Ancient Greece: Notable Writers (and their Most Famous Works and Notable Biographical Information and Information about their Works), Literary Terms and Concepts (inc. Genres), and Notable Orators / Rhetoricians (and their Most Famous Works, Contributions, Concepts, and Notable Biographical Information)

Rhapsodes (All Facts)

• Professional bards who were reciters and singers of poetry

  • They recited stories in a poetic way

  • These stories told of the thrilling and moving legendary exploits and adventures of invincible warriors, steadfast heroines, awesome gods, and terrible monsters

• Their name means “stitchers of songs”

• Part of their fame rested on the immense skill in “stitching” great epic tales together from a rich repertoire of characters, themes, and linguistic formulas

• They were famous for their memory in that they memorized such stories from generation to generation

  • Home was the first to write such tales down, and was considered by the Greeks to be the best of these “stitched together” compositions

850 BCE / 750 BCE / 650 BCE - Homer (All Facts)

• (Credited) Author of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”

• Considered by the Greeks to be the greatest of the Rhapsodes in his day

• Was a blind poet

850 BCE / 750 BCE / 650 BCE - Homer: The Iliad (All Facts)

• Considered to be the one of the two best versions of the “stitched together” compositions of the Rhapsodes, it

  • Drew on elements from every age in Greece since the time of Mycenean Civilization

    • These elements were nostalgically fused as an idealistic, but allegedly real, age of heroes

  • Was written down for the first time as a magnificent poetic epic that had been recited by the Rhapsodes for centuries prior to its having been writing down

  • Gripped the imaginations of the Greeks and set new standards of literary expression at the time

  • Consisted of previously unwritten legends of the past

  • Consisted of a story which moved quickly

  • Was written in a language which was capable of great clarity and simplicity but was equally rich in drama, excitement, humor, and sorrow

• Epic war poem about the siege of the city of Troy

• Describes how the heroes of Greece defeat the heroes of Troy across the sea in the Trojan War

  • The war begins when Helen, wife of King Menelaus (of Greece), is abducted by Paris, one of the 50 sons of King Priam of Troy

  • Achilles, the partly divine great Greek hero and warrior thus goes to Troy with 50 ships after allying with the Greek King Agamemnon, Menelaus’s older brother to avenge Helen’s abduction by Paris of Troy

  • However, when Agamemnon takes Achilles’ slave girl to be his own, Achilles refuses to fight for him

  • This occurs until he agrees to let his friend Patroclus borrow his armor and lead his men in battle to protect the Greeks against the Trojans after a series of victories by the Trojans

  • When Achilles’ friend Patroclus is killed by Hector, Paris’s brother, one of the 50 sons of King Priam of Troy, and the greatest Trojan warrior; Achilles, frenzied with grief, goes into the fight, despite Agammemnon’s actions, and goes to singlehandedly defeat Hector and the Trojans, giving Hector’s corpse to King Priam after burying his friend Patroclus

850 BCE / 750 BCE / 650 BCE - Homer: The Odyssey (All Facts)

• Considered to be the one of the two best versions of the “stitched together” compositions of the Rhapsodes, it

  • Drew on elements from every age in Greece since the time of Mycenean Civilization

    • These elements were nostalgically fused as an idealistic, but allegedly real, age of heroes

  • Was written down for the first time as a magnificent poetic epic that had been recited by the Rhapsodes for centuries prior to its having been writing down

  • Gripped the imaginations of the Greeks and set new standards of literary expression at the time

  • Consisted of previously unwritten legends of the past

  • Consisted of a story which moved quickly

  • Was written in a language which was capable of great clarity and simplicity but was equally rich in drama, excitement, humor, and sorrow

• Describes the epic tale of the travels and exploits of Odysseys (or Ulysses as he is sometimes called)

  • He is the son of King Laertes of Ithaca and is a brave and wise Greek warrior in the service of Agamemnon and Achilles

  • After the Greeks defeat the Trojans and Troy is destroyed, he sets off to return home to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus

  • On his way home, he fights the Cicones but loses and is carried by a storm to a faraway land where, from that point onwards, he has to find his way home

  • Encounters various trials and tribulations including the

    • Lotus Eaters

    • Polyphemus, the one-eyed cyclops Polyphemus, who began to eat his men but he and his men eventually blinded him to escape

