century , before Sir Arthur Evans discovered

Knossos. Its citadel looks down across a broad plain to the sea. Its walls—20 feet thick and 50 feet high—were built

from huge blocks of rough-hewn stone, in a technique called cyclopean [sy-KLOPE-ee-un] masonry because it was

believed by later Greeks that only a race of monsters known as the Cyclopes [sy-KLOH-peez] could have managed

them. Visitors to the city entered through a massive Lion Gate at the top of a steep path that led from the valley below

(Fig. 2.10 ). The lionesses that stood above the gate’ s lintel were themselves nine feet high. It is likely that their

missing heads originally turned in the direction of approaching visitors, as if to ward of f evil or, perhaps, humble them

in their tracks. They were probably made of a dif ferent stone than the bodies and may have been plundered at a later

time. From the gate, a long, stone street wound up the hill to the citadel itself. Here, overseeing all, was the king’ s

palace.

Fig. 2.9 Vaphio Cup , fr om a tomb at V aphio, south of Sparta, Gr eece. ca.

1650–1450 bce .

Gold, height 3½″ . National Archaeological Museum, Iráklion, Crete. Mycenaean invaders used Crete as a base for

operations for several centuries, and probably acquired the cup there.

Fig. 2.10 Lion Gate, Mycenae, Gr eece. ca. 1300 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Limestone relief, panel approx. 9’ 6” high. The lionesses are carved on a triangle of stone that relieves the weight of

the massive doorway from the lintel. The original heads, which have never been found, were attached to the bodies

with dowels.

Mycenae was only one of several fortiﬁed cities on mainland Greece that were ﬂourishing by 1500 bce and that have

come to be called Mycenaean. Mycenaean culture was the forerunner of ancient Greek culture and was essentially

feudal in nature—that is, a system of political or ganization held together by ties of allegiance between a lord and

those who relied on him for protection. Kings controlled not only their own cities but also the surrounding

countryside. Merchants, farmers, and artisans owed their own prosperity to the king and paid high taxes for the

privilege of living under his protection. More powerful kings, such as those at Mycenae itself, also expected the

loyalty (and ﬁnancial support) of other cities and nobles over whom they exercised authority . A large bureaucracy of

tax collectors, civil servants, and military personnel ensured the state’ s continued prosperity. Like the Minoans, they

engaged in trade, especially for the copper and tin required to make bronze.

The feudal system allowed Mycenae’ s kings to amass enormous wealth, as Schliemann’ s excavations conﬁrmed. He

discovered gold and silver death masks of fallen heroes ( Fig. 2.11 ), as well as swords and daggers inlaid with imagery

of events such as a royal lion hunt. He also found delicately carved ivory , from the tusks of hippopotamuses and

elephants, suggesting if not the breadth of Mycenae’s power, then the extent of its trade, which clearly included

Africa. It seems likely , in fact, that the Mycenaean taste for war , and certainly its occupation of Crete, was motivated

by the desire to control trade routes throughout the region.

The Homeric Epics

In about 800 bce , the Greeks began to write down the stories from and about their past—their archaiologia —that had

been passed down, generation to generation, by word of mouth. The most important of these stories were composed

by an author whom history calls Homer . Homer was most likely a bard, a singer of songs about the deeds of heroes

and the ways of the gods. His stories were part of a long-standing oral tradition that dated back to the time of the

Trojan W ar, which we believe occurred sometime between 1800 and 1300 bce . Out of the oral materials he inherited,

Homer composed two great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey . The ﬁrst narrates an episode in the 10-year T rojan

War, which, according to Homer , began when the Greeks launched a lar ge ﬂeet of ships under King Agamemnon of

Mycenae to bring back Helen, the wife of his brother King Menelaus of Sparta, who had eloped with Paris, son of

King Priam [PRY-um] of T roy. The Odyssey narrates the adventures of one of the principal Greek leaders, Odysseus

(also known as Ulysses), on his return home from the ﬁghting.

Fig. 2.1 1 Funerary mask ( Mask of Agamemnon ), from Grave Cir cle A,

Mycenae, Greece. ca. 1600–1550 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Gold, height approx. 12”. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. When Schliemann discovered this mask, he

believed it was the death mask of King Agamemnon, but it predates the T rojan War by some 300 years. Recent

scholarship suggests that Schliemann may have added the handlebar mustache and lar ge ears, perhaps to make the

mask appear more “heroic.”

Most scholars believed that these Homeric epics were pure ﬁction until the discovery by Heinrich Schliemann in the

1870s of the actual site of Troy, a multilayered site near modern-day Hissarlik [hih-sur -LIK], in northwestern Turkey.

The T roy of Homer ’s epic was discovered at the sixth layer . (Schliemann also believed that the shaft graves at

Mycenae, where he found so much treasure, were those of Agamemnon and his royal family , but modern dating

techniques have ruled that out.) Suddenly, the Iliad assumed, if not the authority, then the aura of historical fact.

By the sixth century bce , the Iliad was recited every four years in Athens (without omission, according to law), and

many copies of it circulated around Greece in the ﬁfth and fourth centuries bce . Finally, in Alexandria, Egypt, in the

late fourth century bce , scribes wrote the poem on papyrus scrolls, perhaps dividing it into the 24 manageable units we

refer to today as the poem’ s books.

The poem was so inﬂuential that it established certain epic conventions, standard ways of composing an epic that were

followed for centuries to come. Examples include starting the poem in medias res [in MEH-dee-us rays], Latin for “in

the middle of things,” that is, in the middle of the story; invoking the muse at the poem’ s outset; and stating the

poem’s subject at the outset.

The Iliad tells but a small fraction of the story of the T rojan War, which was launched by Agamemnon of Mycenae

and his allies to attack T roy around 1200 bce . The tale begins after the war is under way and narrates what is

commonly called “the rage of Achilles” [uh-KIL-leez], a phrase drawn from the ﬁrst line of the poem. Already

encamped on the Trojan plain, Agamemnon has been forced to give up a girl that he has taken in one of his raids, but

he takes the beautiful Briseis [bree-SA Y-us] from Achilles as compensation. Achilles, by far the greatest of the Greek

warriors, is outraged, suppresses his ur ge to kill Agamemnon, but withdraws from the war . He knows that the Greeks

cannot succeed without him, and in his rage he believes they will deserve their fate. Indeed, Hector , the great Trojan

prince, soon drives the Greeks back to their ships, and Agamemnon sends ambassadors to Achilles to of fer him gifts

and beg him to return to the battle. Achilles refuses: “His gifts, I loathe his gifts. . . . I wouldn’t give you a splinter for

that man! Not if he gave me 10 times as much, 20 times over.” When the battle resumes, things become desperate for

the Greeks. Achilles partially relents, permitting Patroclus [puh-TROH-klus], his close friend and perhaps his lover , to

wear his armor in order to put fear into the Trojans. Led by Patroclus, the Achaeans, as Homer calls the Greeks, drive

the Trojans back.

The most notable feature of the poem is the unﬂinching verbal picture Homer paints of the realities of war , not only its

cowardice, panic, and brutality, but its compelling attraction as well. In this arena, the Greek soldier is able to

demonstrate one of the most important values in Greek culture, his areté [ah-ray-T AY] often translated as “virtue,” but

actually meaning something closer to “being the best you can be” or “reaching your highest human potential.” Homer 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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uses the term to describe both Greek and T rojan heroes, and it refers not only to their bravery but their ef fectiveness in

battle.

Fig. 2.12 The Botkin Class , Two-handled jar (amphora), Gr eek. Archaic

Period, about 540–530 BC. Place of Manufactur e: Greece, Attica, Athens.

Ceramic, Black Figure, Height: 29.3 cm (1 19/16 in.); diameter: 24.2 cm (9½ in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,

Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 98.923. Photograph © 201 1 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. On the other side of this vase are

two heavily armed warriors, one pursuing the other.

The sixth-century bce painting on the side of the Botkin Class Amphora —an amphora [am-FOR-uh] is a Greek jar

with an egg-shaped body and two curved handles used for storing oil or wine—embodies the concept of areté (Fig.

2.12 ). Here, two warriors, one armed with a sword, the other with a spear , confront each other with unwavering

determination and purpose. At one point in the Iliad , Homer describes two such warriors, holding their own against

one another, as “rejoicing in the joy of battle.” They rejoice because they ﬁnd themselves in a place where they can

demonstrate their areté . The following passage, from Book 24, the ﬁnal section of the Iliad , shows the other side of

war and the other side of the poem, the compassion and humanity that distinguish Homer ’s narration ( Reading 2.1 ).

Hector , son of the king of T roy, has struck down Patroclus with the aid of the god Apollo. On hearing the news,

Achilles is devastated and ﬁnally enters the fray . Until now, fuming over Agamemnon’ s insult, he has sat out the

battle, refusing, in effect, to demonstrate his own areté. But now , he redirects his rage from Agamemnon to the T rojan

warrior Hector, whom he meets and kills. He then ties Hector ’s body to his chariot and drags it to his tent. The act is

pure sacrilege, a violation of the dignity due the great T rojan warrior and an insult to his memory. Late that night,

Priam, the king of Troy, steals across enemy lines to Achilles’ s tent and begs for the body of his son:

READING 2.1 from Homer , Iliad , Book 24 (ca. 750 bce ) 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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“Remember your own father , great godlike Achilles—

as old as I am, past the threshold of deadly old age!

No doubt the countrymen round about him plague him now ,

with no one there to defend him, beat away disaster.

No one—but at least he hears you’re still alive

and his old heart rejoices, hopes rising, day by day,

to see his beloved son come sailing home from Troy.

But I—dear god, my life so cursed by fate . . .

I fathered hero sons in the wide realm of T roy

and now not a single one is left, I tell you.

Fifty sons I had when the sons of Achaea came,

nineteen born to me from a single mother’s womb

and the rest by other women in the palace. Many ,

most of them violent Ares cut the knees from under .

But one, one was left me, to guard my wall, my people—

the one you killed the other day, defending his fatherland,

my Hector! It’s all for him I’ve come to the ships now ,

to win him back from you—I bring a priceless ransom.

Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right,

remember your own father! I deserve more pity . . .

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before—

I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.”

Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire

to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man’ s hand

he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory

both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely

for man-killing Hector , throbbing, crouching

before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself,

now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,

and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house. . . .

Then Achilles called the serving-women out:

“Bathe and anoint the body—

bear it aside ﬁrst. Priam must not see his son.”

He feared that, overwhelmed by the sight of Hector ,

wild with grief, Priam might let his anger ﬂare

and Achilles might ﬂy into fresh rage himself,

cut the old man down and break the laws of Zeus.

So when the maids had bathed and anointed the body 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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repr oduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. V iolators will be prosecuted. sleek with olive oil and wrapped it round and round

in a braided battle-shirt and handsome battle-cape,

then Achilles lifted Hector up in his own arms

and laid him down on a bier , and comrades helped him

raise the bier and body onto a sturdy wagon. . . .

Then with a groan he called his dear friend by name:

“Feel no anger at me, Patroclus, if you learn—

ever there in the House of Death—I let his father

have Prince Hector back. He gave me worthy ransom

and you shall have your share from me, as always,

your ﬁtting, lordly share.”

Homer clearly recognizes the ability of these warriors to exceed their mere humanity , to raise themselves not only to a

level of great military achievement, but to a state of compassion, nobility, and honor. It is this exploration of the

“doubleness” of the human spirit, its cruelty and its humanity , its blindness and its insight, that perhaps best deﬁnes

the power and vision of the Homeric epic.

Homer’s second epic, the Odyssey , narrates the adventures of Odysseus on his 10-year journey home from the war in

T roy—his encounters with monsters, giants, and a seductive enchantress, a sojourn on a ﬂoating island and another in

the underworld. But above all the poem’ s subject is Odysseus’s passionate desire to once more see his wife, Penelope,

and Penelope’s ﬁdelity to him. Where anger and lust drive the Iliad —from Achilles’ angry sulk to Helen’ s ﬁckleness

—love and familial affection drive the Odyssey . Penelope is gifted with areté in her own right, since for the 20 years

of her husband’ s absence she uses all the cunning in her power to ward of f the suitors who ﬂock to marry her,

convinced that Odysseus is never coming home.

