The victories in the Persian Wars produced a new sense of optimism and unity in Greece.  This is especially true in Athens.  In the face of the Persian threat defeatism had been rampant from the supposedly fearless Spartan generals to Apollo's own oracle at Delphi.  The Athenians alone had acted courageously in time of mortal danger; Athenian fortitude had saved the rest of Greece.  This will result in an Athenian sense of moral superiority they will never forget.  "The confidence and pride that came with victory...propelled Athens into a golden age, which became marred by the Athenian urge for dominance in Greece (Perry, 54)."
    This classical age will be one of consolidation, a search for stability & harmony (emphasis for writers, thinkers & artists = balance, order, harmony), but ends up being one largely of war!  Still there are few areas of human thought in which the 5th century BC Greeks were not pioneers: drama, historiography, town planning, medicine, painting, sculpture, mathematics, government.

I. Delian League and Athenian Imperialism

   The new found unity among the Greeks led in 478 BC to the formation of an organization of more than 150 city-states to guard against any future attack from the outside.  Money from the members was kept in a treasury on the island of Delos (an island sacred to the god Apollo, hence, the Delian League).  Since Athens had wealth and a powerful fleet, it assumed leadership of the league when Sparta refused.  The League was able to drive both pirates and the Persians from the Aegean Sea.  By 470 BC Themistocles is ostracized, flees to the Persians and dies in the service of Xerxes' son and successor Artaxerxes.  By this time some of the city-states felt the threat from Persia was over and attempted to withdraw from the league, but Athens attacked both Naxos (470) and Thasos (465) and the Delian League became the Athenian Empire.  Thus ends the unity of Greece as the Greek world divides into two spheres of influence, Spartan and Athenian.

2. Rise of Pericles  and Aspasia [Pericles was elected general continuously—30times!—between 460-429 BC, except for 444 & 430—when he was removed from office and fined 15-50 talents.  He lay at home dejected and mourning until Alcibiades and others talked him into resuming office when the people recalled him after only a few weeks ] 
 The government of Athens was comprised of the Areopagus, Assembly, Council of 500, 10 Strategoi, and 9 archons (executive officers).  In 462 BC the Areopagus was stripped of its political power and Athens becomes a direct democracy with the Assembly of all male citizens making the laws. ("...Athenians debated and voted on key issues of state--they declared war, signed treaties, and spent public funds.  The lowliest cobbler, as well as the wealthiest aristocrat, had the opportunity to express his opinion in the Assembly, to vote, and to hold office.  By the middle of the fifth century, the will of the people as expressed in the Assembly was supreme” (Perry,56).  [Council of 500 managed the ports, military installations, and other state properties and prepared the agenda for the Assembly.  Strategoi led the army and were elected by Assembly.]
  Cimon, son of Miltiades (hero of Marathon), became the leading statesman of Athens until his ostracism in 461 for his pro-Spartan policies.  His successor Ephialtes would be killed by Boeotian assassins hired by Athenian aristocrats.  "The reform was partly inspired by a brilliant young aristocrat named Pericles.  By about 457 the patriotic and incorruptible Pericles had become the leading Athenian politician, responsible for the many military and naval operations conducted simultaneously against the Persians in Egypt (an expensive failure after which in 454 BC the Athenians moved the Delian treasury to Athens on the pretext of protecting it from pirates), against the Spartans, and against certain members of the Athenian alliance itself who resented Athens's dominating ways.
   "At home Pericles pressed for democracy, inaugurating a system of state pay, first for jurymen (drawn from a panel six thousand strong, six hundred from each tribe), and later for those rendering other services to the state.  State service was thus transformed from an activity that the poor could not afford into one that they welcomed.  To limit the number of those eligible for such payment. Pericles also limited Athenian citizenship to those whose parents were both Athenian.  He also saw to it that the money to pay all these people would come only from Athens' allies (Winks, 44)."  The treasury at Delos was used for Athenian building projects.  The Athenians saw no conflict between their imperialism in building a compulsory empire out of the original voluntary league and democracy because it was just natural for strong states to increase their might at the expense of weaker ones.
   Having signed a peace with the Persians in 449 and a truce (the “30 years peace”) with Sparta after the first Peloponnesian War (460-445), Athens enjoyed relative peace from 445 - 431 BC.
            Meanwhile, Aspasia of Miletus, becomes the second most famous female (after Sappho) in Greek history.  Her name means "desired one", probably not her given name.  Born about 470 to the wife of Axiochus, a citizen of Miletus, Aspasia’s pious parents probably dedicated her to a temple of Aphrodite for training as a devotee of the goddess (i.e., a temple prostitute), since it was illegal for free woman to be a prostitute.  This was a perfectly legitimate way (the alternative being exposure) of getting rid of expensive and unwanted girl children who had to be fed and whose dowries might cost a whole year's income!  Temple prostitution was, in fact, a form of slavery; yet somehow she gained her freedom and went into private practice.  Whether an adoring client purchased her release or the  madam let her go, or if she was a temple prostitute, she may have fulfilled her obligation to the goddess and been released.  Whatever the case, endowed with brains and beauty she became a great success and was on intimate terms with some of most prominent citizens of Miletus.  Remember, hetairai ("female companions," our equivalent of call girls) were much more than common prostitutes; they  were highly desired and much-prized companions who knew philosophy, history, politics, science, art and literature. 
            In 448 BC the Athenian people authorized enormous expenditures for the adornment of the city with temples, porticoes, and other public buildings.  This caused a wave of immigration to Athens of artisans (architects, engineers, artists, masons, etc.).  Aspasia probably saw great opportunities here, too, and set herself up with a number of younger women in a house (prob. 440's).  Houses of prostitution were quite popular in a society that did not permit free association between the sexes (we know a lot about them, esp. from Athenaeus who collected all the stories).
    "For some time, Athens had run state-owned brothels; in addition, there were private ones, and such businesses never died for lack of a customer.  The typical male attitude toward sex in Athens seems to be summed up by one citizen's statement that wives were for legitimate children and looking after the house, but `we have call girls for our pleasures and mistresses to daily refresh our bodies.'  There was always room for a new whoring establishment, as long as it was registered and paid the required special tax” (Greek Society 131).
            The house of Aspasia was known all over the Greek world not only for the beauty of her girls, but also for the fame of her customers and the high level of conversation there:  statesmen, playwrights, generals, artists, philosophers, even Socrates, one of Aspasia's favorites.  She is mentioned in the works of his students, e.g. Plato's Menexenus, Xenophon's Oeconomicus, Aeschines of Sphettus’ Aspasia.
    "It seems ironic that men who otherwise excluded women from politics and gave so little attention to their capabilities would earnestly solicit Aspasia's advice on weighty matters and place such high value on her opinions.  Although holding no official position and certainly not considered `respectable' by Greek standards, it was precisely her freedom from conventional restraints that allowed Aspasia to become as influential as she was in Athens (Greek Society 132).
            One day in 440's Pericles saw her, divorced his rich noble wife, and took her as his mistress (he was twice her age: Burn says in 445 Pericles at 50 fell in love with a 20 yr. old)--BUT lived with her!  This was totally unacceptable in Athenian society; in fact, he could not legally marry her because she was not an Athenian citizen--but he remained faithful to her until he died!
    Because of Pericles, she probably also got to know the philosopher Protagorus, but not Anaxagorus  of Clazomenae, Pericles' close friend and teacher ("though soul-mate might be a more proper description since the two men did not differ much in age" --Greek People 134) who probably was forced out of Athens in 450 BC because of his radical views about the gods and the universe (considered atheistic by contemporary standards) and his association with Pericles.
            Her influence and fame increased but also hostility toward her with the bourgeois attitudes of: anti-intellectualism, puritanism, fear of foreigners, and distrust of the intelligence of women.  Comics call her the new Omphale (who once made Heracles wear women's clothes) and Deianeira (who caused the death of Heracles).  The comic poet Cratinus called her "Pericles' Hera, born of buggery, the dog-eyed whore"; others accused her of meddling in politics, of writing speeches for Pericles and perfecting his rhetoric.  She was also accused of causing Athens to take Miletus' side in a war against Samos in which a large number of Athenian young men lost their lives.
            But when Pericles lost his two legitimate sons by his wife to the plague, he pleaded with Athenian assembly to provide him with legal heir by granting citizenship to Aspasia's son (ironically it was his law he was attempting to circumvent!).  They did, and he later served as treasurer and general in 406.  Sadly, he was executed along with 7 other generals after the battle of Arginusae when 25 ships of Athenian sailors were lost and were not rescued because of bad weather.
            After Pericles's death in 429 Aspasia remained active in politics by becoming the companion of the rich wool merchant, Lysicles.  Comic poets again had a field day with this guy who once could only talk of sheep, wool and fleeces and now becomes a master rhetorician.  After his death we know nothing of Aspasia (he dies fighting in Asia Minor as general while she is probably in her 40's).