    • The Isle of Circe, a divine sorceress who turns his men into pigs until he forces her to change them back by agreeing to live with her for a year

    • The Sirens, whose singing attracts sailors to the land where they die, which he was careful not to succumb to on his way home

    • Helios, the Sun God whose cattle are eaten by he and his men and in return he had to deal with a shipwreck and the killing of all his men by Helios

    • Calypso, the island he drifts to after being shipwrecked by Helios where he is kept for seven years there by her but after which he is set free and tries to sail back home

    • The King of Phaeacia, who sends him home clad as a beggar

    • His wife’s suitors, who, after 10 years of having left Troy, he comes back home to violently kill with his son

  • Only after all these encounters is he reunited with his family

750 BCE / 650 BCE - Hesiod (All Facts)

• Famous Greek poet

• Author of “Works and Days” and “Theogony”

• Former shepherd born near Mount Helicon in Boeotia in central Greece

• Gained influence around 700 BCE

• Is the first western writer to embody didacticism in his work

• Has an essentially serious outlook on life

• His works create a vivid impression of everyday life in a Greek village contemporary to his day

750 BCE / 650 BCE - Hesiod: Theogony (All Facts)

• Work which explains what all the Greek gods stand for

• Catalogues some 300 gods, with Zeus as their king

750 BCE / 650 BCE - Hesiod: Works and Days (All Facts)

• Work which explains the state of human existence during his time

• Work which describes man’s state, at the time of his writing, which he described as woeful and weary to two causes

  • the first - the jar of evils opened on the world by Pandora

  • the second - the general deterioration of man since the “First Age” of mankind

• Outlines the “Five Ages” of the namesake author which sought to explain creation:

  • The “Golden Age” in which people

    • were made by the gods and lived “with carefree heart, remote from toil and misery”

    • never grew old, but died “as if overcome by sleep”

    • did not have to do back-breaking work on the land because the soil gave them all the food they needed of its own accord

    • when they passed from the earth had their spirits made divine by Zeus

  • The “Silver Age” followed, which was inferior to the “Gold Age,” and in which people

    • lived through a childhood of 100 years and then died shortly afterwards because their witlessness led them to folly and being immoderate as they would not honor the gods

    • were put away beneath the earth by Zeus as the “mortal blessed”

  • The “Bronze Age” followed, in which a third, bronze race of men were made who

    • Were “terrible and fierce” warriors, who slew each other until none were left

  • The “Heroic Age” followed, in which people

    • Were the predecessors of modern humans

    • Were “righteous and noble” men who were destroyed by “ugly war and fearful fighting” before the seven gates of Thebes and at Troy on account of Helen

    • Who did not perish in the fighting were granted a blessed life in the islands at the ends of the Earth

  • The “Iron Age” followed, the current age for the namesake author, in which people

    • suffer and “will never cease from toil and misery” despite some good things happening

• Warns the reader that men will soon succumb to envy, dishonor, hatred, and lawlessness in the current (for his day) “Age of Iron”

  • When this happens, he explains that Zeus will destroy them just like he destroyed their predecessors

• Exalts honest labor

  • Work which gives a detailed account of the yearly calendar of hard work which should serve as an example to moderately well-off peasant smallholders

  • Famous for its quote “work and let work follow work,” which the writer implores is the key to a decent life of reasonable prosperity

  • His lesson is aimed at his brother Perses in particular, who tried to persuade the ruling basileis (generic Greek word for monarch), or nobles, to give him more than his fair share of the farmland left by his father when he died

  • He seeks to prevent him from doing this, converting him from idleness to diligence

  • He does this by spicing his more practical advice with proverbs, allegories, and legends including the “Five Ages of Man” described above and the story of Pandora described above

• Its lessons / concepts include

  • clearing debts and avoiding famine

    • these require “application” because “a postponer does not fill his granary”

      • He warns that not doing this will have one go begging to their neighbors who will eventually turn them away

  • conceptualizing the prosperous peasant, which is one who

    • Owns a few slaves or hires laborers

    • Produces all the food he and his family need including wheat, barley, vegetables, and fruits like grapes

