More Important Topics Cylinder

Social Structure

Only free, land owning, native-born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state (later Pericles introduced exceptions to the native-born restriction). In most city-states, unlike Rome, social prominence did not allow special rights.

For example, being born in a certain family generally brought no special privileges. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in the government. In Athens, the population was divided into four social classes based on wealth.

People could change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all male citizens were given the title of "equal" if they finished their education. However, Spartan kings, who served as the city-state's dual military and religious leaders, came from two families. Slaves had no power or status.

They had the right to have a family and own property, however they had no political rights. By 600 BC chattel slavery had spread in Greece. By the 5th century BC slaves made up one-third of the total population in some city-states. Slaves outside of Sparta almost never revolted because they were made up of too many nationalities and were too scattered to organize.

Most families owned slaves as household servants and labourers, and even poor families might have owned a few slaves. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves.

Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. Unlike in Rome, slaves who were freed did not become citizens. Instead, they were mixed into the population of metics, which included people from foreign countries or other city-states who were officially allowed to live in the state.

City-states legally owned slaves. These public slaves had a larger measure of independence than slaves owned by families, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for counterfeit coinage, while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's deity.

Sparta had a special type of slaves called helots. Helots were Greek war captives owned by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Helots raised food and did household chores so that women could concentrate on raising strong children while men could devote their time to training as hoplites. Their masters treated them harshly and helots often revolted.

Education

For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta. During the Hellenistic period, some city-states established public schools. Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Boys learned how to read, write and quote literature. They also learned to sing and play one musical instrument and were trained as athletes for military service.

They studied not for a job, but to become an effective citizen. Girls also learned to read, write and do simple arithmetic so they could manage the household. They almost never received education after childhood.

A small number of boys continued their education after childhood, as in the Spartan agoge. A crucial part of a wealthy teenager's education was loving mentorship with an elder.

The teenager learned by watching his mentor talking about politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties, exercising with him in the gymnasium and attending symposia with him. The richest students continued their education by studying with famous teachers. Some of Athens' greatest such schools included the Lyceum and the Academy.

Boys went to school at the age of seven, or went to the barracks, if they lived in Sparta. The three types of teachings were: grammatistes for arithmetic, kitharistes for music and dancing, and paidotribes for sports.

The gymnasium in ancient Greece functioned as a training facility for competitors in public games. It was also a place for socializing and engaging in intellectual pursuits.

The name comes from the Greek term gymnos meaning naked. Athletes competed in the nude, a practice said to encourage aesthetic appreciation of the male or female

body. Some early tyrants feared gymnasia facilitated politically subversive or erotic attachments between competitors. Gymnasia and palestrae were under the protection and patronage of Heracles, Hermes and, in Athens, Theseus.

Etymology of gymnasium

Gymnasium is a Latin and English form of the original Greek noun gymnasion. Gymnasion is derived from the common Greek adjective gymnos (??µ???), meaning "naked", by way of the related verb gymnazein, whose special meaning was "to do physical exercise". The verb had this meaning because one undressed for exercise. Hence the noun, which appears to mean "place to be naked", actually meant "place for physical exercise".

Historically, the gymnasium was used for exercise, communal bathing, and scholarly and philosophical pursuits. The English noun gymnast, first recorded in 1594, is formed from the Greek gymnastes, but in Greek this word meant "trainer" rather than "gymnast". The palaistra was the part of the gymnasium devoted to wrestling, boxing and ball games.

Organisation of ancient Greek gymnasia

The gymnasium was formed as a public institution (a private school) where boys received training in physical exercises. Its organisation and construction were designed to suit that purpose, though the gymnasium was used for other functions as well.

Origins, rules and customs

The athletic contests for which the gymnasium supplied the means of training and competition formed part of the social and spiritual life of the Greeks from very early on. The contests took place in honour of heroes and gods, sometimes forming part of a periodic festival or the funeral rites of a deceased chief. The free and active Greek lifestyle (spent to a great extent in the open air) reinforced the attachment to such sports and after a period of time the contests became a prominent element in Greek culture.

The victor in religious athletic contests, though he gained no material prize other than a wreath, was rewarded with the honour and respect of his fellow citizens. Training of competitors for the greater contests was a matter of public concern and special buildings were provided by the state for such use, with management entrusted to public officials. A victory in the great religious festivals was counted an honour for the whole state.

The regulation of the Athenian gymnasium is attributed by Pausanias (i. 39. 3) to Theseus. Solon made several laws on the subject; according to Galen these were reduced to a workable system of management in the time of Cleisthenes (late 400s and early 500s BC). While the origins of physical exercise regimes cannot be pinpointed, the practice of exercising in the nude had its beginnings in the seventh century BC.

It is believed that the custom began in Sparta, and while various theories have been advanced, it is commonly thought that the main reason for the convention was the eroticisation of the male body. The same purpose is frequently attributed to the tradition of oiling the body, a custom so costly that it required significant public and private subsidies (the practice was the largest expense in gymnasia).

Fascination with the beauty of the male body, reflected in the twin practices of athletic nudity and decoration with olive oil, is linked to the concurrent introduction of pederasty as an educational institution. This athletics-pederasty complex saw its beginnings in the Spartan agoge in the early seventh century BCE and quickly spread to the other city-states.

Its association with the culture of gymnasia is attested to by Plato, who identifies those states that "especially encourage the use of gymnasia" as being notable for their pederastic traditions.

Organisation in Athens

In Athens, ten gymnasiarchs were appointed annually, one from each tribe. These officials rotated through a series of jobs, each with unique duties. They were responsible for looking after and compensating persons training for public contests, conducting the games at the great Athenian festivals, exercising general supervision over competitor moral, and decorating and maintaining the gymnasium.

The office was one of many ordinary public services and so great expense was entailed on the gymnasiarchs. Beneath them in the organisational structure were ten sophronistae responsible for observing the conduct of the youths and (especially) for attending all their games.

Paedotribae and gymnastae were responsible for teaching the methods involved in the various exercises, as well as choosing suitable athletics for the youths. The gymnastae were also responsible for monitoring the constitution of the pupils and prescribing remedies for them if they became unwell.

The aleiptae oiled and dusted the bodies of the youths, acted as surgeons, and administered any drugs prescribed. According to Galen, there also existed a teacher specifically devoted to instruction in ball games.

Construction

Gymnasia were typically large structures containing spaces for each type of exercise as well as a stadium, palaistra, baths, outer porticos for practice in bad weather, and covered porticos where philosophers and other "men of letters" gave public lectures and held disputations. All Athenian gymnasia were located outside the city walls due to the large amount of space required for construction.

Development and legacy

Historical development

The ancient Greek gymnasium soon became a place for more than exercise. This development arose through recognition by the Greeks of the strong relation between athletics, education and health. Accordingly, the gymnasium became connected with education on the one hand and medicine on the other. Physical training and maintenance of health and strength were the chief parts of children's earlier education.

Except for time devoted to letters and music, the education of boys was solely conducted in the gymnasium, where provisions were made not only for physical pedagogy but for instruction in morals and ethics.

As pupils grew older, informal conversation and other forms of social took the place of institutional, systematic discipline. Philosophers and sophists frequently assembled to hold talks and lectures in the gymnasium; thus the institution became a resort for those interested in less structured intellectual pursuits in addition to those using the place for training in physical exercises.

In Athens there were three great public gymnasia: the Academy, the Lyceum and the Cynosarges, each of which was dedicated to a deity whose statue adorned the structure and each of which was rendered famous by association with a celebrated school of philosophy. Plato's teaching in the Academy gave great recognition to that gymnasium, Aristotle conferred much fame on the Lyceum, and the Cynosarges was the resort of the Cynics.

Plato considered gymnastics to be an important part of education (see Republic iii. and parts of Laws) and according to him it was the sophist Prodicus who first pointed out the connection between gymnastics and health. Having found gymnastic exercises beneficial to his own weak constitution, Prodicus formulated a method that became generally accepted and was subsequently improved by Hippocrates.

Galen also put great stress on the proper and frequent use of gymnastics. Throughout other ancient Greek medical writings special exercises are prescribed as cures for specific diseases, showing the extent to which the Greeks considered health and fitness connected. The same connection is commonly suggested by experts today.

Classical legacy

The Greek gymnasium never became popular with the Romans, who believed the training of boys in gymnastics conducive to idleness and immorality, and of little use for militaristic reasons (though in Sparta gymnastic training had been valued chiefly because it encouraged warlike tastes, promoted the bodily strength needed to use weapons and ensured the fortitude required to endure hardship).

In the Roman Republic, games in the Campus Martius, duties of camp life, and forced marches and other hardships of warfare took the place of the gymnastic exercises of the Greeks. The first public gymnasium in Rome was built by Nero – another was built later by Commodus.

In the Middle Ages, jousting, feats of horsemanship and field sports of various kinds became popular and the more systematic training of the body associated with the Greek gymnasium was neglected. It was no longer commonly believed that special exercises had specific therapeutic values, as Hippocrates and Galen once preached.

Origin

The historical origins of the Ancient Olympic Games are unknown, but several legends and myths survive. One of

these involved Pelops, king of Olympia and eponymous hero of the Peloponnesus, to whom offerings were made during the games.

The Christian Clement of Alexandria asserted that "[The] Olympian games are nothing else than the funeral sacrifices of Pelops." That myth tells of how Pelops' overcame King Oenomaus and won the hand of his daughter Hippodamia with the help of Poseidon, his old lover, a myth linked to the later fall of the house of Atreus and the sufferings of Oedipus.

Another myth tells of the hero Heracles, who won a race at Olympia and then decreed that the race should be re-enacted every four years, while another claims that Zeus had instated the festival after his defeat of the Titan Cronus. Yet another tells of King Iphitos of Elis, who consulted the Pythia – the Oracle at Delphi – to try and save his people from war in the 9th century BC.

The prophetess advised him to organize games in honour of the gods. The Spartan adversary of Iphitos then decided to stop the war during these games, which were called Olympic, after the sanctuary of Olympia where they were held.

Had they been named after Mount Olympus, the mountain on which the Greek gods were said to live, they would have been called Olympian games rather than Olympic. The favorite story is that Heracles celebrated cleaning the Augean Stables by building Olympia with help from Athena. Whatever the origin, the games were held to be one of the two central rituals in Ancient Greece, the other being the Eleusinian Mysteries.

History

The Games first started in Olympia, Greece, a sanctuary site for the Greek gods near the towns of Elis and Pisa (both in Elis on the peninsula of Peloponnesos). The Sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia housed a 12 meter high statue in ivory and gold of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods, sculpted by Phidias. This statue was one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World.

The Olympic Games were held in four year intervals, and later the Greek method of counting the years even referred to these Games, using the term Olympiad for the period between two Games. The historian Ephorus who lived in the 4th century BC is believed to have invented the use of Olympiads to count years, much as we today use AD and BC. Previously every Greek state used its own dating system, something that continued for local events, which led to confusion when trying to determine dates.

"Diodorus states that there was a solar eclipse in the third year of the 117th Olympiad, which must be the eclipse of 310 BC. This gives us a date of (mid-summer) 776 BC for the first year of the first Olympiad". Nevertheless, there is disagreement among scholars whether the games truly began at this time or not. The only competition held then was, according to the Greek traveller Pausanias, the stadion race, a race over about 190 meters, measured after the feet of Hercules. The word stadium is derived from this foot race.

The early Olympics were also held to be the place where the Greek tradition of athletic nudity was first introduced in 720 BC, either by the Spartans (and Acanthus in particular) or by the Megarian Orsippus.

Several groups fought over control of the sanctuary, and hence the Games, for prestige and political advantage. Pausanias writes that in 668 BC, Pheidon of Argos was commissioned by the town of Pisa to capture the sanctuary from the town of Elis, which he did and then personally controlled the Games for that year. The next year Elis regained control.

The Athenian writer Xenophon in 364 BC gives a contemporary record of an Elean attack during the Pentathlon final of the Games themselves, as the Pisans were again in control. The Eleans pushed the defenders almost to the altar before retreating due to missiles being thrown at them from the porticos. During that night the defending Arcadians constructed defensive palisades, and the next morning on seeing the strength of the defence the Elians retreated.

Related to the Elis/Pisa conflict, is the Heraea Games, the first sanctioned competition for women, held in Olympic Stadium. It originally consisted of foot races only, as did the men's competition. Some texts, including Pausanias's Description of Greece, c. AD 175, state that Hippodameia gathered a group known as the "Sixteen Women" and made them administrators of the Heraea Games, out of gratitude for her marriage to Pelops. Other texts indicate that the "Sixteen Women" were peace-makers from Pisa and Elis and, because of their political competence, became administrators of the Heraea Games.

In 12 BC Herod the Great gave financial support to the Games to enable their future survival.

The Olympic Games were part of the Panhellenic Games, four separate games held at two- or four-year intervals but arranged so that there was at least one set of games every year. The Olympic Games were the most important and most prestigious of these.

Finally, the Olympic Games were suppressed by either Theodosius I in AD 393 or his grandson Theodosius II in AD 435, as part of the campaign to impose Christianity as a state religion. The site of Olympia remained until an earthquake destroyed it in the 6th century AD.

Events

Unlike the Modern Olympic Games, only free men who spoke Greek were allowed to participate in the Ancient Games. They were to some extent "international", though, in the sense that they included athletes from the various Greek city-states. Additionally, participants eventually came from Greek colonies as well, extending the range of the games to far shores of the Mediterranean and of the Black Sea.

In order to be in the games one had to qualify and have one's name written down in the lists. It seems that only young people were allowed to participate, as the Greek writer Plutarch relates that one young man was rejected for seeming too mature, and only after his lover interceded with the king of Sparta, who presumably vouched for his youth, was he permitted to participate. Before being able to participate, every participant had to take an oath in front of the statue of Zeus saying that he had been in training for 10 months.

The Olympic games originally contained one event: the Stadion (or "stade") race. The stade race was between 180 and 240 metres in length. The actual length of the race is unknown, since tracks found at archeological sites, as well as literary evidence, provide conflicting answers.

Runners had to pass five stakes that divided the lanes: one stake at the start, another at the finish, and three stakes in-between. Since time was not pertinent to winning the Stade race, merely passing the finish stake first was enough to earn the victory. The Diaulos, or 2-stade race, was introduced in 724 BCE, during the 14th Olympic games.

The race was approximately 400 metres, and scholars debate whether or not the runners had individual "turning" posts for the return leg of the race, or whether all the runners approached a common post, turned, and then raced back to the starting blocks. The Dolichos was introduced in 720 BCE.

Separate accounts of the race present conflicting evidence as to the actual length of the Dolichos. However, the average stated length of the race was approximately 18-24 laps, or about three miles. The event was run similarly to modern marathons- the runners would begin and end their event in the stadium proper, but the race course would wind its way through the Olympic grounds.

The course would often flank important shrines and statues in the sanctuary, passing by the Nike statue by the temple of Zeus before returning to the stadium. The last running event added to the Olympic program was the Hoplitodromos, or "Hoplite race," in 520 BCE. The runners would lap the stadium for one mile (1500 metres) in full or partial armour, carrying a shield and additionally equipped either with greaves or a helmet.

The event was a practice in displaying military capacities of the various poleis that competed, as armour weighed between 50 and 60 lbs. and emulated speed and stamina needed for warfare. Due to the weight of the armour, it was easy for runners to drop their shields or trip over fallen competitors. In vase painting depicting the event, some runners are shown leaping over fallen shields. The course they used for these runs were made out of clay with sand over the clay.

Over the years, more events were added: boxing (pygme/pygmachia), wrestling (pale), pankration (regulated full-contact fighting, similar to today's mixed martial arts), chariot racing, several other running events (the diaulos, hippios, dolichos, and hoplitodromos), as well as a pentathlon, consisting of wrestling, stadion, long jump, javelin throw and discus throw (the latter three were not separate events).

Boxing became increasingly brutal over the centuries. Initially soft leather covered their fingers but eventually hard leather weighted with metal was sometimes used.

In the chariot racing event, it was not the rider but the owner of the chariot and team who was considered to be the competitor, so one man could win more than one of the top spots. The addition of events meant the festival grew from 1 day to 5 days, 3 of which were used for competition. The other 2 days were dedicated to religious rituals. On the final day, there was a banquet for all of the participants, consisting of 100 oxen that had been sacrificed to Zeus on the first day.

The winner of an Olympic event was awarded an olive branch, and was often received with much honour throughout Greece and especially in his home town, where he was often granted large sums of money (in Athens, 500 drachma, a small fortune). (See Milo of Croton.) Sculptors would create statues of Olympic victors and poets would sing odes in their praise for money.

Archaeologists believe that wars were halted between the city-states of Greece so that the athletes as well as the spectators of the Olympics could get their safely. However, some archaeologists argue that the wars were not halted, but that the athletes who were in the army were allowed to leave and participate in the Olympics.

Participation in the games was limited to male athletes; the only way women were allowed to take part was to enter horses in the equestrian events. In 396 BC and again in 392 BC, the horses of a Spartan princess named Cynisca won her the four-horse race.

The athletes usually competed naked, not only as the weather was appropriate but also as the festival was meant to celebrate, in part, the achievements of the human body. Olive oil was occasionally used by the competitors, not only to keep skin smooth but also to provide an appealing look for the participants. Competitors may have worn a kynodesme to restrain the penis.

The games were actually part of a much larger religious festival, the Panathenaia, which was held every year. Every fourth year when the games were also held, the festival was known as the "Great Panathenaia," and was 3 or 4 days longer than the regular festival.

They were the most prestigious games for the citizens of Athens, but they were not as important as the Olympic Games or the other Panhellenic Games.

The first Great Panathenaia was organized by Pisistratus in 566 BC, and was modelled on the Olympic Games.

Pisistratus also added music and poetry competitions, which were part of the Pythian Games but not the Olympics. The games were divided into games for Athenians only, and games for Athenians and any other Greeks who wanted to participate.

