The Ancient Greek Literature

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Category: Literature

Published on Monday, 26 January 2015 17:46

In the Greek history a huge amount of writings have been created and even today, 2500 years later, we can still enjoy many of them. Their writings are divided into different types:

First - the epic: Epics are long stories which tell the story of a hero. Well known is the epic poetry of Homer from around 700 BC. He wrote two connected ones – the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”.

Second – the poem: Likewise around 700 BC you can find two examples written by the early Greek poet Hesiod who gives us a systematic account of Greek mythology, the creation myths and the gods, as well as an insight into the day-to-day lives of Greek farmers of the time – “Theogony” and “Works and Days”. There are also a number of shorter poems by Archilochus (Are-KILL-oh-cuss) and Sappho (SA-foe) from the 600s BC, among others. Interesting is that Sappho's poems are the only surviving literature by a Greek woman!

The fables of Aesop represent a separate genre of literature, unrelated to any other, and probably developed out of an oral tradition going back many centuries.

Third – the play: Plays are divided into tragedies and comedies. Tragedies are generally sad, while comedies are funny. The earliest known Greek dramatist was Thespis, the winner of the first theatrical contest held at Athens in the 6th Century BC. Aeschylus, however, is usually considered the first of the great Greek playwrights, and essentially invented what we think of as drama in the 5th Century BCE (thereby changing Western literature forever) with his introduction of dialogue and interacting characters into play-writing. Sophocles is credited with skillfully developing irony as a literary technique, and extended what was considered allowable in drama. Euripides, on the other hand, used his plays to challenge the societal norms and mores of the period (a hallmark of much of Western literature for the next 2 millennia), introduced even greater flexibility in dramatic structure and was the first playwright to develop female characters to any extent. Aristophanes defined and shaped our idea of what is known as Old Comedy, while, almost a century later, Menander carried on the mantle and dominated the genre of Athenian New Comedy.

Fourth – the history: Two major histories that we still have are those by Herodotus and Thucydides.  About 450 BC, Herodotus wrote a history of the Persian Wars. About 400 BC, Thucydides wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War. After the Peloponnesian War, Xenophon wrote about his adventures as a mercenary soldier for the Persians. During the Roman takeover of Greece, Polybius wrote a History of Rome in Greek. All are written in prose (not in verse).

Fifth - philosophical dialogues and treatises: The first written philosophy was written by Plato around 380 BC in the form of a kind of play, two or more people talking to each other. Later on both Plato and his student Aristotle wrote regular philosophical books, in prose without dialogues.

Sixth - legal and political speeches: The first speeches that survived are from the 300s BC and the three most famous speechwriters were Lysias, Isocrates, and Demosthenes.

The Greeks have made the earliest great European literary works and their ideas still fascinate people from today.