In later Greek culture, the Iliad and the Odyssey were the basis of Greek education. Every schoolchild learned the two

poems by heart. They were the principal vehicles through which the Greeks came to know the past, and through the

past, they came to know themselves. The poems embodied what might be called the Greeks’ own cultural, as opposed

to purely personal areté , their desire to achieve a place of preeminence among all states. But in deﬁning this lar ger

cultural ambition, the Iliad and Odyssey laid out the individual values and responsibilities that all Greeks understood

to be their personal obligations and duties if the state were ever to realize its goals.

THE RISE OF THE GREEK CITY-STATES

The Greek city-states, or poleis , arose during the ninth century bce , just before the time of Homer . Colonists set sail

from cities on the Greek mainland to establish new settlements. Eventually , there were as many as 1,500 Greek city-

states scattered around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea from Spain to the Crimea, including lar ge colonies in

Italy ( Fig. 2.13 ). Since the fall of Mycenae in about 1100 bce , some 100 years after the Trojan War, Greece had

endured a long period of cultural decline that many refer to as the Dark Ages. Greek legend has it that a tribe from the

North, the Dorians, overran the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese. Historical evidence suggests that the Dorians

possessed iron weapons and easily defeated the bronze-armored Greeks. Scattered and in disarray , the Greek people

almost forgot the rudiments of culture and reading and writing fell into disuse. For the most part, the Greeks lived in

small rural communities that often warred with one another . But despite these conditions, which hardly favored the

development of art and architecture, the Greeks managed to sustain a sense of identity and even, as the survival of the

Trojan W ar legends suggests, some idea of their cultural heritage.

Fig. 2.13 The T emple of Hera I (left), ca. 560 bce , and The T emple of Hera

II (right), 460 bce , Paestum, Italy . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Two of the best preserved Greek temples can be found in Italy , at Paestum, south of Naples, in a place the Greeks

called Poseidonia after the god of the sea, Poseidon.

Gradually, across Greece, communities began to or ganize themselves and exercise authority over their own limited

geographical regions, which were deﬁned by natural boundaries—mountains, rivers, and plains. The population of

even the largest communities was lar gely dedicated to agriculture, and agricultural values—a life of hard, honest work

and self-reliance—predominated. The great pastoral poem of the poet Hesiod [HE-see-ud] (ﬂourished ca. 800 bce ),

Works and Days , testiﬁes to this. Works and Days was written at about the same time as the Homeric epics in Boeotia

[be-OH-she-uh], the region of Greece dominated by the city-state of Thebes. Hesiod gives us a clear insight not only

into many of the details of Greek agricultural production, but into social conditions as well. He mentions that, all

landowners possessed slaves (taken in warfare), who comprised over half the population. He also speaks of the Greek

gods Zeus [zoos], king of the gods and master of the sky , and Demeter, goddess of agriculture and grain, and the

necessity of working hard in order to please the gods. In fact, it was Hesiod, in his Theogony [the-OG-uh-nee] ( The

Birth of the Gods ), who ﬁrst detailed the Greek pantheon (literally, “all the gods”).

The Gr eek Gods

The religion of the Greeks informed almost every aspect of daily life. The gods watched over the individual at birth,

nurtured the family , and protected the city-state. They controlled the weather , the seasons, health, marriage, longevity,

and the future, which they could foresee. Each polis traced its origins to a particular founding god—Athena for

Athens, Zeus for Sparta. Sacred sanctuaries were dedicated to others.

The Greeks believed that the 12 major gods lived on Mount Olympus, in northeastern Greece. There they ruled over

the Greeks in a completely human fashion. They quarreled and meddled, loved and lost, exercised justice or not—and

they were depicted by the Greeks in human form. There was nothing special about them except their power , which

was enormous, sometimes frighteningly so. But the Greeks believed that as long as they did not overstep their bounds

and try to compete with the gods—the sin of hubris , or pride—that the gods would protect them.

Among the major gods (with their later Roman names in parentheses) are:

Zeus (Jupiter) : King of the gods, usually bearded, and associated with the eagle and thunderbolt.

Hera (Juno [JOO-no]) : Wife and sister to Zeus, the goddess of marriage and maternity .

Athena (Minerva) : Goddess of war, but also, through her association with Athens, of civilization; the daughter

of Zeus, born from his head; often helmeted, shield and spear in hand, the owl (wisdom) and the olive tree

(peace) are sacred to her .

Ares (Mars) : God of war , and son of Zeus and Hera, usually armored.

Aphrodite [af-ra-DIE-tee] (V enus) : Goddess of love and beauty; Hesiod says she was born when the severed

genitals of Uranus, the Greek personiﬁcation of the sky , were cast into the sea and his sperm mingled with sea

foam to create her. Eros is her son.

Apollo (Phoebus [FEE-bus]) : God of the sun, light, truth, prophecy , music, and medicine; he carries a bow and

arrow, sometimes a lyre; often depicted riding a chariot across the sky .

Artemis [AR-tuh-mis] (Diana) : Goddess of the hunt and the moon; Apollo’s sister, she carries bow and arrow ,

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Demeter [dem-EE-ter] (Cer es [SIR-eez]) : Goddess of agriculture and grain.

Dionysus [dy-uh-NY-sus] (Bacchus [BAK-us]) : God of wine and inspiration, closely aligned to myths of

fertility and sexuality.

Hermes [HER-meez] (Mer cury) : Messenger of the gods, but also god of fertility , theft, dreams, commerce,

and the marketplace; usually adorned with winged sandals and a winged hat, he carries a wand with two snakes

entwined around it.

Hades [HAY-deez] (Pluto) : God of the underworld, accompanied by his monstrous dog Cerberus.

Hephaestus [hif-ES-tus] (V ulcan) : God of the forge and ﬁre; son of Zeus and Hera and husband of Aphrodite;

wears a blacksmith’ s apron and carries a hammer .

Hestia [HES-te-uh] (Vesta) : Goddess of the hearth and sister of Zeus.

Poseidon [po-SI-don] (Neptune) : Brother of Zeus and god of the sea; carries a trident (a three-pronged spear);

the horse is sacred to him.

Persephone [per-SEF-uh-nee] (Pr oserpina [pro-SUR-puh-nuh]) : Goddess of fertility , Demeter’s daughter ,

carted off each winter to the underworld by her husband Hades, but released each spring to restore the world to

plenty.

Of particular interest here—as in Homer ’s Iliad —is that the gods are as susceptible to Eros [er -oss], or Desire, as is

humankind. In fact, the Greek gods are sometimes more human than humans—susceptible to every human foible.

Like many a family on Earth, the father, Zeus, is an all-powerful philanderer, whose wife, Hera [HAIR-uh], is

watchful, jealous, and capable of inﬂicting great pain upon rivals for her husband’ s affections. Their children are

scheming and self-serving in their competition for their parents’ attention. The gods think like humans, act like

humans, and speak like humans. They sometimes seem to dif fer from humans only in the fact that they are immortal.

Unlike the Hebrew God, who is admittedly sometimes portrayed as arbitrary—consider the Book of Job—the Greek

gods present humans with no clear principles of behavior, and the priests and priestesses who oversaw the rituals

dedicated to them produced no scriptures or doctrines. The gods were capricious, capable of changing their minds,

susceptible to argument and persuasion, alternately obstinate and malleable. If these qualities created a kind of cosmic

uncertainty, they also embodied the intellectual freedom and the spirit of philosophical inquiry that would come to

deﬁne the Greek state.

The Gr eek Architectural T radition

The Greek poleis were distinguished by their physical isolation from one another and their ﬁerce independence. In

competition for the few really fertile lands on the mainland, they often warred with one another . And inevitably

certain city-states became more powerful than others. Before the ninth century bce , many Athenians had migrated to

Ionia [eye-OH-nee-uh] in southwestern Anatolia [an-uh-TOE-lee-uh] (modern Turkey), and relations with the Near

East helped Athens to ﬂourish. Corinth, situated on the isthmus between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese,

controlled north–south trade routes from early times, but after it built a towpath to drag ships over the isthmus on

rollers, it soon controlled the sea routes east and west as well. The Spartans, on the Peloponnese, traced their ancestry

back to the legendary Dorians, whose legacy was military might. But despite their many dif ferences, a common

architectural tradition began to arise among the poleis, one which not only demonstrated their common cultural

heritage, but has also had a lasting inﬂuence on Western architecture as a whole.

As early as the eighth century bce , various poleis began to establish sanctuaries where they could come together to

share music, religion, poetry, and athletics. The sanctuary was a lar ge-scale reﬂection of another Greek invention, the

symposium , literally a “coming together” of men (originally of the same military unit) to share poetry , food, and

wine. At the sanctuaries, people from different city-states came together to honor their gods and, by extension, to

celebrate, in the presence of their rivals, their own accomplishments.

Delphi

The sanctuaries were sacred religious sites. They inspired the city-states, which were always trying to outdo one

another, to create the ﬁrst monumental architecture since Mycenaean times. At Delphi [DEL-ﬁe], high in the

mountains above the Gulf of Corinth, and home to the Sanctuary of Apollo [uh-POLL-oh], the city-states, in their

usual competitive spirit, built monuments and statues dedicated to the god, and elaborate treasuries to store of ferings.

Many built hostels so that pilgrims from home could gather. Delphi was an especially important site. Here, the Greeks

believed, the Earth was attached to the sky by its navel. Here, too, through a deep crack in the ground, Apollo spoke,

through the medium of a woman called the Pythia [PITH-ee-uh]. Priests interpreted the cryptic omens and messages

she delivered. The Greek author Plutarch [PLOO-tark], writing in the ﬁrst century ce , said that the Pythia entered a

small chamber beneath the temple, smelled sweet-smelling fumes, and went into a trance. This story was dismissed as

ﬁction until recently, when geologists discovered that two faults intersect directly below the Delphic temple, allowing

hallucinogenic gases to rise through the ﬁssures, speciﬁcally ethylene, which has a sweet smell and produces a

narcotic effect described as a ﬂoating or disembodied euphoria.

Fig. 2.14 The Athenian T reasury , Delphi, and plan. ca. 510 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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The sculptural program around the T reasury, just below the roof line, depicts the adventures of two great Greek

mythological heroes, Theseus and Herakles.

The facade of the Athenian T reasury at Delphi consisted of two columns standing in antis (that is, between two-

squared stone pilasters, called antae [AN-tie]). Behind them is the pronaos [pro-NA Y-os], or enclosed vestibule, at

the front of the building, with its doorway leading into the cella [SEL-uh] (or naos [NA Y-os]), the principal interior

space of the building (see the ﬂoor plan, Fig. 2.14 ).

W e can see the antecedents of this building type in a small ceramic model of an early Greek temple dating from the

eighth century bce and found at the Sanctuary of Hera near Ar gos [AR-gus] ( Fig. 2.15 ). Its projecting porch supported

by two columns anticipates the antis columns and pronaos of the Athenian T reasury. The triangular area over the

porch created by the pitch of the roof, called the pediment, is not as steeply pitched in the T reasury. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Fig. 2.15 Model of a temple, found in the Sanctuary of Hera, Argos. Mid-

eighth century bce .

Terra cotta, length 4½”. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. W e do not know if later temples were painted like

the model.

The Temples of Hera at Paestum

From this basic form, surviving in the small treasuries at Delphi, the lar ger temples of the Greeks would develop. Two

distinctive elevations —the arrangement, proportions, and appearance of the temple foundation, columns, and lintels

—developed before 500 bce , the Doric order and the Ionic order (see Closer Look , pages 52 –53 ). Later, a third

Corinthian order would emer ge. The Siphnian T reasury is of the Ionic order , which most often employs columns

with scrolled capitals. Among earliest surviving examples of a Greek temple of the Doric order are the T emples of

Hera I and II in the Sanctuary of Hera at Paestum [PES-tum], a Greek colony established in the seventh century bce in

Italy, about 50 miles south of modern Naples (see Fig. 2.13 ). As the plan of the T emple of Hera I makes clear , the

earlier of the two temples was a lar ge, rectangular structure, with a pronaos containing three (as opposed to two)

columns and an elongated cella, behind which is an adyton [AD-ee-tun], the innermost sanctuary housing the place

where, in a temple with an oracle, the oracle’ s message was delivered. Surrounding this inner structure was the

peristyle [PER-uh-style], a row of columns that stands on the stylobate [STY-luh-bate], the raised platform of the

temple. The columns swell about one-third of the way up and contract again at the top, a characteristic known as

entasis [EN-tuh-sis], and are topped by the two-part capital of the Doric order with its rounded enchinus [EN-ki-nus]

and tabletlike abacus [AB-uh-kus].