The games for all Greeks were essentially the same as the Olympics, with boxing, wrestling, pankration, pentathlon, and chariot racing, but chariot racing was the most prestigious of these, unlike the Olympics where the stadion (foot race) was more important. The winner of the chariot race received as a prize 140 "Panathenaic Amphorae" full of olive oil.

The games in which only the Athenians were allowed to participate were somewhat different. These included a torch race from the Piraeus to the Acropolis (the supposed ancestor of the modern Olympic torch relay that takes place prior to the Games, though in reality the modern torch race was invented as propaganda for Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympic Games), mock infantry and cavalry battles, a javelin throw on horseback,

the apobatai (a chariot race in which the driver had to jump out of the chariot, run alongside, and jump back in), the pyrriche (apparently military exercises accompanied by music), and the euandrion (essentially a beauty contest among the athletes). In later years there was also a rowing competition.

The Panathenaea also included poetic and musical competitions. Prizes were awarded for rhapsodic recitation of Homeric poetry, for instrumental music on the aulos (double oboe) and kithara (lyre), and for singing to the accompaniment of the aulos (aulody) and kithara (citharody).

The procession to the Parthenon was, however, more important than the games themselves. During the Great Panathenaia (but not the regular Panathenaia held every year), a special robe (the peplos) was made by the women of Athens for the statue of Athena, which was carried to the Parthenon as part of the procession.

There was also a large sacrifice made to Athena, the hekatombe ("sacrifice of a hundred oxen") and the meat from the sacrificed animals was used in an enormous banquet on the final night of the festival, the pannychis ("all-nighter").

The athletic events were staged at the Panathenaic Stadium, which is still in use today.

In addition, the Games included a reading of both the Odyssey and the Iliad.

The games were held not simply as a sporting event, but as a celebration of individual excellence, cultural and artistic variety, and a showplace for architectural and sculptural innovation. Fundamentally, it was a time of gratitude and respect for the Gods of the Greek religion.

The games are named after Mount Olympus, a sacred place where the Gods were said to live. A time of truce was declared during the Olympic Games, as military actions and public executions were suspended. This was to enable people to congregate peacefully and to compete in a civilized and respectful atmosphere.

Agriculture was the foundation of the Ancient Greek economy. Nearly 2% of the population was involved in this activity.

An excellent area of activity for a citizen, it gave birth to a way of life and mores which persisted throughout Antiquity.

Environment

With the exception of the Anatolian coastal cities, Greece presented relatively homogenous natural conditions. The mountains represent 7 of available space, and as much as 90% for the islands of the Aegean Sea.

This significantly reduced the space available for agriculture and blah blah animal husbandry. What ground is available is of poor, stony quality. Only a few rare plains such as those of Messenia qualify as being fertile.

The Mediterranean climate is characterized by two seasons: the first dry and hot, from April to September (river beds tend to dry up); the second is humid and marked by often violent rain storms brought in by west hello? winds, with mild frost free temperatures.

There are variations to this climate. As such in the mountains winters can be rigorous and snowy. Attica, Cyclades, the south of Peloponnese, and Crete are much more arid than the rest of Greece.

Agricultural products

Farming

During the early part of Greek history, as shown in the Odyssey, Greek agriculture - and diet - was based on cereals: barley (????a? / kritaí), Durum wheat (p???? / pýros), and, less commonly, millet or common wheat. The generic term (s?t?? / sitos, usually translated as wheat, could in fact designate any type of cereal grain. In reality, 90% of cereal production was barley.

Even if the ancients were aware of the better nutritional value of wheat, the growing of barley was less demanding and more productive. Various attempts have been made to calculate Attican grain production in the period, but results have not been conclusive.

On the other hand, the Greece land was very well adapted for olive trees, which provided olive oil. The growing of olive trees dates back to early Greek history. Olive plantations are a long-term investment: it takes more than twenty years for the tree to provide fruit, and it only fruits every other year.

Grapes also do well in the rocky soil, but demand a lot of care. Grapes have been grown since the Bronze age.

These core crops were augmented by vegetable gardens (cabbage, onion, garlic, lentils, chick pea, beans) and orchards (fig, almond, pomegranate). Herbs were also grown (sage, mint, thyme, savory, oregano, etc.), as were oilseed plants such as linseed, sesame, and poppy.

Animal husbandry

Animal husbandry, above all seen as a sign of power and wealth in the works of Homer, was in fact not well developed due to the limitations of geography. While the Mycenean civilisation was familiar with the rearing of cattle, this reduced quickly as a result of geographic expansion into less suitable terrain.

Goat and sheep quickly became the most common livestock; less difficult to raise and providers of meat, wool, and milk (usually in the form of cheese). Pork and poultry (chicken and geese) were also raised.

Oxen were rare and normally used as a work animal, though they were occasionally used as sacrificial animals (see Hecatomb). Donkeys, mules and their various mixes were raised as pack or draught animals.

Finally, horses were raised on the plains of Thessaly and Argolis; it was a luxury animal, signifying aristocracy. The Clouds, a comedy by Aristophanes, amply illustrates the equestrian snobbery of Athenian aristocrats: Pheidippides, the son of the hero is addicted to race-horses and so ruins his father Strepsiades.

It is likely that most farms practiced some limited animal husbandry; poultry or small animals grazing on waste land or fed kitchen scraps. Combined farm/livestock operations also existed, as well as those specializing in livestock.

An inscription also mentions a certain Eubolos of Elateia, in Phocis, the owner of 220 head of cattle and horses and at least 1000 sheep and goats. Flocks of sheep were herded between the valley in winter and the mountains in summer. Special taxes existed for the transit or stopover of flocks in cities.

[edit] Other products

Wood was intensively exploited, primarily for domestic use; homes and wagons were made of wood as was the aratrum, or light plough. The great Greek forests located in the highlands were denuded by goats and charcoal production; it was not long before it had to be imported especially for ship production (see trireme). what up? Rodolfo R? Finally, beekeeping provided honey, the only source of sugar known to the Greeks. It also used in medicines and in the production of mead.

Agricultural work

Hesiod's Works and Days, 8th century BCE and Xenophon's Economy of the 4th century BCE provide valuable information about working of the land.

The olive harvest took place from late autumn to the beginning of winter, either by hand or by pole (see illustration). They were then placed in wicker baskets and left to ferment for a few weeks before being pressed.

The screw press, although referred to as the Greek press by Pliny the Elder (XVIII, 37) was a relatively late (2nd century BCE) Roman invention. Oil was preserved in terra cotta vases for use throughout the year. This was also the time for pruning of trees and vines and harvesting of legumes.

Spring was the rainy season; farmers took advantage of this to bring fallow ground back into production. In effect, they practised biennial crop rotation, alternating from year to year between fallow and cultivated. Attempts to introduce triennial crop rotation with legumes in the third year, ran into problems due to the poor Greek soil, lack of manpower, and absence of mechanization.

The Greeks did not use animal manure, possibly due to the low number of cattle. The only soil additive was in effect weeds ploughed back into the ground after fields came out of fallow.

In summer, irrigation was indispensable. In June, they harvested with sickles; the scythe was not used. Wheat was threshed with animal power; it was simply trampled by oxen, donkeys or mules. The grain was then stored. It was left to women and slaves to grind it and make bread.

Autumn was the most important season. In the beginning of autumn they collected deadfall and prepared supplies of firewood; while winters were mild on the coast they could be brutal in the highlands. They also had to break the hard crust that had formed over the summer on grain fields. To do this required three passes; the plough was wooden and iron ploughshares were rare.

A hoe and mallet were also used to break clumps of earth. The fallow land for next year was sown by hand. This was also the time of the grape harvest. The grapes were crushed by foot in large vats then the wine was left to ferment in jugs.

In the nearly four centuries that passed between Hesiod and Xenophon, no improvements can be found in agriculture. Tools remained mediocre and there were no inventions to lighten the work of either man or animal.

They had to wait for the Romans to invent the water mill, which finally permitted hydraulic power to augment muscle power. Neither irrigation, nor soil improvements, nor animal husbandry saw any advances. Overall, production remained dismal. Only the very richest of land, such as that of Messinia was capable of supporting two crops per year.

Agricultural property

With the exception of Athens, and a few areas where aerial surveys have permitted analysis of historical land distribution, agricultural property allocation is not well known. Before the 5th century BCE, it is certain that the land belonged to great landowners, such as the Attican Eupatrides.

Nevertheless, land use varied regionally; in Attica domains were divided among smaller plots, whereas in Thessaly they had single tenants. From the 8th century BCE, tensions grew between the great landowners and the peasants, who were finding it more and more difficult to survive.

This can probably be explained by population growth brought on by reduced infant mortality, and aggravated by the practice of equally subdividing land amongst several inheritors each generation (attested to by both Homer and Hesiod).

In Athens, the crisis was resolved with the arrival of Solon in 594 BCE, who forbade slavery for debt and other measures intended to help the peasants. In the 5th century BCE, the practice of liturgy ( ?e?t?????a / leitourgia - literally, "public work") placed the responsibility for provision of public services heavily on the shoulders of the rich, and led to a reduction in large scale land ownership.

It is estimated that most citizens of hoplite rank owned around 5 hectares of land. In Sparta, the reforms of Lycurgus led to a drastic redistribution of land, with 10 to 18 hectare lots (kleroi) distributed to each citizen. Elsewhere, tyrants undertook redistributions of land seized from wealthy political enemies.

From the 4th century BCE onwards, however, property starts to become concentrated among relatively few land owners, including in Sparta where according to Aristotle, the land has passed into the hands of a few (Politics, II, 1270a).

Nevertheless, the great aristocratic estates in Greece never achieved the scope of the great Roman latifundia; during the classical period, the wealthy Alcibiades possessed only 28 hectares (Plato, 1 Alcibiades, 123c).

In all cases, land remains intimately associated with the concept of wealth. The father of Demosthenes possessed 14 talents and for land owned only a home, but he was the exception. When the banker Pasion made his fortune, he hurried to buy land.

Finally, a not insignificant portion of Greek land was public and/or sacred. Each city possessed such land and it is estimated that in Athens during the classical period these lands represented a tenth of cultivable land.

This was an administrative division and the property of the city itself (for example in Attica, it was a deme) or a temple. These lands were leased to generally fortunate individuals.

Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs and rituals practiced in Ancient Greece in form of cult practices, there for the practical counterpart of Greek mythology.

Within the Greek world, religious practice varied enough so that one might speak of Greek religions.

The cult practices of the Hellenes extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minr, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean,

such as Massilia (Marseille). Greek examples tempered Etruscan cult and belief to inform much of the Roman religion.

There is a scholarly belief that early Greek religion came from, or was strongly influenced by, shamanistic practices from the steppes of Central Asia to the Greek colony of Olbia in Scythia, on the northern shore of the Black Sea,

then all the way down to Greece.

Overview

It is perhaps misleading to speak of 'Greek religion.' In the first place, the Greeks did not have a term for "religion" in the sense of a dimension of existence distinct from all others, and grounded in the belief that the gods exercise authority over the fortunes of human beings and demand recognition as a condition for salvation.

The Greeks spoke of their religious doings as "ta theia" (literally, "things having to do with the gods"), but this loose usage did not imply the existence of any authoritative set of "beliefs." Indeed, the Greeks did not have a word for "belief" in either of the two senses familiar to us. Since the existence of the gods was a given, it would have made no sense to ask whether someone "believed" that the gods existed.

On the other hand, individuals could certainly show themselves to be more or less mindful of the gods, but the common term for that possibility was "nomizein", a word related to "nomos" ("custom," "customary distribution," "law"); to nomizein the gods was to acknowledge their rightful place in the scheme of things, and to act accordingly by giving them their due.

Some bold individuals could nomizein the gods, but deny that they were due some of the customary observances. But these customary observances were so highly unsystematic that it is not easy to describe the ways in which they were normative for anyone.

First, there was no single truth about the gods. Although the different Greek peoples all recognized the 12 major gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, and Hestia or Dionysus), in different locations these gods had such different histories with the local peoples as often to make them rather distinct gods or goddesses.

Different cities worshipped different deities, sometimes with epithets that specified their local nature; Athens had Athena; Sparta, Artemis; Corinth was a center for the worship of Aphrodite; Delphi and Delos had Apollo; Olympia had Zeus, and so on down to the smaller cities and towns.

Identity of names was not even a guarantee of a similar cultus; the Greeks themselves were well aware that the Artemis worshipped at Sparta, the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus.

When literary works such as the Iliad related conflicts among the gods because their followers were at war on earth, these conflicts were a celestial reflection of the earthly pattern of local deities.

Though the worship of the major deities spread from one locality to another, and though most larger cities boasted temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with different places remained strong to the end.

Second, there was no single true way to live in dealing with the gods. "The things that have to do with the gods" had no fixed center, and responsibilities for these things had a variety of forms.

Each individual city was responsible for its own temples and sacrifices, but it fell to the wealthy to sponsor the "leitourgeiai" (literally, "works for the people," from which the word "liturgy" comes) --the festivals, processions, choruses, dramas, and games held in honor of the gods. "Phratries" (members of a large hereditary group) oversaw observances that involved the entire group, but fathers were responsible for sacrifices in their own households, and women often had autonomous religious rites.

Third, individuals had a great deal of autonomy in dealing with the gods. After some particularly striking experience, they could bestow a new title upon a god, or declare some particular site as sacred (cf. Gen. 16:13-14 , where Hagar does both).

No authority accrued to the individual who did such a thing, and no obligation fell upon anyone else--only a new opportunity or possibility was added to the already vast and ill-defined repertoire for nomizeining the gods.

Finally, the lines between divinity and humanity were in some ways clearly defined, in other ways ambiguous. Setting aside the complicated genealogies in which gods sired children upon human women and goddesses bore the children of human lovers, after death historical individuals could receive cultic honors for their deeds during life--in other words, a hero cult.

Indeed, even during life, victors at the Olympics, for instance, were considered to have acquired extraordinary power, and on the strength of their glory (kudos), would be chosen as generals in time of war. Itinerant healers and leaders of initiatory rites would sometimes be called into a city to deliver it from disasters, without such a measure implying any disbelief in the gods or exaltation of such "saviors."

To put it differently, "sôteria" ("deliverance," "salvation") could come from divine or human hands and, in any event, the Greeks offered cultic honors to abstractions like Chance, Necessity, and Luck, divinities who stood in ambiguous relation to the personalized gods of the tradition.

All in all, there was no "dogma" or "theology" in the Greek tradition, no heresy, hypocrisy, possibility of schism, or any other social phenomenon articulated according to the background orientation to a codified order of religious understanding. Such variety in Greek religion reflects the long, complicated history of the Greek-speaking peoples.

Greek religion spans a period from Minoan and Mycenean periods to the days of Hellenistic Greece and its ultimate conquest by the Roman Empire. Religious ideas continued to develop over this time; by the time of the earliest major monument of Greek literature, the Iliad attributed to Homer, a consensus had already developed about who the major Olympian gods were. Still, changes to the canon remained possible; the Iliad seems to have been unaware of Dionysus, a god whose worship apparently spread after it was written, and who became important enough to be named one of the twelve chief Olympian deities, ousting the ancient goddess of the hearth, Hestia. It has been written by scholars that Dionysus was a "foreign" deity, brought into Greece from outside local cults, external to Greece proper. 2 3

Quoting Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, article on Zeus, "According to the Homeric account Zeus, like the other Olympian gods, dwelt on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, which was believed to penetrate with its lofty summit into heaven itself (77. i. 221, &c., 354, 609, xxi. 438). He is called the father of gods and men (i. 514, v. 33 ; comp. Aeschyl. Sept. 512), the most high and powerful among the im­mortals, whom all others obey (II. xix. 258, viii. 10, &c.)." 4

In addition to the local cults of major gods, various places like crossroads and sacred groves had their own tutelary spirits. There were often altars erected outside the precincts of the temples. Shrines like hermai were erected outside the temples as well.

Heroes, in the original sense, were demigods or deified humans who were part of local legendary history; they too had local hero-cults, and often served as oracles for purposes of divination. Religion was first and foremost traditional; the idea of novelty or innovation in worship was out of the question, almost by definition. Religion was the collection of local practices to honour the local gods.

Scholar Andrea Purvis has written on the private cults in Ancient Greece as a traceable point for many practices and worship of deities.

A major function of religion was the validation of the identity and culture of individual communities. The myths were regarded by many as history rather than allegory, and their embedded genealogies were used by groups to proclaim their divine right to the land they occupied, and by individual families to validate their exalted position in the social order.

Mystery religions

Those whose spiritual leanings were not satisfied by the public cult of the gods could turn to various mystery religions. Here, they could find religious consolations that the traditional cultus could not provide: a chance at mystical awakening, a systematic religious doctrine, a map to the afterlife, a communal worship, and a band of spiritual fellowship.

Some of these mysteries, like the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace, were ancient and local. Others were spread from place to place, like the mysteries of Dionysus. During the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire, exotic mystery religions like those of Osiris and Mithras became widespread.

Hellenism

Christianization

In the late 4th century, the Imperial courts were predominantly Christian, as was the populace; Christianity tolerated relatively few internal quarrels; and a deep conviction that right belief, orthodoxy, was what mattered to God. The Christian emperors closed pagan oracles, temples and end the pagan games by degrees, in a series of increasingly stringent decrees.

Finally, the public practice of the Greek religion was made illegal by the Emperor Theodosius I and this was enforced by his successors. The Greek religion, stigmatized as "paganism", the religion of country-folk (pagani) - other scholars suggest the force of paganus was "(mere) civilian" - survived only in rural areas and in forms that were submerged in Christianized rite and ritual, as Europe entered into the Dark Ages.

The European Renaissance scarcely touched Greece. Renaissance humanism in Italy and western Europe included the rediscovery and reintroduction of the culture and learning of ancient Greek thought and philosophy, which included a renewed appreciation of the ancient religion and myth, reinterpreted from a humanist point-of-view.

Polytheistic revivals

"Hellenismos", as the religion was named by the Emperor Julian the Philosopher,[citation needed] has experienced a number of revivals, in the arts, humanities and spirituality of the Renaissance as well as contemporary Neopagan Hellenic polytheism.