II. Greek religion   

   "...Homer's epics formed the basis of the Olympian religion accepted throughout Greece.  The principal gods were said to reside on Mount Olympus and on its highest peak was the palace of Zeus, the chief deity.  The Olympian gods were recognized by all Greeks, but each city retained local gods and rituals that had been transmitted through generations by folk memory” (Perry,49).
   Early on Greek religion was more concerned with ritual than morality.  The gods were everywhere and could be indifferent, hostile or friendly; so it was important to avoid arousing the gods' opposition.  It was important to make the right sacrifices, to the right god, at the right place, with the right words.  Greek houses had little statues of Hermes outside and some sort of altar to Zeus Ktesias in the courtyard (role as defender of family property).  Prayers & libations were frequent to get success for a particular event:  journey, business deal, a bet, the gods' favor in general.  There were also rites for all events of family life:  birth, coming of age, marriage, and death.  In country:  Demeter for good crops, Pan for healthy flocks, Nymphs for sufficient water.  In city:  Hephaistos for smiths, Prometheus for potters, etc.
   "In the early stages of Greek history, most people sought to live in accordance with the wishes of the gods.  Through prayer, offerings, and ritual purification, they tried to appease the gods and consulted oracles to divine the future” (Perry 49).
            A major feature of Greek religion was the festival, two of greatest festivals being the Olympic Games at Elis and the Greater Dionysia at Athens (later other festivals would be modeled on the Olympian, including the Pythian at Pytho or Delphi sacred to Apollo, the Nemean at Nemea in the Peloponnesus sacred to Zeus and the Isthmian at the isthmus of Corinth sacred to Poseidon).  Though the calendar had no weekends like modern calendars, there were at least 60 festivals in the official Athenian year!-- not counting a large number of local ones.  Festivals were religious functions to make sure the gods were on your side.  They were great social occasions where parades, hymn singing, prayers, sacrifices, and some sort of athletic, dramatic, or other type of contest would be held. 
            The order of sacrifice included the following:

1.      priests and victims (usually sheep & cattle) wore garlands

2.      the altar and audience would be purified with holy water

3.      silence would be ordered while prayers were made according to a set formula; an incorrect prayer was not considered acceptable or effective

4.      after sacred grain was sprinkled around the victim some hair was cut off its head and thrown     into the fire; the victim would be stunned with a club and its throat cut

5.      its blood would be caught in a bowl and poured on the altar and then the thigh bones and fat  were burnt as an offering to the god; the entrails would be inspected for omens and then the meat eaten (meat was rare in normal diet, so this was very enjoyable for worshippers!)

              Many people were not satisfied with just being spectators as the public festivals shared by all Greeks or at least all members of the clan or polis or village, and wanted more personal and individual involvement, a more emotional contact with the divine.  The mystery religions satisfied these human yearnings.  They were originally fertility rites in which participants felt renewed and purified and offered immortality.  The most important mysteries were the  Dionysiac, Eleusinian, and Orphic.
   "Dionysus, the god of vegetation, fertility, and wine, originated in Boeotia, in north-central Greece, and stood for seasonal fertility in its more openly sexual aspects; his celebrants originally carried phalluses in the procession, and were often dressed as goats.  In its original form the cult inspired its followers with a wild dancing frenzy in which they ate the flesh of living animals and so acted out the eating of the god himself.  The cult was tamer in Athens, where phallic songs were written for the festival, held every two years” (Winks, 56).
            Greeks, like all human beings, wanted some sort of communication from the gods.  They, therefore came to believe in omens and oracles.  Omens were the most common way  of discovering the will of the gods (the Greek word for omen derived from word for bird!).  Sources of omens included (1) birds ; (2) entrails of sacrificed animals; (3) dreams, yet any slightly odd happening could be taken as an omen:  a sneeze, a word taken out of context, thunder, eclipse, etc.  Some so-called experts at interpreting omens that appear in Greek literature include Kalchas (Trojan War), Teiresias (Thebes), and Lampon (a friend of Perikles). 
            Oracles were another way to find out the will of the gods.  One very old oracle was at Dodona in NW Greece where a priest would divine the will of Zeus by interpreting the rustling of the leaves of Zeus' sacred oaks.  Another was the cave of Trophonios in Boeotia where one could crawl into a terrifying, black, subterranean hole and see or hear the future.  But the most famous and popular of all oracles was at Delphi--shrine of Apollo.  Many poleis showed respect for the god by building treasuries in which their gifts to the god accumulated.  Inquiries would be made ranging from larger matters of state to individual affairs.  These questions would be put to the Pythia who would babble a response and priest would interpret   Carved on front of the temple was the general advice of Apollo: "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much." 
   There were some doubters of the traditional Greek religion. Xenophanes of Colophon complained about the immorality of the gods in Homer, pointed out that men make gods in their own image, and argued that god was one, the unmoved mover (by thought).  Lucian (a novelist) laughed at the traditional ideas of the gods, and Euripides probably doubted a god would command Orestes to kill his mother.  On the whole, the old religion never had a strong position:

  1)no authoritative theology

  2)no sacred book inculcating immutable dogma & morality

  3)no priestly caste to convey religious teaching (except mysteries)

  4)interpretation of myths (though fixed to some degree by Homer) open to all alike.

   By the Hellenistic age (despite attempt to defend them by democratic persecutions of persons accused of atheism--Protagorus & Socrates) the old myths perished among the educated with the disappearance of the city-state (though peasants still believed).  Instead philosophical systems such as Stoicism & Epicureanism replaced the old myths.
    During the Hellenistic age king-worship was widespread (ex. Alexander & his successors) but this was a political religion without a true religious spirit, i.e., worship of king as benefactor & protector more powerful than discredited gods of Olympus.

 III. Greek Drama

   "Drama, as we know it, was created by the Greeks.  Tragedy was clearly intended to do more than entertain.  It was used to educate citizens and was supported by the state for that reason.  Its origins, however, are unclear.  Many historians assume that it developed out of religious ritual...(Spiel.4thEd  78)."  "Drama originated in the religious festivals honoring Dionysus, the god of wine and agricultural fertility.  A profound innovation in these sacred performances, which included choral songs and dances, occurred in the last part of the sixth century BC.  Thespis, the first actor known to history, stepped out of the chorus and engaged it in dialogue.  By separating himself from the choral group, Thespis demonstrated a new awareness of the individual” (Perry, 79).  "...a Greek dramatist brought the inner life of a human being into sharp focus and tried to find the deeper meaning of human experience…. Greek tragedy evolved as a continuous striving toward humanization and individualization” (Perry 79-80).
   "Like the natural philosophers, Greek dramatists saw an inner logic to the universe, which they called Fate or Destiny; both physical and social worlds obeyed laws.  When people were stubborn, narrow-minded, or immoderate, they were punished.  The order of the universe required it….The essence of Greek tragedy lies in the tragic hero's struggle against cosmic forces and insurmountable obstacles that eventually crush him.  But what impressed the Greek spectators (and today's readers of Greek drama) was not the vulnerability or weaknesses of human beings but their courage and determination in the face of these forces” (Perry 80).
   "Content was generally based on myths or legends that the audience already knew.  In fact, early Greek tragedy derived many of its themes and its basic preoccupation with the sufferings of the tragic hero from Homer” (Spiel.4^th Ed. 79).
            Tragedy means "goat song," so the chorus may have either sung as goats or for the prize of a goat or performed around a sacrificial goat.  Remember, going to a Greek drama was not like going to the theater today:  It was to partake in a religious ritual.  There were two festivals to Dionysus involved with the primitive longings that the god of vegetation be reborn: winter and early spring, the latter being the City or Greater Dionysia in March.  There would be a parade to the theater with the god Dionysus riding in a chariot.  There was an altar (thymele) in the center of the orchestra where the chorus danced.  New plays produced by only 3 poets with prizes awarded to the winning author.  Plots  were usually drawn from mythology with the male actors portraying heroes or gods, including the female roles. They wore masks (made of linen, cork or wood), elaborate costumes (and raised shoes so people could see them?).
            The convention of the chorus (chorus = "dance", cf. choreography) is the main difference form modern plays.  The choregus was a wealthy citizen who would assemble, pay and equip the chorus.  The poet himself would train the chorus.  The role of the chorus varied: (1) centrally involved in the plot (esp. early plays)--dialogue with actors (Aeschylus' Suppliants and Oresteia; (2) point of view of spectator (Sophocles' Oedipus and Antigone); or (3) just punctuating action and dividing it into separate episodes by singing lyric odes whose subject often only indirectly related to action of play.   The chorus performed in a circular arc ("orchestra") in middle of the theater, dancing and singing to the accompaniment of the flute.  Originally the chorus was composed of 50 members, but over time the number was reduced.(Aeschylus=12, Sophocles=15).  Thespis (c.534) is considered the "father of tragedy" and the first actor speaking dialogue to the chorus (Aeschylus added a second actor and Sophocles a third).

{NOTE:  The physical layout of the Greek theater included: orchestra, thymele, stage, skene, ekkyklema, mechane, theatron.]

