CLASS 103 Final Notes
Themes Chapter 16 Lit & Performant PT I Epic and Archaic Lyric
Dr. Andrew Fualkner
Prof at university of waterloo, London, Ont.
Specialist in Greek and Byzantine Poetry, Hymns (or Hymnography), Textual Criticism, early Christian Literature
Archaic period through the (post-Roman) Byzantine Period
Introduction
Begins with the example of Alexander the Great of macedon having been trained in Greek literature in general and Homer and philosophy in particular
By the time of Alexander - the hellenistic Period - texts like homers are read; in the Archaic and classical periods however, they are recited and listened to
Poems were sung by bards and tragedies were staged: therefore we look at the performance contexts as well as the texts themselves
Homer and oral hexameter poetry
Who is “Homer”?
The name “Homer” doesn’t appear to be Greek in origin, although it bears a resemblance to a Greek word for “hostage” and a dialect (‘Aeolic’) word for “blind”. “Homer” might be a word coined in Greek from the Homeridae, archaic bardic poets whose name might derive from a Semitic (Phoenician) source
Myth versions of who Homer was:
One version is that of Melesigenes, who is blinded on Ithaca after learning the story of Odysseus & again at the city of Colophon on the Ionian coast (where presumably he learned about the Trojan War)
‘Melesi-genes’ (‘born from melodies’) becomes an itinerant bard who composes the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns (hymns to the gods) & epigrams (short poems) – all of these in the same metre – dactylic hexameter
‘Agonistic’ performance
Bards competed during religious festivals
An agon is Greek for contest or competition: a bardic agon would pit rhapsodes – in live composition – against each other – Peisistratos was a keen promoter.
There are tales of Homer & the epic poet Hesiod (Theogony; Works & Days), competing for a prize which Hesiod, as the composer of more practical, agricultural poetry, wins (perhaps a shade ironically – irony is something of an Ancient Greek feature in the lives of poets)
‘Homer’s’ epics
The Iliad: central theme is the anger of Achilles
“With great emotional force” we are treated to Achilles’ quarrel & withdrawal, the death of his companion & the revenge killing of Hector
The Iliad ends before the fall of Troy via the Trojan horse, etc.
The Odyssey: the legendary journey home of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca
Odysseus is stalked by the god Poseidon but helped by the goddess Athena
He makes it home after 10 years – thus he’s away for 20 - & is reunited with his wife Penelope & son Telemachus
Oral Tradition
The poems develop out of an oral tradition of bardic poetry
Evidence for this comes from several sources but chiefly from the “formulaic” elements
Names + epithets often appear in the same places in the hexameter line & may be substituted in and out for each other
There are stock scenes of sacrificing, feasting and arming that proceed similarly and with similar vocabulary and formulaic phrases
At some point, however, the oral poems were written down & our written texts derive from them
The Role of Writing in Homer’s Epics
When were the poems written down?
Traditionally, it was said they were composed in the 2nd half of the 8th C. BCE, without writing – then they were written down more or less as they were heard
Contemporary view is that one or more persons adept at written composition had a lot to do with the texts of the poems – the narrative structures of the poems are complex
We think terms of the written phase of composition belonging to the 7th C., although there is debate & the possibility of a later date, i.e. the 6th C.
The Cup of Nestor – ca. 750-700 BCE
The cup has been taken as evidence for communal wine-drinking among men, in a social ritual that became known as the symposium in the classical period. In 1994, Oswyn Murray called it the earliest definitive evidence of the ritual.
Hexameter verse: “Whoever should drink from this cup, immediately the desire of beautifully crowned Aphrodite will seize him”
Kleos aphthiton – “undying fame”
In the audience is Odysseus himself, who experiences first-hand how his fame as a warrior is spread by poetry, while also shedding a tear for his fallen comrades. It is commonplace in ancient epic that poetry is a vehicle for transmitting & increasing fame (in Greek, kleos). p. 362
Lyric Poetry
… alongside the performance of epic poetry in the 7th to 5th centuries BCE in ancient Greece … a concurrent tradition of what is commonly referred to as Greek lyric poetry
A variety of themes: war, politics, love, death & athletics (Pindar)
A variety of meters (not just epic or dactylic hexameter)
The elegiac meter was popular
Instrumental accompaniment, by lyre, aulos (~oboe) or harp (p. 362)
Archilochus (earliest lyric poet?) & Tyrtaeus (early Spartan lyric poet) (additional to Faulkner’s chapter)
Archilochus
Born on the island of Paros
Local tradition of iambus: rude, humorous, erotic songs
Possibly connected with local (Demeter) fertility cult
Idea of increasing fertility through word-magic
Stories of ‘victims’ of iambic lyric poetry driven to suicide; perhaps all named individuals fictitious
Other poetry: emotional, military, political
Fought, & died, in wars over Thasos, island colonized by Paros
Archilochus Elegy fragment tr. S. Stewart
There won’t be many bows drawn nor constant slings,
When Ares’ battle // is joined on the plain;
But there will be the much-groaning work of swords;
For these are the skilled // in that kind of battle –
The Lords of Euboea of spear-fame
War
Archilochus Elegy Fragment tr. M. L. West, Greek Lyric Poetry, Oxford: 2008
Some Saian sports my splendid shield:
I had to leave it in a wood,
But saved my skin. Well, I don’t care –
I’ll get another just as good.
War / Homeric values??
Archilochus Fragment 3 [trans. West]
Kindly pass the cup down the deck
& keep it coming from the barrel,
Good red wine, & don’t stir up the dregs,
& don’t think why we shouldn’t be,
More than any other, drunk on guard duty.
Ship duty – on his way to fight for the colony
Archilochus Fragments 8 & 14
I am the servant, then, of Lord Enyalios (epithet of Ares)
and am versed in the Muses’ lovely gift
tr. Stewart
The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one.
One good one.
tr. West, Greek Lyric Poetry
Tyrtaeus – early Spartan lyric poet F. 2
… let us obey [the kings, who are]
nearer the line [of the gods]
For fair-crowned Hera’s husband, Kronos’ son himself,
Zeus, gave the sons of Heracles this state.
Spartan right of ownership
Tyrtaeus F. 23a (fragmentary papyrus) tr. M. L. West, Greek Lyric Poetry, Oxford: 1993-2008
But as they fight, Athena, pale-eyed daughter
Of Zeus who holds the Aegis, checks the wild
spears’ flight.
A multitude will throw with javelins
Sharp-pointed …
in light arms running forward …
Arcadians … the Argives’ … along the wall …
… from pale-eyed Athena … ditch …
They will kill every Spartan that they catch
fleeing the battle …
Anacreon
Born in Teos - Asia Minor
Flourished late 6th C.