Many neo-pagan religious paths, such as Wicca, use aspects of ancient Greek religions in their practice; Hellenic polytheism focuses exclusively thereon, as far as the fragmentary nature of the surviving source material allows. It reflects neo-Platonic-Platonic speculation (which is represented in Porphyry, Libanius, and Julian), as well as Classical cult practice.

The overwhelming majority of modern Greeks are Greek Orthodox. According to estimates, there are perhaps as many as 10,000 polytheist followers out of a total Greek population of 10 million. The neopagan revival is limited largely to the transient communities of the Greek islands. Temple worship is unknown, there are no real congregations. Still, this makes them a larger group than Greek Jews, who currently number around 5,000.

Subsequent to a 2006 court decision that officially recognised the revived ancient Greek religion, followers aspire to have the right to perform marriages, baptisms and funerals as afforded to druids in Britain who worship at Stonehenge, and Danish believers in Thor and the Nordic gods.

Those who did not pay were left stranded on the shores of Styx. Many would then come back to haunt their families who treated them so shabbily after death - not an appealing prospect. The same fate awaited those whose bodies were never recovered after death, for example those who drowned at sea.

Those who had the money to pay Charon didn't have it much better, though. They faced eternity existing as pitiful shades, mere shadows of former selves. They were grey, their lives were grey, and it was hardly the sort of existence that anyone would consciously desire. It was, however, where they belonged and proper order was important to the Greeks so this was better than the alternatives.

For both men and women in Ancient Greece there were only two basic garments, the chiton (pronounced KY-ton) and the himation (pronounced HIGH-mah-ton). These were both made from simple rectangles of fabric.

The chiton was worn like a tunic and the himation was worn over the chiton like a cloak around the arms and shoulders.

Great care was taken to drape and gather them properly, especially the himation. If a person draped or wore this garment improperly, letting it hang too short or too long,

they could end up being laughed at and made fun of.

The Greeks liked bright colored clothes decorated with trims. Nearly most clothes were made of wool or linen, but rich people wore silk. Greek women liked to wear a lot of jewelry.

Wealthy women wore gold and silver bracelets, necklaces, and long dangly earrings that jingled with every move. And Greeks wore warm boots in winter and cool sandals in summer. The most comfortable sandals had thick cork soles, which made them soft and bouncy perfect for walking on stony ground.

Festivals, celebrations, and gatherings were an important part of life in ancient Greece. Festivals were usually held to worship the gods and included a variety of different events.

For example, the Olympics were among the most famous festivals in ancient Greece, bringing together citizens of many of the city-states to compete in sporting events.

Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means "to drink together") but has since come to refer to any academic conference, whether or not drinking takes place.

The sympotic elegies of Theognis of Megara and two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium all describe symposia in the original sense.

Symposium as a social activity in ancient Greece

The Greek symposia was a key Hellenic social institution. It was a forum for men to debate, plot, boast, or simply to party with others. They were frequently held to celebrate the introduction of youths into aristocratic society, much like debutante balls today.

A youth would attend as the companion and eromenos of an adult with whom he was involved in a pederastic relationship. Symposia were also held by aristocrats to celebrate other special occasions, such as victories in athletic and poetic contests.

Symposia were usually held in the men's quarters of the household. Singly or in pairs, the men would recline on couches arrayed against the walls of the room. Boys did not recline but sat.

Food, wine (usually mixed with water and served by nude young men from the Krater, the center jar), and entertainment was provided, and depending on the occasion could include games, songs, flute-girls, slaves performing various acts, and hired entertainments.

A symposium would be overseen by a symposiarch who would decide how strong or diluted the wine for the evening would be, depending on whether serious discussions or merely sensual indulgence were in the offing. Certain formalities were observed, most important among which were the libations by means of which the gods were propitiated.

One of the more popular games at symposia was kottabos, in which drinkers swished the dregs of their wine in their kylixes (platter-like stemmed drinking vessels) and flung them at a target. Also popular at symposia were skolia, drinking songs of a patriotic or bawdy nature, which were also performed in a competitive manner with one symposiast reciting the first part of a song and another expected to finish it.

What are called flute-girls today were actually prostitutes or courtesans who played the aulos, a Greek woodwind instrument most similar to an oboe, hired to play for and consort with the symposiasts while they drank and conversed.

Symposiasts could also compete in rhetorical contests, for which reason the term symposium has come to refer to any event where multiple speeches are made.

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practiced by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature.

Animal sacrifice has turned up in almost all cultures, from the Hebrews to the Greeks and Romans and from the Aztecs to the Yoruba.

However, the practice was a taboo among the Ancient Egyptians, and they tended to look down on cultures that

practiced this custom. Animal sacrifice is still practiced today by the followers of Santería and other "lineages of Orisa", as a means of curing the sick and giving thanks to the Orisa (Gods).

However in Santeria, such animal offerings constitute an extremely small portion of what are termed "ebos" – ritual activities that include offerings, prayer and deeds.

Some villages in Greece also sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a practise known as kourbània. The practise, while publicly condemned, is often tolerated for the benefits it provides to the church and the sense of community it engenders.

Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. In many ways, it had an important influence on modern philosophy, as well as modern science.

Clear unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to the Islamic civilization, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the secular sciences of the modern day.

Neither reason nor inquiry began with the Greeks. Defining the difference between the Greek quest for knowledge and the quests of the elder civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, has long been a topic of study by theorists of civilization. Benjamin Farrington, former Professor of Classics at Swansea University wrote:

"Men were weighing for thousands of years before Archimedes worked out the laws of equilibrium; they must have had practical and intuitional knowledge of the principles involved. What Archimedes did was to sort out the theoretical implications of this practical knowledge and present the resulting body of knowledge as a logically coherent system."

and again:

"With astonishment we find ourselves on the threshold of modern science. Nor should it be supposed that by some trick of translation the extracts have been given a delusive air of modernity. Far from it. The vocabulary of these writings and their style are the source from which our own vocabulary and style have been derived."

Pre-Socratic philosophers

The history of philosophy in the West begins with the Greeks, and particularly with a group of philosophers commonly called the pre-Socratics. The pre-Socratics were often known as naturalists or cosmologists. The first Greek philosopher was called Thales, of Miletus. Of course, this is not to deny the occurrence of former philosophical rumblings in Egyptian culture.

Certainly great thinkers and writers existed in the Egyptian culture, and we have evidence that some of the earliest Greek philosophers may have had contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian thought.

However, the early Greek thinkers add at least one element which differentiates their thought from all those who came before them. For the first time in history, we discover in their writings something more than dogmatic assertions about the ordering of the world -- we find reasoned arguments for various beliefs about the world.

It is now believed that decision making through oral debate in the polis would have developed rational thought to carefully construct arguments for and against an action, and these debates would have required calling on abstract principles such as justice, without invoking the notion of a god.

As it turns out, nearly all of the various cosmologies proposed by the early Greek philosophers are profoundly and demonstrably false, and this was often due to their speculations running far ahead of what their senses could cope with, but this does not diminish their importance. For even if later philosophers summarily rejected the answers they provided, they could not escape their questions:

What is life?

From where does everything come?

Of what does it really consist?

How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?

And why can we describe them with a singular mathematics?

And the method the Greek philosophers followed in forming and transmitting their answers became just as important as the questions they asked. The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations for the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations.

In other words they depended on reason and observation to illuminate the true nature of the world around them, and they used rational argument to advance their views to others. And though philosophers have argued at length about the relative weights that reason and observation should have, for two and a half millennia they have basically united in the use of the very method first used by the pre-Socratics.

Difficulties often arise in pinning down the ideas of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and in determining the actual line of argument they used in supporting their particular views. This problem arises not from some defect in the men themselves or in their ideas, but simply from their separation from us in history.

While most of these men produced significant texts, we have no complete versions of any of those texts. We have only quotations by later philosophers and historians, along with the occasional textual fragment.

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Heraclitus is an excellent example of the Pre-Socratic philosopher. All of his existing fragments can be written in 45 small pages as poetry. (Brooks Haxton, a poet, has provided a very interesting translation of all of the fragments of Heraclitus titled "Fragments, the Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus.")

Although he wrote twenty-five hundred years ago and very little of his work still exists, it is very appealing. Some of his lines remain among our common sayings today. For example, "You can never step into the same river twice" Brooks translates the original as follows:

The river

where you set

your foot just now

is gone-

those waters giving way to this,

now this.

Heraclitus had a unique view of the world. For him change was the most important fact about the world, as the lines quoted illustrate. Brooks in his Introduction and brief Notes points out that it is very difficult to translate such ancient writing into contemporary English.

The changes in the culture, the figures of speech, the chasm between the background of the contemporary reader and that of a Greek of twenty-five hundred years ago as relates to our understanding of the world, and so forth, makes literal translation pointless and freer translation subject to question. It is a point to keep in mind when considering any of these Pre-Socratics. Heraclitus also illustrates the point that these early philosophers do have important things to tell us about the world.

Xenophanes

Parmenides and the other Eleatic philosophers

Protagoras and the Sophists

Empedocles

Socrates

Socrates, an Athenian philosopher, believed that a person should always try to do well. He believed that one should "know thyself." This is evidenced by the inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. He claimed that one has an obligation to disobey a bad command. He made his most important contribution to Western thought through his method of inquiry.

In addition, he also taught many famous Greek philosophers. His most famous pupil was Plato. However, since Socrates discussed ideas that upset many people (some in high positions), he was sentenced to death by drinking the poison hemlock.

The ironic thing about this is that during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants he was often threatened, but survived despite his continued protests for democracy. When democracy came, he was executed for corrupting their young. Most of what we know about Socrates came from Plato as Socrates wrote nothing down.

Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle, known as Aristoteles in most languages other than English (Aristotele in Italian), (384 BC - March 7, 322 BC) has, along with Plato, the reputation of one of the two most influential philosophers in Western thought.

Their works, although connected in many fundamental ways, differ considerably in both style and substance. Plato wrote several dozen philosophical dialogues—arguments in the form of conversations, usually with Socrates as a participant—and a few letters.

Though the early dialogues deal mainly with methods of acquiring knowledge, and most of the last ones with justice and practical ethics, his most famous works expressed a synoptic view of ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge, and human life. Predominant ideas include the notion that knowledge gained through the senses always remains confused and impure, and that the contemplative soul that turns away from the world can acquire "true" knowledge.

The soul alone can have knowledge of the Forms, the real essences of things, of which the world we see is but an imperfect copy. Such knowledge has ethical as well as scientific import. One can view Plato, with qualification, as an idealist and a rationalist.

Aristotle was one of Plato's students, but placed much more value on knowledge gained from the senses, and would correspondingly better earn the modern label of empiricist. Thus Aristotle set the stage for what would eventually develop into the scientific method centuries later.

The works of Aristotle that still exist today appear in treatise form, mostly unpublished by their author. The most important include Physics, Metaphysics, (Nicomachean) Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul), Poetics, and many others.

Aristotle was a great thinker and philosopher, and was called 'the master' by Avicenna in the following centuries. His views and approaches dominated early Western science for almost 2000 years. As well as philosophy, Aristotle was a formidable inventor, and is credited with many significant inventions and observations.

The first known medical school opened in Cnido in 700 BC. Alcmaeon, author of the first anatomical work, worked at this school, and it was here that the practice of observing patients was established.

Hippocrates established his own medical school at Cos. Despite their known respect for Egyptian medicine, attempts to discern any particular influence on Greek practice at this earltime have not been dramatically successful because of the lack of sources and the challenge of understanding ancient medical terminology. It is clear, however, that the Greeks definitely imported Egyptian

substances into their pharmacopoeia, and the influence becomes more pronounced after the establishment of a school of Greek medicine in Alexandria.

Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine

The Hippocratic Corpus contains the core medical texts of this school. Although once thought to have been written by Hippocrates himself, today, many scholars believe that these texts were written by a series of authors over several decades. Since it is impossible to determine which may have been written by Hippocrates himself, it is difficult to know which Hippocratic doctrines originated with him.

The existence of the Hippocratic Oath implies that this "Hippocratic" medicine was practiced by a group of professional physicians bound (at least among themselves) by a strict ethical code. Aspiring students normally paid a fee for training (a provision is made for exceptions) and entered into a virtual family relationship with his teacher.

This training included some oral instruction and probably hands-on experience as the teacher's assistant, since the Oath assumes that the student will be interacting with patients. The Oath also places limits on what the physician may or may not do ("To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug") and intriguingly hints at the existence of another class of professional specialists, perhaps akin to surgeons ("I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art").

Humourism

The Hippocratics, along with many other Greeks, also believed in the theory of the four humours. This theory had its roots in the belief in four elements which, Empedocles argued, made up everything in the world: earth, air, fire and water with their associated qualities of dryness, coldness, heat and wetness respectively.

These, in turn, were linked to the four seasons; dry autumn, cold winter, hot summer and wet spring (it followed that you were more likely to suffer from a particular humour in the corresponding season). The humours being, for autumn, black bile, for winter, phlegm, for sumer, yellow bile, and for spring, blood. Among other corollaries, this theory meant that for some diseases, remedies to purge excess humours, such as bloodletting or vomiting, seemed advisable and generally useful as a source of use and understanding

As to the exact relationship between the humours and illness, beliefs varied. The Hippocratics taught that one could only be in perfect health when the humours were in balance, known as crasis or eucrasia. The natural tendency towards balance, or recovery, was called pepsis or coction.

Aristotle

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was the most influential scholar of the living world from antiquity. Though his early natural philosophy work was speculative, Aristotle's later biological writings demonstrate great concern for empiricism, biological causation, and the diversity of life. Aristotle did not experiment, however, holding that items display their real natures in their own environments, rather than controlled artificial ones.

While in physics and chemistry, this assumption has been found unhelpful, in zoology and ethology it has not, and Aristotle's work "retains real interest". He made countless observations of nature, especially the habits and attributes of plants and animals in the world around him, which he devoted considerable attention to categorizing. In all, Aristotle classified 540 animal species, and dissected at least 50; he believed that intellectual purposes, formal causes, guided all natural processes.

Aristotle believed that intellectual purposes, formal causes, guided all natural processes. Such a teleological view gave Aristotle cause to justify his observed data as an expression of formal design.

Noting that "no animal has, at the same time, both tusks and horns", and "a single-hooved animal with two horns I have never seen", Aristotle suggested that Nature, giving no animal both horns and tusks, was staving off vanity, and giving creatures faculties only to such a degree as they are necessary. Noting that ruminants had a multiple stomach and weak teeth, he supposed the first was to compensate for the latter, with Nature trying to preserve type of balance.

In a similar fashion, Aristotle believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man. His system had eleven grades, arranged according "to the degree to which they are infected with potentiality", expressed in their form at birth. The highest animals laid warm and wet creatures alive, the lowest bore theirs cold, dry, and in thick eggs.

Aristotle also noted that the level of a creature's perfection was reflected in its form, but not foreordained by that form. Also important, in the view of Aristotle, was the quality of that creature's soul.

Dividing souls into three groups, Aristotle noted that plants possessed a vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth; animals a vegetative and a sensitive soul, responsible for mobility and sensation; and humans a vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational soul, capable of thought and reflection.

Aristotle, in contrast to earlier philosophers, placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain. Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally went against previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.

Aristotle, and nearly all scholars after him until the 18th century, believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man: the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being. Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botany—the History of Plants—which survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to botany, even into the Middle Ages.

Many of Theophrastus' names survive into modern times, such as carpos for fruit, and pericarpion for seed vessel. Rather than focus on formal causes, as Aristotle did, Theophrastus suggested a mechanistic scheme, drawing analogies between natural and artificial processes, and relying on Aristotle's concept of the efficient cause. Theophrastus also recognized the role of sex in the reproduction of some higher plants, though this last discovery was lost in later ages.

Alexandria

Following Theophrastus, the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly. It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found. The first medical teacher at Alexandria was Herophilus of Chalcedon, who corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation.

Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not. In the same vein, he developed a diagnostic technique which relied upon distinguishing different types of pulse. He, and his contemporary, Erasistratus of Chios, researched the role of veins and nerves, mapping their courses across the body.

Erasistratus connected the increased complexity of the surface of the human brain compared to other animals to its superior intelligence. He sometimes employed experiments to further his research, at one time repeatedly weighing a caged bird, and noting its weight loss between feeding times. Following his teacher's researches into pneumatics, he claimed that the human system of blood vessels was controlled by vacuums, drawing blood across the body.

In Erisistratus' physiology, air enters the body, is then drawn by the lungs into the heart, where it is transformed into vital spirit, and is then pumped by the arteries throughout the body. Some of this vital spirit reaches the brain, where it is transformed into animal spirit, which is then distributed by the nerves.

Herophilus and Erasistratus performed their experiments upon criminals given them by their Ptolemaic kings. They dissected these criminals alive, and "while they were still breathing they observed parts which nature had formerly concealed, and examined their position, colour, shape, size, arrangement, hardness, softness, smoothness, connection."

Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. In the words of Ernst Mayr, "Nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance." Aristotle's ideas of natural history and medicine survived, but they were generally taken unquestioningly.

Influence on Rome & Christianity

Through long contact with Greek culture, and their eventual conquest of Greece, the Romans absorbed many of the Greek ideas on medicine. Early Roman reactions to Greek medicine ranged from enthusiasm to hostility, but eventually the Romans adopted a favorable view of Hippocratic medicine won out.

This acceptance led to the spread of Greek medical theories throughout the Roman Empire, and thus a large portion of the West. Following the collapse of the Empire, however, official Catholic support for Galen's teachings made these the only politically acceptable ideas on medicine until the Renaissance.

This support was a major reason for the huge impact of his teachings, despite their sometimes questionable value. For example, the theory of bloodletting was popular into the 19th century, despite its total inefficacy and the extreme riskiness: many people, including possibly George Washington, died from its failure.