            The main feature of the City Dionysia, then, was a dramatic competition over 4 days, three days of which would be devoted to a dramatic competition in which three poets would presents one tetrology each: a tragic trilogy (3 plays = parts of single story or 3 stories on common theme) and a satyr play.
            Surviving antiquity are tragic dramas from three geniuses:  Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.  Aeschylus (525-456 BC) has been called the “First Great Writer of Tragedy in Western World.”  He was born in 525 [Lattimore likes 513] at Eleusis near Athens; a nobleman.  He was so proud of partaking in the Athenian victory in the Persian Wars that his epitaph mentions nothing about his poetic victories.  His epitaph (supposedly composed by himself) only says that he fought at Marathon (his brother died there) “Under this monument lies Aeschylus the Athenian, Euphorion's son, who died in the wheatlands of Gela.  The grove of Marathon with its glories can speak of his valor in battle.”
             His Persians has a description of the battle of Salamis that makes scholars believe that he was present at that battle also. It was produced in 472 at Athens with his friend Pericles as his choregus (or official sponsor) and reproduced the next year in Sicily.  He visited Syracuse at the invitation of Hieron I more than once and died at Gela in Sicily.  "Sicily was the America of that day, the new Greek world, rich, generous, and young, with its own artists but without the tradition of perfected culture which Old Greee had built up, and it attracted Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides, and Aeschylus..." (Lattimore 3).  He may have been prosecuted for divulging the Eleusinian mysteries, but  he was not convicted.  He had a son Euphorion who was also a tragic poet.  He  supposedly died when an eagle dropped a stone on his head which it mistook for a tortoise whose shell it wished to crack.
            He wrote paeans, elegies and epigrams of which scanty fragments survive and 70-90 plays (incl. satiric dramas) of which seven survive:  (1) Suppliants, (2) Persians, (3) Seven Against Thebes,   (4) Prometheus Vinctus;  and the only extant trilogy, the Oresteia: (5) Agamemnon, (6) Choephoroe (“Libation Bearers"), (7) Eumenides  ("Kindly Spirits").          
            Rivals in his early career include Pratinas, Phrynicus, Choerilus, in his late career, Sophocles.  He had thirteen victories,  including for Persians (472) and for Oresteia (458).  Yet he is regarded as the real founder of Greek tragedy:  he introduced a second actor, thereby making true dialogue and dramatic action possible; he developed the use of stage dress, and his plays show rapid progress in dramatic technique:  Suppliants is simple, lacking action, with no individual characters, while the Oresteia  has outstanding individual characters and a well-developed plot.  He is also known for his picturesque, sonorous language and bold metaphors.  His lyrics reached the highest point in that branch of poetic art. He was criticized in his own time for the limited action in his plays and the violence and obscurity of the language. The criticism, as far as it went, was just.  It is not in neatly contrived plots or fluid poetic expression that his greatness lies, but rather in the magnitude of the problems which he presented and the verbal imagery with which he made their significance penetrate beyond the mind, into the most profound emotions of his audience.  Only a large canvas satisfied Aeschylus, and he required a trilogy of plays for his sturdy designs. 
            The themes of his plays were of the utmost grandeur, usually from mythology, the exception being Persians.  He was essentially an optimist stressing "learning through suffering." A religious spirit permeates his plays as he accepts traditional mythology uncritically (as opposed to Euripides) but he tries to reconcile it with morality.  Prominent ideas include (1) destiny (fatality); (2) the heredity of crime (both vengeance in next generation & inherited criminal taint); (3) nemesis for hubris--overweening pride or arrogance (vengeance from gods for pride: world ruled by divine justice!; and (4) "learning through suffering"
            Sophocles (496-406 BC) was born at Colonus near Athens in a well-to-do family (father Sophillus owned a manufactory of armor) and so he was given the education of a young aristocrat of the period which included athletics and             music.  The best part of his life coincided with the age of Cimon and Pericles (during Athens' greatest prosperity).  "As a boy he led the chorus that sang a hymn of thanksgiving to the gods at the celebration for the great naval victory of Salamis, in 480 BC, which saved Greece from the Persian invader and launched the city of Athens on a brilliant career of political and economic expansion" (Knox's supplement to his trans. of Oedipus, p. 2).
            Herodotus was one of his friends.  He took no active part in politics and had no special military gifts but still was elected strategos twice!  He also was made one of Probouloi (special commissioners) after Sicilian disaster (loss of  the fleet in 413 BC).  These honors were no doubt due to his great fame and popularity.
            This man of great charm who was handsome and well-to-do seems to have lived the perfect life of fame, fortune, good education, good looks, honors, good health, an accomplished musician, a great conversationalist—everything!  Aristophanes even commented on his charmed life (Ran.82:
                                  "contented here, contented there"
                                   among living      among dead
He left two sons when he died in Athens where he was worshipped as a hero! Of his c. 120 plays; seven survive: (1) Antigone (441); (2) Oedipus Tyrannos (declared by Aristotle in his Poetics to be the quintessential tragedy (bet. 430 and 411); (3) Electra (?); (4) Ajax (probably earliest surviving play);    (5) Trachiniae (?); (6) Philoctetes (409); (7) Oedipus at Colonus (produced posthumously in 401 by his grandson the younger Sophocles who also wrote tragedies).  His victories included 18 tetralogies, his  first victory being in 468 at only 28 years of age when he beat Aeschylus.  "...he was known to his fellow citizens mainly as the most successful dramatist who had ever presented plays in the theater of Dionysus" (Knox 2).
            He introduced a third actor, invented stage scenery (or greatly developed it), and increased the chorus from 12 to 15 members.  He also abandoned the practice of connected tetralogies and made each play an artistic whole with different subjects.  Lyrics play a less important part than in Aeschylus and he was known for closely woven plots, penetrating analysis of character as well as poetic fluency and poise.
            He does accept the traditional religion without criticism, yet man plays the greater part in his plays, god the lesser.  He was excellent at portraying character; action was determined by the protagonists (influences they undergo, penalties they suffer) NOT by external incidents.  His characters were heroic with lofty motives struggling against fate:  their dialogue is dignified, therefore appropriate to their idealized character.  In fact, Aristotle quoted Sophocles as saying he portrayed men as they ought to be, Euripides as they are.
            In his plays, the choice between good and evil is never clear or easy—sometimes impossible (e.g., Oedipus and Antigone).  For Sophocles, sophrosune "moderation" is the outstanding virtue.  Modern American audiences are attracted to the Antigone with its conflict between an individual and absolute authority; its psychological conflict between the sexes; its theme of tyranny versus democracy; and the humanism in the famous choral song:    "Many things are wonderful, but none more wonderful than Man" (Antigone 332f.)     
            Euripides (480-406) was born in Salamis (supposedly on same day as the great naval battle) the son of Mnesarchus (or Mnesarchides).  He appears to have had morose disposition and was not so popular, so he held no magistracies.  He presented his first set of tragedies in 455 and won his first victory in 441, and despite his genius won ONLY four or five victories in his lifetime.
            Disillusioned by the Peloponnesian War, after 408 he went to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia where he was honorably received and died there (supposedly accidentally torn apart by king's hunting dogs). 
            He wrote 88 plays (22 sets of 4); 19 survive (18 tragedies & one satyr play): (1)Alcestis (438); (2)Medea (431); (3)Hippolytus (428); (4)Trojan Women (415); (5)Helen (412); (6)Orestes (408); (7) Iphigenia at Aulis (405); (8) Bacchae (405= last completed play); (9) Andromache; (10) Children of Heracles; (11) Hecuba; (12) Suppliants; (13) Electra;  (14) Madness of Heracles; (15) Iphigenia in Tauris; (16) Ion; (17) Phoenissae; (18) Rhesus; and the satyr play Cyclops.
            Euripides "wrote shockers, and it is not enough to say that this was because he was an innovator.  He was, but so were his predecessors.  Aeschylus was more daring, drastic, and original; Sophocles was no serene and static classicist.  Perhaps the most significant remark about Euripides and Sophocles is that supposed to have been made by Sophocles, that he himself showed men as they ought to be (or as one ought to show them) but Euripides showed them as they actually were..…Euripides was basically a realist despite contrary tendencies toward fantasy and romance.  The only materials available for his tragedies were the old heroic sagas.  He used them as if they told the story not of characters heroic in all dimensions, but of real everyday people " (Lattimore p. v-vi).
            He sometimes criticized because he made much use of prologue and of intervention of a god to clear up embarrassing situations.  "His most characteristic fault is to try to get too much into a single plot or character or situation.  His Medea is several kinds of woman unsuccessfully assembled.  His Andromache has two badly connected plots.  He wrote some lovely lyrics, but often (as in Helen) they have nothing to do with what is going on in the play.  And so on.  His faults are obvious.  Equally obvious is his genius.  He is the father of the romantic comedy, the problem play.  He has given us a series of unforgettable characters.  There has never been anyone else like him" (Lattimore vii).
            His lyrics were graceful and charming with much beautiful description of nature but  without grandeur and without close connection to subject of the play.  Anecdotes concerning the beauty of his lyrics are famous:  Athenian prisoners at Syracuse won their freedom by reciting passages of Euripides.  A vessel pursued by pirates was not allowed to enter a Sicilian harbor until some on board could recite Euripides.  Spartan generals in 404 BC decided not to destroy Athens because of being moved when a Phocian sung the first chorus of Electra.
            Of all the tragedians he is perhaps the closest to our own time, with his concern for realism and his determination to expose social, political & religious injustices.  He was affected much by the sophists and the events of the Peloponnesian War (plague, Melos, etc.)  He is sometimes more pathetic than tragic:  "Many characters of Euripides spend all their time trying to run away from something...Even his own invention, bright optimistic romantic comedy, becomes drama of escape" (Lattimore vii).
            He has been called the first psychological dramatist because of his concern for psychological truth.  Though labeled a misogynist since antiquity, he seems to have a profound sympathy and understanding for the problems of women who live in a society dominated by men.  "Women as chief characters out number men, and most of his choruses are female.  It is not that he is "for" them or `against' them; he merely tries to present action from their point of view, and they fascinate him" (Lattimore vi).
            He is called the Rationalist (Verrall) because the rationalist (critical analysis) spirit permeates his plays, but he can also be called the irrationalist since he often deals with the irrational elements of human existence.
            He was anti-war, which makes him more appealing in our own day.  Though he was unpopular in his own time, he would later be the most widely read! "Though the judges of Dionysus disapproved, there cannot be much doubt that the audience was fascinated even when it was not pleased" (Lattimore vi).
            Aristophanes (448-380 BC) was born in Athens, but his family moved to the island of Aegina when still a boy (the purity of his Athenian descent seems to be questioned); his father Philippos owned property on Aegina.  We don't know much about his life, other than he had  a son named Araros.
            He wrote 44 comic plays, of which 11 survive:  (1) Acharnians (425); (2) Knights (424); (3) The Clouds (423); (4) Wasps (422); (5) Peace (421); (6) Birds (414); (7) Lysistrata (411); (8) Thesmophoriazusae (410); (9) Frogs (405); (10) Ecclesiazusae (392); [Beginning of Middle Comedy]