Court poet to tyrant Polycrates of Samos
Rescued by & became court poet to (last) tyrant of Athens, Hipparchus
Story of his death by a grape
Often associated with Sappho in sympotic* context
5 volumes; fragments survive
Wrote on love & wine, mostly the former
Statues (including on the Acropolis) show him drunk, often with only one shoe
Asked why he wrote hymns not to the gods but to young men, he answered “ they are our gods”
Sappho
Faulkner on Sappho p. 363-64
… Certainly one of the most famous of ancient Greek lyric poets, both in antiquity & today … What we possess of her poetry comes through quotation by other ancient authors, but also papyrus scraps preserved in the dry sands of Egypt. New fragments continue to be found: a poem mentioning Sappho’s brothers Charaxos & Larichos was recently identified in a private papyrus collection.
Seems to have come (probably) from an elite family in Mytilene, ca. 620
Exiled at one time, probably to Sicily
Known in antiquity to have composed 9 books of poetry; a papyrus fragment gives us clear evidence that the first book consisted of 1320 lines
‘Sympotic’ Pottery – Drinking cups for symposia where (among other venues) Sappho’s songs would be sung
If not, Winter Anne Carson, 2002
“Sappho was a musician. Her poetry is lyric, that is, composed to be sung to the lyre. Later writers ascribe to her three musical inventions: that of the plectron [the ‘pick’]… the pektis [a type of lyre] and the mixolydian mode [tragic mode in music]”
Sappho 1 v. 1-2 [trans. Carson]
1 Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures. I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart,
2 but come here if ever before
you caught my voice far off
and listening left your father’s
golden house and came,
Sappho 1 v. 3-4 [trans. Carson]
3 yoking your car. And fine birds brought you,
quick sparrows over the black earth
whipping their wings down the sky
through midair -
4 they arrived. But you, O blessed one,
smiled in your deathless face
and asked me what (now again) I have suffered and why
(now again) I am calling out
Sappho 1 v. 5 [trans. Carson]
5 and what I want to happen most of all
in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)
to lead you back into her love? Who, O
Sappho, is wronging you?
Sappho 1 v. 6-7 [trans. Carson]
6 For if she flees, soon she will pursue.
If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them.
If she does not love, soon she will love,
even unwilling.
7 Come to me now: loose me from hard
care and all my heart longs
to accomplish, accomplish. You
be my ally. - summachos, ‘ally’ [very military word]
Sappho 2 v. 1 (trans. West)
Come, goddess, to your holy shrine,
where your delightful apple grove
awaits, and altars smoke
with frankincense
Sappho 2 v.2 (trans. West)
A cool brook sounds through apple boughs,
and all’s with roses overhung;
from shimmering leaves a trancelike sleep takes hold.
‘hymn’ to Aphrodite?
Sappho 16 v. 1-2 (trans. West)
Some think a fleet, a troop of horse
or soldiery the finest sight
in all the world; but I say,
what one loves.
Easy it is to make this plain
to anyone. She the most fair
Of mortals, Helen, having a man
of the best,
Sappho 16 v. 3-4 (trans. West)
deserted him, and sailed to Troy,
without a thought for her dear child
or parents, led astray
by [love’s power.]
[For though the heart be pr]oud [and strong,]
[love] quickly [bends it to his will. -]
that makes me think of Anaktoria
who is gone [added Stewart]
Sappho 16 v. 5 (trans. West [mostly])
For I would rather see her lovely walk
And the bright sparkling of her face
Than all the horse and arms
of Lydia.
Sappho 31 v. 1-2 [trans. Carson]
He seems to me equal to the gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking
and lovely laughing – oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings;
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me
Sappho 31 v. 3-4 [trans. Carson]
no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears
and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead – or almost
I seem to me.
… [single, unmetrical line of next verse omitted]
Sappho 132 (tr. West)
I have a pretty child, like flowers
of gold her form, my precious Cleïs;
whom I would not exchange
for all of Lydia, or the lovely land …
Sappho’s daughter ?
The Kalpis painting of Sappho
The Sappho Painter (c. 510 BC). National Museum, Warsaw
our oldest depiction
Themes Chapter 16 Lit & Performance Pt II Pindar & Drama
Choral Lyric
Choral poetry (as opposed to monody) may also present 1st-person experience, while being sung by a group or “chorus”. The chorus could consist of boys, girls, young men or young women.
Ex.: 1 book of Sappho’s poetry seems to have consisted of wedding songs, sung by a chorus of young women. Another example is the Partheneion by another Spartan lyric poet – Alcman.
Alcman Sparta Late 7th C. BCE
Alcman
Spartan lyric poet, composer of choral poetry – especially for choruses of girls
Contrasts with other Spartan poet, Tyrtaeus, on subject matter
The Louvre papyrus of the Partheneion was first published in 1855. A very gappy papyrus (see next slide)
The Partheneion appears to consist of a competition between 2 female choruses lead by Hagesichora and Agido & includes:
Mythology
Moralizing
Beauty & finery
Alcman 1st Maiden’s Song 34-101
Hubbard* p. 21:
“… the style appears obscure, allusive, & gossipy. … Critics have not implausibly supposed the performance to be part of a female initiation ceremony or cult, perhaps celebrating a union of the two most prominently featured girls, Hagesichora & Agido.”
Selections from Alcman’s Partheneion, tr. Diane Rayor
Now my song’s of the radiance
Of Agido: she to my eyes
Shines like the sun she calls to be our witness.
But I must not speak good or ill of her
When the dancers’ famous principal herself
Stands out like a racehorse set among the sheep,
A thundering winner, the sort you see in dreams
As you doze in a cavern’s shade.
Our purple finery is not
The treasure that defends us,
No coiled snake-bangle of solid gold,
Nor Lydian headband splendid upon girls
With big dark eyes,
Nor Nanno’s hair, no nor nymphlike Areta …
‘Oh please make Astaphis mine’
Or ‘make Philylla look my way’,
Damareta, or sweet Vianthemis.
No, it’s Hagesichora –
She is my heartache
Alcman 59a tr. Stewart
Eros, again, by the command of Cypris,
sweet-flowing inflames my heart
Cypris = Aphrodite
Pindar
Theban poet, last quarter of the Archaic Age, composed choruses to be sung by young men – sometimes by himself solo? - celebrating athletic victories at 4 recurring festivals: the Pythian (Delphi), Isthmian (Corinth), Nemean (Peloponnese, S. of Corinth) & Olympic (Olympia) Games.