Aeschylus (Greek: ??s?????, IPA: /'?sk?l?s/ or /'isk?l?s/, 525–456 BC) was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides.

He expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict between them; previously, characters interacted only with the chorus. Unfortunately, only seven of the estimated 70 plays written by Aeschylus have survived into modern times.

Many of Aeschylus' works were influenced by the Persian invasion of Greece, which took place during his lifetime. His

play The Persians remains an important primary source of information about this period in Greek history. The war was so important to Greeks and to Aeschylus himself that, upon his death around 456 BC, his epitaph included a reference to his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon but not to his success as a playwright.

Life

Aeschylus was born in either 525 or 524 BC in Eleusis, a small town about 30 kilometers northwest of Athens, which is nestled in the fertile valleys of western Attica. His family was both wealthy and well-established; his father Euphorion was a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica. As a youth, he worked at a vineyard until, he later claimed to his friend Pausanias, the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of tragedy.

As soon as he woke from the dream, the young Aeschylus began writing a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC, when he was only 26 years old. After fifteen years, his skill was great enough to win a prize for his plays at Athens' annual city Dionysia playwriting competition. But in the interim, his dramatic career was interrupted by war. The armies of the Persian Empire, who had already conquered the Greek city-states of Ionia, entered mainland Greece in the hopes of conquering it as well.

In 490 BC, Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus fought with the Greek army against the invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon. The Greeks, though outnumbered, encircled and slaughtered the Persian army. This pivotal defeat by the soldiers of the Greek Delian League ended the first Persian invasion of Greece proper and was celebrated across the city-states of Greece.

However, the victory was bittersweet for Aeschylus because his brother was killed in the battle. Aeschylus continued to write plays during the lull between the first and second Persian invasions of Greece, and won his first victory in the city Dionysia, Athens' annual competition of playwrights, in 484 BC.

In 480 and 479 BC, he again fought with the Greek armies against Xerxes' invading forces at the Battles of Salamis and Plataea. The Athenian victory over the Persian fleet at Salamis was to become the subject of The Persians, his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia.

Aeschylus traveled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BC, having been invited by Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island. By 473 BC, after the death of Phrynichus, one of his chief rivals, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition.

In 458 BC, he returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela where he died in 456 or 455 BC when an eagle (or more likely a Lammergeier), mistaking the playwright's bald crown for a stone, dropped a tortoise on his head (though some accounts differ, claiming it was a stone dropped by an eagle or vulture that likely mistook his bald head for the egg of a flightless bird).

He would continue to be honored by the Athenians, who respected his work so highly that they allowed other playwrights to reproduce his plays as part of the Dionysia rather than presenting original works of their own. His sons Euphorion and Euæon and his nephew Philocles would follow in his footsteps and become playwrights themselves.

The inscription on Aeschylus' gravestone may have been written by him, but makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:

This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,

Euphorion's son and fruitful Gela's pride

How tried his valor, Marathon may tell

And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well.

Works

The Greek art of the drama had its roots in religious festivals for the gods, chiefly Dionysus, the god of wine. In Athens, the two major theatre festivals were the Lenaia in January and the more important Dionysia in the spring. These festivals began with an opening procession, continued with a competition of boys singing dithyrambs, and culminated in a pair of dramatic competitions.

The first competition, which Aeschylus would have participated in, was for the tragedians, and consisted of three playwrights each presenting three tragic plays followed by a shorter comedic satyr play. A second competition of five comedic playwrights followed, and the winners of both competitions were chosen by a panel of judges.

Aeschylus entered many of these competitions in his lifetime, and it is estimated that he wrote somewhere between 70 to 90 plays. Only seven tragedies have survived intact: The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, the trilogy known as The Oresteia, consisting of the three tragedies Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, and Prometheus Bound (which may not be by Aeschylus).

Lost and fragmentary works of Aeschylus include: Phineas; Glaukos Potnieus; Prometheus Pyrkaeus, a satyr play belonging to the same tetralogy as The Persians; Laios; Oedipus; Sphynx, another satyr play belonging to the same tetralogy as Seven Against Thebes; Proteus, the satyr play belonging to the Oresteia tetralogy; Eleusians; and The Net-pullers.

The Persians

The earliest of the plays that still exists is The Persians (Persai), performed in 472 BC and based on experiences in Aeschylus' own life, specifically the Battle of Salamis. It is unique both in its aforementioned importance for historians of the Persian Wars and because the majority of Greek plays of that era concerned stories about the gods rather than stories about humans. The Persians focuses on the popular Greek theme of hubris by blaming Persia's loss on the overwhelming pride of its king.

It opens with the arrival of a messenger in Susa, the Persian capital, bearing news of the catastrophic Persian defeat at Salamis to Atossa, the mother of the Persian King Xerxes. Atossa then travels to the tomb of Darius, her husband, where his ghost appears to explain the cause of the defeat. It is, he says, the result of Xerxes' hubris in building a bridge across the Hellespont, an action which angered the gods. Xerxes appears at the end of the play, not realizing the cause of his defeat, and the play closes to lamentations by Xerxes and the chorus.

Seven Against Thebes

Seven Against Thebes (Hepta epi Thebas), which was performed in 467 BC, picks up a contrasting theme, that of fate and the interference of the gods in human affairs. It also marks the first known appearance in Aeschylus' work of a theme which would continue through his plays, that of the polis (the city) being a vital development of human civilization. The play tells the story of Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of the shamed King of Thebes, Oedipus.

The sons agree to alternate in the throne of the city, but after the first year Eteocles refuses to step down, and Polynices wages war to claim his crown. The brothers go on to kill each other in single combat, and the original ending of the play consisted of lamentations for the dead brothers. An alternate ending added 50 years later, after the success of Sophocles' play Antigone, tells of the fate of Antigone, sister to Eteocles and Polynices.

She defies the order of the new king, Creon, banning anyone from burying Polynices. In response, Creon sentences her to be buried alive, and Antigone committs suicide just before Creon is persuaded to rescind his order. The remainder of the play is an orgy of deaths. Creon is killed by his son, Haemon, who was betrothed to Antigone and who immediately afterwards kills himself. Then Eurydice, Creon's wife, kills herself in mourning. This ending entirely mirrors the plot of Antigone.

The Suppliants

Aeschylus would continue his emphasis on the polis with The Suppliants in 463 BC (Hiketides), which pays tribute to the democratic undercurrents running through Athens in advance of the establishment of a democratic government in 461. In the play, the Danaides, the fifty daughters of Danaus, founder of Argos, flee a forced marriage to their cousins in Egypt. They turn to King Pelasgus of Argos for protection, but Pelasgus refuses until the people of Argos weigh in on the decision, a decidedly democratic move on the part of the king. The people decide that the Danaides deserve protection, and they are allowed within the walls of Argos despite Egyptian protests.

The Oresteia

The most complete tetralogy of Aeschylus' work that still exists is the Oresteia (458 BC), of which only the satyr play is missing. In fact, the Oresteia is the only full trilogy of Greek plays by any playwright that modern scholars have uncovered. The trilogy consists of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers (Choephoroi), and The Eumenides. Together, these plays tell the bloody story of the family of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae.

Agamemnon

Agamemnon describes his death at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra, who was angry both at Agamemnon's sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia and at his keeping the Trojan prophetess Cassandra as a concubine. Cassandra enters the palace even though she knows she will be murdered by Clytemnestra as well, knowing that she cannot avoid her gruesome fate. The ending of the play includes a prediction of the return of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who will surely avenge his father.

The Libation Bearers

The Libation Bearers continues the tale, opening with Clytemnestra's account of a nightmare in which she gives birth to a snake. She orders Electra, her daughter, to pour libations on Agamemnon's tomb (with the assistance of libation bearers) in hope of making amends. At the tomb, Electra meets Orestes, who has returned from protective exile in Phocis, and they plan revenge upon Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus together. They enter the palace pretending to bear news of Orestes' death, and when Clytemnestra calls in Aegisthus to share in the news, Orestes kills them both. Immediately, Orestes is beset by the Furies, who avenge patricide and matricide in Greek mythology.

The Eumenides

The final play of the trilogy, The Eumenides, addresses the question of Orestes' guilt. The furies pursue Orestes from Argos and into the wilderness. Orestes makes his way to the temple of Apollo and begs him to drive the furies away. Apollo had encouraged Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, and so bears a portion of the guilt of the act. But the furies belong to the older race of the Titans, and Apollo is unable to drive them away. He sends Orestes to the temple of Athena, with Hermes as a guide.

There, the furies track him down and, just before he is to be killed, the goddess Athena, patron of Athens, steps in and declares that a trial is necessary. Apollo argues Orestes' case and, after the ten person jury splits their vote, Athena decides against the furies. She also renames them the Eumenides, or kindly ones, and declares that thereafter all future hung juries should result in acquittal, since mercy should take precedence over harshness. The Eumenides specifically extols the importance of reason in the development of laws, and, like The Supplicants, lauds the ideals of a democratic Athens.

Prometheus Bound

In addition to these six works, a seventh tragedy, Prometheus Bound, is usually thought to be by Aeschylus, although there is debate among modern scholars as to whether or not it was written by another author. It consists mostly of static dialogue, as throughout the play Prometheus is bound to a rock in punishment for providing fire to humans. Zeus sends Prometheus to the abyss at the end of the play for refusing to confess who it is that will overthrow his rule.

Influence on Greek drama and culture

When Aeschylus first began writing, the theatre had only just begun to evolve, although earlier playwrights like Thespis had expanded the cast to include an actor who was able to interact with the chorus. Aeschylus added a 2nd actor, so that the actors themselves could have conflicts and engage in dialogue, while the chorus took played less important role.

Overall, though, he continued to write within the very strict bounds of Greek drama: his plays were written in verse, no violence could be performed on stage, and the plays had to have a certain remoteness from daily life in Athens, either by relating stories about the gods or by being set, like The Persians, in far-away locales.

Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis. The Oresteia trilogy particularly concentrated on man's position in the cosmos in relation to the gods, divine law, and divine punishment. Scholars assume that the weighty themes of his plays were intended to inspire thought and conversation among Athenian audiences, but almost no sources exist that describe how audiences engaged intellectually with Greek theater.

What is certain, though, is the high regard in which Aeschylus was held by the Athenians. For many years following his death, the epic and prize-winning plays of Aeschylus continued to be performed by actors and actresses for the festival audiences of Athens.

Sappho (Attic Greek Sapf? [sap????], Aeolic Greek ??pf? [psap????]) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos.

In history and poetry texts, she is sometimes associated with the city of Mytilene on Lesbos (Carson 2002); she was also said to have been born in Eresos, another city on Lesbos.

Her birth was sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC.

The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her

immense reputation has endured.

Life

No contemporary historical sources exist for Sappho's life — only her poetry. Scholars have rejected a biographical reading of her poetry and have cast doubt on the reliability of the later biographical traditions from which all more detailed accounts derive.

Sappho is believed to have been the daughter of Scamander and Cleïs and to have had three brothers. She was married (Attic comedy says to a wealthy merchant, but that is apocryphal), the name of her husband being in dispute. Some translators have interpreted a poem about a girl named Cleïs as being evidence that she had a daughter by that name.

It was a common practice of the time to name daughters after grandmothers, so there is some basis for this interpretation. But the actual Aeolic word pais was more often used to indicate a slave or any young girl, rather than a daughter. In order to avoid misrepresenting the unknowable status of young Cleïs, translator Diane Rayor and others, such as David Campbell, chose to use the more neutral word "child" in their versions of the poem.

Sappho was born into an aristocratic family, which is reflected in the sophistication of her language and the sometimes rarified environments which her verses record. References to dances, festivals, religious rites, military fleets, parading armies, generals, and ladies of the ancient courts abound in her writings. She speaks of time spent in Lydia, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of that time. More specifically, Sappho speaks of her friends and happy times among the ladies of Sardis, capital of Lydia, once the home of Croesus and near the gold-rich lands of King Midas.

A violent coup on Lesbos, following a rebellion led by Pittacus, toppled the ruling families from power. For many years, Sappho and other members of the aristocracy, including fellow poet Alcaeus, were exiled. Her poetry speaks bitterly of the mistreatment she suffered during those years. Much of her exile was spent in Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Upon hearing that the famous Sappho would be coming to their city, the people of Syracuse built a statue of her as a form of welcome.

Much later, in 581 BC, when Pittacus was no longer in power, she was able to return to her homeland. A tradition going back at least to Menander (fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for love of Phaon, a ferryman. Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that this legend of Sappho's leap from the cliff over the love for a man may have resulted in part from a desire to assert herself as heterosexual.

Because she wrote love poems addressed to both women and men, Sappho has long been considered bisexual. The word "lesbian" derives from the name of the island of her birth, Lesbos; her name is also the origin of its less common synonym sapphic, despite Sappho herself having been bisexual. The narrators of many of her poems speak of infatuations and love (sometimes requited, sometimes not) for various women, but descriptions of physical acts between women are few and subject to debate.

Whether these poems are meant to be autobiographical is not known, although elements of other parts of Sappho's life do make appearances in her work, and it would be compatible with her style to have these intimate encounters expressed poetically, as well. Her homoerotica should be placed in the seventh century (BC) context. The poems of Alcaeus and later Pindar record similar romantic bonds between the members of a given circle.

The 3rd Century philosopher Maximus of Tyre wrote that Sappho was "small and dark" and that her relationships to her female friends were similar to those of Socrates:

What else was the love of the Lesbian woman except Socrates' art of love? For they seem to me to have practised love each in their own way, she that of women, he that of men. For they say that both loved many and were captivated by all things beautiful. What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phaedrus were to him, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian.

During the Victorian era, it became the fashion to describe Sappho as the headmistress of a girls' finishing school. As Page DuBois (among many other experts) points out, this attempt at making Sappho understandable and palatable to the genteel classes of Great Britain was based more on conservative sensibilities than evidence. In fact, many argue there are no references to teaching, students, academies, or tutors in any of Sappho's admittedly scant collection of surviving works.

Burnett follows others, like C.M. Bowra, in suggesting that Sappho's circle was somewhat akin to the Spartan agelai or the religious sacred band, the thiasos, but Burnett nuances her argument by noting that Sappho's circle was distinct from these contemporary examples because "membership in the circle seems to have been voluntary, irregular and to some degree international." The notion that Sappho was in charge of some sort of academy persists nonetheless.

Works

Ancient sources state that Sappho produced nine volumes of poetry, but only a small proportion of her work survives. Papyrus fragments, such as those found in the ancient rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, are an important source. One substantial fragment is preserved on a potsherd. The rest of what we know of Sappho comes through citations in other ancient writers, often made to illustrate grammar, vocabulary, or meter. There is a single complete poem, Fragment 1, Hymn to Aphrodite.

There is another modern translation of that ode, and translations of two more virtually complete poems (16 and 31 in the standard numeration) and three shorter fragments, including one whose authorship is uncertain (168b).

The most recent addition to the corpus is a virtually complete poem on old age. The line-ends were first published in 1922 from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, no. 1787 (fragment 1: see the third pair of images on this page), but little could be made of them, since the indications of poem-end (placed at the beginnings of the lines) were lost, and scholars could only guess where one poem ended and another began.

Most of the rest of the poem has recently (2004) been published from a 3rd century BC papyrus in the Cologne University collection (image available here). The latest reconstruction, by M. L. West, appeared in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 151 (2005), 1-9, and in the Times Literary Supplement on 21 June 2005 (English translation and discussion). Another full literary translation is available. The Greek text has been reproduced with helpful notes for students of the language, together with other examples of Greek lyric poetry.

A major new literary discovery, the Milan Papyrus, recovered from a dismantled mummy casing and published in 2001, has revealed the high esteem in which the poet Posidippus of Pella, an important composer of epigrams (3rd century BC), held Sappho's 'divine songs'. An English translation of the new epigrams, with notes, is available, as is the original Greek text.

Reputation in antiquity

An epigram in the Anthologia Palatina (9.506) ascribed to Plato states:

Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!

Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.

Claudius Aelianus wrote in Miscellany (??????? ?st???a) that Plato called Sappho wise. Horace writes in his Odes that Sappho's lyrics are worthy of sacred admiration. One of Sappho's poems was famously translated by the 1st century BC Roman poet Catullus in his "Ille mi par esse deo videtur" (Catullus 51).

Loss of Sappho's works

Although Sappho's work endured well into Roman times, with changing interests, styles, and aesthetics her work was copied less and less, especially after the academies stopped requiring her study. Part of the reason for her disappearance from the standard canon was the predominance of Attic and Homeric Greek as the languages required to be studied. Sappho's Aeolic dialect, a difficult one, and by Roman times, arcane and ancient as well, posed considerable obstacles to her continued popularity.

Once the major academies of the Byzantine Empire dropped her works from their standard curricula, very few copies of her works were made by scribes. Still, the greatest poets and thinkers of ancient Rome continued to emulate her or compare other writers to her, and it is through these comparisons and descriptions that we have received much of her extant poetry.

Modern legends, with origins that are difficult to trace, have made Sappho's literary legacy the victim of purposeful obliteration by scandalized church leaders, often by means of book-burning. There is no known historical evidence for these accounts. Indeed, Gregory of Nazianzus, who along with Pope Gregory VII features as the villain in many of these stories, was a reader and admirer of Sappho's poetry. For example, modern scholars have noted the echoes of Sappho fr. 2 in his poem On Human Nature, which copies from Sappho the quasi-sacred grove (alsos), the wind-shaken branches, and the striking word for "deep sleep" (koma).

It appears likely that Sappho's poetry was decimated by the same forces of cultural change that obliterated, without prejudice, the remains of all the canonical archaic Greek poets. Indeed, as one would expect from ancient critical estimations, which regard Sappho and Pindar as the greatest practitioners of monodic lyric and choral poetry (respectively), more of Sappho's work has survived through quotation than any of the others, with the exception of Pindar (whose works alone survive in a manuscript tradition).