[NOTE: The later New Comedy of Menander [bourgeois in its morality, in its limited views of things, in its tastes and ambitions (Oxford history,203)] A "comedy of manners"
(1)representation of contemporary life by means of imaginary persons drawn from it
(2)development of plot and character, but social commentary rather than political since             the city-state is not free but ruled by Macedonians.
(3)substitution of humor for wit
(4)introduction of romantic love as a theme]

IV. GREEK PHILOSOPHY IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

 1. Protagoras and the Sophists and the New Education

            Traditional education was basically a private enterprise.  Fathers would teach sons (1) the 3 R's, (2) learning sections of Homer by heart after learning to read, (3) playing kitharos (lyre) & aulos (like oboe), (4) physical education (wrestling & pentathlon--discus, long jump, javelin, 200 meter run, wrestling).  Girls were taught weaving and spinning and homemaking by their mothers. Those who could afford to would pay to have their sons taught from age 7-14 by a grammatistes.  The each of the boys was accompanied to school by a paidagogos, a slave who would teach the boy good manners and make sure he attended school and could cane him if he chose.

            By the fifth century BC the sophists (professional teachers who wandered from city to city teaching rhetoric, grammar, poetry, gymnastics, mathematics & music) had invented formal secular education.  “The sophists have been described as the founders of educational science.  They did indeed found pedagogy, and even to-day intellectual culture largely follows the path they marked out” (Werner Jaeger, Paideia Vol. I 298).

            Democracy was in full swing:  important decisions made by all of the citizens in the assembly:  all citizens had the right to take part in the debate and all citizens were eligible for public office; therefore rhetoric, the art of public speaking, was necessary to become politically powerful.

            The first sophists were likely to be non-Athenians and charged money for their teaching.

Their goal was to produce successful statesmen.  They taught how to speak and argue in public; they thought truth was relative and denied the existence of universal standards to guide human actions.  Therefore it is more important to win an argument than to reach the truth, so they used emotional appeals, physical appearance, and clever language as tools to win arguments.

            Some important sophists include Isokrates of Athens, Gorgias of Leontinoi, Hippias of Elis and Protagorus of Abdera.  Protagoras (481-411) "the Rationalist" was the greatest of the sophists and did most of his teaching in Athens.  He was befriended by wealthy and powerful Athenians, and as a consequence became rich and powerful himself.  Plato even named a dialogue after him.

            “Protagoras was an archetypal `Sophist’:  an active traveler and first-rate observer of other cultures who noted that although there are a variety of customs and beliefs, each culture believes unquestioningly that its own ways are right--and roundly condemns (or at least criticizes) views that differ from its own...

   "Based on his observations and travels, Protagoras concluded that morals were nothing more than the social traditions, or mores, of a society or group” (Soccio 45f.).  His off-quoted statement, "Man is the measure of all things," captures the essence of the sophist philosophy.  That is, goodness, truth, justice and beauty are all relative to the needs and interests of man himself; they are matters of individual judgment.  In summary, there are no absolute truths or eternal standards of right and wrong. Sense perception is the exclusive source of knowledge; therefore there can only be particular truths valid for a given time & place.

            Sophists would have a negative influence in that they caused people to doubt the traditional religion and morals; they saw law as just custom.  They would give the example of adultery among the Spartans and Athenians:  the Spartans encouraged it in certain cases on part of wives as well as husbands, whereas the Athenians secluded their women and refused even to allow them a normal social life.  Which standard is right?  Neither is right in any absolute sense, say the Sophists; men alone  decide what is good.  This put the emphasis on the individual rather than the community because it was not necessary to obey the law, and it encouraged the strong to do what they could.

            On the other hand, by the 4th BC they condemned slavery and the racial exclusiveness of the Greeks—they became the champions of liberty, rights of the common man and practical/progressive point of view.  They are the ones who extended philosophy to include ethics and politics as well as physics & metaphysics.  In doing so, they helped free the Greeks to think on new, less restricted levels. “From this beginning emerged a nonreligious (amoral) scientific method as well as a philosophic method of questioning, both of which are free to pursue knowledge for its own sake and wherever it leads.  In other words, the Sophists helped break the shackles of dogma and superstition.  For that we remain in their debt.  They laid the cornerstone for the scientific study of human behavior--what would become the social, psychological, political, and anthropological sciences” (Soccio, 57).  Cicero said they "brought philosophy down from heaven to the dwellings of men."

            Their teaching could be summarized in three words:  relativism, skepticism, individualism.  This did trigger a spiritual and intellectual crisis in Athens.  Conservative Greeks saw their relativism, skepticism and individualism as dangerous to traditional religion, morality, the state and society itself.  The result would be a new philosophic movement grounded upon the theory that truth is real and that absolute standards do exist.  The leaders of this movement were perhaps the three most famous individuals in the history of thought:  Socrates, Plato & Aristotle.

2. Socrates (469-399 BC) "the wise" "The unexamined life is not worth living." (Apology 38a9)

            One of the most important figures in Greek history, Socrates was the son of sculptor Sophroniscus (reasonably well-to-do) and a midwife Phaenarete.  “He has been called the greatest of philosophers....He was a pagan who is seen by many Jews and Christians as a man of God....he seems to have practiced what he preached.....an integrated, essentially unambivalent individual.  He stood clearly for some values and clearly for some values and clearly against others.  Then, as now, such personal clarity, such strong sense of direction and purpose were attractive to young (or any) people confused as to who they are or want to be.  Then, as now, his consistent respect for justice, integrity, courage, temperance, decency, beauty, and balance were especially appealing in a cultural climate of dizzy excesses, crass materialism, and cut-throat competition for money, power, and prestige.  In a complex, sophisticated society in which old values were under siege, the simplicity and clarity of an individual with Socrates' obvious abilities was intriguing, even when it was upsetting” (Soccio,64-65).

            “He had a reputation for enjoying good food and drink.  He sometimes stayed out drinking and talking all night; but it is also said that he talked as much as he drank and so never got drunk.  He had a pot belly, but he was also strong.  He could march long distances without complaint.  When he needed to control himself, he would.  We might say that he was balanced.  He did not hate the world or bodily pleasures, but he did not worship it” (Soccio 70).

            He fought courageously at Potidaea (432-429) and saved Alcibiades; he also fought at Amphipolis and at Delium (424).  He was married to Xanthippe, a bitter, complaining woman (he was teased for not being able to control her) and had three sons.  Maybe it was not all her fault; he was, after all, unusual:  worked only now and then so that they had to live off a modest inheritance from his father, consisting of a house and some money, which his best friend Crito invested for him.

            He was uncouth in appearance:  “Socrates was also well known for his indifference to fashion and ordinary comforts.  He was usually barefoot and apparently had only one tattered coat, about which his friends joked.  His enemies accused him of being `unwashed', and even his friends admitted that it was a surprise to see Socrates freshly bathed” (Soccio 68).

    He was"`extraordinarily ugly'--so ugly that he fascinated people.  His most notable physical features were a broad, flat, turned-up nose, protruding, staring eyes, thick, fleshy lips, and a belly which he himself characterized in Xenophon's Symposium as `a stomach rather too large for convenience,' and which he elsewhere announced plans to `dance off'.  His friends compared him to a satyr or an electric eel.

    "He made his appearance serve him well.  His humorous references to it reflect his good nature and modesty, as well as his hierarchy of values.  After all, if, as he taught, the true self is not the body but the soul (psyche), and if all virtue implies excellence of function, then the appearance of the body is less important than how well it functions.  True beauty will be inner beauty, beauty of spirit and character” (Soccio 65-66).

            He was not ambitious politically or for wealth, but was twice put in positions in which he showed courage in opposing the political passions of the moment:  (1) 406 as president of assembly (after Arginusae) he resisted trial of generals by illegal procedure; (2) under rule of the 30 (404-403) he refused to obey an order to arrest a person whom they had condemned to death.

            He wrote no books, so what we know of him comes from other writers, especially two of his pupils, Plato and Xenophon. (especially interesting is the Crito, Plato's picture of Socrates during the next to last day of his life).

            He was probably first a scientist (physical speculations of the earlier philosophers, according to Clouds and Phaedo ).  But his life changed drastically when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if there was any man wiser than Socrates, and “The priestess replied that there was no one....After puzzling about it for some time, I set myself at last with considerable reluctance to check the truth of it in the following way.  I went to interview a man with a high reputation for wisdom, because I felt that here if anywhere I should succeed in disproving the oracle and pointing out to my divine authority, You said that I was the wisest of men, but here is a man who is wiser than I am.

    "Well, I have a thorough examination to this person--I need not mention his name, but it was one of our politicians that I was studying when I had this experience--and in conversation with him I formed the impression that although in many people's opinion, and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not.  Then when I began to try to show him that he only thought he was wise and was not really so my efforts were resented both by him and by many of the other people present.  However, I reflected as I walked away, Well, I am certainly wiser than this man.  It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of, but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance.  At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

    "After this I went on to interview a man with an even greater reputation for wisdom, and I formed the same impression again and here too I incurred the resentment of the man himself and a number of others.