Songs or poems celebrating victories are termed “epinician” [e-pi-ní-shan] – the Greek word “nike”, also denoting the victory-goddess Nike, is part of the word
Pindar, too, wrote partheneia or songs for young female choruses
Athenian Tragedy & Comedy
Origins of Athenian Drama
Choral performance was also a central element in ancient Greek tragic and comic theatre. p. 367
Athenian drama might have originated from choral poetry & in connection with festivals of the wine-god Dionysus; in particular the City Dionysia & the Lenaea festivals in Athens. Dionysus was a shape-shifter as well as an agricultural & fertility god & plays do have a ‘transformative’ element attached to them
Dionysus Dendrites (“arboreal”) on the ‘Dionysus cup’
Athenian Tragedy
Greek drama was competitive: 3 playwrights were chosen to present 3 tragedies & a satyr comedy over 3 days & one was then judged to be the winner. The playwright usually needed the help of a wealthy “producer” or choregos to help with the finances (costumes, stage-sets, actors …)
Structure of a play consisted of a prologue, 3 actors & a chorus who sang & danced at different points during the play
All performers were men as far as we can tell, wearing masks
Audience may, or may not, have included women – undecided at present.
Roman mosaic of actors preparing: masks, costumes, aulos-player & other theatrical features –
- House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii
Tragic masks, Roman depiction in ‘Hadrian’s Villa’: Capitoline Museums
Greek theatres consisted of:
a dancing floor or orchestra for the chorus & actors
2 passages or paradoi for the chorus
A wooden ‘backdrop’ with a door in the middle
Acoustics: excellent – the design allowed sound waves from the stage to resonate even to the highest rows
Tragedy was poetic: different metres were used for different parts of the play, with the chorus singing & dancing to choral lyric metres
Ancient Theatre at Epidauros (Healing Sanctuary in the Peloponnese)
Aeschylus, Sophocles & Euripides
All Classical Period, 5th C. Athenian playwrights
Aeschylus – wrote 70+ plays of which we retain 7
Oldest of the 3 tragedians
Wrote a play about Persian emperor Darius & family (including his son, Xerxes)
Also wrote the one surviving trilogy from the period: the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers & Eumenides; the trilogy “problematizes questions of culpability & justice” with the ending merging “mythological & contemporary time” p. 370)
Said to be concerned with ‘spectacle’: the Chorus of the Furies in the Eumenides - the chorus-members dressed up with snakes-for-hair masks - was very scary.
The Chorus of Furies in Aeschylus’ Eumenides
Gods of the younger generation, you have ridden down
The laws of the elder time, torn them out of my hands.
I, disinherited, suffering, heavy with anger
Shall let loose on the land
The vindictive poison
Dripping deadly out of my heart upon the ground …
… Great the sorrows & the dishonor upon
The sad daughters of the night. Tr. R. Lattimore
Characters in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
Watchman
Chorus (old men of the city of Argos)
Clytemnestra (Agamemnon’s queen)
Herald
Agamemnon
Cassandra (Agamemnon’s prize)
Aegisthus (Clytemnestra’s lover)
Aeschylus of Athens - Epitaph
… The grove
Of Marathon with its glories can speak of his valour in battle
The long-haired Persian remembers & can speak of it too.
Aeschylus seems to have been criticized for having staged a play- The Persians - based on recent tragic events. On the whole, it was safer to set the action in the mythic past.
Sophocles
7 surviving plays, including the Oedipus Tyrannus, (a.k.a. Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King), Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus & the Ajax
Sophoclean language is agile & he makes extensive use of metaphor to explore human psychology (p. 372)
The Oedipus myth in Sophocles (in particular) was used by Sigmund Freud in his Oedipus Complex of Freudian psychoanalytic theory
The Antigone explores religion & family vs. the state; the Ajax, the tragic competition between Odysseus & Ajax for Achilles’ armour
Excerpt from Sophocles’ Ajax [trans. O. Taplin, Oxford: 2015]
One of the earlier plays, perhaps close to the Antigone in date [the 440s], the action follows Ajax son of Telamon (this is the Ajax who duels with Hector & later defends the ships, not his half-brother the archer, Ajax the son of Teucer). After Achilles’ death (post-Iliad), his armour is contested by Ajax & Odysseus; Ajax losing, he is said to have gone mad & then killed himself.
Ajax rescuing Achilles’ body from the battlefield – there are multiple representations of this
Euripides
Famous for ‘realism’ & his (combative) agons has been called both misogynist & feminist
Most notorious play is the Bacchae; the other best known is probably his Medea, on the character from the Argonautic legend who murders her children in vengeance.
Euripides’ Bacchae [Themes Box 16.8]
Dionysus, disguised as a priest of the new Bacchic religion, has bewitched Pentheus in order to lead him to his destruction
Introduction to Old Comedy - komoidia
Officially introduced into the festival of the City Dionysia in 486
Transferred to the mid-winter festival the Lenaea in the 440s
Represented a degree & kind of freedom not otherwise represented in public life
E.g. few punishing lawsuits for the playwrights when they made allusions to living politicians and philosophers (& audience members)
Ribald physical & sexual humour + “cutting political satire” – the latter is harder for us to interpret than the humour
Plots could be set in fantastical settings, but tended to satirize contemporary Athenians
Aristophanes, 5th C. Classical playwright
Best known plays are the Lysistrata, the Clouds (features a Socrates takedown) and the Birds, in which the birds are persuaded by two Athenians on the run from taxes & lawsuits to hold the gods up to ransom by withholding sacrificial smoke; the gods are not portrayed in a flattering light
Introduction to Old Comedy
Old Comedy represented a degree & kind of freedom not otherwise represented in public life
Humans & gods were burlesqued in similar ways
Subjects were not mythological, but topical
Contemporary politicians were burlesqued or ridiculed & the playwrights were generally liable – lawsuits were not usually brought against them
Selections from Aristophanes’ Birds
To the Bird-leader, who they know was once upon a time, human
Themes Chapter 17 Art Architecture
Marina Haworth
Specialist in Art & Graphic Design
PhD in progress, Classical Archaeology, Harvard University
Article in 2019 on armour & male nudity in Greek art – armour & its relationship to the concept of a 2nd skin, as well as to Greek art in general
Introduction
Although “… one of the celebrated goals of Greek art” (p. 360) was to make their images as lifelike as possible, or even mistakable for life itself on occasion (“lifelike, only better”), contemporary scholarship on Greek art & architecture looks at its diversity, rather than accepting it as attaining a kind of static perfection.