Olympia and the Olympic Games

The Greeks date the beginning of their history to the ﬁrst formal Panhellenic (“all-Greece”) athletic competition, held

in 776 bce . These ﬁrst Olympic Games were held at Olympia. There, a sanctuary dedicated to Hera and Zeus also

housed an elaborate athletic facility . The ﬁrst contest of the ﬁrst games was a 200-yard dash the length of the Olympia

stadium, a race called the stadion (Fig. 2.16 ). Over time, other events of solo performance were added, including

chariot racing, boxing, and the pentathlon (from Greek penta , “ﬁve,” and athlon , “contest”), consisting of discus,

javelin, long jump, sprinting, and wrestling. There were no second or third prizes. W inning was all. The contests were 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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javelin, long jump, sprinting, and wrestling. There were no second or third prizes. W inning was all. The contests were

conducted every four years during the summer months and were open only to men (married women were forbidden to

attend, and unmarried women probably did not attend). The Olympic Games were held for more than 1,000 years.

They were revived in 1896 to promote understanding and friendship among nations.

Fig. 2.16 Euphiletos Painter. Detail of a black-ﬁgur e amphora showing a

foot-race at the Panathenaic Games in Athens. ca. 530 bce .

Terra cotta, height 24½ ″ . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1914 (14.130.12). Greek athletes competed

nude. In fact, our word gymnasium derives from the Greek word for “naked,” gymnos .

CLOSER LOOK The Classical Orders

Classical Greek architecture is composed of three vertical elements—the platform , the column , and the entablature

—which comprise its elevation. The relationship of these three units is referred to as the elevation’ s order. There are

three orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, each distinguished by its speciﬁc design.

The classical Greek orders became the basic design elements for architecture from ancient Greek times to the present

day. A major source of their power is the sense of order , predictability, and proportion that they embody . Notice how

the upper elements of each order—the elements comprising the entablature—change as the column supporting them

becomes narrower and taller. In the Doric order, the architrave (the bottom layer of the entablature), and the frieze

(the ﬂat band just above the architrave decorated with sculpture, painting, or moldings), are comparatively massive.

The Doric is the heaviest of the columns. The Ionic is lighter and noticeably smaller . The Corinthian is smaller yet,

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Doric columns at the T emple of Hera I, and plan. Paestum, Italy . ca. 540. The ﬂoor plan of all three orders is

essentially the same, although in the Doric order the last two columns were set slightly closer together—corner

contraction, as it is known—resulting in the corner gaining a subtle visual strength and allowing for regular spacing of

sculptural elements in the entablature above.

The Classical Orders, from James Stuart, The Antiquities of Athens , London, 1794. An architectural order lends a

sense of unity and structural integrity to a building as a whole. By the sixth century bce , the Greeks had developed the

Doric and the Ionic orders. The former is sturdy and simple. The latter is lighter in proportion and more elegant in

detail, its capital characterized by a scroll-like motif called a volute . The Corinthian order, which originated in the last

half of the ﬁfth century bce , is the most elaborate of all. It would become a favorite of the Romans.

Something to Think About . . .

The base, shaft, and capital of a Greek column have often been compared to the feet, body , and head of the human

ﬁgure. How would you compare the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders to Figures 2.17 , 2.18 , and 2.27 ? 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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The Olympic Games were only one of numerous athletic festivals held in various locations. These games comprised a

deﬁning characteristic of the developing Greek national identity . As a people, the Greeks believed in agonizesthai ,

[ahgon-ee-zus-TYE] a verb meaning “to contend for the prize.” They were driven by competition. Potters bragged that

their work was better than any other’s. Playwrights competed for best play , poets for best recitation, athletes for best

performance. As the city-states themselves competed for supremacy , they began to understand the spirit of

competition as a trait shared by all.

Greek Sculptur e and the Taste for Naturalism

Greek athletes performed nude, so it is not surprising that athletic contests gave rise to what may be called a “cult of

the body.” The physically ﬁt male not only won accolades in athletic contests, he also represented the conditioning

and strength of the military forces of a particular polis. The male body was also celebrated in a widespread genre of

sculpture known as the kouros [KOOR-os], meaning “young man” ( Figs. 2.17 and 2.18 ). This celebration of the body

was uniquely Greek. No other Mediterranean culture so emphasized depiction of the male nude. Over 20,000 kouroi

[KOOR-oy] (plural of kouros ) appear to have been carved in the sixth century bce alone. They could be found in

sanctuaries and cemeteries, most often serving as votive of ferings to the gods or as commemorative grave markers.

Their resolute features suggest their determination in their role as ever -watchful guardians.

Although we would never mistake this ﬁgure for the work of an Egyptian sculptor—its nudity and much more fully

realized anatomical features are clear differences—still, its Egyptian inﬂuences are obvious. as can be seen in the

comparison between a late Egyptian sculpture and a kouros dating from 525 bce . In fact, as early as 650 bce , the

Greeks were in Egypt, and by the early sixth century bce , 12 cooperating city-states had established a trading outpost

in the Nile Delta. The Greek sculpture serves the same funerary function as its Egyptian ancestors. In fact, an

inscription on the base of Fig. 2.17 reads, “Stop and grieve at the dead Kroisos [kroy-sos], slain by wild Ares [AR-

eez] in the front rank of battle. This is a monument to a fallen hero, killed in the prime of youth.”

Fig. 2.17 (left) New Y ork Kouros . ca. 600 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Height 6′ 4 ″ . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Y ork. Fletcher Fund, 1932 (32.11.1).

Fig. 2.18 (right) Anavysos Kouros , from Anavysos cemetery , near Athens,

ca. 525 bce . Marble with remnants of paint, height 6’ 4”. National

Archaeological Museum, Athens. The sculptur e on the left is one of the

earliest known life-size standing sculpture of a male in Greek art. The one

on the right represents 75 years of Gr eek experimentation with the form.

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During the course of the sixth century , kouroi became distinguished by naturalism . That is, they increasingly reﬂect

the artist’s desire to represent the human body as it appears in nature. This in turn probably reﬂects the growing role of

the individual in Greek political life. W e do not know why sculptors wanted to realize the human form more

naturalistically, but we can surmise that the reason must be related to agonizesthai , the spirit of competition so

dominant in Greek society . Sculptors must have competed against one another in their attempts to realize the human

form. Furthermore, since it was believed that the god Apollo manifested himself as a well-endowed athlete, the more

lifelike and natural the sculpture, the more nearly it could be understood to resemble the god himself.

Fig. 2.19 Peplos Kore and cast reconstruction of the original, fr om the

Acropolis, Athens. Dedicated 530 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Polychromed marble, height 47½ ″ . Acropolis Museum, Athens (original) and Museum of Classical Archaeology ,

Cambridge, England (cast). The extended arm, probably bearing a gift, was originally a separate piece, inserted in the

round socket at her elbow. Note the small size of this sculpture, more than two feet shorter than the male kouros

sculptures ( Fig. 2.17 and Fig. 2.18 ).

Fig. 2.20 Kore , fr om Chios (?). ca. 520 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Polychromed marble, height 21”. Acropolis Museum, Athens. Although missing half its height, the sculpture gives us

a clear example of the elaborate dress of the last years of the sixth century bce .

The same increasing naturalism is evident in the sculptural renderings of korai [KOR-eye], or “maidens.” Just as the

kouros statue seems related to Apollo, the kore [KOR-ee] statue appears to have been a votive of fering to Athena and

was apparently a gift to the goddess. Male citizens dedicated korai to her as a gesture of both piety and evident

pleasure.

As with the kouroi statues, the korai also became more naturalistic during the century . This trend is especially obvious

in their dress. In the sculpture known as the Peplos Kore (Fig. 2.19 ), anatomical realism is suppressed by the straight

lines of the sturdy garment known as a peplos [PEP-lus]. Usually made of wool, the peplos is essentially a rectangle of

cloth folded down at the neck, pinned at the shoulders, and belted. Another kore, also remarkable for the amount of

original paint on it, is the Kor e dating from 520 bce found on Athenian Acropolis ( Fig. 2.20 ). This one wears a chiton

[KY -ton], a garment that by the last decades of the century had become much more popular than the peplos. Made of

linen, the chiton clings more closely to the body and is gathered to create pleats and folds that allow the artist to show

off his virtuosity .

Athenian Pottery

The same trend toward increasing naturalism is also evident in the decorative painting on Greek pottery . By the

middle of the sixth century bce , Athens had become a major center of pottery making. Athenian potters were helped

along by the extremely high quality of the clay available in Athens, which turned a deep orange color when ﬁred.

Fig. 2.21 The Priam Painter, Water jar (hydria) with Women at the

Fountain , Gr eek. Ar chaic Period, about 520 bc . Place of Manufactur e: 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Greece, Attica, Athens.

Ceramic, Black Figure, Height: 53 cm (20 ⅞ in.); diameter: 37 cm (14 in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,

William Francis W arden Fund, 61.195. Photograph © 201 1 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The convention of

depicting women’s skin as white is also found in Egyptian and Minoan art.

As with Athenian sculpture, the decorations on Athenian vases grew increasingly naturalistic and detailed until,

generally, only one scene ﬁlled each side of the vase. The Athenians soon developed two types of vase characterized

by the relationship of ﬁgure to ground: black- and red-ﬁgure vases. The ﬁgures on black-ﬁgur e vases are painted with

slip, a mixture of clay and water , so that after ﬁring they remain black against an unslipped red background. Women at

the Fountain House (Fig. 2.21 ) is an example. Here the artist, whom scholars have dubbed the Priam [PR Y-um]

painter , has added touches of white by mixing white pigment into the slip. By the second half of the sixth century , new

motifs, showing scenes of everyday life, became increasingly popular. This hydria [HY-dree-uh], or water jug, shows

women carrying similar jugs as they chat at a fountain house of the kind built by Peisistratus at the ends of the

aqueducts that brought water into the city . Such fountain houses were extremely popular spots, of fering women, who

were for the most part conﬁned to their homes, a rare opportunity to gather socially . Water ﬂows from animal-head

spigots at both sides and across the back of the scene. The composition’ s strong vertical and horizontal framework,

with its Doric columns, is softened by the rounded contours of the women’ s bodies and the vases they carry. This vase

underscores the growing Greek taste for realistic scenes and naturalistic representation.

Many of their pots depict gods and heroes, including representations of the Iliad and Odyssey . An example of this

tendency is a krater [KRAY-tur], or vessel in which wine and water are mixed, that shows the Death of Sarpedon [sar -

PE-dun], painted by Euphronius [you-FRO-ne-us] and made by the potter Euxitheos [you-ZI-thee-us (soft th as in

think)] by 515 bce (Fig. 2.22 ). Euphronius was praised especially for his ability to accurately render human anatomy .

Here Sarpedon has just been killed by Patroclus (see Reading 2.1 ). Blood pours from his leg, shoulder, and carefully

drawn abdomen. The winged ﬁgures of Hypnos [HIP-nos] (Sleep) and Thanatos [THAN-uh-tohs] (Death) are about to 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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carry off his body as Hermes [HER-meez], messenger of the gods who guides the dead to the underworld, looks on.

But the naturalism of the scene is not the source of its appeal. Rather , its perfectly balanced composition transforms

the tragedy into a rare depiction of death as an instance of dignity and order . The spears of the two warriors left and

right mirror the edge of the vase, the design formed by Sarpedon’s stomach muscles is echoed in the decorative bands

both top and bottom, and the handles of the vase mirror the arching backs of Hypnos and Thanatos.

Fig. 2.22 Euphronius (painter) and Euxitheos (potter), Death of Sarpedon .

ca. 515 bce .

Red-ﬁgure decoration on a calyx krater . Ceramic, height of krater 18 ″ . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Purchase, Gift of Darius Ogden Mills, Gift of J. Pierpont Mor gan, and Bequest of Joseph H. Durkee, by exchange,

1972 (1972.11.10). This type of krater is called a calyx krater because its handles curve up like the calyx ﬂower .

The Death of Sarpedon is an example of a red-ﬁgur e vase. The process is the reverse of the black-ﬁgure process, and

more complicated. Here, the slip is used to paint the background, outlining the ﬁgures. Using the same slip,

Euphronius also drew details on the ﬁgure (such as Sarpedon’ s abdomen) with a brush. The vase was then ﬁred in

three stages, each one varying the amount of oxygen allowed into the kiln. In the ﬁrst stage, oxygen was allowed into

the kiln, which “ﬁxed” the whole vase in one overall shade of red. Then, oxygen in the kiln was reduced to the

absolute minimum, turning the vessel black. At this point, as the temperature rose, the slip became vitriﬁed, or glassy .

