Greek Literature

D

Oratory

Attic prose reached its highest expression in the works of the Athenian orators. Of these the earliest whose works have survived was Antiphon, a teacher of rhetoric. The orator Lysias used a simple, forthright style devoid of rhetorical devices. It is said that he wrote a speech for Socrates to use at his trial (399 bc). The speeches of Isocrates, on the other hand, are literary works intended to be read rather than spoken. The full perfection of Greek oratory was achieved in the works of Demosthenes. Utilizing all the resources of the language, he gave speeches that became models for subsequent orators.

E

Philosophy

The two major Greek philosophical writers in the Attic period were Plato and Aristotle. Plato developed certain aspects of the philosophy of Socrates and expressed, in the form of written dialogues, the type of philosophy later called idealism. See also Greek Philosophy. Plato's dialogues are not only great philosophical works but literary masterpieces as well, having many qualities common to poetry and drama. His prose style is one of the clearest and most beautiful in Greek literature. Aristotle, a pupil of Plato, wrote a large number of works on logic, metaphysics, ethics, rhetoric, and politics. Some classical scholars consider these to be notes taken by students from Aristotle's lectures delivered at the Lyceum, his school in Athens. Of Aristotle's literary criticism, only the sections on tragedy, epic poetry, and rhetoric exist.

IV

The Hellenistic Period, 323-146 bc

Following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century bc, Greek culture spread throughout his vast empire. The most outstanding of the many literary schools that came into being and the greatest library of antiquity were located in the city of Alexandria, Egypt (see Alexandria, Library of).

A

Poetry

Among the finest Alexandrian poetry was that of Callimachus, the master of a school in Alexandria and the chief librarian of the Alexandrian library. Callimachus is credited with writing more than 800 volumes, each containing many works, of which only 6 hymns, 64 epigrams, and a few elegies and other poems are extant. He and his followers improved the use of metre and invented the epullion, a type of short story in verse. They also developed the purely literary didactic poem and the pastoral, and they perfected the epigram, which was later adopted by their Roman disciples.

The Sicilian poet Theocritus, who did most of his work in Alexandria and is considered by many critics to be the greatest of the Alexandrian poets, wrote the Idylls, a series of pastoral poems. They were imitated by his successors, such as Bion of Smyrna, among whose 18 extant poems is the famous Lament for Adonis; and the Sicilian poet Moschus, who wrote an epic poem, Europa, and pastoral verse.

B

Prose

Possibly the most important work of the Hellenistic period was done by the scientific and scholarly writers, particularly the physician Herophilus; the anatomist Erasistratus; the astronomers Hipparchus and Aristarchus of Samos (the first to maintain that the Earth revolves around the Sun); and the mathematician, astronomer, and geographer Eratosthenes, who measured the circumference of the Earth.