    "From that time on I interviewed one person after another.  I realized with distress and alarm that I was making myself unpopular, but I felt compelled to put my religious duty first.  Since I was trying to find out the meaning of the oracle, I was bound to interview everyone who had a reputation for knowledge.  And by dog, gentlemen, for I must be frank with you, my honest impression was this.  It seemed to me, as I pursued my investigation at the god's command, that the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence.

    "I want you to think of my adventures as a sort of pilgrimage undertaken to establish the truth of the oracle once for all.  After I had finished with the politicians I turned to the poets, dramatic, lyric, and all the rest, in the belief that here I should expose myself as a comparative ignoramus.  I used to pick up what I thought were some of their most perfect works and question them closely about the meaning of what they had written, in the hope of incidentally enlarging my own knowledge.  Well, gentlemen, I hesitate to tell you the truth, but it must be told.  It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any of the bystanders could have explained those poems better than their actual authors. So I soon made up my mind about the poets too.  I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.  It seemed clear to me that the poets were in much the same case, and I also observed that the very fact that they were poets made them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant.  So I left that line of inquiry too with the same sense of advantage that I had felt in the case of the politicians.

    "Last of all I turned to the skilled craftsmen.  I knew quite well that I had practically no technical qualifications myself, and I was sure that I should find them full of impressive knowledge.  In this I was not disappointed.  They understood things which I did not, and to that extent they were wiser than I was.  But, gentlemen, these professional experts seemed to share the same failing which I had noticed in the poets.  I mean that on the strength of their technical proficiency they claimed a perfect understanding of every other subject; however important, and I felt that this error more than outweighed their positive wisdom.  So I made myself spokesman for the oracle, and asked myself whether I would rather be as I was--neither wise with their wisdom nor stupid with their stupidity--or possess both qualities as they did.  I replied through myself to the oracle that it was best for me to be as I was.

    "The effect of these investigations of mine, gentlemen, has been to arouse against me a great deal of hostility, and hostility of a particularly bitter and persistent kind....”(Apology 21a-23a).

    So Socrates continued the use of reason initiated by the Ionian philosophers, but instead of applying it to nature, he, like the Sophists, applied it to society and the individual.  BUT SOCRATES, UNLIKE THE SOPHISTS, BELIEVED IN ABSOLUTES.  There are such universals such as justice, beauty and goodness.

    "Socrates' central concern was the perfection of individual human character, the achievement of moral excellence.  Moral values...were attained when the individual regulated his life according to objective standards arrived at through rational reflection, that is, when reason became the formative, guiding, and ruling agency of the soul....

    "Socrates wanted to subject all human beliefs and behavior to the clear light of reason, and in this way to remove ethics from the realm of authority, tradition, dogma, superstition and myth” (Perry, 70-71).

            For Socrates, dialectics (logical discussion) was the essential source of knowledge.  Dialectics forced people out of illogical, inconsistent, dogmatic & imprecise positions in their attempt to express ideas in clearly defined terms.; this is called the "Socratic method."

            “In brief, the dialectical method consists of three stages.  The original idea or issue is known as the thesis.  The dialectic begins when the thesis is tested against a counterview known as the antithesis (anti-thesis).  In spite of the name, the antithesis may or may not be the ‘opposite’ of the thesis; it must, however, be significantly different, at least in the early stages of inquiry.  The ensuing ‘struggle’ produces a third point of view, containing elements of both the thesis and antithesis; hence it is called the synthesis.  In important and complex issues, the synthesis becomes a new thesis for a more refined dialectical analysis--and the process continues” (Soccio, 78).

            Socrates sees human mind not as a passive vessel into which a teacher pours knowledge, but knowledge becomes a part of one's being only as one struggles to explain and justify ideas or opinions. Through this method of arriving at truth people are able to make ethical choices & laws.  With Socrates, arete is not excellence in martial skills, but excellence in controlling one's life through reason and reflection (self-examination & self-discipline: "the unexamined life is not worth living")

            The dialectical method of Socrates did not endear him with the authorities of Athenian society (see above).   The Crito is Plato's picture of the next to last day of Socrates' life.  It asks whether one is obliged to obey laws that are believed to be unjust?  His answer: YES!

            The Apology ("defense") is Socrates' defense at his trial. (mentions the picture of him as presented in the 423 BC play  Clouds of Aristophanes produced when Socrates was 47 years old.).  In the Apology Socrates refers to what he calls his daimon (demon), a divine or prophetic sign, "voice," or spiritual guide...Socrates claimed that this daimon began in childhood and remained with him throughout his life:  “This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do” (Soccio, 79).

            He is brought to trial for "not worshiping the gods of the state," and "corrupting the young."  (e.g., Alcibiades who became a traitor and helped the Spartans, and his friends Critias and Charmides who were among the Thirty-tyrants set up by Sparta as new Athenian government after Peloponnesian War).  He could have gone into exile when he was charged with these potentially capital crimes by Meletus, but he chose to be tried instead.  The jury consisted of 501 members.  If found guilty the prosecution would propose one penalty and the defendant another.  The prosecutor proposes the death penalty thinking that Socrates would propose exile and they would be rid of him (no one wanted him to die), but suggests a small fine and free meals the rest of his life.

  He drinks the hemlock poison and dies.  Athens became infamous for the execution of Socrates.

3.  PLATO (427-348)  "the Idealist"

            Plato was born at Athens as Aristocles--"best, most renowned"-- (Plato was a nickname that means "broad" or "wide" for his wide shoulders--wrestled-- or wide head).  He was from one of oldest and most elite Athenian families claiming descent from Codrus and even further to the god Poseidon.  “He is said to have done well at practically everything as a young man:  music, logic, debated, math, poetry.  He was attractive and made his mark as a wrestler.  In the military he distinguished himself in three battles, and even won a prize for bravery” (Soccio, 106).

            He met Socrates when he was in his early 20's ( by 407) and turned from poetry to philosophy.  He was ill at the time of Socrates execution, and therefore was not present at his last moments.  He twice attempted to enter politics but was twice disgusted:  (1) under the Thirty--repelled by the iniquities perpetrated by the Thirty (404); (2) under the restored democracy--repelled by the condemnation of Socrates (399).

            He went to Megara after Socrates death and travelled extensively (supposedly made acquaintance with the Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia).  He visited Syracuse three times:  389, 367, 361.  “...Plato became friends with a brother-in-law of the ruler of Syracuse.  Because of his influence as an adviser, Plato was kidnapped by the ruler's bodyguards, Diogenes Laertius reports.  His friends raised three thousand drachmas to pay his ransom, but for some reason his captor refused it and freed him anyway.  His friends took the ransom money and bought him a grove on the outskirts of Athens...” (Soccio, 108).  When he returned to Athens in 388 BC at about forty years of age, he began teaching philosophy in the Academy (named for a grove of olive trees sacred to the hero Academus which contained a gymnasium):  this is the first permanent institution in Western Civilization devoted to education and research and lasted from 388 BC-529 AD.  Above the door to Plato's school:  “Mathematicians Only.”  “Plato's ideal educational program was a progressive one in which the study of mathematics, geometry, music, and so forth, introduced discipline into the student's overall character, and order into the mind.  Only after the mind and soul were disciplined were a select few allowed to study ultimate philosophical principles” (Soccio, 109).  (His attempt at an ideal state occurred in 367 with Dionysius II, the young tyrant of Syracuse, but the guy wouldn't submit to his long educational system.)

            Plato's philosophy contains 2 principle elements:  (1) moral, (2) metaphysical.  His goal was more ambitious than Socrates' moral reformation of the individual:  he tried to arrange political life according to rational rules, holding that Socrates' quest for personal morality could not succeed unless the community also was transformed on the basis of reason.  Reform must come through education.

            All his works have come down to us complete and in a fairly perfect state.  They are arranged in three groups:  (1) Socrates as the principle figure examining and demolishing views of others   (Crito, Euthyphro, Apology, etc.); (2) Socrates putting forth doctrines which may be regarded as Plato's own (Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, etc.); (3) Plato's last work left in draft and published after his death (Timaeus, Laws, etc.)

            In his dialogues Plato discussed politics, education, ethics, aesthetics, ontology, epistemology and logic, but his main concern (like Socrates) was:  how do you produce good men & a good good state?  His most famous book, The Republic (THE FIRST SYSTEMATIC TREATISE ON POLITICAL SCIENCE), is his answer:  you do it by educating a few people properly and them have them rule the state.  “Probably no single work of philosophy has been read by as many people as Plato's Republic. It is considered by most philosophers to be Plato's most impressive and important work because it presents his overall philosophy in a dramatic, organized, and brilliant form” (Soccio 106).

            For Plato, the just state could not be founded on tradition (for inherited attitudes did not derive from rational standards), nor on the doctrine of might being right (a principle taught by radical Sophists and practiced by Athenian statesmen).

  Plato's theory of Forms (Ideas) is illustrated in the “Allegory of the Cave” from Republic, Bk. VII.

  In a higher dimension of existence are perfect forms of which all phenomena we perceive in the world around us are actually pale reflections.  To illustrate his ideas, Plato presents and allegory in which prisoners are bound in cave; chained facing back of cave so they can see nothing except back of cave (not even each other).  All they see  are shadows on the wall; that is reality to them.  If one was suddenly freed he would be dazzled by the light & unable to see the objects causing the shadows (too bright, not accustomed).  It would be even worse if someone dragged him up the steep incline out of the cave and into the sunlight!  First he might look at reflections in the water and eventually look at the men themselves, then the stars at night, finally the sun itself-true reality.   Now thinking back to his friends and their beliefs, he would pity their ignorance.  If he attempted to go back he would not be accustomed to the dark and his friends would accuse his experience of having ruined his eyes, and they would try to kill anyone that tried to take them out of the cave!