Although the manuscript tradition broke off, some copies of her work have been discovered in Egyptian papyri from an earlier period. A major find at Oxyrhynchus brought many new but tattered verses to light. From the time of the European Renaissance, the interest in Sappho's writing has grown, seeing waves of fairly widespread popularity as new generations rediscover her work.

Since few people are able to understand ancient languages, each age has translated Sappho in its own idiomatic way. Poetry, such as Sappho's, that relies on meter is difficult to reproduce in English, especially American English, which has a much more even pronunciation and emphasis than ancient Greek. As a result, many early translators used rhyme and worked Sappho's ideas into English poetic forms.

In the 1960s, Mary Barnard reintroduced Sappho to the reading public with a new approach to translation that eschewed the use of rhyming stanzas or forms of poetry, such as the sonnet. Subsequent translators have tended to work in a similar manner, seeking to allow the essence of Sappho's spirit to be visible through the translated verses.

Homer (Greek: ?µ???? Hómeros) is the name given to the supposed author of the early Greek poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.

It is now generally believed that they were composed by illiterate aoidoi (rhapsodes) in an oral tradition in the 8th or 7th century BC, but it is a matter of debate among scholars whether a single aoidos is largely responsible for the poems as they stand.

The name Homer is nevertheless often used, as a convention, by those who do not believe in singular authorship of the Homeric poems. Homer's works begin the Western Canon and are universally praised as brilliant and influential. By convention, the compositions are also often taken to initiate the period of Classical Antiquity.

Identity and authorship

Nothing is known about Homer's identity or life, and in fact there is no concrete evidence that he existed. Tradition holds that he was blind, and the island of Chios and various Ionian cities claim to be his birthplace.

In Greek, Homeros means "hostage." There is a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the Homeridae, which literally means "of hostages," that is, descendants of prisoners of war.

These men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, and so they would not be killed in battles. Thus they were entrusted with remembering the area's stock of epic poetry, before the invention of literacy made it possible to make written records.

It has repeatedly been argued and questioned whether the same poet was responsible for both the Iliad and the Odyssey. While many find it unlikely that the Odyssey was written by one person, others find that the epic is generally in the same writing style, and is too consistent to support the theory of multiple authors.

The Batrachomyomachia, Homeric hymns, and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey. Most accounts of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" are generally accepted to be written by Homer.

Homer was even at one time credited with the entire Epic Cycle, which included further poems on the Trojan War as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War," ?at?a??µ??µa??a), and the Margites were also attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely.

Most scholars generally agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BC. An important role in this standardization appears to have been played by the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the production of a canonical written text.

Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer. So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common joke has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name,". Samuel Butler argued that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further pursued by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter.

Most Classicists would agree that, whether or not there was ever such a composer as "Homer," the Homeric poems are the product of an oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets (aoidoi). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat.

Could the Iliad and Odyssey have been oral-formulaic poems, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phrases? Milman Parry and Albert Lord pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry in an exclusively oral culture. The crucial words are "oral" and "traditional." Parry started with "traditional." The repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited by the singer-poet from his predecessors, and they were useful to the poet in composition. He called these chunks of repetitive language "formulas."

Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to debate. The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis," wherein a non-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe between the 8th and 6th centuries.

The Greek alphabet was introduced in the early 8th century, so that it is possible that Homer himself was of the first generation of rhapsodes that were also literate. More radical Homerists, such as Gregory Nagy, contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist until the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BC).

Ancient accounts of Homer

Many passages in archaic and classical Greek poets and prose authors mention Homer or allude to him, and the eight preserved Lives of Homer purport to give the poet's birthplace and background. Modern scholarship, however, generally concludes that these accounts give no solid evidence on which to base a theory of Homer's identity.

Homeric studies

The study of Homer is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity. Purely in terms of quantity it is one of the largest of all literary sub-disciplines: the annual publication output rivals that on Shakespeare. The aims and achievements of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia; in the last few centuries they have revolved around the process by which the Homeric poems came into existence and were transmitted down to us, first orally, and later in writing.

Some of the main trends in modern Homeric scholarship have been, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Analysis and Unitarianism (see Homeric question), which were schools of thought that emphasized on the one hand the inconsistencies, on the other the artistic unity, in Homer; and in the 20th century and later Oral Theory, which is the study of the mechanisms and effects of oral transmission, and Neoanalysis, which is the study of the relationship between Homer and other early epic material.

Homeric dialect

The language used by Homer is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in dactylic hexameter.

Homeric style

The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer have been well articulated by Matthew Arnold: "the translator of Homer," he says, "should above all be penetrated by a sense of the four qualities of his author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and finally, that he is eminently noble" (On Translating Homer, page 9).

The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of the hexameter verse. It is characteristic of early literature that the evolution of the thought, or the grammatical form of the sentence, is guided by the structure of the verse; and the correspondence which consequently obtains between the rhythm and the syntax, the thought being given out in lengths, as it were, and these again divided by tolerably uniform pauses produces a swift flowing movement, such as is rarely found when the periods have been constructed without direct reference to the metre.

That Homer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults, that is, without becoming either fluctuant or monotonous, is perhaps the best proof of his unequalled poetical skill. The plainness and directness, both of thought and of expression, which characterize Homer were doubtless qualities of his age; But the author of the Iliad (similar to Voltaire, to whom Arnold happily compares him) must have possessed this gift in a surpassing degree. The Odyssey is in this respect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.

Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought are not the distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets, Virgil, Dante, and Milton (Dante in fact mentions Homer in Inferno IV,88, ranking him as 'Poet sovereign' just above Horace, Ovid and Virgil). On the contrary, they belong rather to the humbler epico-lyrical school for which Homer has been so often claimed.

The proof that Homer does not belong to that school, and that his poetry is not in any true sense ballad-poetry is furnished by the higher artistic structure of his poems, and, as regards style by the fourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold, the quality of nobleness. It is his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of ballad-poetry and popular epic.

It may be recognized that there is an historical connection between the Iliad and Odyssey and the ballad literature which undoubtedly preceded them in Greece. It may even be admitted that the swift-flowing movement, and the simplicity of thought and style, which are greatly admired in the Iliad, are an inheritance from the earlier lays, such as the reference to Achilles and Patroclus singing to the lyre in their tent; even the hexameter verse may be assigned to them.

But between earlier days and the time of Homer we must place the cultivation of epic poetry as an art. The pre-Homeric days doubtless furnished the elements of such poetry, but they must have been refined somewhat before they gave way to poems like the Iliad and Odyssey.

Like the French epics, such as the Chanson de Roland, Homeric poetry is indigenous, and by the ease of movement and its resulting simplicity, is distinguishable from the works of Dante, Milton, and Virgil. It is also distinguished from the works of these artists by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment. In Virgil's poetry a sense of the greatness of Rome and Italy is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the chosen delicacy of his language.

Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. Even the French epics display sentiments of fear and hatred of the Saracens; but in Homer's works, the interest is purely dramatic.

There is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political event; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad, and even the heroes portrayed are not comparable to the chief national heroes of Greece. So far as can be seen, the chief interest in Homer's works is that of human feeling and emotion, and of drama - indeed, Homer's works are oft referred to as 'dramas'.

History and the Iliad

Another significant question regards the possible historical basis of the poems. The commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey written in the Hellenistic period began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems. Modern classicists continue the tradition.

The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in the late 19th century began to provide evidence to scholars that there was a historical basis for the Trojan War. Research (pioneered by the aforementioned Parry and Lord) into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian and Turkic languages began to convince scholars that long poems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until someone bothered to write them down.

The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris (and others) convinced others of a linguistic continuity between 13th century BC Mycenaean writings and the poems attributed to Homer.

It is probable, therefore, that the story of the Trojan War as reflected in the Homeric poems derives from a tradition of epic poetry founded on a war which actually took place. However, it is crucial not to underestimate the creative and transforming power of subsequent tradition: for instance, Achilles, the most important character of the Iliad, associated with Thessaly, has probably been added to a story where the attackers of Troy were from the Peloponnese

Hero cult

In the Hellenistic period, Homer was the subject of a hero cult in several cities. A shrine devoted to Homer or Homereion was built in Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BC. This shrine is described in Aelian's 3rd century work Varia Historia.

He described how Ptolemy had "placed in a circle around the statue [of Homer] all the cities who laid claim to Homer" and mentions a painting of the poet by the artist Galaton, which apparently depicted Homer in the aspect of Oceanus as the source of all poetry.

A marble relief, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt, depicts the apotheosis of Homer. It shows Ptolemy and his wife/sister Arsinoe III standing beside a seated Homer. The poet is shown flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, with the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approaching an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion.

Apollo, god of music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identified as Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses. Zeus, the king of the gods, presides over the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly how the Greeks considered Homer not just a great poet, but the divinely inspired source of all literature.

Homereia also stood at Chios, Ephesus and Smyrna, which were among the city-states that claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. Strabo (14.1.37) records a Homeric temple in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon or cult statue of the poet. He also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at another Homereion.

Publication history

In late antiquity knowledge of Greek declined in Latin-speaking western Europe, and along with it knowledge of Homer's poems. It is not until the fifteenth century that Homer's work began to be read once more in Italy. The first arguably modern edition appeared in 1488.

Euripides (Ancient Greek: ????p?d??) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias.

Eighteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete. It is now widely believed that what was thought to be a nineteenth, Rhesus, was probably not by Euripides.

Fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays also survive. More of his plays have survived than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because of the chance preservation of a manuscript that was probably

part of a complete collection of his works in alphabetical order.

Euripides is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of traditional Attic tragedy by showing strong women characters and intelligent slaves, and by satirizing many heroes of Greek mythology. His plays seem modern by comparison with those of his contemporaries, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown to Greek audiences.

Perhaps one of his more famous quotes is "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad".

Life

According to legend, Euripides was born in Salamís on September 23, 480 BC, the day of the Persian War's greatest naval battle. Other sources estimate that he was born as early as 485 BC.

His father's name was either Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides and his mother's name Cleito, and evidence suggests that the family was wealthy and influential. It is recorded that he served as a cup-bearer for Apollo's dancers, but he grew to question the religion he grew up with, exposed as he was to thinkers such as Protagoras, Socrates, and Anaxagoras.

He was married twice, to Choerile and Melito, though sources disagree as to which woman he married first. He had three sons, and it is rumored that he also had a daughter who was killed after a rabid dog attacked her. (Some say this was merely a joke made by Aristophanes, who often poked fun at Euripides.)

The record of Euripides' public life, other than his involvement in dramatic competitions, is almost non-existent. The only reliable story of note is one by Aristotle about Euripides being involved in a dispute over a liturgy - a story which offers strong proof to Euripides being a wealthy man.

It has been said that he travelled to Syracuse, Sicily; that he engaged in various public or political activities during his lifetime; and that he left Athens at the invitation of king Archelaus I of Macedon and stayed with him in Macedonia after 408 BC. According to Pausanias, Euripides was buried in Macedonia.

Plays

Euripides first competed in the Dionysia, the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus. He came in third, reportedly because he refused to cater to the fancies of the judges. It was not until 441 BC that he won first prize, and over the course of his lifetime, Euripides claimed a mere four victories. He also won one posthumous victory.

He was a frequent target of Aristophanes' humour. He appears as a character in The Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae, and most memorably in The Frogs, where Dionysus travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead. After a competition of poetry, the god opts to bring Aeschylus instead.

Euripides' final competition in Athens was in 408 BC; there is a story that he left Athens embittered over his defeats. He accepted an invitation by the king of Macedon in 408 or 407 BC, and once there he wrote Archelaus in honour of his host.

He is believed to have died there in winter 407/6 BC; ancient biographers have told many stories about his death, but the simple truth was that it was probably his first exposure to the harsh Macedonia winter which killed him. (Rutherford 1996). The Bacchae was performed after his death in 405 BC and won first prize.

When compared with Aeschylus, who won thirteen times, and Sophocles, with eighteen victories, Euripides was the least honoured of the three — at least in his lifetime. Later in the 4th century BC, the dramas of Euripides became the most popular. His works influenced New Comedy and Roman drama, and were later idolized by the French classicists; his influence on drama reaches modern times.

Euripides' greatest works include Alcestis, Medea, Electra, and The Bacchae. Also considered notable is Cyclops, one of the only complete satyr plays currently in existence.

The manuscript, apparently part of a multiple volume, alphabetically-arranged collection of Euripides' works, whose preservation accounts for the comparatively large number of extant plays of Euripides, was rediscovered after lying in a monastic collection for approximately eight hundred years.

In June 2005, classicists at Oxford University employed infrared technology — previously used for satellite imaging — to detect previously unknown material by Euripides in fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, a collection of ancient manuscripts held by the university.

Commentary

Euripides has been compared to Rousseau in being too modern for his time. Unlike other playwrights of his time, Euripides focused on the realism of his characters. While Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra is a stock evil woman, for example, Euripides’ Medea is a more realistic woman with recognizable emotions.

According to Aristotle, Euripides's colleague and contemporary Sophocles said: "I portray men as they ought to be, and Euripides portrays them as they are."

Euripides' realistic characterisations were sometimes at the expense of a realistic plot; he frequently relied upon the deus ex machina to resolve his plays, as in Alcestis and Medea. According to Aristotle's Poetics, this is the worst way to end a play. Many classicists cite this as a reason why Euripides was less popular in his own time.

Bibliography

Tragedies

Alcestis (438 BC, second prize)

Heracleidae (c. 430 BC)

Hippolytus (428 BC, first prize)

Andromache (c. 425 BC)

Hecuba (c. 424 BC)

The Suppliants (c. 423 BC)

Electra (c. 420 BC)

Heracles (c. 416 BC)

Trojan Women (415 BC, second prize)

Iphigeneia in Tauris (c. 414 BC)

Ion (c. 414 BC)

Helen (412 BC)

Phoenician Women (c. 410 BC)

Orestes (408 BC)

Bacchae and Iphigeneia at Aulis (405 BC, posthumous, first prize)

Fragmentary tragedies

The following plays have come down to us today only in fragmentary form; some consist of only a handful of lines, but with some the fragments are extensive enough to allow tentative reconstruction: see Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays (Aris and Phillips 1995) ed. C. Collard, M.J. Cropp and K.H. Lee.

Telephus (438 BC)

Cretans (c. 435 BC)

Stheneboea (before 429 BC)

Bellerophon (c. 430 BC)

Cresphontes (ca. 425 BC)

Erechtheus (422 BC)

Phaethon (c. 420 BC)

Wise Melanippe (c. 420 BC)

Alexandros (415 BC)

Palamedes (415 BC)

Sisyphus (415 BC)

Captive Melanippe (412 BC)

Andromeda (412 BC with Euripides' Helen)

Antiope (c. 410 BC)

Archelaus (c. 410 BC)

Hypsipyle (c. 410 BC)

Oedipus (c. 410 BC)

Philoctetes (c. 410 BC)

Satyr play

Cyclops (uncertain date)

Spurious plays

Rhesus (most modern scholars maintain that the play was probably not by Euripides, shows many indications of mid 4th century BC contamination).

Chariot racing was one of the most popular ancient Greek and Roman sports.

Often dangerous to both drivers and horses, who frequently suffered serious injury and even death, the sport generated

strong spectator enthusiasm comparable to modern-day interest in motor sports. Some of the organizational aspects of chariot racing also paralleled current practices in professional sports. In the Roman form of chariot racing, teams represented different groups of financial backers and sometimes competed for the services of particularly skilled drivers.

These teams became the focus of intense support among spectators, and occasional disturbances broke out between followers of different teams. The conflicts sometimes became politicized, as the sport began to transcend the races themselves and started to affect society overall.

This helps explain why Roman and later Byzantine emperors took control of the teams and appointed many officials to oversee them. The sport faded in importance after the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, surviving only for a time in the Byzantine Empire. A form of the sport exists today as harness racing.

Early chariot racing

It is unknown exactly where chariot racing began, but it may have been as old as chariots themselves. It is known from artistic evidence on pottery that the sport existed in the Mycenaean world, but the first literary reference to a chariot race is the one described by Homer in Book 23 of the Iliad, at the funeral games of Patroclus. The participants in this race were Diomedes, Eumelus, Antilochus, Menelaus, and Meriones.

The race, which was one lap around the stump of a tree, was won by Diomedes, who received a slave woman and a cauldron as his prize. A chariot race was also said to be the event that founded the Olympic Games; according to one legend, King Oenomaus challenged his daughter Hippodamia's suitors to a race, but was defeated by Pelops, who founded the Games in honour of his victory.

The Olympic Games

In the ancient Olympic Games, as well as the other Panhellenic Games, there were both four-horse (tethrippon) and two-horse (synoris) chariot races, which were essentially the same aside from the number of horses. The chariot racing event was first added to the Olympics in 680 BC (but was not, in reality, the founding event).

The race was begun by a procession into the hippodrome, while a herald announced the names of the drivers and owners. The hippodrome at Olympia was about 600 yards long and 300 yards wide, and up to 60 chariots could race at one time (though in practice the number was probably much lower).

It was located beneath a hill, and underneath a vast river, which provided standing room for possibly as many as 10,000 spectators. The tethrippon consisted of twelve laps around the hippodrome, with sharp turns around the posts at either end. Various mechanical devices were used, including the starting gates (hyspleges, sing. hysplex) which were lowered to start the race.

According to Pausanias these were invented by the architect Kleoitas, and staggered so that the chariots on the outside began the race earlier than those on the inside. The race did not actually begin properly until the final gate was opened, at which point each chariot would be more-or-less lined up alongside each other, although the ones that had started on the outside would have been travelling faster than the ones in the middle.

Other mechanical devices known as the "eagle" and the "dolphin" were raised to signify that the race had begun, and were lowered as the race went on to signify the number of laps remaining. These were probably bronze carvings of those animals, set up on posts at starting line.

Unlike the other Olympic events, charioteers did not perform in the nude (see nudity in sports), probably for safety reasons because of the dust kicked up by the horses and chariots, and the likelihood of bloody crashes. Racers wore a garment called a xystis. It fell to the ankles and was fastened high at the waist with a plain belt. Two straps that crossed high at the upper back, prevented the xystis from "ballooning" during the race. Like modern jockeys, chariot racers were chosen for their lightness, but also needed to be tall, so they were frequently teenagers.