    • Keeps sheep for wool, goats for milk and cheese, and oxen or mules for pulling and carrying

  • outlining the work-year with each part of the year having an allotted task:

    • ploughing

    • sowing

    • harvesting

    • threshing

    • storing grain and straw

  • a description of how the women of the household

    • prepare food

    • spin flax and wool

    • weave cloth to make garments

  • the relief of the yearly grind consisting of numerous festival days when peasant families can enjoy the fruits of their labor

680 BCE - 645 BCE - Archilochus (All Facts)

• Well-established Greek lyrical poet from the island of Paros

• Celebrated for his versatile and innovative use of poetic meters

• Earliest known Greek author to compose almost entirely on the theme of his own emotions and experiences

• Wrote in the Ionian dialect, he composed short elegies and couplets in a sometimes mordant tone

625 BCE - 580 BCE - Alcaeus (All Facts)

• Well-established Greek lyrical poet from the island of Lesbos

• Famous for inventing his namesake form of stanza

• His work includes religious hymns in which he sung of Athena, Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite

• His own feelings and experiences are also a source of inspiration

  • Recalls an encounter with the Athenians in which he had to throw away his shield in order to make a quick escape

• Sings of the pleasures of love and honey-scented wine

630 BCE - 570 BCE - Sappho (All Facts)

• Well-established Greek lyrical poetess from the island of Lesbos

• Remembered for her poems referring to love between women

  • Her poems

    • Were not explicitly physical, but full of passion and sensuality

    • Described the torments of love, with tremulous outpourings of emotion

    • Were often dedicated to her pupils

• Founder of a unique boarding school for well-born young women on the island where she taught them poetry, music, and social graces under the watchful eyes of the Muses, the Graces, and Aphrodite

  • Pupils were groomed for marriage, which she exalted in her poems

  • Encouraged the pupil girls to show affection for one another

  • While this may have involved sexual contact, it would have been no more unusual than male homosexuality which which was more or less institutionalized in Greece during the time of her life

• Famous for inventing her namesake form of stanza

• Despite the content of her poems, she was a wife and mother

  • She was the wife of a rich man named Andros, by whom she had a daughter

• She was born into one of the best families in Lesbos

600’s BCE - Alcman (All Facts)

• Well-established Greek lyrical poet from Lydia (in Anatolia) and who settled in Sparta

• Wrote poems in the Doric dialect

• Excelled in “partheneia,” which were hymns sung by choirs of maidens

Partheneia (All Facts)

• Hymns sung by choirs of maidens

600’s BCE - Arion (All Facts)

• Ancient Greek poet

• Famous for inventing “dithyrambic” poetry

• Professional lyre-player whose existence is famously shrouded in legend:

  • He traveled from city to city performing his choral lyrics

  • Made a tour of Italy, where his talents made him rich

  • On his return journey to Greece, the sailors tried to murder him and steal his money

  • He was granted a request to sing one last time

  • He threw himself overboard, but, transfixed by his music, a dolphin saved him and carried him to the shore on its back

• Disciple of Alcman

620 BCE - 564 BCE - Aesop (All Facts)

• Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as his namesake “Fables” of which he is considered the author

  • However, some fables attributed to him are not actually his but were retold by story-tellers throughout the Greek-speaking world

• Famous for his anthropomorphic tales, in which animals behave in ways which offer morals about human behavior

• Was executed by the Delphians, the priests of Apollo

  • He is believed to have offended the Delphians, who accused him of Sacrilege and cast him to his death from a rock

• Was either a Phrygian, a Thracian, or a slave

630 BCE - 560 BCE - Solon (All Facts)

• Athenian statesman and poet

• One theme which recurs throughout his poetry is his dislike of the greed and pride of the Athenian rich

630 BCE - 555 BCE - Stesichorus (All Facts)

• Considered the greatest of the Dorian lyric poets, he lived in Catania

• His poems were sung by choirs with kithara (lyre) accompaniment

• The subjects of his poems were often mythological and include

  • The capture of the oxen of Geryon by Hercules

  • The taking of Troy

  • The return of the Achaean horses

  • The story of Orestes

570 BCE - 478 BCE - Xenophanes (All Facts)

• Poet from the Colophon in Anatolia

• Considered the first Greek / Western Monotheist

  • He put forth the idea that there is one god, more powerful than all other gods and men, who is different from mortals in mind and body