Finally, oxygen entered the kiln again, turning the unslipped areas—in this case, the red ﬁgures—back into a shade of

red. The areas painted with the vitriﬁed slip were not exposed to oxygen, so they remained black.

The Poetry of Sappho

The poet Sappho [SAF-foh] (ca. 610–ca. 580 bce ) was hailed throughout antiquity as “the tenth Muse” and her poetry

celebrated as a shining example of female creativity . We know little of Sappho’ s somewhat extraordinary life. She was

the daughter of an aristocrat, married, had a daughter of her own, and then, apparently , left all behind to settle on the

island of Lesbos. There, she surrounded herself with a group of young women, and together they engaged in the

worship of Aphrodite—the Lesbian cult. Most of her circle shared their lives with one another only for a brief period

before marriage.

Sappho produced nine books of lyric poems —poems to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre—on themes of love

and personal relationships, often with other women. Sappho’s poetry was revered throughout the Classical world, but

only fragments have survived. It is impossible to convey the subtlety and beauty of her poems in translation, but their 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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astonishing economy of feeling does come across. In the following poem ( Reading 2.2a ) one of the longest surviving

fragments, she expresses her love for a married woman:

READING 2.2a Sappho, lyric poetry

He is more than a hero

He is a god in my eyes

the man who is allowed

to sit beside you—he

who listens intimately

to the sweet murmur of

your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own

heart beat fast. If I meet

you suddenly, I can’t

speak—my tongue is broken;

a thin ﬂame runs under

my skin; seeing nothing

hearing only my ears

drumming, I drip with sweat;

trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than

dry grass. At such times

death isn’ t far from me.

Sappho’s talent is the ability to condense the intensity of her feelings into a single breath, a breath that, as the

following poem suggests, lives on ( Reading 2.2b ):

READING 2.2b Sappho, lyric poetry

Although they are

only breath, words

which I command

are immortal

Even in so short a poem, Sappho realizes concretely the Greek belief that we can achieve immortality through our

words and deeds.

The Rise of Democracy and the Thr eat of Persia

The growing naturalism of sixth-century bce sculpture coincides with the rise of democratic institutions in Athens and

reﬂects this important development. Both bear witness to a growing Greek spirit of innovation and accomplishment.

And both testify to a growing belief in the dignity and worth of the individual.

In 508 bce , the Athenian aristocrat Kleisthenes [KLEYE-sthuh-neez] instituted the ﬁrst Athenian political democracy

—from the Greek demokratia [dem-oh-KRAY-te-uh], the rule ( kratia ) of the people ( demos )—an innovation in self-

government that might not have been possible had the Athenians not just endured over 50 years of tyranny .

Fifty years earlier, in 560 bce when Peisistratus [pie-SIS-truh-tus] assumed rule in Athens, the urban and rural regions

of the Athenian polis were wracked by division. W ealthy landowners from the plains, poorer hill people living on the

mountainsides, Athenian merchants and aristocracy , all vied for power. Peisistratus had controlled this division with a

heavy hand, ruling as a tyrant—that is, as a dictator—without consulting the people. Although he succeeded in 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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providing jobs for the entire population by commissioning lar ge-scale public works, he exiled aristocrats who didn’t

support him, and he often kept sons of noble families as his personal hostages to guarantee their families’ loyalty . His

son, Hippias [HIP-ee-us], who followed him to power in 527 bce , was harsher still, exiling more nobles and executing

many others. In 510 the exiled nobles revolted, with aid from Sparta, Hippias escaped to Persia, and Kleisthenes took

over.

“Nothing is worse for a city than a tyrant,” the Greek playwright Euripides would later write in his play , The Suppliant

Women . “One man rules, and frames the law himself. Equality doesn’ t exist. But when laws are written down, both

rich and poor have the same right to justice. This is freedom’ s rallying cry: ‘What man has good advice to give the

city? Make it public, and earn a reputation. . . . For the city’s sake, what could be better than that? When the people

are the pilots of the city, they control their own destiny .’” In other words, politics—a dedication to the well-being of

the polis through discussion, consensus, and united action—depends upon democracy . In a tyranny, there can be no

politics because there can be no debate. Whatever their diver ging views, the citizens of the polis were free to debate

the issues, to speak their minds. They spoke as individuals, and they cherished the freedom to think as they pleased.

But they spoke out of a concern for the common good, for the good of the polis, which, after all, gave them the

freedom to speak in the ﬁrst place. When Aristotle says, in his Politics , that “man is a political animal,” he means that

man is a creature of the polis, bound to it, dedicated to it, determined by it, and, somewhat paradoxically , liberated by

it as well.

These principles were well understood by Kleisthenes, who reorganized the Athenian political system into demes

[deemz], small local areas comparable to precincts or wards in a modern city . Because all citizens remember, only

males were citizens registered in their given deme , landowners and merchants had equal political rights. Kleisthenes

then grouped the demes into 10 political “tribes,” whose membership cut across all family , class, and regional lines,

thus effectively diminishing the power and inﬂuence of the noble families. Each tribe appointed 50 of its members to a

Council of Five Hundred, which served for 36 days. There were thus 10 separate councils per year , and no citizen

could serve on the council more than twice in his lifetime. With so many citizens serving on the council for such short

times, it is likely that nearly every Athenian citizen participated in the government at some point during his lifetime.

The new Greek democracy was immediately threatened by the rise of the Persian Empire in the east (see Chapter 1 ).

In 499 bce , probably aware of the newfound political freedoms in Athens and certainly chaﬁng at the tyrannical rule

of the Persians, the Ionian cities rebelled, burning down the city of Sardis, the Persian headquarters in Asia Minor . In

495 bce , Darius struck back. He burned down the most important Ionian city, Miletus [my-LEET-us], slaughtering the

men and taking its women and children into slavery . Then, probably inﬂuenced by Hippias, who lived in exile in his

court, Darius turned his sights on Athens, which had sent a force to Ionia to aid the rebellion.

In 490 bce , a huge Persian army, estimated at 90,000, landed at Marathon, on the northern plains of Attica. They were

met by a mere 10,000 Greeks, led by a professional soldier named Miltiades [mil-TIE-uh-deez], who had once served

under Darius in Persia, and who understood the weakness of Darius’ s military strategy. Miltiades struck Darius’ s

forces at dawn, killing 6,000 Persians and suf fering minimal losses himself. The Persians were routed. The anxious

citizens of Athens heard news of the victory from Phidippides [ﬁh-DIP-uh-deez] who ran the 26 miles between

Marathon and Athens, thus completing the original marathon, a run that the Greeks would soon incorporate into their

Olympic Games. (Contrary to popular belief, Phidippides did not die in the ef fort.)

Darius may have been defeated, but the Persians were not done. Even as the Greeks basked in victory , Darius and his

son Xerxes [ZURK-seez] were once again solidifying their power at Persepolis, and after Darius died ﬁghting in

Egypt in 486 bce , Xerxes (r. 486–465 bce ) assumed the throne. By 481 bce , it was apparent that Xerxes was preparing

to attack Greece once again. Themistocles [thuh-MIS-tuh-kleez] (ca. 524–ca. 460 bce ), an Athenian statesman and

general, had been anticipating the invasion for a decade. He convinced the Athenians to unite with the other Greek

poleis under the direction of the Spartans, the strongest military power . When a large supply of silver was discovered

in 483 bce , Themistocles, convinced that the Persians could not be defeated on land, persuaded Athens to use its new-

found wealth to build a ﬂeet.

Finally, in 480 bce , Xerxes led a huge army into Greece. In his nine-volume Histories (430 bce ), written 50 years after

the events, Herodotus [hih-ROD-uh-tus], the ﬁrst Greek historian, says that Xerxes’ s army numbered ﬁve million men

and that whole rivers were dried when the army stopped to drink. These are doubtless exaggerations, but Xerxes’ s

army was probably the largest ever assembled until that time. Modern estimates suggest it was composed of at least

150,000 men. Herodotus also tells us that the Delphic oracle had prophesied that Athens would be destroyed and

advised the Athenians to put their trust in “wooden walls.” Themistocles knew that the Persians had to be delayed so

that the Athenians would have time to abandon the city and take to sea. At a narrow pass between the sea and the

mountains called Thermopylae [ther -MOP-uh-lee], a band of 300 Spartans, led by their king, Leonidas [lee-ON-ih-

dus], gave their lives so that the Athenians could escape.

The Persians sacked Athens, and, as Themistocles hoped, quickly pursued the Athenians out to sea. At Salamis, of f

the Athenian coast, the Greeks won a stunning victory, led by Themistocles. The Persian ﬂeet, numbering about 800

galleys, faced the Greek ﬂeet of about 370 smaller and more maneuverable triremes [TR Y-reemz], galleys with three

tiers of oars on each side. Themistocles lured the Persian ﬂeet into the narrow waters of the strait at Salamis. The

Greek triremes then attacked the crowded Persian ﬂeet and used the great curved prows of their galleys to ram and

sink about 300 Persian vessels. The Greeks lost only about 40 of their own ﬂeet, and Xerxes was forced to retreat,

never to threaten the Greek mainland again.

THE GOLDEN AGE 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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After the Persian invasion, the Athenians returned to a devastated city . They initially vowed to keep the Acropolis in a

state of ruin as a reminder of the horrible price of war; however, the statesman Pericles (ca. 495–429 bce ) convinced

them to rebuild it, ushering in a “Golden Age” ( Map 2.2 ). No person dominated Athenian political life in the ﬁfth

century bce more than Pericles. An aristocrat by birth, he was nonetheless democracy’ s strongest advocate. Late in his

career, in 431 bce , he delivered a speech honoring soldiers who had fallen in early battles of the Peloponnesian W ar, a

struggle for power between Sparta and Athens that would eventually result in Athens’ s defeat in 404 bce , long after

Pericles’s own death. Pericles begins his speech by saying that, in order to properly honor the dead, he would like “to

point out by what principles of action we rose to power , and under what institutions and through what manner of life

our empire became great.” First and foremost in his mind is Athenian democracy . But Pericles is not concerned with

politics alone. He praises the Athenians’ “many relaxations from toil.” He acknowledges that life in Athens is as good

as it is because “the fruits of the whole earth ﬂow in upon us.” And, he insists, Athenians are “lovers of the beautiful”

who seek to “cultivate the mind.” “To sum up,” he concludes ( Reading 2.3 ):

READING 2.3 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian W ars , Pericles’

Funeral Speech (ca. 410 bce )

I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power

of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and

idle word, but truth and fact; and the assertion is veriﬁed by the position to which these qualities have raised the state.

. . . I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize

than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of these men whom I am

now commemorating. Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the city , I magnify them, and

men like them whose virtues made her glorious.

Map 2.2 Athens as it appeared in the late 5th century bce .

When Pericles says that Athens is “the school of Hellas,” he means that it teaches all of Greece by its example. He

insists that the greatness of the state is a function of the greatness of its individuals. The quality of Athenian life

depends upon this link between individual freedom and civic responsibility—which most of us in the W estern world

recognize as the foundation of our own political idealism (if, too often, not our political reality).

As for rebuilding the Acropolis, Pericles argued that, richly decorated with elaborate architecture and sculpture, the

Acropolis could become a ﬁtting memorial not only to the Persian war but especially to Athena’ s role in protecting the

Athenian people. Furthermore, at Persepolis, the defeated Xerxes and then his son and successor Artaxerxes [ar -tuh-

ZERK-seez] I (r. 465–424 bce ), were busy expanding their palace, and Athens was not about to be outdone. Pericles

placed the sculptor , Phidias, in charge of the sculptural program for the new buildings on the Acropolis, and Phidias

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The Architectural Pr ogram at the Acr opolis

The cost of rebuilding the Acropolis was enormous, but despite the reservations expressed by many over such an

extravagant expenditure, ﬁnanced mostly by tributes that Athens assessed upon its allies, the project had the virtue of

employing thousands of Athenians—citizens, metics (free men who were not citizens because they came from

somewhere in the Greek world other than Athens), and slaves alike—thus guaranteeing its popularity . Writing a Life

of Pericles ﬁve centuries later , the Greek-born biographer Plutarch (ca. 46–after 1 19 ce ) gives us some idea of the

project and its effects ( Reading 2.4 ):

READING 2.4 Plutarch, Life of Pericles (75 ce )

The raw materials were stone, bronze, ivory , gold, ebony, and cypress wood. T o fashion them were a host of

craftsmen: carpenters, moulders, coppersmiths, stonemasons, goldsmiths, ivory-specialists, painters, textile-designers,

and sculptors in relief. Then there were the men detailed for transport and haulage: merchants, sailors, and helmsmen

at sea; on land, cartwrights, drovers, and keepers of traction animals. There were also the rope-makers, the ﬂax-

workers, cobblers, roadmakers, and miners. Each craft, like a commander with his own army , had its own attachments

of hired labourers and individual specialists organized like a machine for the service required. So it was that the

various commissions spread a ripple of prosperity throughout the citizen body .

