Enrichment Project

Cultural/historical sketch:

5^th Century Greece

Background

Politics. The 5th Century B.C. Greek civilization of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and their peers was organized politically around a collection of city-states, the most influential of which were militaristic, totalitarian Sparta and its rival, democratic Athens (see Figure 1). The organizing principle of these city-states was the polis, or the individual and collective commitment to an active participation in public life. However, this participation was largely limited to Greek citizens—to the native-born Greek free men; women, slaves, and foreigners were not citizens and were largely excluded from the civic activities of the Greek polis.

Early in the 5th Century, Athens, Sparta, and other of the Greek city-states joined together to defeat powerful Persian invaders, a conflict from which Athens emerged as the central political force of the Greek confederacy. In subsequent years, Athens grew more powerful, asserting its dominance over its former allies. The Athenians sustained this position of prominence throughout the century, until overthrown finally in 404 by the Spartans to conclude the long Peloponnesian War that had developed between the powerful city-states.

Intellectual change. These political events unfolded during a time of rich intellectual change and development (see Figure 2). Perhaps the mot notable event precipitating this period of change was the Greek adoption and adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet and of Egyptian papyrus in the late 8th Century. Scholars speculate it was the new ability to “pin down thought” in writing, and the potential for abstract and linear thinking that writing supports, that led to the profound explosion of rational thought that characterized Greek intellectual life over the following centuries. As Marshall McLuan explained 2500 years later, the content of information exchanged among the Greeks was profoundly affected by the new written processes by which that exchange took place—the new Greek “medium” of alphabetic writing became itself the “message.”

5th Century Greek rationalism—a belief that the world was ordered logically by laws of continuity, linear sequence, and causality, and therefore ultimately “knowable”—led to the emergence of new systems of thought that included science, history, mathematics, rational philosophy, and more. For the first time in history, the Greek intellect posited a separation of “inner” and “outer” worlds, of individual subjectivities and objective reality. Thus, in the 6th Century, Democritus proposed the first scientific conceptions of atomic structure and the natural elements; Pythagoras developed the first mathematics based on logical deduction from first principles or axioms. In the 5th Century, Herodotus and Thucydides composed the first formal histories. And beginning in the late-5th Century, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle adapted the principles of logical inquiry to philosophy and humankind’s attempt to explore and “know” the world they lived in. These developments spurred by the new Greek rationalism represented a dramatic break from earlier world views that simply accepted and accommodated the mysteries of the world, attributing all they could not comprehend to the whims of incomprehensible divinity.

Religion. The 5th Century Greeks, unlike other ancient near-Eastern civilizations, conceived of their gods in distinctively human terms: unpredictable, mischievous, and often wrathful. And behind the gods themselves the Greeks perceived the ever-present and compelling force of an unpredictable and sometimes terrible fate. Also central to the Greek and Athenian sensibility, however, was an emergent and self-conscious humanism—an unshakable belief in human rationality and in the universal significance of the human (particularly the Greek) spirit. These beliefs were nurtured by an educational system that emphasized Sophistic rhetoric and relativism over determinate truths. Thus, by the close of the 5th Century Protagoras could assert his bold tenet of the humanistic sensibility, that “Man is the measure of all things.”

Art and Aesthetics

It was these tensions between unprecedented political and military strength and confidence of Greece throughout the 5th Century and their lasting awe in the face of mysterious and sometimes terrifying supernatural forces, between their inward-looking, individualistic humanism and their public commitments to state and polis, and between scientific truth and sophistic relativism that came to animate much of the greatest art of the time.

Aesthetics. Most generally, the classical Greek aesthetic was based on the rationalistic belief that beauty was a measure of order, proportion, and harmony. Unlike earlier civilizations, these Greeks believed that the function of art was as much to please and educate an audience and the Greek citizenry as to placate or honor some deity. And parallel to their skepticism toward the objective truths of nature, the Greek artists of the time felt free to create “new truths” in the fictional literature and idealistic sculptures they created.