• Noted that men give their gods bodies, voices, and clothes like their own

  • Noted that Thracians thought of their gods as having red hair and blue eyes

  • Noted that Ethiopians thought of their gods as having black faces and snub noses

  • Noted that Homer and Hesiod had the gods behaving badly, like humans, committing adultery, stealing and deceiving one another

• Derided these notions by arguing that if cows, lions, and horses had hands and could paint, they would paint the gods as cows, lions, and horses

• Traveled about Greece reciting his verses

• Upset traditionalists by ridiculing their religious beliefs

500’s BCE - Thepsis (All Facts)

• Greek poet, playwright, and performer from Athens

• Credited with inventing the tragedy genre or Ancient Greek drama

• Credited with introducing a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in stories, distinguishing between characters with the aid of different masks

• Was the first human to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play (instead of speaking as himself) and introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus having stepped out from the chorus to recite poetry as a character in which he spoke his own lines as a counterpoint to the chorus

• His name lends itself to his namesake adjective which is used as a synonym for actor

400’s BCE - Phrynicus (All Facts)

• Greek tragic poet

• Student of Thepsis

  • Some consider him the true inventor of Greek tragedy instead of his teacher

• Wrote two out of the three known Greek tragedies that dealt with contemporary history from episodes from the Greco-Persian Wars

400’s BCE - Phrynicus: The Sack of Miletus (All Facts)

• Its topicality marks a departure from the traditional subject matter of tragedy, which was myth

• Stage play which depicts the disaster at Miletus in which he was fined for having moved but guilt-tripped the audience into

573 BCE - 495 BCE - Anacreon (All Facts)

• Court poet in Athens from Teos in Ionia

• Notable for his erotic poems and drinking songs

• His favorite theme is love, which he said “masters the gods and tames men”

• Extols the charm of young girls who are wider than unbroken mares

• If a rival is more favored than himself, he accuses him of dallying with bakerwomen and “frequenting prostitutes”

550 BCE - 476 BCE - Hecataeus (All Facts)

• Historian and geographer from Miletus

• Famous for having put the Greek myths into writing for the first time

• Poked fun at the various contradictions that could be found in the Greek myths

• Expedited the process of studying humanity in its historical and physical environments and contexts by bringing critical faculties to bear on genealogical claims made by the aristocratic families, asserting truth and individual opinion at a time when privileges were being challenged

550 BCE - 476 BCE - Hecataeus: Genealogia (All Facts)

• Work in which the author classifies the traditional stories of Greek mythology chronologically

  • He starts with Deucalion, the first man after the flood, to the children of Hercules

• Wrote the stories in a way which was more true to life than had been orally transmitted prior, ironing out inconsistencies and purging them of their fantastic elements on the grounds of common-sense

• He did this to make them seem more sane and credible

• By writing them down, the old myths could be compared, and so writing was seen as a means of interpretation and criticism

518 BCE - 438 BCE - Pindar (All Facts)

• Poet from Thebes

• Famous for his writings on Greece’s athletic games and festivals

  • His verses pay a fitting tribute to the efforts of those whom they immortalize

• Followed the four major athletic festivals, penning triumphal odes (pinicians) in honor of the victors at the Olympics, Pythian Games, Isthmian Games, and Nemean Games

• His odes all followed the same pattern:

  • After calling up visions of splendor, they tell of the victor’s home and family and the city in which he lives

  • Then, they deal with the context itself, usually in terms of a famous mythical exploit well known to all

• As well as descriptions, he refers to religious and moral themes, stressing that victory only comes to those whose way of life deserves it

Pinicians (All Facts)

• Written triumphal odes in honor of the victors of various athletic games and festivals

• Famously written down by Pindar

• If an athlete is rich enough, he can commission poets himself with a choir singing this resulting ode for the public’s enjoyment

556 BCE - 468 BCE - Simonides (All Facts)

• Greek lyric poet from Ceos

• Known for his powerful sense of memory

• Credited with the invention of mnemonics of mnemonic systems

  • He realized that memory could be improved by forming mental images of the required facts and arranging them in an imaginary set of objects, in his case, pigeon holes