The chariots themselves were modified war chariots, essentially wooden carts with two wheels and an open back, although chariots were by this time no longer used in battle. The charioteer's feet were held in place, but the cart rested on the axle, so the ride was bumpy. The most exciting part of the chariot race, at least for the spectators, was the turns at the ends of the hippodrome.

These turns were very dangerous and often deadly. If a chariot had not already been knocked over by an opponent before the turn, it might be overturned or crushed (along with the horses and driver) by the other chariots as they went around the post.

Deliberately running into an opponent to cause him to crash was technically illegal, but nothing could be done about it (at Patroclus' funeral games, Antilochus in fact causes Menelaus to crash in this way), and crashes were likely to happen by accident anyway.

The chariot race was not as prestigious as the stadion (the foot race), but it was more important than other equestrian events such as racing on horseback, which were dropped from the Olympic Games very early on. In Mycenaean times the driver and owner would have been the same person, and therefore the winning driver received the prize. However, by the time of the Panhellenic Games, the owners usually had slaves who did the actual driving, and it was the owner who was awarded the prize.

Arsecilas, the king of Cyrene, won the chariot race at the Pythian Games in 462 BC, when his slave driver was the only one to finish the race. In 416 BC the Athenian general Alcibiades had seven chariots in the race, and came in first, second and fourth; obviously he could not have been racing all seven chariots himself.

Philip II of Macedon also won an Olympic chariot race in an attempt to prove he was not a barbarian, though if he had driven the chariot himself he would likely have been considered even lower than a barbarian. However, the poet Pindar did praise the courage of Herodotos for driving his own chariot. This rule also meant that women could technically win the race, despite the fact that women were not allowed to participate in or even watch the Games.

This happened rarely, but a notable example is the Spartan Cynisca, daughter of Agesilaus II, who won the chariot race twice. Chariot racing was a way for Greeks to demonstrate their prosperity at the games. Lycurgus criticized chariot racing by saying that it was not as useful as building city walls or temples.

Chariot racing was also an event at other games in the Greek world, and was the most important event at the Panathenaic Games in Athens. At these games, the winner of the four-horse chariot race was given 140 amphorae of olive oil, an extremely expensive prize, as this was more oil than an athlete would ever need in his career. Most of it was probably sold to other athletes.

There was another form of chariot racing at the Panathenaic Games, known as the apobotai or the anabotai. This involved jumping out of the chariot and running alongside for some distance (the anabotai); the apobotai apparently also including jumping back into the chariot after running alongside it.

In these races there was a second driver who held the reins while the first driver jumped out, but of course neither of these were considered the winner. The first chariot over the line would win, no matter if the driver was in the chariot or out. If the driver crashed, and could still walk, he would win if he crossed the finish line on foot.

Roman chariot racing

The Romans probably borrowed chariot racing from the Etruscans, who themselves borrowed it from the Greeks, but the Romans were also influenced directly by the Greeks especially after they conquered mainland Greece in 146 BC.

According to Roman legend chariot racing was used by Romulus just after he founded Rome in 753 B.C. as a way of distracting the Sabine men. Whilst the Sabines were enjoying the spectacle Romulus and his men seized and carried off the Sabine women.

In ancient Rome the main centre of chariot racing was the Circus Maximus in the valley between Palatine Hill and Aventine Hill, which could seat 250,000 people. The Circus probably dated back to the time of the Etruscans, but it was rebuilt by Julius Caesar around 50 BC so that it had a length of about 600 metres and a width of about 225 metres. One end of the track was more open than the other, as this was where the chariots lined up to begin the race.

The Romans used a series of gates known as carceres, an equivalent to the Greek hysplex. These were staggered in the same way as the hysplex, but they were slightly different because Roman racing tracks also had a median (the spina) in the centre of the track. The carceres took up the angled end of the track, and the chariots were loaded into spring-loaded gates.

When the chariots were ready, the emperor (or whoever was hosting the races, if they were not in Rome) dropped a cloth known as a mappa, signalling the beginning of the race. The gates would spring open, creating a perfectly fair beginning for all participants.

Once the race had begun, the chariots could move in front of each other in an attempt to cause their opponents to crash into the spinae (singular spina). The spinae had "eggs", similar to the "dolphins" of the Greek races, which may have dropped into a channel of water that ran along the top of the spinae to signify the number of laps remaining.

The spina eventually became very elaborate, with statues and obelisks and other forms of art, so that the spectators often could not see the chariots on the other side (but they seem to have thought this was more suspenseful and exciting).

At either end of the spina there were turning posts (metae, singular meta), and spectacular crashes took place there, as in the Greek races. Crashes in which the chariot was destroyed and the charioteer and horses incapacitated were known as naufragia, also the Latin word for shipwrecks.

The race itself was much like its Greek counterpart, although there were eventually dozens of races every day, sometimes for hundreds of consecutive days each year. However, a race consisted of only 7 laps (and later 5 laps, so that there could be even more races per day), instead of the 12 laps of the Greek race. The Roman style was also more money-oriented; racers were professionals and there was widespread betting among spectators.

There were four-horse chariots (quadrigae) and two-horse chariots (bigae), but the four-horse races were more important. In rare cases, if a driver wanted to show off his skill, he could use up to 10 horses, although this was extremely impractical. The Roman drivers also wore helmets and other protective gear, unlike the Greeks, and they wrapped the reins round their waist, while the Greeks held the reins in their hands.

Because of this the Romans could not let go of the reins in a crash, so they would be dragged around the circus until they were killed or they freed themselves. The Romans carried a knife to cut themselves free in this situation. The most famous and best reconstruction of a Roman chariot race, although inaccurate in several elements, can be seen in the film Ben-Hur.

Another important difference was that the charioteers themselves, the aurigae, were considered to be the winners, although they were usually also slaves (as in the Greek world). They received a wreath of laurel leaves, and probably some money; if they won enough races they could buy their freedom.

Drivers could become celebrities throughout the Empire simply by surviving, as the life expectancy of a charioteer was not very high. One such celebrity driver was Scorpus, who won over 2000 races before being killed in a collision at the meta when he was about 27 years old. The horses, too, could become celebrities, but their life expectancy was also low. The Romans kept detailed statistics of the names, breeds, and pedigrees of famous horses.

Seats in the Circus were free for the poor, who by the time of the Empire had little else to do, as they were no longer involved in political or military affairs as they had been in the Republic. The wealthy could pay for shaded seats where they had a better view, and they probably also spent much of their times betting on the races.

The emperor's palace was located close to the Hippodrome, and he would often watch the games as well. This was one of the few opportunities for the general population to view their leader. Julius Caesar frequently watched the races specifically so that the public could see him, although he apparently was not very interested as he usually brought something to read. Apparently he also brought paperwork to the theatre too although this did not make him very popular.

Nero was interested in the races almost to the exclusion of everything else. He was a driver himself, and won the chariot racing event at the Olympic Games, which were still being held in the Roman era. Under Nero the major racing factions began to develop. The four most important factions were the Reds, Blues, Greens, and Whites. They had existed before Nero, probably as friends and patrons of the various stables that produced the racehorses.

Nero, however, subsidized them so that they grew almost beyond his control. Each team could have up to three chariots each in a race. Members of the same team often collaborated with each other against the other teams, for example to force them to crash into the spina (a legal and encouraged tactic). Drivers could switch teams, much like athletes can be traded to different teams today.

According to the disapproving Tertullian (De spectaculis 9.5), there were originally just two factions, White and Red, sacred to winter and summer respectively. Writing near the beginning of the third century, he wrote that the Reds were dedicated to Mars, the Whites to the Zephyrs, the Greens to Mother Earth or spring, and the Blues to the sky and sea or autumn. Domitian created two new factions, the Purples and Golds, which disappeared soon after he did. By the 3rd century only the Blues and Greens had any importance.

There were many other circuses throughout the Roman Empire; there was even another major circus outside Rome, the Circus of Maxentius. There were major circuses at Alexandria and Antioch, and Herod the Great built four circuses in Judaea. In the 4th century Constantine I built a circus in his new capital at Constantinople.

Byzantine chariot racing

Like many other aspects of the Roman world, chariot racing continued in the Byzantine Empire, although the Byzantines did not keep as many records and statistics as the Romans did. Constantine preferred chariot racing to gladiatorial combat, which he considered a vestige of paganism.

The Olympic Games were eventually ended by the devoutly Christian emperor Theodosius I in 394, in a move to suppress paganism and promote Christianity, but chariot racing continued to be popular. The Hippodrome of Constantinople (really a Roman circus, not the open space that the original Greek hippodromes were) was connected to the emperor's palace and the Church of Hagia Sophia, allowing spectators to view the emperor as they had in Rome.

There is not much evidence that the chariot races were subject to bribes or other forms of cheating in the Roman Empire. In the Byzantine Empire there seems to have been more cheating; Justinian I's reformed legal code prohibits drivers from placing curses on their opponents, but otherwise there does not seem to have been any mechanical tampering or bribery. Wearing the colours of your team became an important aspect of Byzantine dress.

Chariot racing in the Byzantine Empire also included the Roman racing clubs, but by this time only the Blues and Greens were important. One of the most famous charioteers, Porphyrius, was a member of both the Blues and the Greens at various times in 5th century. However, they were now more than simply sports teams. They gained influence in military, political, and theological matters, with, for example, the Greens tending towards Monophysitism and the Blues remaining Orthodox.

They also developed in something like street gangs, responsible for robberies and murders. Although they had rioted as far back as the reign of Nero, the rioting throughout the 5th century and into the 6th century culminated in the Nika riots of 532 during the reign of Justinian, which began when some of their members were arrested for murder. Chariot racing seems to have declined after this incident, but it had in any case become much too expensive for the racing teams, or even the emperors, to pay for.

By the 9th century the Whites had merged with the Blues, and the Reds with the Greens, and the two merged groups were formed into municipal militias, and so incorporated into the enormous hierarchy of the Byzantine state.

The Hippodrome in Constantinople remained a sanctuary for the emperors, until it was sacked during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. During the looting, the Crusaders removed the Horses of Saint Mark, four bronze statues originally part of a monument depicting a quadrigae built by Constantine the Great. The horses still exist, but they are now at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.

The Discobolus of Myron ("discus thrower" Greek ??s??ß???? t?? ?????a) is a famous Roman marble copy of a lost Greek bronze original, completed during the zenith of the classical period between 460-450 BC. A discus thrower is depicted about to release his throw.

The moment captured in the statue is an example of rhythmos, harmony and balance. Myron is often credited as being the first sculpture to master this style. Naturally, as always in Greek athletics, the Discobolus is completely naked.

His pose is said to be unnatural to a human, and today considered a rather inefficient way to throw the discus. Also there is very little emotion shown in the discus thrower's face.

The other trademark of Myron depicted in this sculpture is how well the body is proportioned, the symmetria. The Discobolus Palombara stands at 1.55 meters tall (6 feet, 1 inch).

Literary account

Myron's Discobolus was long known from descriptions:

"When you came in the hall," he said, "didn't you notice a totally gorgeous statue up there, by Demetrios the portraitist?" "Surely you don't mean the discus-thrower," said I, "the one bent over into the throwing-position, with his head turned back to the hand that holds the discus, and the opposite knee slightly flexed, like one who will spring up again after the throw?"

"Not that one," he said, "that's one of Myron's works, that Diskobolos you speak of..." (Lucian of Samosata, Philopseudes c. 18)

Principal example

On its discovery in 1781, at a Roman property of the Massimo family, the Villa Palombara on the Esquiline Hill, it was initially restored by Giuseppe Angelini., and the Massimi installed it initially in their Palazzo Massimo delle Colonne then at Palazzo Lancelotti. The Italian archeologist Carlo Fea identified the sculpture as a copy from the original of Myron. It was instantly famous, though the Massimo jealously guarded access to it (Haskell and Penny 1981:200).

Prior to this statue's discovery the term Discobolus had been applied in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to a standing figure holding a discus, a Discophoros, which Visconti identified as the Discobolus of Naukydes of Argos, mentioned by Pliny (Haskell and Penny 1981:200).

In 1937 Adolf Hitler negotiated to buy it, and eventually succeeded in 1938, when Galeazzo Ciano, Minister of Foreign Affairs, sold it to him for five million lire, over the protests of Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of Education, and the scholarly community. It was shipped by rail to Munich and displayed in the Glyptothek; it was returned in 1948. It is now in the National Museum of Rome.

Townley's Discobolus

After the discovery of the Discobolus Palombara a second notable Discobolus was excavated, at Hadrian's Villa in 1790, and was purchased by the English antiquary and art dealer established in Rome, Thomas Jenkins, at public auction in 1792. (Another example, also found at Tivoli at this date, was acquired by the Vatican Museums.)

The English connoisseur Charles Towneley paid him £400 for the statue, which arrived at the semi-public gallery Townley commissioned in Park Street, London, in 1794. The head was wrongly restored, as Richard Payne Knight pointed out, but Townley was convinced his was the original and better copy.

It was bought for the British Museum, with the rest of Townley's marbles, in July 1805 (illustration, left).

Other copies

Other Roman copies in marble have been recovered, and torsoes that were already known in the seventeenth century but that had been wrongly restored and completed, have been identified as further repetitions after Myron's model.

For one such example, in the early eighteenth century, Pierre-Étienne Monnot restored a torso now recognized as an example of Myron's Discobolus as a Wounded Gladiator who supports himself on his arm as he sinks to the ground; the completed sculpture was donated before 1734 by Pope Clement XII to the Capitoline Museums, where it remains.

Other examples of the Discobolus of Myron, besides the Discobolus Palombara and the Townley Discobolus include:

a copy discovered in 1906 in the ruins of a Roman villa at Tor Paterna in the royal estate of Castel Porziana, now also in the Museo Nazionale Romano.

Pythagoras of Samos (Greek: ???a???a?; between 580 and 572 BC–between 500 BC and 490 BC) was an Ionian (Greek) philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism.

He is often revered as a great mathematician and scientist; however, careful scholarship in the past three decades has found no evidence of his contributions to mathematics or natural philosophy.

He is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. Known as "the father of numbers," Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century BC. Because legend and obfuscation cloud his work even more than with the other pre-Socratics, one can say little with confidence about his life and teachings.

His name led him to be associated with Pythian Apollo; Aristippus explained his name by saying, "He spoke (agor-) the truth no less than did the Pythian (Pyth-)," and Iamblichus tells the story that the Pythia prophesied that his pregnant mother would give birth to a man supremely beautiful, wise, and of benefit to humankind.

We do know that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said that "number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons."

He was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom. Many of the accomplishments of Plato, Aristotle and Copernicus were based on the ideas of Pythagoras. Unfortunately, very little is known about Pythagoras because none of his writings have survived. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors.

Life

Born on the island of Samos (a Greek island in the Eastern Aegean), off the coast of Asia Minor. He was born to Pythais (his mother, a native of Samos) and Mnesarchus (his father, a Phoenician merchant from Tyre).

As a young man, he left his native city for Croton, Calabria, in Southern Italy, to escape the tyrannical government of Polycrates. According to Iamblichus, Thales, impressed with his abilities, advised Pythagoras to head to Memphis in Egypt and study with the priests there who were renowned for their wisdom.

He also was discipled in the temples of Tyre and Byblos in Phoenicia. It may have been in Egypt where he learned some geometric principles which eventually inspired his formulation of the theorem that is now called by his name. This possible inspiration is presented as an example problem in the Berlin Papyrus.

Upon his migration from Samos to Croton, Calabria, Italy, Pythagoras established a secret religious society very similar to (and possibly influenced by) the earlier Orphic cult.

Pythagoras undertook a reform of the cultural life of Croton, urging the citizens to follow virtue and form an elite circle of followers around himself called Pythagoreans. Very strict rules of conduct governed this cultural center. He opened his school to male and female students alike. Those who joined the inner circle of Pythagoras's society called themselves the Mathematikoi.

They lived at the school, owned no personal possessions and were required to assume a vegetarian diet. Other students who lived in neighboring areas were also permitted to attend Pythagoras's school. Known as Akousmatikoi, these students were permitted to eat meat and own personal belongings.

According to Iamblichus, the Pythagoreans followed a structured life of religious teaching, common meals, exercise, reading and philosophical study. Music featured as an essential organizing factor of this life: the disciples would sing hymns to Apollo together regularly; they used the lyre to cure illness of the soul or body; poetry recitations occurred before and after sleep to aid the memory.

Flavius Josephus relates that, according to Hermippus of Smyrna, Pythagoras was familiar with and an admirer of Jewish customs and wisdom (De Pythagora, Contra Apionem I, 162/165). Hermippus is quoted as saying about Pythagoras: "In practicing and repeating these precepts he was imitating and appropriating the doctrines of Jews and Thracians. In fact, it is actually said that that great man introduced many points of Jewish law into his philosophy." (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge (Mass.)-London)

Pythagoras is commonly given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in trigonometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle), c, is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides, b and a, that is, a2+b2=c2.

The history of the Pythagorean theorem that bears his name is complex. There is no evidence that Pythagoras himself worked on or proved this theorem. For that matter, there is no evidence that he worked on any mathematical or meta-mathematical problems. The myth seems to have been carefully constructed by followers of Plato over two centuries after the death of Pythagoras, mainly to bolster the case for Platonic meta-physics, which resonate well with the ideas they attributed to Pythagoras.

This attribution has stuck, down the centuries up to modern times. The earliest known mention of Pythagoras's name in connection with the theorem occurred five centuries after his death, in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch. There are many ancient references to the facts stated in the Pythagorean theorem; Egyptian and Chinese tablets and writings show that they knew the theorem.

Today, Pythagoras is revered as a prophet by the Ahl al-Tawhid or Druze faith along with his fellow Greek, Plato.