            THE ASCENT AND CONTEMPLATION OF THE THINGS OUTSIDE THE CAVE REPRESENT THE SOUL'S ASCENT TO THE INTELLIGIBLE REGION.  So his doctrine that truth resides in a world of Forms (unchanging, eternal, absolute and universal standards of beauty, goodness, justice & truth) is a challenge to Sophistic relativism.

            In the Republic Plato applies reason to describe the establishment of an ideal state.   The proper education is a training primarily in mathematics and philosophy so that the pupil can ultimately understand what the ideal is.  For Plato believed that there was a perfect world, of which our world and the things we see and know in it are merely imperfect copies.  True education gives students the ability to discover and love these ideals.  Dialectic is the way to truth:  it is a method of interrogation and recalling a former existence in the realm of ideas.  Therefore  knowledge is deductive.

            Armed with this understanding, a certain elite can rule the state in such a way that everybody is benefited.  This is accomplished by dividing up the citizens into the three classes:  (1) philosopher-kings (those ruled by reason)--govern as Absolute rulers; (2) soldiers (those ruled by moral courage) administrators and soldiers; (3) artisans (those ruled by the appetite)--do the hard work in society.

            This coincides with his doctrine of the soul, the divine entity buried in the body that will escape at death.  The tripartite (three parts of) soul: reason, spiritedness or moral courage (ally of reason), appetite or desire (food, sex, wealth:  must be kept in check).  So Plato does not think the average person is capable of participating in public affairs.

   The weaknesses of democracy according to Plato include:  (1) the common man is incapable of thinking intelligently about foreign policy, economics, etc.; (2) leaders are chosen for persuasive speech, good looks, wealth & family background instead of by the best man for the job;  (3) the democracy could degenerate into anarchy when liberty turns to license; (4) there is a potential for tyranny by demagogues.

4.  Aristotle (384-322 BC) "the Empiricist" "the Naturalist"

            He was born at Stageira in Chalcidice, the son of Nichomachus (a physician to the king of Macedonia, Amyntas II).  In 367 BC at 17 years of age he came to Athens and was a pupil of Plato for 20 years (until Plato's death in 347).   Plato's Academy was dedicated to producing the philosopher-king: pupils studied technical problems of philosophy:  mathematics, theoretical astronomy, epistemology, the nature of pleasure and pain, political philosophy; relied on mathematics and dialectic, not observation and experiment.

            “[P]ractically everyone noticed him, in part because he was something of a dandy.  Plato is reported to have said that Aristotle paid more attention to his clothes than was proper for a philosopher.  In order to be fashionable, he cultivated a deliberate lisp, the speech pattern that the Greek elite used to separate themselves form the masses...Despite his affectations, Aristotle almost immediately earned a reputation as one of the Academy's finest students.  Diogenes Laertius says that on one occasion when Plato read aloud a difficult treatise about the soul, Aristotle `was the only person who sat it out, while all the rest rose up and went away.'  Aristotle remained with Plato for perhaps twenty years, and Plato is supposed to have humorously remarked that his Academy consisted of two parts:  the body of his students, and the brain of Aristotle.  Although Aristotle disagreed with Plato on important philosophical matters, he built an altar to Plato at his teacher's death.

   "Aristotle, thirty-seven years old when Plato died in 347, expected to be the next master of the Academy.  But when the trustees of the Academy picked a native Athenian, Plato's nephew Speusippus, instead because they saw Aristotle as a `foreigner', he waited for the first good opportunity to leave Athens.  As it turned out, a former classmate, Hermius, who had become a kind of philosopher-king over a rather large area in Asia Minor invited Aristotle to be his adviser. [Hermius ruler of cities of Atarneus and Assus near Troy had two advisors:  Erastus and Coriscus, former students of Plato]

   "Apparently Aristotle had little effect on his friend's rulership, but he did manage to marry the man's adopted daughter [Hermias' neice Pythias] in 344 BC.  She had a large dowry, which Aristotle happily invested.  Aristotle's life was disrupted the same year, however, when his political benefactor offended the king of Persia.  Shortly after Aristotle and his wife fled to the island of Lesbos [home of Theophrastus who would be Aristotle's successor at Lyceum], Aristotle's friend was crucified by the Persian king.  While on the island of Lesbos, Aristotle studied natural history, and his wife died giving birth to their daughter.  Aristotle later lived with a woman named Herpyllis.  Their long, happy relationship produced Aristotle's son Nicomachus, to whom he dedicated the Nichomachean Ethics.  He then left Athens, but Stageira was destroyed by Philip of Macedon that same year, so he settled at Assos in the Troad (here was a small colony of philosophers of the Athenian Academy).

            “In 343 BC King Philip of Macedon invited Aristotle to train his thirteen-year-old son Alexander.  The boy was wild and crude, but Aristotle was able to smooth his rough edges and instill in him respect for knowledge and science.  As Alexander the Great, Aristotle's famous pupil ordered his soldiers to collect specimens of plant, marine, and animal life from faraway places for his old teacher.

            “In 340 BC Philip sent Aristotle back to his hometown so that Aristotle could write a code of laws to help restore the community, which had been disrupted by a war.  Aristotle did well enough that Stagira celebrated a yearly holiday in his honor.  In 334 Aristotle at last returned to Athens, where he founded his own school, possibly with money from Alexander” (Soccio, 136).  He called his school of philosophy Lyceum (after a grove sacred to Apollo Lyceius where, as at the Academy, there was a sacred grove).  THIS REPRESENTS A SEVERING OF TIES WITH PLATO; HIS SCHOOL IS IN COMPETITION WITH PLATO'S ACADEMY.   “The Lyceum's students tended to be from the middle class, whereas the Academy's were more aristocratic.  For a short while the two schools were bitter rivals, but as each concentrated on its own particular interests this rivalry died down.  The Academy stressed mathematics and ‘pure’ understanding, while Aristotle's students collected anthropological studies of barbarian cultures, chronologies of various wars and games, the organs and living habits of animals, the nature and locations of plants, and so on” (Soccio, 137).

            “Aristotle's students were known as the peripatetic philosophers because he often discussed philosophy while strolling with them along tree-covered walkways called the Peripatos.  In addition, Aristotle's curriculum included technical lectures for limited audiences and popular lectures of more general interest” (Soccio, 137).  Besides lecturing on philosophy, Aristotle organized and supervised a great program of research: he collected MSS--book-rolls--(hundreds of maps, charts, and documents—e.g. he collected and studied 158 {M&H 351} political constitutions) and formed first considerable library; also a museum of natural objects (helped by Alexander who may have contributed 800 talents and ordered his generals to help).

            After the death of Alexander there was anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens, and Aristotle fled to the island of Euboea (his mother's birthplace)--in his own words, "lest Athens sin twice against philosophy" (charged with impiety--not respecting the gods of the state--one of the same charges leveled at Socrates) and died a year later at 62 at Chalcis.  "So great was his influence on later thinkers that for hundreds of years all educated persons knew him simply as the Philosopher” (Soccio, 138).

            “Aristotle was one of the universal geniuses" (M&H 352):  his interests were encyclopedic; his greatest contribution was the systematization of knowledge:  "His aim was to make one great unified structure of all knowledge" (M&H 352).  He left a vast number of works on a great variety of subjects (he was the leading expert of his time in every field of knowledge--except maybe mathematics), but known most as a teacher not an author.  "Leadership of the Lyceum rotated among certain members of the school according to rules drawn up by Aristotle.  Once a month he held a common meal and symposium at which one of the members was picked to defend a philosophical idea against criticism from everyone else” (Soccio,137).

            "Even during the lifetime of Plato, Aristotle had published a number of works on philosophy, mostly in dialogue form, all of which have perished.  During his period absence from Athens (347-335), he continued and extended his articles, completing some of his most important works in logic and physics, and the older parts of his books on metaphysics, politics and ethics.  Some of his biological research was done at Assus and Mytilene" (M&H 351).

            Although Aristotle shared with Plato and Socrates a belief that reason was a person's highest faculty and the polis was the primary formative institution of Greek life, he eventually departed philosophically from his teacher Plato by adopting a wholly independent position and philosophical method.

            Aristotle’s Critique of Plato's Theory of Forms:  like Democritus before him, Aristotle renewed the  confidence in sense perception (had a scientist's curiosity about nature--concrete reality).  This is evident in his assertion that Plato's Forms existed, not in another higher world outside and beyond the sensible world, but in things themselves.  Therefore, Aristotle is bringing philosophy back to earth.  His conviction that THEORY MUST BE CORRECTED BY THE FACTS OF SENSE EXPERIENCE motivates HIS DRIVE FOR ARRANGING FACTS INTO SYSTEMS OF         KNOWLEDGE (physics, biology, zoology, botany, etc.)  “He is...an eminent representative of the inductive, empirical school.  It is generally agreed that his most successful scientific work was in the minute study and classification of biological types.  He made discoveries, for example, about unusual reproductive systems in certain kinds of fish, and about care of the young by fish, which were only verified about a century ago.  He made records or reports on about 540 species of animals, and personally dissected many of them.  Moveover, though he was engaged in scientific studies even during the Assus-Mytilene period, the works of his latest period, as he drew progressively further from the influence of Plato and embarked on his great program of research, show the greatest devotion to observation and the evidence of the senses" (M&H 354).  BUT HE IS USUALLY ON PLATO'S SIDE:  THEORY OUTWEIGHS FACTS!  "Aristotle saw dangers in rationalistic idealism's failure to begin from a clear assessment of actual facts.  In contrast to Plato's idealism, Aristotle brings to full maturity a second major approach to the study of the good life:  collecting of facts and using factual information to make this a better world.