• The idea came to him following a disastrous recital of one of his poems in which

  • He had been giving a recital at the home of a nobleman named Scopas, in Thessaly, and there had been an argument over his fee; to which, as he departed, the roof collapsed and killed the entire audience which was still inside

  • Despite the victims being crushed beyond recognition, he was able to identify their bodies because he could remember where each guest was sitting

  • These events led him to his realization described above

518 BCE - 451 BCE - Bacchylides (All Facts)

• Greek lyrical poet

• Wrote odes in praise of Hieron’s success in the horse races at Olympia

525 BCE - 455 BCE - Aeschylus (All Facts)

• Greek playwright

• Known for adding a second actor to the genre of Greek Drama, which, prior to him, featured only one actor

• Won the dramatic competition of the Great Dionysia with his trilogy on the Theban legend

• Won another tragedy competition with his Oresteia Trilogy

• Died at Gela in odd circumstances

  • Was killed by an eagle who dropped a tortoise it was carrying onto him and he did not survive the blow to his head from it

525 BCE - 455 BCE - Aeschylus: The Persians (All Facts)

• Play in which the playwright presents the Athenian public with a Persian view of the Battle of Salamis

• The vanquished appear on stage, and the main body the drama consists of one long, gloomy complaint

• The play offers a moral lesson in moderation, caution, and respect for the gods - all those qualities which ought to have dissuaded the Persians from such a disastrous undertaking

525 BCE - 455 BCE - Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes (All Facts)

• One of three great plays by the namesake author

• Dealt with the final confrontation between the two accursed sons of Oedipus Eteocles and Polynices

• Describes how Eteocles, King of Thebes; and his brother Polynices kill each other in battle and how the terrible curse on the house of Laius dies with them

525 BCE - 455 BCE - Aeschylus: Agamemnon (All Facts)

• First play in his Oresteia trilogy

• Shows the namesake Achaean king being murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, and her lover

525 BCE - 455 BCE - Aeschylus: The Libation Bearers (All Facts)

• Second in his Oresteia trilogy

• Shows Agamemnon’s son Orestes avenge his father via matricide

525 BCE - 455 BCE - Aeschylus: The Euminides (All Facts)

• Third play in his Oresteia Trilogy

497 BCE - 405 BCE - Sophocles (All Facts)

• Greek tragedian / playwright who wrote over 120 plays

• Known for adding a third actor to the genre of Greek Drama, which, prior to him, featured only two actors

497 BCE - 405 BCE - Sophocles: Ajax (All Facts)

• Tragedy that dealt with an episode in the Trojan War in which, after the death of Achilles, the Greeks decided to give the hero’s armor to the man with the greatest cunning, Odysseus, rather than to the man with the greatest courage, the namesake character

• In response, the namesake character flies into a fit of rage, slaughters all the army’s livestock, and commits suicide

497 BCE - 405 BCE - Sophocles: Antigone (All Facts)

• Play which poses important moral and political questions and examines the conflict between divine and human justice

497 BCE - 405 BCE - Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus (All Facts)

• The last play and tragedy by the namesake playwright

• Was a drama of guilt and destiny

497 BCE - 405 BCE - Sophocles: Oedipus Rex (All Facts)

• The most famous play of the namesake playwright

• About the namesake man who killed his father, married his mother, and fled from Thebes

484 BCE - 425 BCE - Herodotus (All Facts)

• Considered the “Father of History” or first historian

• Wrote on the history of the wars between Greece and the barbarians, especially the Greco-Persian Wars; the conquest of the Greek colonies in Anatolia by the Lydian King Croesus and the history of Lydia; and the history of Persia, Babylon, and Egypt

• Travelled widely in the Greek world, collecting mythological, historical, and geographical material

• Was from a literary family in Anatolia

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides (All Facts)

• Greek playwright

• Characterized by / remembered for focusing more on men’s passions than on the great myths

• His works challenged conventional assumptions and introduced a new tone into Attic tragedy

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: Hippolytus (All Facts)

• Story about a clash between the goddesses Aphrodite and Artemis

• This tragedy ends with two deaths

  • that of the namesake character, who pays for his excessive attachment to Artemis and his contempt for Aphrodite