The Parthenon

The centerpiece of the project was the Parthenon ( Fig. 2.23 ), which was completed in 432 bce after 15 years of

construction. As Pericles had argued, it was built to give thanks to Athena for the salvation of Athens and Greece in

the Persian Wars, but it was also a tangible sign of the power and might of the Athenian state, designed to impress all

who visited the city . It was built on the foundations and platform of an earlier structure, but the architects Ictinus and

Callicrates clearly intended it to represent the Doric order in its most perfect form. It has 8 columns at the ends and 17

on the sides. Each column swells out about one-third of the way up, a device called entasis , to counter the eye’ s

tendency to see the uninterrupted parallel columns as narrowing as they rise and to give a sense of “breath” or

liveliness to the stone. The columns also slant slightly inward, so that they appear to the eye to rise straight up. And

since horizontal lines appear to sink in the middle, the platform beneath them rises nearly ﬁve inches from each corner

to the middle. There are no true verticals or horizontals in the building, a fact that lends its apparently rigid geometry a

sense of liveliness and animation.

Fig. 2.23 Ictinus, with contributions by Callicrates, the Parthenon and its

plan, Acropolis, Athens. 447–438 bce . Sculptural pr ogram completed 432

bce .

The temple measures about 228 ′ × 101 ′ on the top step. The temple remained almost wholly intact (though it served

variously as a church and then a mosque) until 1687, when the attacking V enetians exploded a Turkish powder

magazine housed in it. The giant, 40-foot-high sculpture of Athena Parthenos was located in the Parthenon’ s cella or

naos, the central interior room of a temple in which the cult statue was traditionally housed. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Explore an architectural panorama of the Parthenon on myartslab.com

In the clarity of its parts, the harmony among them, and its overall sense of proportion and balance, the Parthenon

represents the epitome of classical architecture. The building’ s classical sense of beauty manifests itself in the

architects’ use of a system of proportionality in order to coordinate the construction process in a way that resulted in a

harmonious design. The ratio controlling the Parthenon’s design can be expressed in the algebraic formula x = 2 y + 1.

The temple’s columns, for instance, reﬂect this formula: there are 8 columns on the short ends and 17 on the sides,

because 17 = (2 × 8) + 1. The ratio of the stylobate’ s length to width is 9:4, because 9 = (2 × 4) + 1. This mathematical

regularity is central to the overall harmony of the building.

Other Architectural Pr ojects on the Acr opolis

One of the architects employed in the project, Mnesicles [NES-ih-kleez], was char ged with designing the propylon , or

lar ge entryway , where the Panathenaic W ay approached the Acropolis from below . Instead of a single gate, he created

ﬁve, an architectural tour de force named the Propylaia [prop-uh-LA Y-uh] (the plural of pr opylon ), ﬂanked with

porches and colonnades of Doric columns. The north wing included a picture gallery featuring paintings of Greek

history and myth, none of which survive. Contrasting with the towering mass of the Propylaia was the far more

delicate T emple of Athena Nike ( Fig. 2.24 ), situated on the promontory just to the west and overlooking the entrance

way. Graced by slender Ionic columns, the diminutive structure (it measures a mere 27 by 19 feet) was designed by

Callicrates and built in 425 bce , not long after the death of Pericles. It was probably meant to celebrate what the

Athenians hoped would be their victory in the Peloponnesian W ars, as nike is Greek for “victory.” Before the end of

the wars, between 410 and 407 bce , it was surrounded by a parapet , or low wall, faced with panels depicting Athena

together with her winged companions, the V ictories.

Fig. 2.24 Temple of Athena Nike, Acr opolis, Athens. ca. 425 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Overlooking the approach to the Propylaia, the lighter Ionic columns of the temple contrast dramatically with the

heavier, more robust Doric columns of the gateway .

Fig. 2.25 Erechtheion, Acr opolis, Athens. 430s–405 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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The Erechtheion, with its irregular and asymmetrical design, slender Ionic columns, and delicate Porch of the

Maidens, contrasts dramatically and purposefully with the more orthodox and highly regular Parthenon across the

Acropolis to the south.

To the left of the Parthenon, visitors would have seen the Erechtheion ( Fig. 2.25 ). Its asymmetrical and multileveled

structure is unique, resulting from the rocky site on which it is situated. Flatter areas were available on the Acropolis,

so its demanding position is clearly intentional. The building surrounds a sacred spring dedicated to Erechtheus, the

ﬁrst legendary king of Athens, after whom the building is named. W ork on the building began after the completion of

the Parthenon, in the 430s bce , and took 25 years. Among its unique characteristics is the famous Porch of the

Maidens, facing the Parthenon. It is supported by six caryatids , female ﬁgures serving as columns. These ﬁgures

illustrate both the idea of the temple column as a kind of human ﬁgure and the idea that the stability of the polis

depends upon the conduct of its womenfolk. All assume a classic contrapposto pose, the three on the left with their

weight over the right leg, the three on the right with their weight over the left. Although each ﬁgure is unique—the

folds on their chitons fall differently, and their breasts are dif ferent sizes and shapes—together they create a sense of

balance and harmony.

The Sculptural Pr ogram at the Parthenon

If Phidias’s hand was not directly involved in carving the sculpture decorating the Parthenon, most of the decoration is

probably his design. He was, of course, heir to the ever -increasing interest in naturalistic representation that had

developed at the end of the sixth century bce in Athenian kouros sculpture (see Figs. 2.17 and 2.18 ). A sculpture

attributed to Kritios ( Fig. 2.26 ), found in 1865 in a pile of debris on the Acropolis pushed aside by Athenians cleaning

up after the Persian invasion (its head was found 25 years later in a separate location), demonstrates the increasing

naturalism of Greek sculpture during the ﬁrst 20 years of the ﬁfth century bce . The boy’s head is turned slightly to the

side. His weight rests on the left leg, and the right leg extends forward, bent slightly at the knee. The ﬁgure seems to

twist around its axis , or imaginary central line, the natural result of balancing the body over one supporting leg. The

term for this stance, coined during the Italian Renaissance, is contrapposto (“counterpoise”), or weight-shift. The

inspiration for this development seems to have been a growing desire by Greek sculptors to dramatize the stories

narrated in the decorative programs of temples and sanctuaries. Liveliness of posture and gesture and a sense of

capturing the body in action became their primary sculptural aim and the very deﬁnition of classical beauty .

Fig. 2.26 Kritios Boy , from Acr opolis, Athens. ca. 480 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Marble, height 46″ . Acropolis Museum, Athens. The growing naturalism of Greek sculpture is clear when one

compares the Kritios Boy to the kouros ﬁgures discussed earlier in the chapter . Although more naturalistic, this ﬁgure

still served a votive function.

An even more developed version of the contrapposto pose can be seen in the Doryphoros , or Spear Bear er (Fig. 2.27 ),

whose weight falls on the forward right leg. An idealized portrait of an athlete or warrior , originally done in bronze,

the Doryphoros is a Roman copy of the work of Polyclitus, one of the great artists of the Golden Age. The sculpture

was famous throughout the ancient world as a demonstration of Polyclitus’ s treatise on proportion known as The

Canon (from the Greek kanon , meaning “measure” or “rule”). In Polyclitus’s system, the ideal human form was

determined by the height of the head from the crown to the chin. The head was one-eighth the total height, the width

of the shoulders was one-quarter the total height, and so on, each measurement reﬂecting these ideal proportions. For

Polyclitus, these relations resulted in the work’ s symmetria , the origin of our word “symmetry,” but meaning, in

Polyclitus’s usage, “commensurability ,” or “having a common measure.” Thus, the ﬁgure, beautifully realized in great

detail, right down to the veins on the back of the hand, reﬂects a higher mathematical order and embodies the ideal

harmony between the natural world and the intellectual or spiritual realm.

We know for certain that Phidias himself designed the giant statue of Athena Parthenos housed in the Parthenon ( Fig.

2.28 ). Though long since destroyed, we know its general characteristics through literary descriptions and miniature

copies. It stood 40 feet high and was supported by a ship’ s mast. Its skin was made of ivory and its dress and armor of

gold. Its spectacular presence was meant to celebrate not only the goddess’ s religious power but also the political

power of the city she protected. She is at once a warrior, with spear and shield, and the model of Greek womanhood,

the parthenos, or maiden, dressed in the standard Doric peplos. And since the gold that formed the surface of the

statue was removable, she was, in essence, an actual treasury .

Fig. 2.27 Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) . Roman copy after the original

bronze by Polyclitus of ca. 450–440 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Marble, height 6′ 6 ″ . Museo Archeològico Nazionale, Naples. There is some debate about just what “measure”

Polyclitus employed to achieve his ideal ﬁgure. Some ar gue that his system of proportions is based on the length of

the ﬁgure’s index ﬁnger or the width of the ﬁgure’ s hand across the knuckles. The idea that it is based on the distance

between the chin and hairline derives from a much later discussion of proportion by the Roman writer V itruvius, who

lived in the ﬁrst century ce . It is possible that Vitruvius had ﬁrsthand knowledge of Polyclitus’ s Canon, which was lost

long ago.

Fig. 2.28 Model of the Athena Parthenos , by Phidias. Original ca. 440 bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Royal Ontario Museum, T oronto. With Permission of the Royal Ontario Museum © ROM. Surviving “souvenir”

copies of Phidias’ s original give us some idea of how it must have originally appeared, and this model is based on

those.

The sculptures decorating the building proper were in three main areas—in the pediments at each end of the building,

on the metopes , or the square panels between the beam ends under the roof, and on the frieze that runs across the top

of the outer wall of the cella ( Fig. 2.29 ). Brightly painted, these sculptures must have appeared strikingly lifelike. The

3-foot-high frieze that originally ran at a height of nearly 27 feet around the central block of the building depicts a

ceremonial procession ( Fig. 2.30 ). Traditionally , the frieze has been interpreted as a depiction of the Panathenaic

procession, a civic festival occurring every four years in honor of Athena. Some 525 feet long, the freize consists of

horsemen, musicians, water carriers, maidens, and sacriﬁcial beasts. All the human ﬁgures have the ideal proportions

of the Doryphoros (see Fig. 2.27 ).

Fig. 2.29 Cutaway drawing of the Parthenon por ch showing friezes,

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Evident here is the architect Ictinus’ s juxtaposition of the Doric order, used for the columns with their capitals and the

entablature on the outside, with the lighter Ionic order of its continuous frieze, used for the entablature inside the

colonnade.

Fig. 2.30 Young Men on Horseback , segment of the north frieze,

Parthenon. ca. 440 bce .

Marble, height 41”. © The T rustees of the British Museum. This is just a small section of the entire procession, which

extends completely around the Parthenon.

The sculptural program in the west pediment depicts Athena battling with Poseidon to determine who was to be patron

of Athens. Scholars debate the identity of the ﬁgures in the east pediment, but it seems certain that overall it portrays 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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the birth of Athena with gods and goddesses in attendance ( Fig. 2.31 ). The 92 metopes, each separated from the next

by triglyphs , square blocks divided by grooves into three sections, narrate battles between the Greeks and four

enemies—the Trojans on one side, and on the other three, giants, Amazons (perhaps symbolizing the recently defeated

Persians), and centaurs, mythological beasts with the legs and bodies of horses and the trunks and heads of humans.

Executed in high relief ( Fig. 2.32 ), these metopes represent the clash between the forces of civilization—the Greeks—

and their barbarian, even bestial opponents. The male nude reﬂects not only physical but mental superiority , a theme

particularly appropriate for a temple to Athena, goddess of both war and wisdom.

