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LESSON 1-a- GREEK LITERATURE

LESSON 1

GREEK LITERATURE


Overview of Greek Literature

Over a period of more than ten centuries, the ancient Greeks created a literature of such
brilliance that it has rarely been equaled and never surpassed. In poetry, tragedy, comedy, and
history, Greek writers created masterpieces that have inspired, influenced, and challenged
readers to the present day.

There are four major periods of Greek literature: pre-classical, classical, Hellenistic-
Roman, and Byzantine. Of these the most significant works were produced during the pre-
classical and classical eras.

Classical and Pre-classical antiquity Greek literature stretched from Homer until the 4th
century BC and the rise of Alexander the Great. At the beginning of Greek literature stand the
two monumental works of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The other great poet of the pre-
classical period was Hesiod. His two works were Works and Days and Theogony. The first is a
faithful depiction of the poverty-stricken country life he knew so well, and it sets forth principles
and rules for farmers. Theogony is a systematic account of creation and of the gods. It vividly
describes the ages of mankind, beginning with a long-past Golden Age. Together the works of
Homer and Hesiod comprised a kind of Bible for the Greeks; Homer told the story of a heroic
relatively near past, which Hesiod bracketed with a creation narrative and an account of the
practical realities of contemporary daily life.
By 338 BC all of the Greek city-states except Sparta had been conquered by Philip II of
Macedon. Greece was not independent again until the early 19th century, a period of more than
2,000 years. This period is called the Hellenistic Roman Period.
Philip's son Alexander the Great extended his father's conquests greatly. In so doing he
inaugurated what is called the Age of Hellenism. The Greek word for Greece was Hellas.
Hellenism, therefore, signifies the spread of Greek language, literature, and culture throughout
the Mediterranean world.
Alexander 's conquests were in the East, and Greek culture shifted first in that direction.
Athens lost its preeminent status as the leader of Greek culture, and it was replaced temporarily
by Alexandria, Egypt.
After the rise of Rome, all the Mediterranean area was brought within one far-flung
empire. Greek civilization then spread westward as well. Educated Romans learned to speak and
write Greek, and they looked to Greece's golden age for inspiration in philosophy, poetry, and
drama. So dependent did Roman writers become, in fact, that they produced very little that was
not based upon Greek works, especially in drama and philosophy. Best known of the late Greek
historians to modern readers is Plutarch, who died about AD 119. His `Parallel Lives' of great
Greek and Roman leaders has been read by every generation since the work was first published.
His other surviving work is the `Moralia', a collection of essays on ethical, religious, political,
physical, and literary topics

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LESSON 1-a- GREEK LITERATURE

Translation of the Hebrew Bible
During the Byzantine Period, Constantine the Great moved the capital of the empire from
Rome to Byzantium (now Istanbul) in about AD 330 and renamed the city Constantinople. The
Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire lasted until it was destroyed by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (see
Byzantine Empire ). The civilization of this empire was Greek in language and heritage, but it
was Christian in religion.
One of the most valuable contributions of the Hellenistic period was the translation of the
Hebrew Bible into Greek. The work was done at Alexandria and completed by the end of the 2nd
century BC. The name Septuagint means "seventy," from the tradition that there were 72
scholars who did the work. Since the language of the early Christian community was Greek, the
Septuagint became its Bible. In religion the crowning literary achievement was considered to be
the New Testament portion of the Christian Bible. Other books not in the Hebrew Bible were
also written in Greek and included what is called the Apocrypha.
There were very few literature that showed any real originality that written in the
vernacular, the language of the common people. This literature--including poems, romances, and
epics--was only written from the 12th century onward. Of the epics, the most memorable is the
story of Digenis Akritas, based on a historical figure who died in about 788. It presents Akritas
as the ideal medieval Greek hero.
After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, Greek national life and culture ended
for centuries, as did literary production. It was only revived when Greece became independent in
1829.
Lyric Poetry
Greek lyric is the body of lyric poetry written in dialects of ancient Greek. It is primarily
associated with the early 7th to the early 5th centuries BC, sometimes called the "Lyric Age of
Greece" but continued to be written into the Hellenistic and Imperial periods.

Poetry flourished in Alexandria in the third century BC. The chief Alexandrian poets
were Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. Theocritus, who lived from about 310
to 250 BC, invented a new genre of poetrybucolic, a genre that the Roman Virgil would later
imitate in his Eclogues.

Lyric poetry got its name from the fact that it was originally sung by individuals or a
chorus accompanied by the instrument called the lyre.