Examples of the living-statue idea include the Pygmalion myth, the statue of Aphrodite of Knidos, & gold statues made by Hephaestus that acted as servants in his household
Period Styles & Shifting Perspectives
The view has changed: Greek art is now analyzed over a wide field & representing diverse styles & modalities, changing from time to time & place to place.
Period styles: the traditional nomenclature – the Geometric, Orientalizing, Archaic, Classical & Hellenistic Periods
Focus: style, cultural context & innovative techniques
Periods of Greek Art
Geometric Period: 900-700 Dark Age
Loss of specialized craftsman knowledge, although pottery & ceramics do continue
Protogeometric & Geometric: innovation from the ANE
Compass – circles, semi-circles, horizontal lines
Potter’s wheel
Human & animal) figures appear in the Late Geometric
Proto-Geometric
Geometric & abstract designs predominate
Later Geometric
Can include figures & Homeric scenes – shields, horses, burials
Meander Pattern: Attic krater for funeral libations, ca. 740 BCE
A hole in the bottom allowed libations to be poured directly through as an offering to the Underworld – funerary practice.
The 2 stages of the funeral ritual at this time (the 1st = depicted on the krater): the prothesis– “lying in state” & the ekphora– the “carrying out” in the funerary procession to the cemetery.
Were such scenes designed to be read as ‘epic’ (Bronze Age figure-of-8 shields ...) but in a contemporary funeral-style?
Orientalizing Period 700-600 Archaic Period
Development of an international style: iconography adapted from ANE sources
In this period the earlier ‘geometric’ designs give way to more fluid & colourful – ‘polychromic’ figures – animals & flowers
Very popular style in Corinth; also Rhodes (very ANE orbit)
Lions, panthers etc. & note the sphinxes
Black figure Corinthian 7th Century
A symposium?
> Some writing = Left to Right
Suspected Eastern (ANE) Influence
Increasing interest in (pre-monumental or ‘large-scale’) sculpture & in the human figure as subject
The Mantiklos “Apollo”, Thebes ca. 700-675
Is the figure meant to represent the donor, Mantiklos, or the god? If the object in the left hand was once a ‘silver bow’, which is the epithet given to Apollo in the inscription, then Apollo is almost certain.
Archaic Period 600-480 Archaic Period
Characterized by advancement in sculpture & other techniques, through contact with the ANE & Egypt (colossal statuary)
Archaic Period Art & Architecture
“Ranefer”: Egyptian statue, larger than life-size
Egyptian monumental stone sculpture pioneered 2 millennia before
The Archaic Age Kouros
The kouros statue: weight evenly balanced over both feet to support the (free-standing) weight
Stone sculpture Late 7th Century
Mid-6th C. marble kouros from Attica, cemetery find
Rounded musculature, facial features more modelled (recalling the deceased)
Inscription naming the deceased as ‘Kroisos’, who died in battle
Archaic Age Pottery
Clearly an export as well as import (the 2 contexts of Attica & Etruria are particularly intertwined), but of course Corinthian ware was hugely popular
Thousands of examples and fragments (sherds) of sympotic pottery
Classical Period
A ‘new’ aesthetic: focus on ‘lifelike’ appearance “informed by geometry” & and an ideal of sophrosyne “moderation” (p. 395)
Marble gives way (partly) to bronze, and in particular hollow-cast bronzes: lighter and able to express movement more freely: e.g. the contrapposto pose, in which the weight is unevenly distributed – compare the more rigid, balanced stance of the kouroi. The inlaid eyes = quite striking.
Unfortunate rate of survival, however: melting down of bronze for coinage etc. But see at least the Riace Warrior A (Themes p. 396).
Apollo at Olympia, subduing Centaurs
Athenian Red-figure
Hellenistic Period
Architecture
Stone (limestone, marble) replaces mud brick and wood for temples
Some Egyptian influence
2 (later, 3) styles of architecture established:
Ionic
Doric
Non-religious (private homes & civic buildings) are still ‘modest’ in style and construction
Greek Science and Scientists
Archaic & Classical Period
Greek cosmology
Hesiod: out of Chaos came Order – kosmos
“Ionians rationalists”: abandon ‘mythological’ framework for explanation of the world by material processes
‘divine plan’ replaced by material forces, analyzed by human reason
3 great Milesian scientists
3 Philosopher-scientists from the city of Miletus on the west coast of Anatolia
Thales
Predictor of eclipses
Single origin of all matter: water (since it can be solid and gas as well as liquid) = ‘material monist’
Earth = flat, floating on water
Anaximander
Single origin of all matter: “the Boundless” [the apeiron] = ‘material monist’
Includes wet and dry, hot and cold
Hypothesized that the earliest creatures arose from mud warmed by the sun
First ‘map-maker’
Anaximenes
Single origin of all matter from air [= ‘material monist’] (transforming into fire, wind, cloud and solid substances)
Earth = flat, floating on air
Pythagoras – mathematician & mystic
Born on the island of Samos
Emigrated to Southern Italy because of tyranny on Samos (tyrant Polycrates)
Pythagorean community
Rigid diet
Belief in the transmigration of souls
Earth = a sphere [!] within hollow spheres of the cosmos
Mathematics
Pythagorean theorem
‘Harmony of the spheres’
Xenophanes – scientist & poet
Emigrated to Southern Italy (Magna Graecia)
‘observational’ scientist
Fossils: earth at one time covered in ocean
Humans create deities by attributing their own characteristics to them; a critic of anthropomorphic (‘human-looking’) religion
Also a Lyric poet: “Homer and Hesiod assign to the gods everything that is blameworthy and disgraceful … stealing, committing adultery, and deceiving each other” p. 145
Anaxagoras
From Asia Minor, he becomes a mentor of Pericles in Athens
Material objects are composed of infinitely divisible particles
The sun = a white-hot stone (only a little larger than the Peloponnese)
Fled Athens when Pericles got into political trouble
‘Golden’ Age of Pericles [Classical Period]: many intellectuals drawn to Athens
Empedocles
Lived in Sicily
4 primary elements: earth, air, fire and water
‘Attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ act upon these elements
Evolution: forms would have been produced by means of these forces that failed to adapt and survive
Reputed to have died by leaping into Mt. Etna volcano on Sicily
Early Atomists
Leucippus (mid-5th C.): matter created from tiny particles [we know very little about Leucippus]
Democritus: studied under Leucippus
Originally from Thrace
Universe consists of tiny uncuttable particles = atoma [a-tomos], floating in empty space – a ‘void’
No divine component
Hippocrates
From the island of Cos where large practice, school and healing cult of Asclepius established
