Why Study Ancient Greek Literature? : Why Study Ancient Greek Literature?
Reasons to Study Ancient Greek Literature : Reasons to Study Ancient Greek Literature They laid the foundation of Western Civilization
They established a system of government known as the rule of the people or Democracy
In their literature, they discussed and weighed out the issues of war, role of women, and humanity’s obligations to the divine.
In a very real sense, they struggled with the same concerns we do in the contemporary era.
Greek language and Greek thought is the root metaphor of Western thought.
Their art and architecture are still the basis of High Classical Art in the West.
What is literature? : What is literature? When scholars speak of the literature of a subject, what they are referring to is the vast bibliography of criticism, interpretation, and polemic that has attached itself over the years to every field of study.
Politicians sometimes refer to ‘campaign literature’, referring to the collection of speeches, campaign slogans, etc. This we might find hard to claim has any literary merit.
When we refer to French or American literature, what we are referring to here is a written tradition, available to a large literate public, presenting a canon of great works that define the identity of a civilization, proclaiming its ideals but also brood over its problems and defects, and set a standard against which later writers measure their own achievements.
It is this last sense of ‘literature’ that we will be using in this course
Who are these ‘Greeks’? : Who are these ‘Greeks’? The Greeks and the Greek language has a continuous literary history which covers three millennia from the Homeric writings to the present day. There is good reason to believe that the ancestors of the Greeks launched the first of a series of invasions of the Aegean world as early as 2000 BCE. The earliest record of the Greeks comes from Hittite sources, certain Hittite letters dated cir. 1335 - 1325 BCE mention a people they refer to as the Ahhiyawa or the Achaeans of Homer. The various Greek communities referred to themselves as the Hellenes (EllhneV); they called their country Hellas (h EllaV) and their language the Hellenic language (h Ellnvikh glwssa). We call them Greeks from the Latin Graeci, the name given to them by the Romans, who applied it to the entire people, originally designating a colony in southern Italy. In Homer, the Greeks are generally referred to as the Achaeans, or the Danai.
Periods of Greek History : Periods of Greek History Greek history can be divided into several periods.
The earliest of which is the Mycenaean period stemming from about 1500 to 900 BCE.
The dark ages, roughly 900 to 800 BCE.
Archaic Greece, roughly 800 to 500 BCE.
The Classical period, roughly 500 to 350 BCE.
The Hellenistic period; roughly 350 to 90 BCE.
After 90 BCE, Greece was conquered by Rome and made part of the Empire.
The periods of Greek literature we will be examining will come from the Archaic and the Classical periods.
Why Study Greek Literature, and not the literature of other ancient peoples? : Why Study Greek Literature, and not the literature of other ancient peoples? Even though a fragment of the vast output of Greek thought exists, what we have is of extremely high caliber.
The literature of other ancient peoples does not effect us as greatly as the Greeks. (The only exception here is that of Biblical Hebrew).
The remains of other ancient peoples literature isn’t of the same quality as that of Ancient Greece.
The written works of other ancient peoples was not intended for a literate audience.
Slide7 : Athena Parthanos
Views of the Acropolis in Athens : Views of the Acropolis in Athens
The Acropolis Today : The Acropolis Today
Egyptian Hieroglyphs : Egyptian Hieroglyphs
A sample of Egyptian Hieroglyphs : A sample of Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Sumerian Cuneiform Writing : Sumerian Cuneiform Writing
Map of Greece : Map of Greece
Greek Dialects : Greek Dialects
Our Authors : Our Authors Aeschylus: Aristotle: Euripides: Homer: Plato: Sophocles