  • that of the namesake character’s stepmother Phaedra, who commits suicide out of guilt at her love for the namesake character

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: Hecuba (All Facts)

• Play in which the author treats the great mythological subject in a new way, in which he stressed

  • passion

  • the troubles of the soul

  • psychological developments

• Included sharp political commentary

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: Suppliant Women (All Facts)

• Play in which the author treats the great mythological subject in a new way, in which he stressed

  • passion

  • the troubles of the soul

  • psychological developments

• Included sharp political commentary

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: Heracles (All Facts)

• Play in which the author treats the great mythological subject in a new way, in which he stressed

  • passion

  • the troubles of the soul

  • psychological developments

• Included sharp political commentary

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: Iphigeneia in Aulis (All Facts)

• Play that shows that King Agamemnon must choose between the defeat of his army or the death of his daughter

• Play which epitomized the characteristic tone dealing with men’s passions that the namesake playwright was known for adding to the tradition of Greek drama

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: The Trojan Women (All Facts)

480 BCE - 406 BCE - Euripides: Electra (All Facts)

460 BCE - 400 BCE: Thucydides (All Facts)

• Greek writer, historian, general, and soldier

• Famous for his war reports and writings on the Peloponnesian Wars

• Brilliant reporter of current events

  • Revolutionized the annals of warfare by having brought back on-the-spot reports from the battlefields of the Peloponnesian War

    • Additionally, he claimed to have recalled from the best of his memory speeches delivered in assemblies or on the battlefield during the events of the Peloponnesian War

      • He admitted, however, that his imperfect memory may meant that the exact text of the speech was lost, but what was called for in each situation was still properly included

  • Claimed that his work, based on personal experience, was far more accurate than that of poets, whose authorities cannot be checked

• Considered the “father of scientific history"

  • This would be the case if it could be shown that he demonstrated through his work

    • strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering

    • analysis of cause and effect

    • lack of reference to intervention by the gods

• Considered the “father of political realism”

  • He was the first major figure to view the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by, and constructed upon, fear and self-interest

• Devoted follower of Pericles

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes (All Facts)

• Comic playwright from Athens

• Wrote 40 plays total, 11 of which survive today

• His plays were comic dramas known as Old Comedy and are considered its most valuable example

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: The Wasps (All Facts)

• Satire which violently denounces the alleged abuses of the legal system of his day

• He claims that the financial indemnities paid to Athenians who sit on the tribunals have corrupted their sense of justice

  • He compares them to the namesake creature: their stylus is the sting, and they are reduced to stinging their fellow citizens to earn a living

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: The Birds (All Facts)

• Comic play in which the playwright presents two Athenians who decide to go and live in the land of the namesake creature

• They involve the namesake creature in the building of an aerial city, Cloudcuckoobury, halfway between men and the gods

• The play deals with the serious political and moral problems of Athens as it remains caught up in the exhausting Second Peloponnesian War

• Play which raised bawdiness to a higher level than which was presented in earlier Greek satire and comedy

• Was given a political edge that the Athenian public loved but that the Athenian rulers detested

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: The Frogs (All Facts)

• Play which raised bawdiness to a higher level than which was presented in earlier Greek satire and comedy

• Was given a political edge that the Athenian public loved but that the Athenian rulers detested

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: Peace (All Facts)

• Play which raised bawdiness to a higher level than which was presented in earlier Greek satire and comedy

• Was given a political edge that the Athenian public loved but that the Athenian rulers detested

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: Clouds (All Facts)

• Comic play which makes fun of the Sophists

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: Lysistrata (All Facts)

• Produced during the middle of the Second Peloponnesian War

• Play which shows an imaginary peace movement in which the women of Greece force people on their warring men by denying them sex

• Play which concludes with peace breaking out everywhere, which was so successful in its day that Cleophou, the leader of the Athenian pro-war party at the time, denounced it as morally offensive and called for its playwright to be deported from Greece

446 BCE - 386 BCE - Aristophanes: Women in Parliament (All Facts)

• Comedy in which the namesake playwright makes fun of the political role played by women - inconceivable in reality in a city where only men took part in public debates and political decision-making

Ancient Greek Drama (All Facts)