This Greek aesthetic found rich expression in the art and architecture its citizens produced, including some of the world’s most beautiful sculptures, exquisite pottery and mosaics, and grand temples and public buildings. In all of this, the Greek ideals of beauty, order, and proportion, the celebration of humanistic individuality, the abiding tensions between truth and relativism and between scientific rationalism and the enduring awe toward the mysteries of divinity expressive of that civilization’s truly unique world views are evident.

Sculpture. For example, classical Greek sculpture broke markedly from earlier work in its idealized celebration of the human form. Where prior sculpture was characterized by a kind of blank and rigid, two-dimensional formlessness that functioned mainly to honor some deity (see Figure 3), the new Greek figure incorporated complex, naturalistic (if idealized) detail, exact proportionality, and three dimensionality (see Figure 4). Often, such figures were posed in naturalistic, everyday settings (see Figure 5). New Greek conceptions of linearity found expression in the linear pictorial style of vase paintings (see Figure 6) and in the single-line, monodic melodies of Greek music (hear Audio File 1).

Architecture. Likewise, classical Greek architecture—the vast public buildings like the Parthenon (see Figure 7) that celebrated the Greek commitment to engaged civic life—incorporated keen attention to detail, to mathematical proportion, and to linearity. And finally, the integration in each of these artistic accomplishments of humanistic and metaphysical expression, their dual functionality as icons of humanistic accomplishment and as tokens of divine homage, expressed the enduring and powerful tensions animating the classical Greek psyche.

Drama. Classical Greek drama—perhaps the fullest artistic expression of that civilization’s celebration of Greek individualism, of the Greek devotion to state, and of the Greeks’ intense contemplation of issues of metaphysics—was already firmly established by the beginning of the 5th Century (see Figure 8). Tradition credits Thespis (from whom the term thespian has been derived) as the first dramatist, winning the first annual, state-sponsored City Dionysia festival, a publicly funded competition begun at Athens in 534 B.C. Even so, Thespis appears to have been not the inventor of drama, which may have appeared even hundreds of years earlier in the form of choric dithyrambs or ritualistic songs accompanied by rhythmic dance (see Figure 9), but more accurately an innovator of dramatic form credited with introducing the first independent actor into the mix.

Dramatic innovation continued into the 5th Century with Aeschylus’ (524-456) introduction of a second actor onto the stage, thus creating a potential for intensified conflict, and Sophocles’ (496-406) addition of yet a third actor, bringing even more complexity and intensification to the dramatic form. Euripides (480-406) sustained this pattern of innovation by bringing a new sense of skepticism toward traditional values to the stage and by intensifying the psychological and humanistic perspectives of his great contemporaries. Aristophanes (450-385), who wrote primarily satiric comedies, introduced sharp, biting commentaries on the central issues and politics of the day. Each based their dramas on well-known mythological and historical subjects, infusing profound philosophical, psychological, and civic insight into their stories. Together, these four dramatists wrote hundreds of enormously popular and influential plays, many of which remain extant today, thus forming our principal lens on the drama of the period and the beginnings of the Western dramatic tradition.

Sources.

Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theatre. (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.

Lucie-Smith, Edward. Art and Civilization. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993.

Mack, Maynard (gen. ed.). The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: Vol. 1. (6th ed.). New York: Norton, 1992.

Roberts, J.M. A Short History of the World. NY: Oxford U. Press, 1993.

Shlain, Leonard. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, & Light. NY: Quill, William Morrow, 1991.

Van Dornan, Charles. A History of Knowledge. NY: Ballantine, 1991.

Suggested Enrichment Activities.

Cultural/Historical Sketch. Cultural/historical sketches: Submit your own short description of some additional relevant aspect of the cultural/historical context surrounding this dramatic period, including overviews of relevant issues in the politics, religion, socio-psychology, technology, and art of the times.

Cultural/historical critique (up to 75 points): Conduct an-depth analysis and evaluation of one or more plays as an expression of the cultural/historical milieu in which it is produced. Your critque must include relevant cultural/historical background (major events, politics, socio-economic conditions, scientific advances), as well as samples of related artistic achievements for comparison/contrast (sculpture, paintings, architecture, music). Required length: 6-8 pages. Advance approval required.