            “Aristotle is a philosophical naturalist.  Naturalism is the belief that reality consists of the natural world and that the universe is ordered.  Everything follows consistent and discoverable laws of nature, and can be described in terms of fundamental laws.  Nature always acts with a purpose, and the key to understanding anything lies in determining its essential purpose.  There is no separate supernatural order of reality” (Soccio 156).

            Aristotle’s Ethical Thought.  Like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle believed a knowledge of ethics was possible and must be based on reason.  Yet he suggested a guiding principle:  NOTHING IN EXCESS.”   What would later be called “the Golden Mean” is the key to Aristotle's ethics; i.e., avoid total surrender to desire but also avoid ascetic denial of passions.  This would assure one of a sort of happiness, but perfect happiness could only be found in the contemplative life of the philosopher in the pursuit of wisdom & beauty.  This life offers pure and durable pleasure, but it is only possible for those possessing the leisure and intelligence necessary.

            Aristotle was realistic, though.  "For Aristotle, happiness is a quality of life here and now, not something for the hereafter.  It is neither entirely material nor entirely spiritual.  His is a philosophy of moderation in the fullest sense, based on common experience, stripped of sentimentality: Wealth is not enough to give us happiness, but poverty makes happiness impossible.  Mental attitude is important, but so is physical health.  No one can be happy in the fullest sense who is chronically ill or mentally deficient.  Unattractive people are not as happy as attractive ones.  No matter how great our efforts, happiness always contains an element of luck.  A person raised well from infancy is a happier person than one who is not.  A good life can be marred by a bad death” (Soccio, 138)."      "Eudaimonia implies being really alive as opposed to just existing:  fully aware, vital alert.  It is more than being free of cares or worries.  Rather, eudaimonia implies exhilaration--great suffering and great joy, great passions.  It implies a full life, not a pinched, restricted one.

    "A life devoted solely to pleasure, says Aristotle, is ‘a life fit only for cattle.’  Pleasure is not the goal of life; it's the natural companion of a full and vigorous life.  If you have ever seen an athlete or scholar or artist working very hard at what she loves, you know what Aristotle meant:  deep and satisfying pleasure accompanies doing what we are meant to do.  But the pursuit of pleasure as an end is shallow:

            Aristotle’s Political Thought.  Aristotle thought that "Man is by nature a `political' animal" (Politics I, i, 9).  The polis is necessary for a person to have the opportunity to lead a rational and moral existence, i.e., political life could be rationally understood and intelligently directed.  "His ideal was a moderate, safe, property-based government (the "polity")...” (M&H 353).

He is not aiming at utopia, like Plato; his trust is in the rule of law, not in individuals (like Plato's philosopher-kings), and this respect for law must be ingrained in youth! Absolute kingship is the best form of government,  but it is unrealistic.  So he felt the best political community was one formed by citizens of the middle class (“polity” as he called it)!  The wealthy and the poor both have difficulty in following rational principles:  the wealthy have never learned the habit of obedience and the poor never develop qualities of leadership.  The middle class is less afflicted by envy than the poor and more likely to view fellow citizens as equals than the rich.  [NOTE: slavery is a given!]  This is not real democracy.

               SO SOPHROSYNE "moderation" IS THE KEY TO ARISTOTLE'S THOUGHT!       

NOTE:  This rational approach to nature would even affect the physician Hippocrates, who wrote:   "Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it.  But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, there would be no end of divine things."  (Sagan Demon Haunted World 8)                                            

V. The Peloponnesian War and the decline of the polis.

            The chief source of our knowledge about the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides’ (460-400 BC) History of the Peloponnesian War.  In 424 he was elected general and put in charge of defending the city of Amphipolis in N. Greece.  When the city fell to Spartans, Thucydides was exiled.  History ends at 411 BC, so Thucydides may have died before he could complete the book.  The “Funeral Oration =” of Pericles represents the high water mark in that tide of humanistic optimism which had been growing in Greece since the Persian War with its insistence that the irrational can be overcome by conscious effort!

            Thucydides applied the rationalist-empiricism of the Ionian philosophers to political history.  His work is an attempt to analyze human motives and reactions for future generations; i.e., he is looking for universal principles of human behavior (typical of Classical Period).  

   "The years from 480 to 400 BC are among the great ages of the world; an age when a small people created some of the best literature, art and thought of the world, when some of its greatest drama was written, some of its finest sculpture carved, its most beautiful building erected--the age of Herodotus, of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, of Ictinus and Phidias, the age when Socrates lived and Plato was born.  Thucydides does not even mention their names or their works.  It seems strange as when the epitaph of Aeschylus claims that he fought against the Persians but does not say a word about his plays.  Thucydides is uninterested in the achievement that has profoundly affected the world, and is absorbed in a war which beside the vast struggles of later ages seems a quarrel of frogs and mice, in a political struggle which has no great significance in world history, in the fortunes of half a dozen towns any of which would be lost in a suburb of London.  He is absorbed in the war because it is the crisis of one of these cities and its empire.  Posterity, accustomed to the empires of Rome, Britain, Russia, and China, hardly thinks of Athens as an imperial state.  One might almost say that Thucydides thought of her as nothing else (Sir Richard Livingstone's intro. to Thucydides'  The History of the Peloponnesian War, xiv-xv)."

  NOTE:  "[Thucydides]...began the association of history wit political and military affairs, an equation that dominated Western historiography until the 1960s...For millennia the association of history with politics and war made it the exclusive study of adult male aristocrats, leaving little place for a discussion of the lives of lower-class males, women, children, and slaves"  (Carl J. Richard Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts 3-4).

            In 431 began the ruinous Second Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) in which half of the Athenian population will die as well as thousands of other Greeks in the most bloody and ruinous war up to this time.  Athens had angered Sparta's closest ally, Corinth, by siding with Corcyra (not wanting the second largest fleet of 120 ships to fall into the hands of the Corinthians who had the second largest fleet with 100 ships [Athens had the largest with 300].  Then Athens ordered the Corinthian ambassadors to leave Potidaea while increasing the Potidaean assessment to the league from 6 to 15 talents.  When Potidaea revolted, Athens surrounded the city, trapping the Corinthian envoys inside.  Corinth now persuaded the Spartans to invade Attica to force a military decision.  Pericles (r.454-429) countered by withdrawing the entire population within Athens's city walls, which had been extended to include the suburbs and to give access to the sea.  He intended to avoid pitched battles with the superior Spartan troops on land and to go on the offensive at sea, launching seaborne raids against enemy territory and inviting naval battles.  "Athens and its allies possessed 600 ships to the 150 ships of Sparta and its allies.  Better yet, while the Athenians possessed six thousand talents, the Spartan treasury was virtually empty" (Carl J. Richard Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts 58).
    "Though these tactics worked well in the first year of the war, in 430 plague [carried from Egypt to Athens by a trading vessel] broke out in Athens, where the population of Attica was cooped up with little sanitation.  Pericles died of it in 429, leaving Athens without a trusted leader who could make unpopular but necessary policies acceptable.  The plague raged until the end of 426 and cost Athens about a third of its population, including its best troops” (Winks, 45).  After the death of Pericles in 429 BC of the plague, peace was finally reached with the Spartans in 421 BC (called the Peace of Nicias after its leader).  Athens then showed its ruthlessness by killing all the adult males of the island of Melos and enslaving the women and children as a punishment for Melos's insistence on staying neutral in the war (416) and then following the advice of Alcibiades (Pericles' cousin) by sending the Athenian expedition against Sicily (esp. Syracuse the largest city of Sicily), in 415-413.  Before the fleet reached Syracuse, Alcibiades was recalled to stand trial for profaning the Herms and he fled to Sparta. War with Sparta resumed in 414 at his suggestion.
            Meanwhile the largest army ever assembled by any Greek city was led by Nicias against Syracuse and when he requested reinforcements a second large force was sent.  Experiencing failure after failure against the Syracusans, and their allies, the Greeks were about to withdraw when Nicias (advised by seers) postponed the departure for 27 days because of a sudden lunar eclipse ["Greek religous tradition warned against making important moves during an eclipse" (Carl J. Richard Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts 69)].  Meanwhile the Syracusans blocked the harbor and when the Athenians attempted to escape by land they were overcome and set in Sicilian rock quarries to die of hunger, thirst and disease.  Athens and its allies lost 50,000 men (incl. Nicias) and 200 ships, one third of their army and most of their navy!
            Besides the devastation of the plague and the war, the Athenians also suffered from the internal political struggles between various oligarchic democratic factions.  In fact, a Council of 400 was installed in power in 411 BC only to be overthrown by the democratic crews of the Athenian ships.
            In 406 the Athenians had an impressive victory at Arginusae, but then executed the 6 victorious generals--including Pericles' son--for failing to rescue drowning rowers in  stormy seas (5,000 men died in the confusion).  Then in 405 at Aegospotomi, "the Spartans captured most of the Athenian fleet, deserted on a beach in the Hellespont while the sailors were hunting food on shore.  The Spartan infantry rounded up thousands of Athenian prisoners, of whom three thousand were executed as direct reprisal for recent Athenian atrocities.  Starving, without money, blockaded by land and sea, its alliance in ruins as the allies had revolted or joined the Spartans, Athens had to surrender unconditionally to the Spartan leader Lysander” (Winks 47).   "One of Sparta's allies (by one account Thebes, by another Corinth) proposed that Athens be razed and that the entire Athenian population be sold into slavery--just as the sleepless Athenians expected.  But after a man from Phocis sang a few lines from Euripides' Electra, the allies decided that it would be an outrage to destroy a city that had produced such a poet." (Carl J. Richard Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts 73).  Sparta, upon winning the war in 404, installed another oligarchy, the ruling Council of 30 (called "Thirty Tyrants" by Athenians) who were led by Critias.  They confiscated property & executed many until an uprising led by returned exiles took power in the winter of 404-403 BC.
            Because of the Peloponnesian War the great confidence and pride that prevailed after the Persian Wars diminished.  "At least half of the Athenian population died during the war, along with large numbers of Spartans and other Greeks.  At the war's end Greece lay in ruin"{ (Carl J. Richard Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts 56).  The Spartan victory was followed by political and economic collapse of the Greek world.  Democracies were replaced by oligarchies; but ruthless excesses of oligarchs led to democratic revolutions (e.g., Athens by 403 had restored the democracy!).  Persia was financing some of the trouble--alliances that were short-lived:  in 395 Persia supported Athens, Argos, Corinth and Thebes against Sparta!  In 371 at the battle of Leuctra Sparta was defeated by Thebes.  Epaminondas, the Theban general, then marched into Messenia freeing the helots, thus ending Spartan power and society as it had been.  In fact, by 371 so many Spartans had died in war that the only 1,200 Spartan citizens survived.  Then in 362 at Mantinea, the Thebans defeated a new coalition of Sparta and Athens, but the Theban general Epaminondas was killed, and no other able leader rose, so her power ended. The Athenians attempted to fill the power vacuum with a revised naval confederacy, but it failed and Greek internecine war continued, along with an economic depression in which prices rose by 50% from 400-350 BC.