Pythagoreans

The organization was in some ways a school, in some ways a brotherhood, and in some ways a monastery. It was based upon Pythagoras’ religious teachings and was very secretive. At first, the school was highly concerned with the morality of society. Members were required to live ethically, love one another, share political beliefs, practice pacifism and vegetarianism, and devote themselves to the mathematics of nature.

Pythagoras's followers were commonly called "Pythagoreans." For the most part we remember them as philosophical mathematicians who had an influence on the beginning of axiomatic geometry, which after two hundred years of development was written down by Euclid in The Elements.

The Pythagoreans observed a rule of silence called echemythia, the breaking of which was punishable by death. This was because the Pythagoreans believed that a man's words were usually careless and misrepresented him and that when someone was "in doubt as to what he should say, he should always remain silent".

Another rule that they had was to help a man "in raising a burden, but do not assist him in laying it down, for it is a great sin to encourage indolence", and they said "departing from your house, turn not back, for the furies will be your attendants"; this axiom reminded them that it was better to learn none of the truth about mathematics, God, and the universe at all than to learn a little without learning all. (The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall).

In his biography of Pythagoras (written seven centuries after Pythagoras's time), Porphyry stated that this silence was "of no ordinary kind." The Pythagoreans were divided into an inner circle called the mathematikoi ("mathematicians") and an outer circle called the akousmatikoi ("listeners").

Porphyry wrote "the mathematikoi learned the more detailed and exactly elaborate version of this knowledge, the akousmatikoi (were) those which had heard only the summary headings of his (Pythagoras's) writings, without the more exact exposition." According to Iamblichus, the akosmatikoi were the exoteric disciples who listened to lectures that Pythagoras gave out loud from behind a veil.

The akousmatikoi were not allowed to see Pythagoras and they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. Instead they were taught laws of behavior and morality in the form of cryptic, brief sayings that had hidden meanings. The akousmatikoi recognized the mathematikoi as real Pythagoreans, but not vice versa. After the murder of Pythagoras and a number of the mathematikoi by the cohorts of Cylon, a resentful disciple, the two groups split from each other entirely, with Pythagoras's wife Theano and their two daughters leading the mathematikoi.

Theano, daughter of the Orphic initiate Brontinus, was a mathematician in her own right. She is credited with having written treatises on mathematics, physics, medicine, and child psychology, although nothing of her writing survives. Her most important work is said to have been a treatise on the principle of the golden mean. In a time when women were usually considered property and relegated to the role of housekeeper or spouse, Pythagoras allowed women to function on equal terms in his society.

The Pythagorean society is associated with prohibitions such as not to step over a crossbar, and not to eat beans. These rules seem like primitive superstition, similar to "walking under a ladder brings bad luck". The abusive epithet mystikos logos ("mystical speech") was hurled at Pythagoras even in ancient times to discredit him. The prohibition on beans could be linked to favism, which is relatively widespread around the Mediterranean.

The key here is that akousmata means "rules", so that the superstitious taboos primarily applied to the akousmatikoi, and many of the rules were probably invented after Pythagoras's death and independent from the mathematikoi (arguably the real preservers of the Pythagorean tradition).

The mathematikoi placed greater emphasis on inner understanding than did the akousmatikoi, even to the extent of dispensing with certain rules and ritual practices. For the mathematikoi, being a Pythagorean was a question of innate quality and inner understanding.

There was also another way of dealing with the akousmata — by allegorizing them. We have a few examples of this, one being Aristotle's explanations of them: "'step not over a balance', i.e. be not covetous; 'poke not the fire with a sword', i.e. do not vex with sharp words a man swollen with anger, 'eat not heart', i.e. do not vex yourself with grief," etc. We have evidence for Pythagoreans allegorizing in this way at least as far back as the early fifth century BC. This suggests that the strange sayings were riddles for the initiated.

The Pythagoreans are known for their theory of the transmigration of souls, and also for their theory that numbers constitute the true nature of things. They performed purification rites and followed and developed various rules of living which they believed would enable their soul to achieve a higher rank among the gods.

Much of their mysticism concerning the soul seem inseparable from the Orphic tradition. The Orphics advocated various purificatory rites and practices as well as incubatory rites of descent into the underworld. Pythagoras is also closely linked with Pherecydes of Syros, the man ancient commentators tend to credit as the first Greek to teach a transmigration of souls.

Ancient commentators agree that Pherekydes was Pythagoras's most intimate teacher. Pherekydes expounded his teaching on the soul in terms of a pentemychos ("five-nooks", or "five hidden cavities") — the most likely origin of the Pythagorean use of the pentagram, used by them as a symbol of recognition among members and as a symbol of inner health (ugieia).

Pythagoras was interested in music and the Pythagoreans were musicians as well as mathematicians. He wanted to improve the music of his day, which he believed was not harmonious enough and was too chaotic.

According to legend, the way Pythagoras discovered that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations was one day as he passed blacksmiths at work, and thought that the sounds emanating from their anvils being hit were beautiful and harmonious and decided that whatever scientific law caused this to happen must be mathematical and could be applied to music. He went to the blacksmiths to learn how this had happened by looking at their tools.

He discovered that it was because the anvils were "simple ratios of each other, one was half the size of the first, another was 2/3 the size, and so on." The Pythagoreans elaborated on a theory of numbers, the exact meaning of which is still debated among scholars. Pythagoras believed in something called the harmony of the spheres. He believed that since planets and the stars all moved in the universe according to mathematical equations that these mathematical equations could be translated into musical notes and thus produce a symphony.

Religion and science

Pythagoras’ religious and scientific views were, in his opinion, inseparably interconnected. However, they are looked at separately in the 21st century. Religiously, Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became moral.

His ideas of reincarnation were probably borrowed from Hinduism. He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart. He himself claimed to have lived four lives that he could remember in detail, and heard the cry of his dead friend in the bark of a dog.

Literary works

No texts by Pythagoras survive, although forgeries under his name — a few of which remain extant — did circulate in antiquity. Critical ancient sources like Aristotle and Aristoxenus cast doubt on these writings. Ancient Pythagoreans usually quoted their master's doctrines with the phrase autos ephe ("he himself said") — emphasizing the essentially oral nature of his teaching.

Pythagoras appears as a character in the last book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Ovid has him expound upon his philosophical viewpoints. Pythagoras has been quoted as saying, "No man is free who cannot command himself."

Other accomplishments

One of his major accomplishments was the discovery that music was based on proportional intervals of four. He believed that the number system, and therefore the universe system, was based on the sum of these numbers: ten. Pythagoreans swore by the Tetrachtys of the Decad, or ten, rather than by the gods.

He assigned roles for the numbers as follows: one was reason, two was opinion, four was justice, five was marriage because it was the sum of the first odd and the first even numbers (one was disregarded), seven was virgin because it neither factors or produces among the numbers one through ten. Odd numbers were masculine and even were feminine. He discovered the theory of mathematical proportions, constructed from three to five geometrical solids.

One of his order also discovered irrational numbers, but the idea was unthinkable to Pythagoras, and he had this member executed. He was one of the first to think that the earth was round, that all planets have an axis, and that all the planets travel around one central point.

He originally identified that point as Earth, but later renounced it for the idea that the planets revolve around a central “fire” that he never identified as the sun. He also believed that the moon was another planet that he called a “counter-Earth” – furthering his belief in the Limited-Unlimited and bringing the number of planets to ten.

Groups influenced by Pythagoras

Influence on Plato

Pythagoras or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, allegedly exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. According to R. M. Hare, his influence consists of three points:

a) the platonic Republic might be related to the idea of "a tightly organized community of like-minded thinkers", like the one established by Pythagoras in Croton.

b) there is evidence that Plato possibly took from Pythagoras the idea that mathematics and, generally speaking, abstract thinking is a secure basis for philosophical thinking as well as "for substantial theses in science and morals".

c) Plato and Pythagoras shared a "mystical approach to the soul and its place in the material world". It is probable that both have been influenced by Orphism.

Plato's harmonics were clearly influenced by the work of Archytas, a genuine Pythagorean of the third generation, who made important contributions to geometry, reflected in Book VIII of Euclid's Elements.

Roman influence

In the legends of ancient Rome, Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, is said to have studied under Pythagoras. This is unlikely, since the commonly accepted dates for the two lives do not overlap.

Influence on esoteric groups

Pythagoras started a secret society called the Pythagorean brotherhood devoted to the study of mathematics. This had a great effect on future esoteric traditions, such as Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, both of which were occult groups dedicated to the study of mathematics and both of which claimed to have evolved out of the Pythagorean brotherhood.

The mystical and occult qualities of Pythagorean mathematics are discussed in a chapter of Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages entitled "Pythagorean Mathematics".

Pythagorean theory was tremendously influential on later numerology, which was extremely popular throughout the Middle East in the ancient world. The 8th-century Islamic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan grounded his work in an elaborate numerology greatly influenced by Pythagorean.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: ???d?t?? ????a???sse?? Herodotos Halikarnasseus) was a Greek historian from Ionia who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC–ca. 425 BC) and is regarded as the "Father of History".

He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a record of his 'inquiries' (or '?st???a?', a word which passed into Latin and took on its modern connotation of 'history')

into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479 BCE — especially since he includes a

narrative account of that period, which would otherwise be poorly documented, and many long digressions concerning the various places and peoples he encountered during wide-ranging travels around the lands of the Mediterranean and Black Sea.

His life

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian from Ionia who lived in the 5th century from 484 BC to 425 BC. He is almost singularly known for writing The Histories, a record of his research and 'inquiries' into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479 BCE — especially since he includes a narrative account of that period of time, which would otherwise be poorly documented. Most of what is known of his life has been gathered from his own work.

There was a duration of exile from his home-city of Hal-i-car-nas-sus during which it may have been that he undertook the broad journeys which he describes in The Histories. These journeys took him to many places such as Egypt as far south as the first cataract of the Nile, to Ukraine, Italy and Sicily.

Although his description of Babylon contains highly suggestive remarks he does not actually claim to have visited the city. He lived for a period in Athens and became familiar with the oral traditions of the prominent families, in particular the Alkmaeonidai, to which Pericles belonged. The Athenians did not accept foreigners as citizens and Herodotus would have felt distinctly out of place there.

When Athens sought citizens for the Greek colony at Thurii in 444 BCE, Herodotus' name was among the willing, according to the Suda. Whether or not he died in his adopted city is uncertain. At an unknown point in Herodotus’s life he became a logios. That is he was a teller of stories written in prose (the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse).

It is important to emphasize that his work was originally presented orally, and was designed to have a sort of theatrical element to it. His subject matter often encompassed battles, other political incidents of note, and, especially, the marvels of foreign lands. He made tours of the Greek cities and the major religious and athletic festivals, where he offered performances and expected payment. In 431 BCE, the Peloponnesian War broke out between Athens and Sparta.

It may have been that conflict that inspired him to collect his stories into a continuous narrative. Centering as they do on the theme of Persia's imperial progress, which only a united Athens and Sparta had managed to resist, he may have intended them as a critique of, or an attack upon, the war-mongering that threatened to overwhelm the entire Greek world.

Contribution

Herodotus has passed on to us a large amount of information concerning the nature of the world and the status of the sciences which was current during his time.

For example, he reports that the annual flooding of the Nile was said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and comments that he cannot understand how there can be snow in Africa, the hottest part of the known world; he concludes that the snow must be from Mount Kilimanjaro, a very large mountain in southern Africa.

Although this hypothesis proved to be wrong, if it were not for Herodotus' method of comparing all theories known to him, we might never have discovered that such speculation existed in ancient Greece. (He also passes on reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa, they 'saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards'.

Thanks to this brief mention, which is almost an afterthought, modern scholars have been able to establish that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by ancient seafarers—for this is precisely where the sun ought to have been.)

Written between 431 BCE and 425 BCE, The Histories were divided by later editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses (the 'Muse of History', Clio, represented the first book).

As the work progresses, it becomes apparent that Herodotus is fulfilling his opening desire—to 'prevent the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due mead of glory; and to put on record what causes first brought them into conflict.' Indeed, it is only from this perspective that his opening discussion of ancient wife-stealing is comprehensible: he is attempting to discover who first made the 'west' and the 'east' mutual antagonists, and myth is the only source he can delve into for information on the subject.

The first six books deal broadly with the growth of the Persian Empire. The tale begins with an account of the first 'western' monarch to enter into conflict with an 'eastern' people—Croesus of Lydia attacked the Greek city-states of Ionia, and then (misinterpreting a cryptic oracle), also attacked the Persians. (As occurs many times throughout The Histories to those who disregard good advice, Croesus soon lost his kingdom, and nearly his life). Croesus was defeated by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, and Lydia became a Persian province.

The second book forms a lengthy digression concerning the history of Egypt, which Cyrus' successor, Cambyses, annexed to the Empire. The following four books deal with the further growth of the Empire under Darius, the Ionian Revolt, and the burning of Sardis (an act participated in by Athens and at least one other Greek polis).

The sixth book describes the very first Persian incursion into Greece, an attack upon those who aided the Ionians and a quest for retribution following the attack upon Sardis, which ended with the defeat of the Persians in 490 BCE at the battle of Marathon, near Athens.

The last three books describe the attempt of the Persian king Xerxes to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and to finally absorb Greece into the Empire. The Histories end in the year 479 BCE, with the Persian invaders having suffered both a crushing naval defeat at Salamis, and near annihilation of their ground forces at Plataea. The Persian Empire thus receded to the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor, still threatening but much chastened.

It is possible to see the dialectic theme of Persian power and its various excesses running like a 'red thread' throughout the narrative—cause and effect, hubris and fate, vengeance and violence. Even the strange and fantastic tales that are liberally sprinkled throughout the text find their source in this momentum. At every stage, a Persian monarch crosses a body of water or other liminal space and suffers the consequences: Cyrus attacks the Massagetae on the eastern bank of a river,

and ends up decapitated; Cambyses attacks the Ethiopians to the south of Egypt, across the desert, and goes mad; Darius attacks the Scythians to the north and is flung back across the Danube; Xerxes lashes and then bridges the Hellespont, and his forces are crushed by the Greeks. Thus, though he strays (and sometimes strays rather far) off of this main course, he always returns to the task at hand—answering the question, how and why did the Greeks and Persians enter into the greatest conflict then known, and what were the consequences?

Opinions

Herodotus' invention has earned him the twin titles The Father of History and The Father of Lies . As these epithets would seem to imply, there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero's 'On the Laws' (Book 1, paragraph 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales, and, more importantly, concerning the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications. Indeed, every manner of argument has surfaced on this subject, from a devious and consciously-fictionalizing Herodotus to a gullible Herodotus whose sources 'saw him coming a long way off'.

Herodotus was, however, by his day's standards, reasonably accurate in his accounts, respectful of evidence, and a master of narrative. It is unfair, in other words, to condemn him for relating tales of giant man-eating ants, if such stories were told to him. Indeed, recent research focusing on Herodotus' report about "gold-digging, giant ants" has gone a long way towards rehabilitating Herodotus' reputation as a scientific historian - see the "Scrutiny of his works" section below. Like myths and legends in general, they need not have been true to have been meaningful stories.

Criticisms of Herodotus

There are many cases in which Herodotus was not sure of the truth of a certain event or unimpressed by the dull 'facts' he received, reports the several most famous accounts of a given subject or process and then writes as to which he believes is the most probable.

Though The Histories were often criticized in olden times for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism (for example, Lucian of Samosata attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae historian and went so far as to reject him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed), this methodology has been seen in a more positive light by many modern historians and philosophers, especially those searching for an example of relatively objective historical writing.

Of course, given the sensitivity of the issue, the very founding of the discipline of history, this has not become a consensus view; attacks have been made by several scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and completely made-up sources.

Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century have helped to restore Herodotus' reputation a great deal. The archaeological study of the now submerged ancient Egyptian city of Heraklion and the recovery of the so-called 'Naucratis stela' give extensive credibility to Herodotus' previously unsupported claim that Heraklion was founded under the Egyptian New Kingdom.

Because of this recent increase in respect for his accuracy, as well as the quality and content of his observations, Herodotus is now recognized as a pioneer not only in history, but in ethnography and also anthropology.

One of the most interesting discoveries yet made concerning Herodotus' honesty is that of Michel Peissel, a French ethnologist, who claims to have discovered that in an isolated region of the Dansar Plateau, in the Himalayas region between India and Pakistan, there live marmots (a species of borrowing squirrel) who tend to throw up gold dust whenever they dig their burrows.

According to Peissel, he interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in Dansar Plateau, and they confirmed for him that they have, for generations been collecting the gold dust that the marmots expose in their diggings.

Even more tantalizing, in his book, "The Ants' Gold", Peissel offers the theory that Herodotus became confused because the old Persian word for "marmot" is quite similar to that for "mountain ant".

Herodotus, who probably did not know any Persian, may have without knowing, been the victim of a simple misunderstanding of translation. The suggestion that he completely made-up the tale may continue to be thrown into doubt as more research is conducted.

Aristotle (Greek: ???st?t???? Aristotéles) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

He wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry (including theater), biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, and ethics.

Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was one of the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers.

They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it.

Some consider Plato and Aristotle to have founded two of the most important schools of Ancient philosophy; others

consider Aristotelianism as a development and concretization of Plato's insights.

Life

Aristotle was born in Stageira (Greek: St??e??a) in Chalcidice. His parents were Phaestis and Nicomachus, who became physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was educated as a member of the aristocracy. At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. Aristotle remained at the Academy for nearly twenty years, not leaving until after Plato's death in 347 BC.

He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Hermias' daughter (or niece) Pythias. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip of Macedon to become tutor to Alexander the Great.

After spending several years tutoring the young Alexander, Aristotle returned to Athens. By 335 BC, he established his own school there, the Lyceum. Aristotle directed courses at the Lyceum for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died. Aristotle soon became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus.

It is during this time in Athens that Aristotle is thought to have composed many of his works. Although Aristotle wrote dialogues, only fragments of these have survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and, for the most part, were not meant for widespread publication.