Hippocratic Corpus: writings associated with Hippocrates’ school on Cos, some presumably written by Hippocrates himself, but far from all
Sought rational explanations for diseases, including epilepsy, for which he wrote the treatise entitled On the Sacred Disease
The Asklepeion on Cos
Some cures were effected through ‘incubation’: sleeping in the temple overnight, as well as following the doctors’ prescriptions
Hippocrates Hippocratic Oath
Hippocratic Oath: part of the Hippocratic Corpus written in Ionic Greek (H.’s dialect, perhaps by H. himself):
Plato and his School
Plato was “profoundly shaken” by the trial & death of his mentor, Socrates, & spent most of his time pursuing philosophical questions through the character of Socrates in his Dialogues
These evolved away from the historical Socrates and toward Plato’s own ideas
Theory of Forms
Part of his definitional approach to problem- solving
If all beautiful things/acts/ideas have something in common, that must have to do with an ideal Form of beauty
Circular forms have the Ideal Form of Circle in common: a perfect circle such as one cannot actually find in the physical world
For Plato, “only the concept is real”: physical artifacts are (only) imitations
Plato’s Republic enshrines Plato’s views on the best government of human affairs
Plato’s Republic enshrines Plato’s views on the best government of human affairs
Plato founded a school known as the Academy– the name coming from a grove sacred to a Greek hero Academus
Plato’s Academy produced philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, tyrannicides and the tutor to the future Alexander the Great: Aristotle
Aristotle
Son of a doctor at the Macedonian court
Studied under Plato at the Academy, but he was keener on the observation and categorization of nature while Plato was keener on reason and (abstract) mathematics
Aristotle: “the craftsmanship of nature provides extraordinary pleasures to those who are able to recognize the causes in things …”
Spent a few years at the Macedonian court as the tutor of Alexander the Great
Back in Athens he founded his own school in Athens: the Lyceum
At the Lyceum he compiled a great deal of data: biological, political, social, meteorological, even literary (he wrote a treatise on Greek tragedy)
He believed that the ultimate goal or end – telos– of the universe was ‘god’: a perfect being whose existence was outside time and space, and who was infinite, eternal and unchanging. He saw this god as the ‘Prime Mover’, very different from the Olympians and other Greek gods.
Aristotle’s view of a changing world presided over by an unchanging, eternal deity influenced medieval thought & religion
Hellenistic Period
Archimedes of Syracuse
Mathematician and engineer, Archimedes is recorded to have anticipated modern calculus and to have originated ‘Archimedes’ Principle’ on mass, volume and the displacement of water
He developed siege-engines and (the very conjectural) ‘heat rays’ for use against the Roman army at the siege of Syracuse, his home town
His text On Floating Bodies survives only in a manuscript underneath another text; 6 other works of his are also recorded in it
His poem, “The Cattle Problem” challenges mathematicians in Alexandria to solve a computational problem: the answer is a very, very large number
Archimedes
Excellent source on the figure of Archimedes in the Roman world, and on imagination and the writing of history [historiography]: Jaeger, Mary, Archimedes & the Roman Imagination, Ann Arbor: 1998
Hipparchus of Rhodes, 2nd C. BCE
A mathematical astronomer who catalogued the stars, evolved the degree system & discovered the ‘precession of the equinoxes’ [< cyclic movement of the earth’s axis of rotation roughly every 25,000 years: Hipparchus had Babylonian records]
Usually styled the greatest astronomer of the Ancient World … “Father of Astronomy”
His commentary on an astronomical poem corrects some of the poet’s astronomy and is very rigorous and scientific
It is just possible that the Antikythera mechanism was destined for him – a bronze instrument found in a 2nd C. shipwreck off the island of Kythera
The mechanism was designed to perform complex calendrical computations: planetary orbits etc.
The Antikythera Device
“The 1st analog computer”??
30+ gears enabling calculation of eclipses, planetary movements and Olympiads
Corinthian month names
Claudius Ptolemy, Astronomer Roman Period [2nd C. CE]
Lived in Alexandria in Greco-Roman Egypt
Wrote the Tetrabiblos– ‘The 4 Books’, and the Megistē or ‘The Great Book’ (of Astronomy) = the Almagest
Ptolemy’s system of revolutions around the earth in the Megistē becomes the Ptolemaic System, replaced by the Copernican in 1543
Hypatia of Alexandria Roman Period [4th C. C.E.]
In the 4th C. she was “the world’s foremost mathematician and astronomer, and a leading Neoplatonic philosopher” [*Deakin biography p. 13]
She wrote commentaries on mathematical subjects, both algebra & geometry, and,
following in the footsteps of astronomer Hipparchus, also astronomy & its instruments – it is on the latter her fame mostly rests.
Themes Chapter 18 Greek Philosophy
Vernon Provencal
Professor of Classics at Acadia University
Books: Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus (Ann Arbor: 2004) Online @ Rutherford
Articles on (among other subjects) the state & the individual in Plato’s Republic 5.
Wonder & Zeno’s Paradox
A Paradox: from the Greek meaning (roughly) beside what is known, accepted, understood.
Zeno’s (Zeno of Elea, not the Stoic founder) paradox: if space is infinitely divisible, then how are we able to get from A to B?
Origin of Greek Philosophy - ?
We can only speculate, but: surely it had something to do with the culture of the Greek polis (city-state), which centred on the free flow of talk, trade, and the exchange of ideas in the agora
Athens’ democracy & empire – perhaps her theatre as well – made it the natural centre of Greek intellectual life in the 5th C. BCE p. 409
Participation in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Philosophy was never an elite pursuit in Athens confined to a leisure class, but one that engaged with & changed Athenians politically & culturally.
… With some profound modification, the Athenian legacy of philosophical engagement as a form of civic engagement would continue on in the Hellenistic period to be absorbed into the Roman Empire. Themes p. 409
The Presocratic Sphinx of Early Greek Philosophy
Ionian philosophers in the early 6th C. BCE, part of the Ionian community which had migrated from the Attic-Ionic region of Greece (the migration & colonization period)
Become known as the Presocratics but were traditionally called physikoi [or phusikoi] from physis “nature”
Did their speculation arise from rationalizing cosmogony in the epic poets – Homer, Hesiod & others whose work is lost?