Lyric poetry was divided in four genres, two of which were not accompanied by cithara,
but by flute.
1. Elegiac poetry written in elegiac couplet
2. Iambic poetry written in iambic trimester, popularized by Archilocus of Paros ,
700BC.
3. Monadic lyric popularized by the Nine lyric poets, particularly Alcaeus and Sappho
4. Choral lyric popularized by Pindarus.



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LESSON 1-a- GREEK LITERATURE

Characteristics of Greek lyrics

Greek lyric poems celebrate athletic victories , commemorate the dead, exhort soldiers to
valor, and offer religious devotion in the forms of hymns, paeans, and dithyrambs. Love poems
praise the beloved, express unfulfilled desire, proffer seductions, or blame the former lover for a
breakup. In this last mood, love poetry might blur into invective, a poetic attack aimed at
insulting or shaming a personal enemy, an art at which Archilochus, the earliest known Greek
lyric poet, excelled.

The themes of Greek lyric include "politics, war, sports, drinking, money, youth, old age,
death, the heroic past, the gods," and hetero- and homosexual love.

Major Poets
The two major poets were Sappho and Pindar. Sappho, who lived in the period from 610
to 580 BC, has always been admired for the beauty of her writing. Her themes were personal.
They dealt with her friendships with and dislikes of other women, though her brother Charaxus
was the subject of several poems. Unfortunately, only fragments of her poems remain.
With Pindar the transition has been made from the pre-classical to the classical age. He
was born about 518 BC and is considered the greatest of the Greek lyricists. His masterpieces
were the poems that celebrated athletic victories in the games at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and
the Isthmus of Corinth.
Greek Drama

Ancient Greek drama developed around Greece's theater culture. Drama was particularly
developed in Athens, so works are written in Attic dialect. The dialogues are in iambic trimeter,
while chorus are in the meters of choral lyric. The tragic plays grew out of simple choral songs
and dialogues performed at festivals of the god Dionysus. In the classic period, performances
included three tragedies and one pastoral drama, depicting four different episodes of the same
myth. Wealthy citizens were chosen to bear the expense of costuming and training the chorus as
a public and religious duty. Attendance at the festival performances was regarded as an act of
worship. Performances were held in the great open-air theater of Dionysus in Athens. All of the
greatest poets competed for the prizes offered for the best plays.

Three Types of Drama/Play

Tragedy

The three best authors are Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. From Aeschylus, we still
have seven tragedies, among which the only surviving series of three tragedies performed
together, the so-called Oresteia. Seven works of Sophocles have survived, the most important of
which are Oedipus rex and Antigone. From Euripides, seventeen tragedies have survived, among
them Medea and The Bacchae.

Comedy

As with the tragedians, few works still remain of the great comedic writers. Of the works
of earlier writers, only some plays by Aristophanes exist. These are a treasure trove of comic
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presentation. He poked fun at everyone and every institution. For boldness of fantasy, for
merciless insult, for unqualified indecency, and for outrageous and free political criticism, there
is nothing to compare to the comedies of Aristophanes. In The Birds, he held up Athenian
democracy to ridicule. In The Clouds, he attacked the philosopher Socrates. In Lysistrata, he
denounced war. Only 11 of his plays have survived.

Satyr Play

Satyr plays were an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to the bawdy
satire of burlesque. They featured choruses of satyrs, were based on Greek mythology, and were
rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality (including phallic props), pranks, sight gags, and
general merriment. Although the genre was popular, only one example has survived in its
entirety, Euripides' Cyclops.

Greek History

Two of the most famous historians who have ever written flourished during Greece's
classical age: Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus is commonly called the father of history,
and his "History" contains the first truly literary use of prose in Western literature. Of the two,
Thucydides was the more careful historian. His critical use of sources, inclusion of documents,
and laborious research made his History of the Peloponnesian War a significant influence on
later generations of historians. A third historian of ancient Greece, Xenophon, began his
Hellenica where Thucydides ended his work about 411 BC and carried his history to 362 BC.
His writings were superficial in comparison to those of Thucydides, but he wrote with authority
on military matters.

Greek Influence

The influence of Ancient Greek Literature on Western Literature has been enormous. In fact, the
frame of Greek literary genres has been almost perfectly adopted by Latin literature, firstly, and
then by the European literatures, until the 18th century. The Greek works were well known by
Roman writers, as well as by European writers since Renaissance. So, these works, particularly
the Homeric poems and the tragedies were the model for the successive writers of the same
genres.