Philosophy and the Polis

The extraordinary architectural achievement of the Acropolis is matched by the philosophical achievement of the

great Athenian philosopher Socrates, born in 469 bce , a decade after the Greek defeat of the Persians. His death in 399

bce arguably marks the end of Athens’ s Golden Age. Socrates’ death was not a natural one. His execution was ordered

by a polis in turmoil after its defeat by the Spartans in 404 bce . The city had submitted to the rule of the oligarchic

government installed by the victorious Spartans, the so-called Thirty T yrants, whose power was ensured by a gang of

“whip-bearers.” They deprived the courts of their power and initiated a set of trials against rich men, especially

metics, and democrats who opposed their tyranny. Over 1,500 Athenians were subsequently executed. Socrates was

brought to trial, accused of subversive behavior, corrupting young men, and introducing new gods, though these

charges may have been politically motivated. He antagonized his jury of citizens by insisting that his life had been as

good as anyone’ s and that far from committing any wrongs, he had greatly beneﬁted Athens. He was convicted by a

narrow majority and condemned to die by drinking poisonous hemlock. His refusal to ﬂee and his willingness to

submit to the will of the polis and drink the potion testify to his belief in the very polis that condemned him. His

eloquent defense of his decision to submit is recorded in the Crito [KRIH-toh], a dialogue between Socrates and his

friend Crito, actually written by Plato, Socrates’ student and fellow philosopher . Although the Athenians would

continue to enjoy relative freedom for many years to come, the death of Socrates marks the end of their great

experiment with democracy. Although Socrates was no defender of democracy—he did not believe that most people

were really capable of exercising good government—he became the model of good citizenship and right thinking for

centuries to come.

Fig. 2.31 A recumbent god (Dionysos or Heracles), east pediment of the

Parthenon. ca. 435 bce .

brought the marbles from the east pediment, as well as some from the west pediment and the south metopes, and a

large part of the frieze, back to England—the source of their name, the Elgin Marbles. The identities of the ﬁgures are

much disputed, but the greatness of their execution is not. Now exhibited in the round, in their original position on the

pediment, they were carved in high relief. As the sun passed over the three-dimensional relief on the east and west

pediments, the sculptures would have appeared almost animated by the changing light and the movement of their cast

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Fig. 2.32 Lapith Over coming a Centaur , south metope 27, Parthenon,

Athens. 447–438 bce .

defeated drunken centaurs at the wedding of their king, Pirtihous. The Greeks identiﬁed centaurs with the Persians,

whom they considered the embodiment of chaos, possessing centaur -like forces of irrationality.

The Philosophical T radition in Athens

To understand Socrates’ position, it is important to recognize that the crisis confronting Athens in 404 bce was not

merely political, but deeply philosophical. And furthermore, a deep division existed between the philosophers and the

polis. Plato, Socrates’ student, through whose writings we know Socrates’ teachings, believed good government was

unattainable “unless either philosophers become kings in our cities or those whom we now call kings and rulers take

to the pursuit of philosophy .” He well understood that neither was likely to happen, and good government was,

therefore, something of a dream. T o further complicate matters, there were two distinct traditions of Greek

philosophia —literally, “love of wisdom”—pre-Socratic and Sophist.

The oldest philosophical tradition, that of the pre-Socratics , referring to Greek philosophers who preceded Socrates,

was chieﬂy concerned with describing the natural universe—the tradition inaugurated by Thales of Miletus. “What,”

the pre-Socratics asked, “lies behind the world of appearance? What is everything made of? How does it work? Is

there an essential truth or core at the heart of the physical universe?” In some sense, then, they were scientists who

investigated the nature of things, and they arrived at some extraordinary insights. Pythagoras (ca. 570–490 bce ) was

one such pre-Socratic thinker . He conceived of the notion that the heavenly bodies appear to move in accordance with

the mathematical ratios and that these ratios also govern musical intervals producing what was later called “the

harmony of the spheres.” Leucippus (ﬁfth century bce ) was another. He conceived of an atomic theory in which

everything is made up of small, indivisible particles and the empty space, or void, between them (the Greek word for

“indivisible” is atom ). Democritus of Thrace (ca. 460–ca. 370 bce ) furthered the theory by applying it to the mind.

Democritus taught that everything from feelings and ideas to the physical sensations of taste, sight, and smell could be

explained by the movements of atoms in the brain. Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 540–ca. 480 bce ) argued for the

impermanence of all things. Change, or ﬂux, he said, is the basis of reality , although an underlying Form or Guiding 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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impermanence of all things. Change, or ﬂux, he said, is the basis of reality , although an underlying Form or Guiding

Force ( logos ) guides the process, a concept that later informs the Gospel of John in the Christian Bible, where logos is

often mistranslated as “word.”

Socrates was heir to the second tradition of Greek philosophy, that of the Sophists , literally “wise men.” The Sophists

no longer asked, “What do we know?” but, instead, “How do we know what we think we know?” and, crucially ,

“How can we trust what we think we know?” In other words, the Sophists concentrated not on the natural world but

on the human mind, fully acknowledging the mind’s many weaknesses. The Sophists were committed to what we

have come to call humanism —that is, a focus on the actions of human beings, political action being one of the most

important.

Protagoras (ca. 485–410 bce ), a leading Sophist, was responsible for one of the most famous of all Greek dictums:

“Man is the measure of all things.” By this he meant that each individual human, not the gods, not some divine or all-

encompassing force, deﬁnes reality. All sensory appearances and all beliefs are true for the person whose appearance,

or belief, they are. The Sophists believed that there were two sides to every ar gument. Protagoras’s attitude about the

gods is typical: “I do not know that they exist or that they do not exist.”

The Sophists were teachers who traveled about, imparting their wisdom for pay . Pericles championed them,

encouraging the best to come to Athens, where they enjoyed considerable prestige despite their status as metics. Their

ultimate aim was to teach political virtue— areté [ah-RA Y-tay]—emphasizing skills useful in political life, especially

rhetorical persuasion, the art of speaking eloquently and persuasively . Their emphasis on rhetoric—their apparent

willingness to assume either side of any argument merely for the sake of debate—as well as their critical examination

of myths, traditions, and conventions, gave them a reputation for cynicism. Thus, their brand of ar gumentation came

to be known as sophistry —subtle, tricky, superﬁcially plausible, but ultimately false and deceitful reasoning.

Socrates and the Sophists

Socrates despised everything the Sophists stood for , except their penchant for rhetorical debate, which was his chief

occupation. He roamed the streets of Athens, engaging his fellow citizens in dialogue, wittily and often bitingly

attacking them for the illogic of their positions. He employed the dialectic method —a process of inquiry and

instruction characterized by continuous question-and-answer dialogue intent on disclosing the un-examined premises

held implicitly by all reasonable beings. Unlike the Sophists, he refused to demand payment for his teaching, but like

them, he urged his fellow men not to mistake their personal opinions for truth. Our beliefs, he knew , are built mostly

on a foundation of prejudice and historical conditioning. He differed from the Sophists most crucially in his emphasis

on virtuous behavior. For the Sophists, the true, the good, and the just were relative things. Depending on the situation

or one’s point of view , anything might be true, good, or just—the point, as will become evident in the next section, of

many a Greek tragedy .

For Socrates, understanding the true meaning of the good, the true, and the just was prerequisite for acting virtuously ,

and the meaning of these things was not relative. Rather, true meaning resided in the psyche , the seat of both

intelligence and character. Through inductive reasoning —moving from speciﬁc instances to general principles, and

from particular to universal truths—it was possible, he believed, to understand the ideals to which human endeavor

should aspire. Neither Socrates nor the Sophists could have existed without the democracy of the polis and the

freedom of speech that accompanied it. Even during the reign of Pericles, Athenian conservatives had char ged the

Sophists with the crime of impiety. In questioning everything, from the authority of the gods to the rule of law , they

challenged the stability of the very democracy that protected them. It is thus easy to understand how , when democracy

ended, Athens condemned Socrates. He was democracy’s greatest defender, and if he believed that the polis had

forsaken its greatest invention, he himself could never betray it. Thus, he chose to die.

Plato’s Republic and Idealism

So far as we know , Socrates himself never wrote a single word. W e know his thinking only through the writings of his

greatest student, Plato (ca. 428–347 bce ). Thus, it may be true that the Socrates we know is the one Plato wanted us to

have, and that when we read Socrates’ words, we are encountering Plato’ s thought more than Socrates’.

As Plato presents Socrates to us, the two philosophers, master and pupil, have much in common. They share the

premise that the psyche is immortal and immutable. They also share the notion that we are all capable of remembering

the psyche’s pure state. But Plato advances Socrates’ thought in several important ways. Plato’ s philosophy is a brand

of idealism —it seeks the eternal perfection of pure ideas, untainted by material reality. He believes that there is an

invisible world of eternal Forms, or Ideas, beyond everyday experience, and that the psyche, trapped in the material

world and the physical body, can only catch glimpses of this higher order . Through a series of mental exercises,

beginning with the study of mathematics and then moving on to the contemplation of the Forms of Justice, Beauty ,

and Love, the student can arrive at a level of understanding that amounts to superior knowledge.

Socrates’ death deeply troubled Plato—not because he disagreed with Socrates’ decision, but because of the injustice

of his condemnation. The result of Plato’s thinking is The Republic. In this treatise, Plato outlines his model of the

ideal state. Only an elite cadre of the most highly educated men were to rule—those who had glimpsed Plato’ s

ultimate Form, or Idea—the Good. In The Republic, in a section known as the “Allegory of the Cave,” Socrates

addresses Plato’s older brother, Glaucon [GLA W-kon], in an attempt to describe the difﬁculties the psyche encounters

in its attempt to understand the higher Forms. The Form of Goodness, Socrates says, is “the universal author of all

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reason and truth in the intellectual; and . . . this is the power upon which he who would act rationally , either in public

or private life, must have his eye ﬁxed.” The Form of Goodness, then, is something akin to the common understanding

of God (though not God, from whom imperfect objects such as human beings descended, but more like an aspect of

the Ideal, of which, one supposes, God must have some superior knowledge). The difﬁculty is that, once having

attained an understanding of the Good, the wise individual will appear foolish to the people, who understand not at all.

And yet, as Plato argues, it is precisely these individuals, blessed with wisdom, who must rule the commonwealth.

In many ways, Plato’ s ideal state is reactionary—it certainly opposes the individualistic and self-aggrandizing world

of the Sophists. Plato is indif ferent to the fact that his wise souls will ﬁnd themselves ruling what amounts to a

totalitarian regime. He believes their own sense of Goodness will prevail over their potentially despotic position.

Moreover, rule by an intellectual philosopher king is superior to rule by any person whose chief desire is to satisfy his

own material appetites.

To live in Plato’ s Republic would have been dreary indeed. Sex was to be permitted only for purposes of procreation.

Everyone would under go physical and mental training reminiscent of Sparta in the sixth century bce . Although he

believed in the intellectual pursuit of the Form or Idea of Beauty , Plato did not champion the arts. He condemned

certain kinds of lively music because they affected not the reasonable mind of their audience but the emotional and

sensory tendencies of the body. (But even for Plato, a man who did not know how to dance was uneducated—Plato

simply preferred more restrained forms of music.) He also condemned sculptors and painters, whose works, he

believed, were mere representations of representations—for if an actual bed is once removed from the Idea of Bed, a

painting of a bed is twice removed, the faintest shadow . Furthermore, the images created by painters and sculptors

appealed only to the senses. Thus he banished them from his ideal republic. Because they gave voice to tensions

within the state, poets were banned as well.

Fig. 2.33 Assteas. Red-ﬁgure krater depicting a comedy , from Paestum,

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Staatliche Museen, Berlin. On a stage supported by columns, with a scenic backdrop to the left, robbers try to separate

a man from his strongbox.

The Theater of the People

The Dionysian aspects of the symposium—the drinking, the philosophical dialogue, and sexual license—tell us

something about the origins of Greek drama. The drama was originally a participatory ritual, tied to the cult of

Dionysus. A chorus of people participating in the ritual would address and respond to another chorus or to a leader ,

such as a priest, perhaps representing (thus “acting the part” of) Dionysus. These dialogues usually occurred in the

context of riotous dance and song—beﬁtting revels dedicated to the god of wine.