Aristotle – who likes a ‘starting point’ – sees Thales as the first recorded philosophical inquirer
Anaximander: theorized that the single origin [arkhe “beginning, source, origin”] of all matter is “the Boundless” [the apeiron]
Heraclitus: “oracular utterance” that the arkhe = fire
Parmenides (5th C, S. Italy): it is “the same thing to think & to be”
Zeno of Elea: since you cannot think you walked across the room, you only appear to have walked across the room … ergo Parmenides is correct
The Sophists – “Golden Age” (~Periclean Age in the Classical Period)
Humanism: human reasoning ~ the divine
The Olympians depicted as the same size as humans on the Parthenon in Athens
Sophocles’ Antigone: “terrible wonders abound, & none more wondrous than the human”
Herodotus: aim of his Histories - to preserve a record of human achievements
More ‘radical’ declaration of humanism from ‘professional’ sophist: Protagoras (~490-420): humankind is the measure of all things …
The Sophist Protagoras: the 1st “professional”
Protagoras spanned the 5th C. CE – the century of 1st the Persian, then the Peloponnesian, wars
A sophistes or professional lecturer, Protagoras travelled around Greece and charged tuition for his lectures; settled in Athens – the “school of Greece”
Sophists & Symposia
A popular symposium-pastime: sophists like Protagoras giving a virtuoso performance in a competition for the best speech – in other words, in an agon.
nomos vs physis: a popular agon at which Protagoras & other sophists excelled – cf. Hippias – “Fellow guests, I regard you all as my kin, my family & fellow citizens – by physis, not nomos: for by physis like is kin to like, but nomos, who is a tyrant among peoples, forces upon us much that is contrary to physis (Prot. 337c-d)
“The effect of these sophistic debates was to challenge the older religious beliefs & moral traditions on which the Greek polis had been founded. Unlike Heraclitus, who claimed that the various human nomoi were all a manifestation of “the one divine nomos” … Protagoras argued that nomoi were human conventions necessary to sustain order in the
Polis” (see Themes p. 412 for the sources)
Protagoras = agnostic – it isn’t possible for humans to know anything about the gods, even whether they exist
Later sophists = religious skeptics: the gods were “human fabrication” p. 413)
Excursus – Plato’s Protagoras: Protagoras, Hippias & more
3 points:
i. what a round-up of sophists look like
ii. what Socrates thinks about how we learn (&, of course, about sophists per se)
iii. how Protagoras – whom Socrates does profess to admire – talks about creation
Setting the stage - Excerpt from Plato’s Protagoras
Socrates & an excited friend (who invited Socrates) arrive. Socrates speaking:
… we were standing on the porch discussing something until we agreed w/ each other. I think the doorkeeper, who was a eunuch, overheard us & was probably annoyed about visitors because of the number of sophists coming to the house. When we knocked & he opened it & saw us, he said: “Sophists, eh? He’s busy!” & slammed the door with both hands. We tried again …
[tr. Stewart]
Portraits - Excerpt from Plato’s Protagoras
Protagoras, walking around the stoa trailing 2 groups of adherents, including some collected on his travels; “whenever the master turned about … it was fine to see the orderly manner in which his train of listeners split up into two … & wheeling round formed up again each time in his rear most admirably”
Hippias, sitting in doorway opposite, lecturing on astron.
Prodicus, still in bed in a guestroom, wrapped in blankets, lecturing – but Socrates can’t hear him: “owing to the depth of his voice the room was filled with a booming sound which made the talk indistinct” [tr. Lamb, Loeb ed. 1924]
Creation of Humankind - Excerpt from Plato’s Protagoras
Protagoras speaking:
“There was once a time when there were gods, but no mortal creatures. And when to these also came their destined time to be created, the gods moulded their forms within the earth, of a mixture made of earth & fire & all substances that are compounded with fire & earth. When they were about to bring these creatures to light, they charged Prometheus & Epimetheus to deal to each the equipment of his proper faculty.”
tr. W. R. M. Lamb, Plato II: (Loeb) Cambridge MA: 1924
Excerpt from Plato’s Protagoras
Socrates speaking:
“For I tell you there is far more serious risk in the purchase of doctrines than in that of eatables. When you buy [food & drink] you can carry them off from the dealer or merchant in separate vessels … But you cannot carry away doctrines in a separate vessel: you are compelled, when you have handed over the price, to take the doctrine in your very soul by learning it, & so to depart either an injured or a benefited man.”
tr. W. R. M. Lamb, Plato II: (Loeb) Cambridge MA: 1924
Protagoras & the Sophists - last word
So long as Athens “held sway” over her empire under Pericles, the sophists were generally held in high regard. But once Athens began to suffer hardship in her war with Sparta … the tide of popularity turned, sending Protagoras into exile shortly after Pericles died in the plague … In the comedies of Aristophanes … the sophists are repeatedly blamed for encouraging the Athenians to adopt an attitude of religious skepticism toward their gods & or moral relativism toward their nomoi … also blamed for corrupting political life …
Plato & Socrates in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War
Cast of Characters in the Trial & Execution of Socrates
Plato
Alcibiades, renegade aristocrat
Raised in Pericles’ house, father having died when he was 3
‘Handsome, witty, athletic, charming, sensuous … courted by lovers of both sexes’
Liked: horse-racing, athletic competition and Socrates
Hated: rules …
The Sicilian Expedition
Opposing generals Alcibiades and Nicias sent to Sicily as part of Peloponnesian War effort
Before expedition sets sail, Athenian scandal erupts -
An attack on statues of Hermes known as Herms, set up around the city
Athenians awaken to find them mutilated
Alcibiades also suspected, perhaps wrongly, of having mocked the Eleusinian Mysteries
Sicilian Expedition = a disaster
Far less support from Sicilian allies materialized than expected
Alcibiades recalled to stand trial; jumps ship and defects to Sparta
Both Athens and Sparta win and lose in successive conflicts
A well-matched conflict (incredibly) to the end
Alcibiades is a ‘wild card’: a fulltime ally of neither one nor the other
Alcibiades loses the support of one of the Spartan kings (King Agis: apparently Alcibiades slept with his wife; a son born to her was believed to be his)
Alcibiades defects back to Athens and helps them against the Spartans, very effectively
Alcibiades defects to Persia before the battle of Aegispotami, and is killed, we don’t know by whom, in Persian territory, near Troy
End of the Peloponnesian War
Sparta imposes an oligarchia on Athens: the rule of The Thirty (Tyrants)
Members of The Thirty include hardliner Critias (previously exiled from Athens)
Critias is an intellectual, an atheist, an antidemocrat, an admirer of the Spartan constitution, and ruthless
Also a relative of Plato
Also a former pupil of Socrates
The Thirty abolish the old assembly and the people’s law courts, and start killing (at least 1500)
Execute chief moderate, Theramenes, by hemlock
Athenian revolution in 403 throws out the Thirty
An amnesty for all those not closely involved with The Thirty
Alcibiades returns to Athens for a short time; ultimately assassinated in Phrygia in Anatolia more or less on the Spartan side again
Trial and Death of Socrates
Takes place in the year 399, in the aftermath of the war and despite the Amnesty
A politically-motivated prosecution, stemming partly from Socrates’ connections to Critias of The Thirty, & to Alcibiades
Charges were threefold:
Not believing in the gods of the state
Teaching new gods
Corrupting the young
Socrates’ defense speech appears in Plato’s Apology of Socrates (Greek apologia = refutation)
Know that if you kill me, I being the sort of man I say I am, you will injure yourselves more than you injure me
I believe that I am the gadfly which the god has fastened upon the city in some such capacity, & all day long I go about arousing & persuading & reproaching each one of you …
Now you might be angry, like someone awakened from a nap, and slap me as [one of the prosecutors] advises, & easily kill me; then you would pass the remainder of your lives asleep, unless the god, in his care for you, should send someone else to sting you.