VI.  Alexander the Great

            This chaos in Greece would end with Philip II (382-336) when Macedonia, whose inhabitants were related to the Greeks but nonetheless were considered by them to be barbarians, became a centralized powerful state under Philip II who became king in 359.  He created a powerful army by combining the renowned Macedonian cavalry of nobles with the Greek phalanx (infantry), a formation that he and Alexander would conquer the world with!  Epaminondas, the famous Theban general, had instructed a young Macedonian hostage--Philip (to secure the Theban/Macedonian alliance)--in the art of warfare.  Using an infantry armed with pikes (sarissa) up to 5 meters long (Philip had lengthened them from the standard 8 feet and fitted them with a heavier iron point) that were used for thrusting at the enemy rather than throwing, the phalanx would stand firm and immovable against the enemy's front line while the cavalry attacked in wedge-shaped formations on the flanks.  Once the cavalry had broken the enemy ranks, the phalanx moved forward to complete the victory.
            At Chaeronea in 338 BC Philip defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes, killing 1,000 and taking another 2,000 captive, with his 18 year old son Alexander commanding part of the army! Philip treated Athens kindly despite Demosthenes (384-322) who had been delivering speeches against Philip (Philippics) since 351.  But Greece was now his, and in 337 at a conference in Corinth he was elected general and leader of a confederacy of the Greeks, the League of Corinth, the purpose of which was to invade Persia, ostensibly to avenge the 480 BC invasion of Greece by Xerxes and to free the Greek cities of Asia, but actually Philip was in debt and could not maintain his army without fresh wealth (therefore his plan to attack Persia).
            BUT in 336 as he was about to set out for Asia Minor, he was assassinated by a young man with a grievance. Thus Philip's son Alexander (356-323)  came to the throne of Macedonia at age 20!  Aristotle had tutored him for three years (beginning at age 13) in philosophy, rhetoric, geography, geometry, astronomy, biology & medicine (the last two being his favorite subjects).
            After quelling a Greek rebellion, he conquered Asia Minor in 334 BC with 35,000 men (he  kept a copy of the Iliad annotated by Aristotle with him as he went:  Did he see himself as a second Achilles?).  Then he conquered Palestine & Egypt [founded city of Alexandria after the Egyptians made him pharaoh for liberating them from the Persians.] and then went after Persia. 
            “Alexander's first major victory over the Persian king and general, Darius III, took place at Issus in southeastern Asia Minor in 333 B.C."  Darius had around 75,000 troops to Alexander's 35,000.  Darius took a position facing south with the sea on his right and the slopes of Mount Amanus on the left. He and the Immortals were in the center with  his cavalry on his extreme right, hoping to overwhelm Alexander's left with a cavalry charge.  Alexander was on the right of his line of troops with his general Parmenio commanding left and center.  Alexander's tactic was like his father's:  have the left flank advance more slowly than the right, drawing the enemy out to the breaking point.  As the enemy thought the left flank was weakening and send more troops there, Alexander would break through the weakened area and cause panic as they would surround the enemy.  As it happened, the Persians panicked and Darius III fled the field.  He would meet Alexander again.
    In the  meantime, Alexander freed the Ionian poleis and replaced their Persian-imposed oligarchies with democracies.  He "then moved down the eastern Mediterranean coast, overcame resistance at Tyre and Gaza (332) [where he was severely wounded in the shoulder, and all the men were killed and the women and children sold into slavery], induced submission of the Jews of Palestine, and was welcomed in Egypt as a conquering hero.  There he founded the city of Alexandria, destined to become one of the greatest cities of Hellenistic civilization.  Then he moved further eastward, decisively defeated the armies of Darius at Gaugamela [Persians would lose 30,00 dead to the Greek 100-500;in 331;  he set fire to the palace of Xerxes at Persepolis just as Xerxes did to the Athenian acropolis], and took possession of the wealth of the eastern cities [ca. 180,00 talents of silver, not counting gold, jewels--enough in coins alone to run the Athenian empire for 200 years!].  When Darius was murdered by the Persian princes, Alexander proclaimed himself "King of Asia" and quickly accustomed himself to the divine honors paid an oriental monarch" (Perrin The New Testament 4). 
            By 330 discontent was growing among his troops:  they were tired of fighting & marching so far from home.  He began irrational after a minor plot to kill him was uncovered and he killed Parmenio and Kleitus, two of his generals.  They also thought Alexander was behaving too much like a Persian by--wearing Persian dress, appointing Persians to positions of high authority, but allowing Persians to prostrate themselves on the ground when they greeted him (Greeks only did so before gods!), and by taking a Persian bride (Stateira, daughter of Darius), and arranging for 80 of his officers & 10,000 of his soldiers to marry oriental women. Later he would fall in love with and marry the Bactrian princess, Roxane, daughter of Oxyartes.
            By 326 BC Alexander crossed Bactria (Afghanistan) and pushed across the river Indus.  As they got deeper into India, the troops finally refused to go further than the Hyphasis River.  On the return home they experienced many hardships from heat, hunger and thirst.  Then Alexander experienced an almost fatal wound during the conquest of the Mallians on the way back which was to make the return even more difficult for Alexander (although it also reveals his great prowess in battle).
            Alexander finally reached Babylon in 324 BC with only 25,000 of the 86,000 who began the march home.  Then as he was about to circumnavigate Arabia, he died at age 32 of fever in 323 BC.  Thus, Alexander died of wounds and exhaustion 13 years after successful campaigns over an area from Greece to India established him as the finest general of the ancient world.

This ends the Classical Age of Greece (and the Hellenic Period).

            One cannot underestimate the impact of Alexander the Great.  “Alexander was a brilliant military strategist, but there was more to his dream than military conquest.  He had been tutored by Aristotle and saw himself as the apostle and emissary of the classical Greek culture.  Attached to his general staff were historians, ethnographers, geographers, botanists, zoologists, mineralogists, and hydrographers.  His vision was ‘one world’ (Greek oicumene), or one great ‘world city’ (Greek cosmopolis).  Alexander's conquests ‘spread Hellenism in a vast colonizing wave throughout the Near East and created, if not politically, at least economically and culturally, a single world stretching from Gibraltar to the Punjab [with]...Greek koine [‘common’ or vernacular] as a lingua franca.
           "The extent to which Alexander went in his attempt to create a ‘single world’ can be illustrated by two points.  First, he wed Persians, including Statira, the daughter of Darius II, and Parysotis, the daughter of Artaxerxes II Ochus  [and Roxana, the daughter of a Bactrian named Oxyartes of Balkh in Bactria (then eastern Persia, now northern Afghanistan)]; then he induced eighty of his officers to marry local women; in the spring of 324 B.C. during a ‘feast of fraternization’ he gave gifts to 10,000 of his men for marrying Persian women!  Second, he built a network of almost thirty Greek cities throughout the empire, a building program that was expanded by later Hellenistic rulers.  These became enclaves of Greek culture.  Here gymnasia, baths, and theaters were built, and the upper classes spoke koine Greek, wore Greek dress, absorbed Greek learning, adopted Greek customs, and took part in Greek athletics.  Palestine, the land of the ancient Hebrews (now known as "Jews from the word Judah) was no exception to this phenomenon.  Furthermore, the process of Hellenization continued through the beginning of the Roman Empire (27 B.C.) and beyond, for the Romans perpetuated Greek culture" (Perrin 5).

Send comments and questions to Dr. Richard Baldwin, Gulf Coast Community College.
This page last updated 08/17/10