This kind of behavior gave rise to one of the three major forms of Greek drama, the satyr play . Always the last event

of the daylong performances, the satyr-play was farce , that is, broadly satirical comedy , in which actors disguised

themselves as satyrs, replete with extravagant genitalia, and generally honored the “lord of misrule,” Dionysus, by

misbehaving themselves. One whole satyr play survives, the Cyclops of Euripides, and half of another, Sophocles’

Trackers. The spirit of these plays can perhaps be summed up best by Odysseus’ s ﬁrst words in the Cyclops as he

comes ashore on the island of Polyphemus (recall Reading 2.2 page 57, and Fig. 4.15 ): “What? Do I see right? We

must have come to the city of Bacchus. These are satyrs I see around the cave.” The play , in other words, spoofs or

lampoons traditional Greek legend by setting it in a world turned topsy-turvy, a world in which Polyphemus is

stronger than Zeus because his farts are louder than Zeus’s thunder.

Comedy

Closely related to the satyr -plays was comedy , an amusing or lighthearted play designed to make its audience laugh.

The word itself is derived from the komos [KO-mus], a phallic dance, and nothing is sacred to comedy . It freely

slandered, buffooned, and ridiculed politicians, generals, public ﬁgures, and especially the gods. Foreigners, as always

in Greek culture, are subject to particular abuse, as are women; in fact, by our standards, the plays are racist and

sexist. Most of what we know about Greek comedies comes from two sources: vase painting and the plays of the

playwright Aristophanes.

Comedic action was a favorite subject of vase painters working at Paestum in Italy in the fourth century bce . They

depict actors wearing masks and grotesque costumes distinguished by padded bellies, buttocks, and enlar ged genitalia.

These vases show a theater of burlesque and slapstick that relied heavily on visual gags ( Fig. 2.33 ).

The works of Aristophanes (ca. 445–388 bce ) are the only comedies to have survived, and only 11 of his 44 plays

have come down to us. Lysistrata is the most famous. Sexually explicit to a degree that can still shock a modern

audience, it takes place during the Peloponnesian W ars and tells the story of an Athenian matron who convinces the

women of Athens and Sparta to withhold sex from their husbands until they sign a peace treaty . First performed in 411

bce , seven years before Sparta’ s victory over Athens, it has its serious side, begging both Athenians and Spartans to

remember their common traditions and put down their arms. Against this dark background, the play’ s action must

have seemed absurd and hilarious to its Athenian audience, ignorant of what the future would hold for them.

Tragedy

It was at tragedy that the Greek playwrights truly excelled. As with comedy , the basis for tragedy is conﬂict, but the

tensions at work in tragedy—murder and revenge, crime and retribution, pride and humility , courage and cowardice—

have far more serious consequences. Tragedies often explore the physical and moral depths to which human life can

descend. The form also has its origins in the Dionysian rites—the name itself derives from tragoidos [trah-GOY-dus],

the “goat song” of the half-goat, half-man satyrs—and tragedy’ s seriousness of purpose is not at odds with its origins.

Dionysus was also the god of immortality, and an important aspect of his cult’s inﬂuence is that he promised his

followers life after death, just as the grapevine regenerates itself year after year . If tragedy can be said to have a

subject, it is death—and the lessons the living can learn from the dead.

The original chorus structure of the Dionysian rites survives as an important element in tragedy . Thespis, a playwright

from whom we derive the word thespian , “actor,” ﬁrst assumed the conscious role of an actor in the mid-sixth century

bce and apparently redeﬁned the role of the chorus . At ﬁrst, the actor asked questions of the chorus, perhaps of the

“tell me what happened next” variety , but when two, three, and sometimes four actors were introduced to the stage,

the chorus began to comment on their interaction. In this way , the chorus assumed its classic function as an

intermediary between actors and audience. Although the chorus’ s role diminished noticeably in the fourth century bce ,

it remained the symbolic voice of the people, asserting the importance of the action to the community as a whole.

Greek tragedy often focused on the friction between the individual and his or her community , and, at a higher level,

between the community and the will of the gods. This conﬂict manifests itself in the weakness or “tragic ﬂaw” of the

play’s protagonist , or leading character , which brings the character into conﬂict with the community , the gods, or

some antagonist who represents an opposing will. The action occurs in a single day , the result of a single incident that

precipitates the unfolding crisis. Thus the audience feels that it is experiencing the action in real time, that it is directly

involved in and affected by the play’ s action.

During the reign of the tyrant Peisistratus, the performance of all plays was regularized. An annual competitive

festival for the performance of tragedies called the City Dionysia was celebrated for a week every March as the vines 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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came back to life, and a separate festival for comedies occurred in January . At the City Dionysia, plays were

performed in sets of four— tetralogies —all by the same author, three of which were tragedies, performed during the

day, and the fourth a satyr play , performed in the evening. The audiences were as lar ge as 14,000, and audience

response determined which plays were awarded prizes. Slaves, metics, and women judged the performances alongside

citizens.

Although many Greek playwrights composed tragedies, only those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides have come

down to us. Three plays by Aeschylus (ca. 525–ca. 456 bce ), known as the Oresteia [oh-ray-STYE-ee-uh], form the

only complete set of tragedies from a tetralogy that we have. The plays narrate the story of the Mycenaean king

Agamemnon, murdered by his adulterous wife Clytemnestra and mourned and revenged by their children, Orestes and

Electra. Playwright, treasurer for the Athenian polis, a general under Pericles, and advisor to Athens on ﬁnancial

matters during the Peloponnesian W ars, Sophocles (ca. 496–406 bce ) was an almost legendary ﬁgure in ﬁfth-century

bce Athens. He wrote over 125 plays, of which only seven survive, and he won the City Dionysia 18 times. In

Oedipus the King , Sophocles dramatizes how the king of Thebes, a polis in east central Greece, mistakenly kills his

father and marries his mother, then ﬁnally blinds himself to atone for his crimes of patricide and incest. In Antigone ,

he dramatizes the struggle of Oedipus’ s daughter Antigone with her uncle Creon, the tyrannical king who inherited

Oedipus’s throne. Antigone struggles for what amounts to her democratic rights as an individual to fulﬁll her familial

duties, even when this opposes what Creon ar gues is the interest of the polis. Her predicament is doubly complicated

by her status as a woman. The youngest of the three playwrights, Euripides (ca. 480–406 bce ), writing during the

Peloponnesian Wars, brought a level of measured skepticism to the stage. Eighteen of his 90 works survive, but

Euripides won the City Dionysia only four times. His plays probably angered more conservative Athenians, which

may be why he moved from Athens to Macedonia in 408 bce . In The Trojan W omen , for instance, performed in 415

bce , he describes, disapprovingly , the Greek enslavement of the women of T roy, drawing an unmistakable analogy to

the contemporary Athenian victory at Melos, where women were subjected to Athenian abuse.

The Performance Space

During the tyranny of Peisistratus, plays were performed in an open area of the Agora called the orchestra , or

“dancing space.” Spectators sat on wooden planks laid on portable scaf folding. Sometime in the ﬁfth century bce , the

scaffolding collapsed, and many people were injured. The Athenians built a new theater ( theatr on, meaning “viewing

space”), dedicated to Dionysus, into the hillside on the side of the Acropolis away from the Agora and below the

Parthenon. Architecturally , it was very similar to the best preserved of all Greek theaters, the one at Epidaurus ( Figs.

2.34 and 2.35 ), built in the early third century bce . The orchestra has been transformed into a circular performance

space, approached on each side by an entryway called a parados , through which the chorus would enter the orchestra

area. Behind this was an elevated platform, the pr oscenium , the stage on which the actors performed and where

painted backdrops could be hung. Behind the proscenium was the skene , literally a “tent,” and originally a changing

room for the actors. Over time, it was transformed into a building, often two stories tall. Actors on the roof could

portray the gods, looking down on the action below . By the time of Euripides, it housed a rolling or rotating platform

that could suddenly reveal an interior space.

Artists were regularly employed to paint stage sets, and evidence suggests that they had at least a basic knowledge of

perspective (although the geometry necessary for a fully realized perspectival space would not be developed until

around 300 bce , in Euclid’s Optics ). Their aim was, as in sculpture, to approximate reality as closely as possible. W e

know from literary sources that the painter Zeuxis “invented” ways to shade or model the ﬁgure in the ﬁfth century

bce . Legend also had it that he once painted grapes so realistically that birds tried to eat them. The theatrical sets

would have at least aimed at this degree of naturalism.

THE HELLENISTIC WORLD

Both the emotional drama of Greek theater and the sensory appeal of its music reveal a growing tendency in the

culture to value emotional expression at least as much, and sometimes more, than the balanced harmonies of classical

art. During the Hellenistic age in the fourth and third centuries bce , the truths that the culture increasingly sought to

understand were less idealistic and universal, and more and more empirical and personal. This shift is especially

evident in the new empirical philosophy of Aristotle (384–322 bce ), whose investigation into the workings of the real

world supplanted, or at least challenged, Plato’s idealism. In many ways, however, the ascendancy of this new

aesthetic standard can be attributed to the daring, the audacity , and the sheer awe-inspiring power of a single ﬁgure,

Alexander of Macedonia, known as Alexander the Great (356–323 bce ) ( Fig. 2.36 ). Alexander aroused the emotions

and captured the imagination of not just a theatrical audience, but an entire people—perhaps even the entire W estern

world—and created a legacy that established Hellenic Greece as the model against which all cultures in the West had

to measure themselves.

Fig. 2.34 Theater, Epidaurus. Early third century bce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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This theater is renowned for its democratic design—not only is every viewer equally well situated, but the acoustics of

the space are unparalleled. A person sitting in the very top row can hear a pin drop on the orchestra ﬂoor .

Fig. 2.35 Plan of the theater at Epidaurus. Early third century bce .

The Empir e of Alexander the Gr eat

Alexander was the son of Philip II (382–336 bce ) of Macedonia, a relatively undeveloped state to the north whose

inhabitants spoke a Greek dialect unintelligible to Athenians. Recognizing that after the Peloponnesian W ars, the

Greek poleis were in disarray, in 338 bce Philip defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes and uniﬁed all of

Greece, with the exception of Sparta. He then turned his attention to Persia, and when he was assassinated in 336 bce ,

Alexander quickly took control. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Fig. 2.36 Alexander the Great , head from a Pergamene copy (ca. 200 bce )

of a statue, possibly after a fourth-century bce original by L ysippus.

Marble, height 16⅛ ”. Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, T urkey. Alexander is traditionally portrayed as if looking

beyond his present circumstances to greater things.

Within two years of conquering Thebes, Alexander had crossed the Hellespont into Asia and defeated Darius III of

Persia at the battle of Issus (just north of modern Iskenderon, T urkey). The victory continued Philip’s plan to repay the

Persians for their role in the Peloponnesian W ars and to conquer Asia as well. By 332 bce , Alexander had conquered

Egypt, founding the great city of Alexandria (named, of course, after himself) in the Nile Delta ( Map 2.3 ). Then he

marched back into Mesopotamia, where he again defeated Darius III and then marched into both Babylon and Susa

without resistance. After making the proper sacriﬁces to the Akkadian god Marduk—and thus gaining the admiration

of the locals—he advanced on Persepolis, the Persian capital, which he burned after seizing its royal treasures. Then

he entered present-day Pakistan.

Map 2.3 Alexander’s empir e as of his death in 323 bce and the r oute of his

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Alexander founded over 70 cities throughout his empire, naming many after himself.

Alexander’s object was India, which he believed was relatively small. He thought if he crossed it, he would ﬁnd what

he called Ocean, and an easy sea route home. Finally , in 326 bce , his army reached the Indian Punjab. Under

Alexander’s leadership, it had marched over 1 1,000 miles without a defeat. It had destroyed ancient empires, founded

many cities (in the 320s bce , Alexandrias proliferated across the world), and created the lar gest empire the world had

ever known.

When Alexander and his army reached the banks of the Indus River in 326 bce , he encountered a culture that had long

fascinated him. His teacher Aristotle had described it, wholly on hearsay , as had Herodotus before him, as the farthest

land mass to the east, beyond which lay the Endless Ocean that encircled the world. Alexander stopped ﬁrst at T axila

(20 miles north of modern Islamabad, Pakistan; see Map 2.3 ), where King Omphis [OHM-ﬁs] greeted him with a gift

of 200 silver talents, 3,000 oxen, 10,000 sheep, 30 elephants, and bolstered Alexander’s army by giving him 700

Indian cavalry and 5,000 infantry .

While Alexander was in Taxila, he became acquainted with the Hindu philosopher Calanus [kuh-LA Y-nus]. Alexander

recognized in Calanus and his fellow Hindu philosophers a level of wisdom and learning that he valued highly , one

clearly reminiscent of Greek philosophy, and his encounters with them represent the ﬁrst steps in a long history of the

cross-fertilization of Eastern and Western cultures.