Socrates persuades nearly half of the jury (consisting of 501 citizens), but loses by about 30 votes.
Prosecutor calls for the death penalty
It was then up to Socrates to propose his own counter-penalty – usually the convicted proposed that they go into exile
Socrates proposes that he be given free meals by the state as a public benefactor (like victorious athletes
Doesn’t go down well.
Given a second chance, he suggest a very small fine, pointing out that he doesn’t have any money but some of his friends might be able to loan him a few bucks.
The jurors vote for the death penalty
Socrates is made to drink poison (hemlock) in prison days later, surrounded by his students
His death is recounted in a different dialogue, the Phaedo; Socrates believes that he is being cured of life, not deprived of it
Socrates and the U of A
For further reference on Socrates & his trial see:
Harris, John P., “Revenge of the Nerds: Xenophanes, Euripides, & Socrates vs. Olympic Victors”, AJP Vol. 130, No. 2, Summer, 2009: 157-194
Professor Harris is at the U of A in History, Classics & Religion
Trial and Death of Socrates
Death of Socrates Jacques Louis David, 1787
Remains of the prison near the Athenian agora
Plato and his School – post-trial*
Plato was “profoundly shaken” by the trial & death of his mentor, Socrates, and spent most of his time pursuing philosophical questions through the character of Socrates in his Dialogues
These evolved away from the historical Socrates & toward Plato’s own ideas
Theory of Forms
Circular forms have the Ideal Form of Circle in common: a perfect circle such as one cannot actually find in the physical world
For Plato, “only the concept is real”: physical artifacts are (only) imitations
Plato’s Republic enshrines Plato’s views on the best government of human affairs
Plato’s Republic enshrines Plato’s views on the best government of human affairs
Plato founded a school known as the Academy – the name coming from a grove sacred to a Greek hero Academus
Plato’s Academy produced philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, tyrannicides (tyrant- killers) & the tutor to the future Alexander the Great: Aristotle …
Aristotle
Son of a doctor at the Macedonian court
Studied under Plato at the Academy, but he was keener on the observation & categorization of nature while Plato was keener on reason & (abstract) mathematics
Aristotle: “the craftsmanship of nature provides extraordinary pleasures to those who are able to recognize the causes in things …”
Spent a few years at the Macedonian court as the tutor of Alexander the Great
Back in Athens he founded his own school in Athens: the Lyceum
At the Lyceum he compiled a great deal of data: biological, political, social, meteorological, even literary (e.g. writing a treatise on Greek tragedy)
He believed that the ultimate goal or end – telos – of the universe was ‘god’: a perfect being whose existence was outside time & space, and who was infinite, eternal & unchanging. He saw this god as the ‘Prime Mover’, very different from the Olympians & other Greek gods.
Aristotle’s view of a changing world presided over by an unchanging, eternal deity greatly influenced medieval thought & religion
Hellenistic Philosophers
Diogenes: founder of the Cynic School, a genuine discipline rather than merely an attitude of ‘cynicism’. (But they didn’t write things down.)
Zeno of Citium (Phoenician Cyprus): founder of the Stoic School; chief goal is virtue in accordance with nature => freedom & peace of mind
Epicurus of Samos (& Athens): founder of the Epicurean School – chief goal is ataraxia, freedom from pain (& worry) => pleasure, which, for Epicureans, is the absence of pain.
Some of the Philosophers in the School of Athens
Pythagoras
Socrates
Plato (Academy)
Aristotle (Lyceum)
Diogenes (Cynic School)
Zeno (Stoic School)
Epicurus (Epicurean School)
Archimedes (Hellenistic)
Claudius Ptolemy (astronomy)
Hypatia (Late Antiquity; philosophy & mathematics)
Averroes /Ibn Rushd (philosopher, logician, Islamic
Themes Chapter 7 Finding a Balance
Judith Fletcher
Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University
Author of Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama, Cambridge: 2011 [electronic & hardcopy UofA Library]
Classical Greek Tragedy, London: 2021 [hardcopy UofA Library]
Sources
Homer, Iliad …
Demosthenes, Speeches Greek orator, Classical Period
Prelude
Aristophanes’ Wasps: the protagonist is an Athenian citizen addicted to jury duty (remember also the 2 protagonists of Aristophanes’ Birds who want to escape from jury duty).
… the courts were a form of popular entertainment in Classical Athens p. 150
Most of our information about legal process in Ancient Greece does come from Athens, comedic or otherwise.
Demosthenes’ speech On the False Embassy (Dem. 19): among several speeches mostly directed against the aggressions of Philip of Macedon, Demosthenes reminds the jurors in his opening that they had been approached & lobbied outside the court even as they arrived for jury-duty.
Most courtroom proceedings were conducted in public – only certain cases like homicide were conducted in camera.
Demosthenes
Demosthenes of Abdera
Celebrated orator who tried to alert Athens to the dangers posed by Philip of Macedon – we
have a host of his speeches, of which On the False Embassy and On the Crown are vitally important examples of forensic oratory
Portrait of Demosthenes by sculptor Polyeuctus – Roman copy of a Hellenistic original
On the False Embassy
Begins by focusing the jurors’ attention:
How much lobbying, Athenians, this trial has occasioned & how much influence has been exerted are evident, I think, to nearly all of you, for you saw the people badgering & accosting you just now as you were being chosen by allotment.
… keep in mind that justice & the oath advance your interest and those of the whole city, but partisan supporters make their entreaties & pursue their cause for private gain. You are assembled here by law to thwart such efforts, not to assist the wrongdoers in realizing them.
trans. Yunis, H., Demosthenes, Speeches 18 & 19, Austin: 2005.
