Ancient Greek literature

These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, the Theogony and Works and Days, constituted the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.

The lyric poets Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar were highly influential during the early development of the Greek poetic tradition.

The historians Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Thucydides, who both lived during the fifth century BC, wrote accounts of events that happened shortly before and during their own lifetimes.

Ever since the Renaissance, European authors in general, including Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and James Joyce, have all drawn heavily on classical themes and motifs.

The writings of Homer and Hesiod were held in extremely high regard throughout antiquity[14] and were viewed by many ancient authors as the foundational texts behind ancient Greek religion;[18] Homer told the story of a heroic past, which Hesiod bracketed with a creation narrative and an account of the practical realities of contemporary daily life.

[9]: 23–24 Lyric poetry received its name from the fact that it was originally sung by individuals or a chorus accompanied by the instrument called the lyre.

[26] The Athenians credited a man named Thespis with having invented drama[26] by introducing the first actor, whose primary purpose was to interact with the leader of the chorus.

[28] In the age that followed the Greco-Persian Wars, the awakened national spirit of Athens was expressed in hundreds of tragedies based on heroic and legendary themes of the past.

[40][41] Like tragedy, comedy arose from a ritual in honor of Dionysus, but in this case the plays were full of frank obscenity, abuse, and insult.

John Lemprière's Bibliotheca Classica describes him as, quite simply, "the greatest comic dramatist in world literature: by his side Molière seems dull and Shakespeare clownish.

"[44] Of all Aristophanes's plays, however, the one that has received the most lasting recognition is The Frogs, which simultaneously satirizes and immortalizes the two giants of Athenian tragedy: Aeschylus and Euripides.

[71] Even from these books, the enormous range of his interests is evident: He explored matters other than those that are today considered philosophical; the extant treatises cover logic, the physical and biological sciences, ethics, politics, and constitutional government.

[78] Callimachus, a scholar at the Library of Alexandria, composed the Aetia ("Causes"),[79] a long poem written in four volumes of elegiac couplets describing the legendary origins of obscure customs, festivals, and names,[79] which he probably wrote in several stages over the course of many years in the third century BC.

[81] The Alexandrian poet Apollonius of Rhodes is best known for his epic poem the Argonautica, which narrates the adventures of Jason and his shipmates the Argonauts on their quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the land of Colchis.

[82] The poet Aratus wrote the hexameter poem Phaenomena, a poetic rendition of Eudoxus of Cnidus's treatise on the stars written in the fourth century BC.

The book established a whole new genre of so-called "Milesian tales," of which The Golden Ass by the later Roman writer Apuleius is a prime example.

[94] While the transition from city-state to empire affected philosophy a great deal, shifting the emphasis from political theory to personal ethics, Greek letters continued to flourish both under the Successors (especially the Ptolemies) and under Roman rule.

The New Testament, written by various authors in varying qualities of Koine Greek also hails from this period,[95][9]: 208–209  the most important works being the Gospels and the Epistles of Saint Paul.

[96][9]: 208–213 The poet Quintus of Smyrna, who probably lived during the late fourth century AD,[97][98] wrote Posthomerica, an epic poem narrating the story of the fall of Troy, beginning where the Iliad left off.

[99] About the same time and in a similar Homeric style, an unknown poet composed the Blemyomachia, a now fragmentary epic about conflict between Romans and Blemmyes.

Surviving examples of this popular genre include works such as Aulus Gellius's Attic Nights,[112] Athenaeus of Naucratis's Deipnosophistae,[113] and Claudius Aelianus's De Natura Animalium and Varia Historia.

His Geographical Sketches remains the only existing ancient book covering the whole range of people and countries known to the Greeks and Romans through the time of Augustus.

[130] Origen of Alexandria, the founder of Christian theology,[131] also made extensive use of ideas from Greek philosophy[132] and was even able to hold his own against the pagan philosopher Celsus in his apologetic treatise Contra Celsum.

The ancient Greek novels Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius[134][135] and Daphnis and Chloe by Longus[136] were both probably written during the early second century AD.

The medieval writer Roger Bacon wrote that "there are not four men in Latin Christendom who are acquainted with the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic grammars.

[158] Plutarch's Lives were a major influence on William Shakespeare and served as the main source behind his tragedies Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.

[159]: 794  James Joyce's novel Ulysses, heralded by critics as one of the greatest works of modern literature,[165][166] is a retelling of Homer's Odyssey set in modern-day Dublin.

[167][168] The mid-twentieth-century British author Mary Renault wrote a number of critically acclaimed novels inspired by ancient Greek literature and mythology, including The Last of the Wine and The King Must Die.

[169] Even in works that do not consciously draw on Graeco-Roman literature, authors often employ concepts and themes originating in ancient Greece.

[171] Common Greek literary terms still used today include: catharsis,[172] ethos,[173] anagnorisis,[174] hamartia,[175] hubris,[176] mimesis,[177] mythos,[178] nemesis,[179] and peripeteia.

A Greek manuscript of the beginning of Hesiod 's Works and Days
A painting by the French Neoclassical painter Thomas Degeorge depicting the climactic final scene from Book Twenty-Two of The Odyssey in which Odysseus , Telemachus , Eumaeus , and Philoetius slaughter the suitors of Penelope
A nineteenth-century painting by the English painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema depicting the poet Sappho gazing on in admiration as the poet Alcaeus plays the lyre
Medea kills her son (a scene from Euripides 's Medea ), Campanian red-figure amphora , c. 330 BC, Louvre (K 300)
Illustration for Aristophanes 's Lysistrata by Aubrey Beardsley (1896)
A second century AD Roman copy of a Greek bust of Herodotus from the first half of the fourth century BC
The Death of Socrates , by Jacques-Louis David (1787)
Imaginative nineteenth-century engraving of the ancient Library of Alexandria
A painting by John William Waterhouse depicting a scene from The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes
Republican or Early Imperial relief depicting a seating Menander holding the masks of New Comedy (1st century BC – early 1st century AD) Princeton University Art Museum
In 1906, The Archimedes Palimpsest revealed works by Archimedes previously thought to have been lost.
The Mykonos vase , one of the earliest surviving depictions of the myth of the Trojan Horse , a myth which is described in depth in Quintus of Smyrna 's Posthomerica
A bust of Plutarch , one of the most famous ancient Greek historians, from his hometown of Chaeronea
Manuscript (1485), of Pausanias 's Description of Greece at the Laurentian Library
Head of Plotinus , a major philosopher from the Roman Era
A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre depicting a scene from Daphnis and Chloe
Illustration from 1894 by William Strang depicting a battle scene from Book One of Lucian of Samosata 's A True Story
Hero Mourns the Dead Leander by Gillis Backereel (1640s)
Page from an Arabic translation of Aristotle 's Poetics by Abū Bishr Mattā