But in India the army encountered elephants, whose formidable size proved problematic. East of T axila, Alexander’s

troops managed to defeat King Porus [P AW -rus], whose army was equipped with 200 elephants. Rumor had it that

farther to the east, the kingdom of the Ganges, their next logical opponent, had a force of 5,000 elephants. Alexander

pleaded with his troops: “Dionysus, divine from birth, faced terrible tasks—and we have outstripped him! . . .

Onward, then: let us add to our empire the rest of Asia!” The army refused to budge. His conquests thus concluded,

Alexander himself sailed down the Indus River , founding the city that would later become Karachi. As he returned

home, he contracted fever in Babylon and died in 323 bce . Alexander’s life was brief, but his inﬂuence on the arts was

long lasting.

Fig. 2.37 L ysippus, Apoxyomenos (The Scraper) , Roman copy of an

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Museo Pio Clementino, V atican Museums, Vatican State. Marble, height 6 ′ 8 ″ . According to the Roman Pliny the

Elder, writing in his Natural History in the ﬁrst century ce , Lyssipus “made the heads of his ﬁgures smaller than the

old sculptors used to do.” In fact, the ratio of the head size to the body in L ysippus’s sculpture is 1:9, as compared to

Polyclitus’ s Classical proportions of 1:8.

Toward Hellenistic Art: Sculptur e in the Late Classical Period

During Alexander’s time, sculpture ﬂourished. Ever since the fall of Athens to Sparta in 404 bce , Greek artists had

continued to develop the Classical style of Phidias and Polyclitus, but they modiﬁed it in subtle yet innovative ways.

Especially notable was a growing taste for images of men and women in quiet, sometimes dreamy and contemplative

moods, which increasingly replaced the sense of nobility and detachment characteristic of ﬁfth-century Classicism and

found its way even into depictions of the gods. The most admired sculptors of the day were L yssipus, Praxiteles, and

Skopas. Very little of the latter ’s work has survived, though he was noted for high relief sculpture featuring highly

ener gized and emotional scenes. The work of the ﬁrst two is far better known.

The Her oic Sculptur e of Lysippus

Alexander hired the sculptor L ysippus (ﬂourished fourth century bce ) to do all his portraits. Despite his cruel

treatment of the Thebans early in his career , Alexander was widely admired by the Greeks. Even during his lifetime,

but especially after his death, sculptures celebrating the youthful hero abounded, almost all of them modeled on

Lyssipus’ s originals. Alexander is easily recognizable—his disheveled hair long and ﬂowing, his gaze intense and

melting, his mouth slightly open, his head alertly turned on a slightly tilted neck (see Fig. 2.36 ).

Lysippus dramatized his hero. That is, he did not merely represent Alexander as naturalistically as possible, he also

animated him, showing him in the midst of action. In all likelihood, he idealized him as well. The creation of 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Alexander’s likeness was a conscious act of propaganda. Early in his conquests the young hero referred to himself as

“Alexander the Great,” and L ysippus’s job was to embody that greatness. L ysippus challenged the Classical kanon of

proportion created by Polyclitus—smaller heads and slenderer bodies lent his heroic sculptures a sense of greater

height. In fact, he transformed the Classical tradition in sculpture and began to explore new possibilities that,

eventually, would deﬁne Hellenistic art, with its sense of animation, drama, and psychological complexity . In a Roman

copy of a lost original by Lysippus known as the Apoxyomenos [uh-pox-ee-oh-MAY-nus] ( Fig. 2.37 ), or The Scraper ,

an athlete removes oil and dirt from his body with an instrument called a strigil. Compared to the Doryphoros (Spear

Bearer) of Polyclitus (see Fig. 2.27 ), the Scraper is much slenderer , his legs much longer , his torso shorter. The

Scraper seems much taller , though, in fact, the sculptures are very nearly the same height. The arms of The Scraper

break free of his frontal form and invite the viewer to look at the sculpture from the sides as well as the front. He

seems detached from his circumstances, as if recalling his athletic performance. All in all, he seems both physically

and mentally uncontained by the space in which he stands.

The Sensuous Sculptur e of Praxiteles

Competing with Lysippus for the title of greatest sculptor of the fourth century bce was the Athenian Praxiteles

(ﬂourished 370–330 bce ). Praxiteles was one of the 300 wealthiest men in Athens, thanks to his skill, but he also had a

reputation as a womanizer . The people of the port city of Knidos [ku-NEE-dus], a Spartan colony in Asia Minor ,

asked him to provide them with an image of their patron goddess, Aphrodite, in her role as the protectress of sailors

and merchants. Praxiteles responded with a sculpture of Aphrodite as the goddess of love, here reproduced in a later

Roman copy ( Fig. 2.38 ). She stands at her bath, holding her cloak in her left hand. The sculpture is a frank celebration

of the body—reﬂecting in the female form the humanistic appreciation for the dignity of the human body in its own

right. (Images of it on local coins suggest that her original pose was far less modest than that of the Roman copy , her

right hand not shielding her genitals.) The statue made Knidos famous, and many people traveled there to see it. She

was enshrined in a circular temple, easily viewed from every angle, the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (23–79 ce ) tells

us, and she quickly became an object of religious attention—and openly sexual adoration. The reason for this is

difﬁcult to assess in the rather mechanical Roman copies of the lost original.

Fig. 2.38 Praxiteles, Aphrodite of Knidos Roman copy of an original of ca.

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P. Zigrossi/V atican Museums, V atican State. Marble, height 6’ 8”. The head of this ﬁgure is from one Roman copy , the

body from another. The right forearm and hand, the left arm, and the lower legs of the Aphrodite are all seventeenth-

and eighteenth-century restorations. There is reason to believe that her hand was not so modestly positioned in the

original.

Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos may be the ﬁrst fully nude depiction of a woman in Greek sculpture, which may be

why it caused such a sensation. Its fame elevated female nudity from a sign of low moral character to the embodiment

of beauty , even truth itself. Paradoxically , it is also one of the earliest examples of artwork designed to appeal to what

some art historians describe as the male gaze that regards woman as its sexual object. Praxiteles’ canon for depicting

the female nude—wide hips, small breasts, oval face, and centrally parted hair—remained the standard throughout

antiquity.

Aristotle: Observing the Natural W orld

We can only guess what motivated L ysippus and Praxiteles to so dramatize and humanize their sculptures, but it is

likely that the aesthetic philosophy of Aristotle (384–322 bce ) played a role. Aristotle was a student of Plato’ s. Recall

that, for Plato, all reality is a mere reﬂection of a higher , spiritual truth, a higher dimension of Ideal Forms that we

glimpse only through philosophical contemplation.

Aristotle disagreed. Reality was not a reﬂection of an ideal form, but existed in the material world itself, and by

observing the material world, one could come to know universal truths. So Aristotle observed and described all

aspects of the world in order to arrive at the essence of things. His methods of observation came to be known as

empirical investigation . And though he did not create a formal scientiﬁc method , he and other early empiricists did

create procedures for testing their theories about the nature of the world that, over time, would lead to the great

scientiﬁc discoveries of Bacon, Galileo, and Newton. Aristotle studied biology , zoology, physics, astronomy , politics,

logic, ethics, and the various genres of literary expression. Based on his observations of lunar eclipses, he concluded

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as early as 350 bce that the Earth was spherical, an observation that may have motivated Alexander to cross India in

order to sail back to Greece. He described over 500 animals in his Historia Animalium, including many that he

dissected himself. In fact, Aristotle’ s observations of marine biology were unequaled until the seventeenth century and

were still much admired by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth.

He also understood the importance of formulating a reasonable hypothesis to explain phenomena. His Physics is an

attempt to deﬁne the ﬁrst principles governing the behavior of matter—the nature of weight, motion, physical

existence, and variety in nature. At the heart of Aristotle’ s philosophy is a question about the relation of identity and

change (not far removed, incidentally, from one of the governing principles of this text—the idea of continuity and

change in the humanities). To discuss the world coherently , we must be able to say what it is about a thing that makes

it the thing it is, that separates it from all the other things in the world. In other words, what is the attribute that we

would call its material identity or essence ? What it means to be human, for instance, does not depend on whether

one’s hair turns gray . Such “accidental” changes matter not at all. At the same time, our experience of the natural

world suggests that any coherent account requires us to acknowledge process and change—the change of seasons, the

changes in our understanding associated with gaining knowledge in the process of aging, and so on. For Aristotle, any

account of a thing must accommodate both aspects: W e must be able to say what changes a thing undergoes while still

retaining its essential nature. Aristotle thus approached all manner of things—from politics to the human condition—

with an eye toward determining what constituted its essence.

Aristotle’s Poetics

What constitutes the essential nature of literary art, and the theater in particular , especially fascinated him. Like all

Greeks, Aristotle was well acquainted with the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, and in his Poetics he

deﬁned their literary art as “the imitation of an action that is complete and whole.” Including a whole action, or a

series of events that ends with a crisis, gives the play a sense of unity. Furthermore, he argued (against Plato, who

regarded imitation as inevitably degrading and diminishing) that such imitation elevates the mind ever closer to the

universal.

One of the most important ideas that Aristotle expressed in the Poetics is catharsis , the cleansing, puriﬁcation, or

purgation of the soul. As applied to drama, it is not the tragic hero who under goes catharsis, but the audience. The

audience’s experience of catharsis is an experience of change, just as change always accompanies understanding. In

the theater , what moves the audience to change is its experience of the universality of the human condition—what it is

that makes us human, our weaknesses as well as our strengths. At the sight of the action onstage, they are struck with

“fear and pity .” Plato believed that both of these emotions were pernicious. But Aristotle ar gued that the audience’s

emotional response to the plight of the characters on stage clariﬁed for them the fragility and mutability of human life.

What happens in tragedy is universal—the audience understands that the action could happen to anyone at any time.

The Golden Mean

In Aristotle’s philosophy , such Classical aesthetic elements as unity of action and time, orderly arrangement of the

parts, and proper proportion all have ethical ramiﬁcations. He ar gued for them by means of a philosophical method

based on the syllogism , two premises from which a conclusion can be drawn. The most famous of all syllogisms is

this:

All men are mortal;

Socrates is a man;

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written for and edited by his son Nicomachus [nee-koh-MAH-kus], Aristotle attempts to

deﬁne, once and for all, what Greek society had striven for since the beginning of the polis—the good life. The

operative syllogism goes something like this:

The way to happiness is through the pursuit of moral virtue;

The pursuit of the good life is the way to happiness;

Therefore, the good life consists in the pursuit of moral virtue.

The good life, Aristotle argued, is attainable only through balanced action. T radition has come to call this the Golden

Mean —not Aristotle’s phrase but that of the Roman poet Horace—the middle ground between any two extremes of

behavior. Thus, in a formulation that was particularly applicable to his student Alexander the Great, the Golden Mean

between cowardice and recklessness is courage. Like the arts, which imitate an action, human beings are deﬁned by

their actions: “As with a ﬂute-player , a statuary [sculptor], or any artisan, or in fact anybody who has a deﬁnite

function, so it would seem to be with humans. . . . The function of humans is an activity of soul in accordance with

reason.” This activity of soul seeks out the moral mean, just as “good artists . . . have an eye to the mean in their

works.”

Despite the measure and moderation of Aristotle’ s thinking, Greek culture did not necessarily reﬂect the balanced

approach of its leading philosopher. In his emphasis on catharsis—the value of experiencing “fear and pity ,” the

emotions that move us to change—Aristotle introduced the values that would deﬁne the age of Hellenism, the period

lasting from 323 to 31 bce , that is, from the death of Alexander to the Battle of Actium, the event that marks in the

minds of many the beginning of the Roman Empire. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Alexandria

Perhaps the most spectacular of all Alexander ’s capitols was Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander had conceived of all the

cities he founded as centers of culture. They would be hubs of trade and learning, and Greek culture would radiate out

from them to the surrounding countryside. But Alexandria exceeded even Alexander ’s expectations.

The city’ s ruling family , the Ptolemies (heirs of Alexander ’s close friend and general, Ptolemy I), built the world’ s ﬁrst

museum—from the Greek mouseion [moo-ZAY-on], literally , “temple to the muses”—conceived as a meeting place

for scholars and students. Nearby was the lar gest library in the world, exceeding even Pergamon’s. It contained over

700,000 volumes. Plutarch later claimed that it was