Prelude
Spanning the earliest Homeric epics to the democratic literature of Classical Athens & beyond, a concern with jurisprudence (the study of philosophy of law) manifested in popular culture as markedly as it did in the institutionalized courts of justice. p. 150
For a Homeric portrayal of law proceedings, see Iliad 16 & 18 …
Iliad 16: 385-90
when Zeus pours down great torrents of rain; He is full of rancor towards men & is furious with them, Because they give violent, crooked judgements in their assembly, & drive out justice, with no concern for the gods’ gaze, & all the rivers in their land are flowing in full spate, & everywhere torrents are tearing the hillsides away …
[from the Verity translation]
The Concept of Justice
The earliest literature makes a connection between justice & nature. Zeus, the most powerful Olympian, is both a weather deity & the god of justice … p. 151
Justice & the Presocratics: Heraclitus –
“The sun will not transgress his measures. If he does, the Erinyes, sentinels of justice, will find him out” (Diehls Kranz 22 B94)
Book 18: 497-502
In the meeting place a crowd of citizens had formed;
A dispute had arisen there, & two men were quarrelling
Over the blood-money of a man who had been killed.
One claimed he had paid it in full, appealing to the people,
While the other said he had received nothing; both were anxious
To go to an arbitrator for judgement.
Book 18: 497-502
The people took sides,
Shouting support for both; heralds were holding them back,
While the elders sat on polished stones in a sacred circle,
Holding in their hands the loud-voiced heralds’ staffs.
The disputants rushed up to these men, & they gave their judgements
In turn; 2 talents of gold lay before them, to be given to
The judge who should deliver to them the straightest verdict.
Justice & Literature – Classical Period
Thucydides – Histories of the Peloponnesian War
Greek Drama – Tragedy & Comedy
E.g. Aristophanes’ The Clouds (featuring Socrates): “twisting justice” – cf. “delivering the straightest verdict” [previous slide]
Aeschylus’ The Eumenides: Apollo & Athena in a courtroom-style setting
Plato – The Republic
Oratory (as expected)
Common Features of Greek Law
“Institutionalized methods” of dispensing justice in the poleis by the Archaic period, although evidence is either from poetry or fragmentary
The role of the alphabet = important, making ‘common codes’ available [see slide on the Law Code of Gortyn on Crete]
Poleis have their own laws, but there are still consistent procedures in most places
Gortyn (Gortyna)
The Law Code of Gortyn, Crete – still in original setting
5th – 4th C. BCE
NB: written left to right & right to left
Nevertheless – not “professional”
no professionals – as in lawyers
Athens: litigants were allowed a “co-speaker”
women usually represented by proxy
jurors decided cases using the laws, the arguments & their own sense of justice …
Other Aspects
‘Popular Justice’ [see p. 153-54]
Cursing
Surviving curse tablets (such as we saw in the chapter on religion) often make reference to legal proceedings – e.g. “binding” the tongue where formal defense is concerned; psychological advantage (from letting those cursed know that a curse had been made; occasionally even embedded in the civic law codes
Oaths – “conditional curses” …
Oaths
Breaking oaths: legal penalties, moral ‘disapproval’
Empedocles: a broken oath is equivalent to homicide
Gods overseeing oaths:
Zeus
The Furies / Erinyes – ‘midwives at the birth of Oath’ in Hesiod, implicitly present in all oaths
In the Eumenides: “We are curses” (li. 417)
Oaths sworn in trials:
The judges
The prosecutor (that the charge is true; he is not himself a criminal)
The defendant (that they are innocent)
The witnesses (their testimony = accurate; at the end they swear to the verdict
The victor (that the decision is correct)
The Oath Challenge
Litigants could challenge each others’ oaths for veracity – essentially a ‘dare’.
Oath challenges might have been a feature of early law – some evidence (pre-alphabetic, for example) but still unclear …
Early Legal Systems
“… well-defined, established laws to restrict the arbitrary exercise of power, exemplifying ‘the rule of law’” are, however, vital.
p. 156
Early Lawgivers
Legendary Lawgivers:
Crete: Minos & Rhadamanthus
Athens: Solon
Sparta: Lycurgus
Personal Connections to the deity: Minos & Lycurgus both reported in Plutarch’s Lives as having had personal communications with the gods
Solon of Athens
Lawgiver (& lyric poet) Solon:
Abolishes debt slavery
Opens up political participation to larger segment of the population
Sets up 4 hierarchical property classes – only the rich could hold office (= be archons), but the poor sat in the assembly and on juries
A Council (the boulē) of 400 set the agenda for the Assembly (the ekklesia) of all citizens
Ensures some stability over a 10 year period with this “balancing rich and poor” approach
Solon fragment: tr. West, Greek Lyric Poetry, 1993
And as for you, who now have all the wealth you want,
Make the stern spirit gentler in your hearts,
Adjust to moderation. We will not accept
This state of things, nor will it work for you.
Addressing the wealthy
The commons I have granted privilege enough,
Not lessening their estate nor giving more;
The influential, who were envied for their wealth,
I have saved them from all mistreatment too.
Reference to the poor
Solon of Athens
The democratic jury system
A dike vs. graphe:
The dike is a ‘private suit’
Solon institutes the graphe, an indictment that can be launched by a citizen not directly involved in the case
An appeal system – though not for homicide
Homicide
Before Solon’s reforms: Athenian lawgiver Draco:
“so efficient & well drafted that it remained intact for centuries” (p. 159)
Miasma:
Also a consequence of murder, liable to bring disease, famine or the like on the entire community
Possibly associated with the 7th C. rise of the Apollo cult since associated with purification – exile (& literal scapegoating) becomes a purification for homicide: e.g. Aexchylus’ Eumenides & Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
Miasma - Robert Parker
Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford 2nd ed. 1996) 1 hardcopy in Rutherford
Assault Cases & Hubris
The graphe increased accessibility to legal recourse, but also resulted in law-suit proliferation (cf. Aristophanes’ Birds for the escapees desire to escape Athenian litigating)
Assault was a matter of dike/private suit, unless the victim wished to sue for hubris, which was available as a graphe.
Hubris seems to have been deployed between rival gangs
The orator Lysias: a metic (a foreigner resident in Athens) who sketched effective, psychological portraits – we have several speeches, including the famous Against Alcibiades & On the Murder of Eratosthenes
The Mechanics of the Legal System
The kleroterion/the klepsydra
Used for the timing of speeches in Athenian courtrooms