• Genre of stage play in Ancient Greece that began in the 400’s BCE

• Its actors wore masks, with each actor playing several parts

• Props and scenery were so minimal as to be symbolic

• Subtle face expressions and nuances were impossible, and everything depended upon the lines

• Was serious and tragic, with the protagonists usually being pawns of the gods

430 BCE - 354 BCE - Xenophon (All Facts)

• Athenian warrior-historian and philosopher

• Student of Socrates, he wrote many philosophical works as well as his more famous literary ones

• Banished from Athens for associating Sparta, he spent much of his life in the Peloponnese

430 BCE - 354 BCE - Xenophon: Anabasis (All Facts)

• A remarkable account of the expedition of the “Ten Thousand” - the Greeks who fought for Cyrus the Younger in Persia and then, when Cyrus was killed, battled their way home without a leader through extensively hostile terrain

  • The namesake author went off as a gentleman volunteer with the army of impoverished Greek peasants recruited by Cyrus to depose his brother King Artaxerxes II in which he explains how the “Ten Thousand” were deceived by Cyrus, who told them that they were merely going to deal with some troublesome tribesmen instead of King Artaxerxes II and his men

• Story of the ascent of the mutinous Greek “Ten Thousand” under Cyrus the Younger and their adventures

  • In it, the namesake author writes about how they were commanded by Clearchus, in which, they marched, virtually unopposed, to Cunaxa, on the outskirts of Babylon where Artaxerxes at last gave battle

    • The Greeks, on the right wind of Cyrus’s army, shouted their war-cries, clashed their shields and spears together, and drove their opponents from the field having virtually won Persia’s crown for Cyrus

    • The Greeks, after having laid next to the Cyrus’s dead body, were allowed to leave after Clearchus and his captains had been killed

  • In it, the namesake author writes about how he was elected general and how he led the survivors of the ordeal home in an epic march

• An account of the Greek retreat from Persia after the Battle of Cunaxa

445 BCE - 380 BCE - Lysias (All Facts)

• One of the Ten Attic Orators

• His brother was killed by the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, so he fled into exile, but returned to Athens when democracy was restored there

• He prosecuted Eratosthenes, the Tyrant to blame for his brother’s murder

• Went on to write many speeches for private litigants, which often included insightful points on morals and politics

436 BCE - 338 BCE - Isocrates (All Facts)

• One of the Ten Attic Orators

• Law-court speechwriter

• Opponent of the Sophists

• Founded Athens’ first institute of higher learning, a school of rhetoric, in 393 BCE

• Wrote “display speeches” for big occasions, his most famous ones being the Panegyricus and the Panathenaicus, which were hymns of the glories of Hellenism and the city-state of Athens

• Was the first to write in the “Panegyric” genre

• Made a major contribution to developing Panhellenism, according to which a united Greece should / would conquer Persia

Panegyric (All Facts)

Formal public speech or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, first delivered at public events in Ancient Athens

384 BCE - 322 BCE - Demosthenes (All Facts)

• Athenian Archon, orator, and lawyer

• Learned his legal skills as a young man in a prolonged battle to recover his patrimony from dishonest guardians

  • He won his case, but there was no money left

  • From that point, he began to earn his living by writing speeches

  • Eventually, he rose to the rostrum of the assembly, learning to improve his diction

• His arguments often failed, having argued against the war in 354 BCE and for the war in 351 BCE

  • However, he gradually won a reputation for speeches characterized by powerful logic, withering sarcasm, and use of dialogue that kept his audience enthralled

• The term “philippic” is derived from his speeches he gave in 351 BC denouncing the imperialist ambitions of Philip of Macedon, which later came to be known as his “Philippics”

Philippic (All Facts)

• Fiery and damning speech, or tirade, delivered to condemn a particular political actor

• First made by Demosthenes of Athens

360 BCE - 327 BCE - Callisthenes (All Facts)

• From Olynthus

• Official historian of Alexander the Great’s expeditions

  • He accompanied Alexander the Great during his expedition in Asia and served as his historian and publicist

• Authored several works on Greek history, including a biography of Alexander the Great

• Executed for his alleged complicity in a conspiracy against Alexander the Great

  • He later opposed Alexander the Great’s adoption of Persian culture

  • He was arrested after being implicated in a plot on the king’s life, where he died in prison