Early Greek Poetry

SAPPHO

(born c. 610, Lesbos [now part of Greece]died c. 570 bc),

Legends about Sappho abound, many having been repeated for centuries. She is said, for
example, to have been married to Cercylas, a wealthy man from the island of Andros. But many
scholars challenge this claim, finding evidence in the Greek words of the bawdry of later Comic
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LESSON 1-a- GREEK LITERATURE

poets. Most modern critics also consider it legend that Sappho leaped from the Leucadian rock to
certain death in the sea because of her unrequited love of Phaon, a young man.

Greek lyric poet greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing style. She ranks
with Archilochus and Alcaeus, among Greek poets, for her ability to impress readers with a
lively sense of her personality. Her language contains elements from Aeolic vernacular speech
and Aeolic poetic tradition, with traces of epic vocabulary familiar to readers of Homer. Her
phrasing is concise, direct, and picturesque. She has the ability to stand aloof and judge critically
her own ecstasies and grief, and her emotions lose nothing of their force by being recollected in
tranquility.

Qualities of Sapphos Poetry

1. Clarity of language and simplicity of thought are everywhere evident in fragments
2. Sharp images that sometimes linger over to elaborate words for their own sake.
3. Direct words of conversations real or imaginary are quoted and so gains immediacy.
4. When the subject is the turbulence of her emotions, she displays a cool control in their
expression.
5. Her words are chosen for their sheer melody enchanting

Here is a single complete poem, Fragment 1, the Hymn to Aphrodite,

quoted in its entirety as
a model of the "polished and exuberant" style of composition by Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
with admiration of its consummate artistry. The two additional verses were translated by A. S.
Kline in 2005.
Hymn to Aphrodite
Daughter of Zeus and Immortal
Aphrodite, serene
Weaver of spells, at thy portal
Hear me and slay not, O Queen!
As in the past, hither to me
From thy far palace of gold,
Drawn by the doves that overflew me,
Come, as thou earnest of old.
Swiftly thy flock bore thee hither,
Smiling, as turned I to thee,
Spoke thou across the blue weather,
"Sappho, why callest thou me?"
"Sappho, what Beauty disdains thee,
Sappho, who wrongest thine heart,
Sappho, what evil now pains thee,
Whence sped the dart?
"Flies from thee, soon she shall follow,
Turns from thee, soon she shall love,
Seeking thee swift as the swallow,
Ingrate though now she may prove."
Come, once again to release me,
Join with my fire thy fire,
Freed from the torments that seize me,
Give me, O Queen! my desire

Be here, by me
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LESSON 1-a- GREEK LITERATURE


Be here, by me,
Lady Hera, I pray
Who answered the Atreides,
Glorious kings.

They gained great things
There, and at sea,
And came towards Lesbos,
Their home path barred

Till they called to you, to Zeus
Of suppliants, to Dionysus, Thyones
Lovely child: be kind now,
Help me, as you helped them

Hes equal with the Gods, that man

Hes equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voices sweetness,

And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And Im an inch from dying.


Sources:

Barnard, Mary (transl.), Sappho: A New Translation, University of California Press; Reissue edition (June
1986)
Beye, Charles Rowan (1987). Ancient Greek Literature and Society. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Campbell, D. A. (ed.) (1982). Greek Lyric 1: Sappho and Alcaeus (Loeb Classical Library No. 142).
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Campbell, D.A. (1982), Greek Greek Lyric Poetry: Volume I. Sappho and Alcaeus, Loeb Classical
Library, no. 142, Cambridge, MA
Campbell, D.A. (1988), Greek Lyric Poetry: Volume II. Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus t
Alcman, Loeb Classical Library, no. 143, Cambridge MA
Easterling, P.E., and Knox, B.M.W., [editors] (1985). The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek
literature: Volume 1. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Flacelire, Robert (1964). A Literary History of Greece. (Translated by Douglas Garman). Chicago: Aldine
Pub. Co.
Gutzwiller, Kathryn (2007). A guide to Hellenistic literature. Blackwell.
Hadas, Moses (1950). A History of Greek Literature. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Lesky, Albin (1966). A history of Greek literature. Translated by James Willis and Cornelis de Heer.
Indianapoli
/ Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Page, D. L.(1955). Sappho and Alcaeus, Oxford, Clarendon Press
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/523753/Sappho
www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Sappho.htm

chars.lin.oakland.edu/lin109/Handouts/Greek/greekliterature.html
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LESSON 1-a- GREEK LITERATURE