These are generally thought to be lecture notes or texts used by his students. Among the most important are Physics, Metaphysics (or Ontology), Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics. These works, although connected in many fundamental ways, differ significantly in both style and substance.

Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, economics, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics, and zoology. In philosophy, Aristotle wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, psychology, rhetoric and theology.

He also dealt with education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works practically constitute an encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been remarked that Aristotle was likely the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.

Upon Alexander's death in 323 BC, anti-Macedonian feelings in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the hierophant denounced Aristotle, claiming he did not hold the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy." However, he died there of natural causes within the year. Aristotle left a will, which has been preserved, in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.

Methodology

For more details on this topic, see Aristotle's theory of universals.

Aristotle defines his philosophy in terms of essence, saying that philosophy is "the science of the universal essence of that which is actual". Plato had defined it as the "science of the idea", meaning by idea what we should call the unconditional basis of phenomena.

Both pupil and master regard philosophy as concerned with the universal; Aristotle, however, finds the universal in particular things, and called it the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar.

For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal ideas to a contemplation of particular imitations of those ideas. In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles (Jori, 2003).

In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" was a branch of philosophy that studied the phenomena of the natural world, and included matters that today fall under the domain of physics, biology, and other natural sciences.

In modern times the scope of philosophy has come to be more narrowly defined as limited to more generic or abstract inquiries such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role, and as excluding the empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, in Aristotle's time and use, philosophy was taken to encompass all facets of intellectual inquiry.

In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also called "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical". By practical science he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; while by theoretical science he means physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.

If logic, or, as Aristotle calls it, Analytic, is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of Aristotelian philosophy are: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy; and (4) Poetical Philosophy.

Aristotle's epistemology

Logic

For more details on this topic, see Non-Aristotelian logic.

Aristotle's conception of logic was the dominant form of logic up until the advances in mathematical logic in the 19th century. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic had arrived at a complete account of the core of deductive inference.

History

Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak of'" (Bochenski, 1951). However, Plato reports that syntax was thought of before him, by Prodikos of Keos, who was concerned by the right use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics; the earlier philosophers used concepts like reductio ad absurdum as a rule when discussing, but never understood its logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with logic.

Although he had the idea of constructing a system for deduction, he was never able to construct one. Instead, he relied on his dialectic, which was a confusion between different sciences and methods (Bochenski, 1951).

Plato thought that deduction would simply follow from premises, so he focused on having good premises so that the conclusion would follow. Later on, Plato realized that a method for obtaining the conclusion would be beneficial. Plato never obtained such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he introduced his division method (Rose, 1968).

Analytics and the Organon

What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century AD:

Categories

On Interpretation

Prior Analytics

Posterior Analytics

Topics

On Sophistical Refutations

The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely the fourth book of Metaphysics. (Bochenski, 1951).

Modal logic

Aristotle is also the creator of syllogisms with modalities (modal logic). The word modal refers to the word 'modes', explaining the fact that modal logic deals with the modes of truth. Aristotle introduced the qualification of 'necessary' and 'possible' premises. He constructed a logic which helped in the evaluation of truth but which was difficult to interpret. (Rose, 1968).

Science

In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy and the Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is now most renowned. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the objects of natural science.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no original contributions to Mathematics. He did, however, perform original research in the natural sciences, including: botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, geometry and several other sciences.

Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, not quantitative. Beginning in the sixteenth century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was found to be hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to lacking concepts like mass, velocity, force, and temperature. He had a notion of what speed and temperature was, but no quantitative understanding of them, which was partly due to not having basic experimental apparatus, like a clock or thermometer.

His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, but there are some curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he claimed that human males have more teeth than females. In a similar vein, Galileo showed by simple experiments that Aristotle's theory that the heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect.

In places, Aristotle goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple observation and over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's hypothesis requires far more rigorous experimentation than that which Aristotle used to support his laws.

Aristotle also had some scientific blind spots, the largest being his inability to see the application of mathematics to physics. Aristotle held that physics was about changing objects with a reality of their own, whereas mathematics was about unchanging objects without a reality of their own. In this philosophy, he could not imagine that there was a relationship between them.

He also posited a flawed cosmology that we may discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the 1500s. From the 3rd century to the 1500s, the dominant view held that the Earth was the center of the universe (geocentrism).

This scientific concept, as proposed by Aristotle and Plato was later adopted as dogma by the Roman Catholic Church because it placed mankind at the center of the universe, and scientists who disagreed, such as Galileo, were considered heretics. This erroneous concept was eventually rejected.

Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting the immense advances that he made in the many fields of science. For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded (in the West) for two millennia.

Also, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge. This made the study of physics, and all other sciences, respectable. This observation, though, goes beyond physics and is really the subject matter of metaphysics.

Aristotle's metaphysics

Aristotle defines metaphysics as "the knowledge of immaterial being", or of "being in the highest degree of abstraction". He calls metaphysics "first philosophy", and also "the theologic science".

Causality

The Material Cause is that from which a thing comes into existence as from its parts, constituents, substratum or materials. This reduces the explanation of causes to the parts (factors, elements, constituents, ingredients) forming the whole (system, structure, compound, complex, composite, or combination) (the part-whole causation). An example of a material cause might be the marble in a carved statue.

The Formal Cause tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis, or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (macrostructure) is the cause of its parts (the whole-part causation). An example of a formal cause might be the sketches or plans of the carved statue.

The Efficient Cause is that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. An example of an efficient cause might be the artist who carved the statue.

The Final Cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve, or it is that from which and that to which the change is. This also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation, or motives, rational, irrational, ethical, all that gives purpose to behavior. The final cause of the artist might be the statue itself. (teleology)

Additionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally, as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the one is as the beginning of change, the other as the goal. [Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular causality as a relation of mutual dependence or action or influence of cause and effect.] Also, Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects, its presence and absence may result in different outcomes.

Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes, so that generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, operating causes to actual effects. Essentially, causality does not suggest a temporal relation between the cause and the effect.

All further investigations of causality will consist of imposing the favorite hierarchies on the order causes, such as final > efficient> material > formal (Thomas Aquinas), or of restricting all causality to the material and efficient causes or to the efficient causality (deterministic or chance) or just to regular sequences and correlations of natural phenomena (the natural sciences describing how things happen instead of explaining the whys and wherefores).

Chance and spontaneity

Spontaneity and chance are causes of effects. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things. It is "from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous does not come from chance). For a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of "chance" it might be better to think of "coincidence": Something takes place by chance if a person sets out with the intent of having one thing take place, but with the result of another thing (not intended) taking place.

For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person willing to donate a substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the person donating, not for the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose, Aristotle would call the collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of chance. It must be unusual that something happens by chance. In other words, if something happens all or most of the time, we cannot say that it is by chance.

However, chance can only apply to human beings, it is in the sphere of moral actions. According to Aristotle, chance must involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable of deliberation and choice. "What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance" (Physics, 2.6).

Substance, potentiality and actuality

Aristotle examines the concept of substance (ousia) in his Metaphysics, Book VII and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form. As he proceeds to the book VIII, he concludes that the matter of the substance is the substratum or the stuff of which it is composed e.g. the matter of the house are the bricks, stones, timbers etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house.

While the form of the substance, is the actual house, namely ‘covering for bodies and chattels’ or any other differentia (see also predicables). The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form (Metaphysics VIII, 1043a 10-30).

With regard to the change (kinesis) and its causes now, as he defines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption 319b-320a, he distinguishes the coming to be from 1. growth and diminution, which is change in quantity 2. locomotion, which is change in space and 3. alteration, which is change in quality. The coming to be is a change where nothing persists of which the resultant is property. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in association with the matter and the form.

Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing, or being acted upon, if it is not prevented from something else. For example, a seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) plant, and if is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), as well as can be either innate or come by practice or learning. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate - being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise - acting).

Referring now to actuality, this is the fulfillment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle of every change, and for the sake of the end exists potentiality, therefore actuality is the end. Referring then to our previous example, we could say that actuality is when the seed of the plant becomes a plant.

“ For that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see.” (Aristotle, Metaphysics IX 1050a 5-10).

In conclusion, the matter of the house is its potentiality and the form is its actuality. The Formal Cause (aitia) then of that change from potential to actual house, is the reason (logos) of the house builder and the Final Cause is the end, namely the house itself. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality.

With this definition of the particular substance (matter and form) Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings; e.g., what is that makes the man one? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same thing. (Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII 1045a-b).

The five elements

Fire, which is hot and dry.

Earth, which is cold and dry.

Air, which is hot and wet.

Water, which is cold and wet.

Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

Each of the four earthly elements has its natural place; the earth at the centre of the universe, then water, then air, then fire. When they are out of their natural place they have natural motion, requiring no external cause, which is towards that place; so bodies sink in water, air bubbles up, rain falls, flame rises in air. The heavenly element has perpetual circular motion.

Criticism

Aristotle has been criticized on several grounds. Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back science in this epoch.

His analysis of procreation is frequently criticized on the grounds that it presupposes an active, ensouling masculine element bringing life to an inert, passive, lumpen female element; it is on these grounds that some feminist critics refer to Aristotle as a misogynist.

His assertion that objects of different mass fall at different speeds under gravity, which was later refuted by John Philoponus (credit is often given to Galileo, even though Philoponus lived centuries earlier).

His refutation of Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of a multitude of stars.

His refutation of the claim that the stars visible in the night sky were just like the Earth's Sun; he calculated that they would have to be millions of times farther away from the Earth than the Sun, and thus these claims were dismissed for hundreds of years.

His theory of the natural slave was used by thinkers such as Juan Gines de Sepulveda to justify European domination of the Native Americans.

Legacy

It is the opinion of many that Aristotle's system of thought remains the most marvellous and influential one ever put together by any single mind. According to historian Will Durant, no other philosopher has contributed so much to the enlightenment of the world. He single-handedly founded the sciences of Logic, Biology and Psychology.

Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. See Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 3, etc. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods. The medieval English poet Chaucer describes his student as being happy by having

At his bedded hed

Twenty books clothed in blake or red,

Of Aristotle and his philosophie;

—Chaucer

The Italian poet Dante says of Aristotle in the first circles of hell,

I saw the Master there of those who know,

Amid the philosophic family,

By all admired, and by all reverenced;

There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,

Who stood beside him closer than the rest.

—Dante, The Divine Comedy

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has been said to take nearly all of his political philosophy from Aristotle.

The loss of his works

Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), the vast majority of his writings are now lost, while the literary character of those that remain is disputed. Aristotle's works were lost and rediscovered several times, and it is believed that about one fifth of his original works have survived.

One story of the original manuscripts of his treatises is described by Strabo in his Geography and Plutarch in his Parallel Lives. The manuscripts were left from Aristotle to his successor Theophrastus, who in turn willed them to Neleus of Scepsis. Neleus supposedly took the writings from Athens to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the first century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens.

According to the story, Apellicon tried to repair some of the damage that was done during the manuscripts' stay in the basement, introducing a number of errors into the text. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla occupied Athens in 86 BC, he carried off the library of Appellicon to Rome, where they were first published in 60 BC by the grammarian Tyrranion of Amisus and then by philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes.

Carnes Lord attributes the popular belief in this story to the fact that it provides "the most plausible explanation for the rapid eclipse of the Peripatetic school after the middle of the third century, and for the absence of widespread knowledge of the specialized treatises of Aristotle throughout the Hellenistic period, as well as for the sudden reappearance of a flourishing Aristotelianism during the first century B.C." Lord voices a number of reservations concerning this story, however.

First, the condition of the texts is far too good for them to have suffered considerable damage followed by Apellicon's inexpert attempt at repair. Second, there is "incontrovertible evidence," Lord says, that the treatises were in circulation during the time in which Strabo and Plutarch suggest they were confined the cellar in Scepsis. Third, the definitive edition of Aristotle's texts seems to have been made in Athens some fifty years before Andronicus supposedly compiled his.

And fourth, ancient library catalogues predating Andronicus' intervention list an Aristotelean corpus quite similar to the one we currently possess. Lord sees a number of post-Aristotelean interpolations in the Politics, for example, but is generally confident that the work has come down to us relatively intact.

After the Roman period, Aristotle's works were by and large lost to the West for a second time. They were, however, preserved in the East by various Muslim scholars and philosophers, many of whom wrote extensive commentaries on his works. Aristotle lay at the foundation of the falsafa movement in Islamic philosophy, stimulating the thought of Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and others.

As the influence of the falsafa grew in the West, in part due to Gerard of Cremona's translations and the spread of Averroism, the demand for Aristotle's works grew. William of Moerbeke translated a number of them into Latin.

When Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand for Aristotle's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe.

Socrates (Greek: S????t??, invariably anglicized as ['s?k??ti?z], Socrates; circa 470–399 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.

The most important source of information concerning Socrates is Plato. Plato's dialogues portray Socrates as a teacher who denies having disciples, as a man of reason who obeys a divine voice in his head, and a pious man who is executed for the state's own expediency.

Socrates disparages the pleasures of the senses, yet is excited by beauty; he is devoted to the education of the

citizens of Athens, yet indifferent to his own sons. He is often held to be the founder of Western philosophy, and its most influential practitioner.

The trial and execution of Socrates was the climax of his career and the central event of the dialogues of Plato. According to Plato, both were unnecessary. Socrates admits in court that he could have avoided the trial by abandoning philosophy and going home to mind his own business.

After his conviction, he could have avoided the death penalty by escaping with the help of his friends. The reason for his cooperation with the state's mandate forms a valuable philosophical insight in its own right, and is best articulated by the dialogues themselves, especially in his dialogue with Crito.

Life

Details about Socrates are derived from three contemporary sources: the dialogues of Plato, the plays of Aristophanes, and the dialogues of Xenophon. There is no evidence that Socrates wrote anything himself.

Aristophanes' play The Clouds portrays Socrates as a clown who teaches his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt. Most of Aristophanes' works, however, function as parodies. Thus one should not take his portrayal of Socrates at face value.

According to Plato, Socrates' father was Sophroniscus and his mother Phaenarete, a midwife. Socrates married Xanthippe, who was much younger than her husband. She bore him three sons, Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus. His friend Crito criticized him for abandoning his sons when he refused to try to escape before his execution.

It is unclear how Socrates earned a living. According to Timon of Phlius and later sources, Socrates took over the profession of stonemasonry from his father. There is evidence that he crafted statues of the Three Graces that stood near the Acropolis until the second century CE. According to Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates is reported as saying he devotes himself only to what he regards as the most important art or occupation: discussing philosophy.

Aristophanes portrays Socrates as accepting payment for teaching and running a sophist school with Chaerephon, in The Clouds, while in Plato's Apology and Symposium and in Xenophon's accounts, Socrates explicitly denies accepting payment for teaching. More specifically, in the Apology Socrates cites his poverty as proof that he is not a teacher.Several of Plato's dialogues refer to Socrates' military service.

Socrates says he served in the Athenian army during three campaigns: at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium. In the Symposium Alcibiades describes Socrates' valour in the battles of Potidaea and Delium, recounting how Socrates saved his life in the former battle (219e-221b). Socrates' exceptional service at Delium is also mentioned in the Laches, by the general the dialogue is named after (181b).

In the Apology Socrates compares his military service to his courtroom troubles, and says that anyone on the jury who thinks he ought to retreat from philosophy must also think that soldiers should retreat when it looks like they will be killed in battle.

Trial and death

Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian Empire to its decline with the defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens was seeking to stabilize and recover from its humiliating defeat, the Athenian public may have been entertaining doubts about democracy as an efficient form of government. Socrates appears to have been a critic of democracy, and his trial is interpreted by some scholars to be an expression of political infighting.

Despite claiming death-defying loyalty to his city, Socrates' pursuit of virtue and his strict adherence to truth clashed with the current course of Athenian politics and society. Here it is telling to refer to Thucydides: "Applause, in a word, went to one who got in first with some evil act, and to him who cheered on another to attempt some crime that he was not thinking of."

He praises Sparta, arch rival to Athens, directly and indirectly in various dialogs. But perhaps the most historically accurate of Socrates' offences to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of immorality within his region, Socrates worked to undermine the collective notion of "might makes right" so common to Greece during this period.

Plato refers to Socrates as the gadfly of the state, insofar as he irritated the establishment with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His attempts to improve the Athenian's allegiance to justice may have been the source of his execution.

According to Plato's Apology, Socrates' life as the "gadfly" of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that none was wiser than Socrates. Socrates believed that what the Oracle had said was a riddle, considering there is no record of the oracle ever giving individuals praise for their achievements or knowledge.

He proceeded to test the riddle through approaching men who were considered to be wise by the people of Athens. He questioned the men of Athens about their knowledge of good, beauty, and virtue.

Finding that they knew nothing and yet believed themselves to know much, Socrates came to the conclusion that he was wise only in so far as "that what I don't know, I don't think I know." Socrates' paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of wrongdoing.

He was nevertheless found guilty for corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death by drinking a mix of the poisonous hemlock. Socrates turned down the pleas of Crito to attempt an escape from prison. After drinking the poison, he was instructed to walk around until his limbs felt heavy. After lying down, the man who administered the poison pinched his foot. Socrates could no longer feel his legs. The numbness slowly crept up his body until it reached his heart.

Shortly before dying, Socrates spoke his last words to Crito saying, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the debt." Asclepius was the Greek god for curing illness, and its likely that Socrates' last words were implied to mean that death is the cure, and freedom, of the soul from the body. The Roman philosopher Seneca attempted to emulate Socrates' death by hemlock when forced to commit suicide by the Emperor Nero.

According to Xenophon and Plato, Socrates had an opportunity to escape, as his followers were able to bribe the prison guards. After escaping, Socrates would have had to flee from Athens. However, Socrates refused to escape for several reasons.

1. He believed that such a flight would indicate a fear of death, which he believed no true philosopher has.

2. Even if he did leave, he, and his teaching, would fare no better in another country.

3. Having knowingly agreed to live under the city's laws, he implicitly subjected himself to the possibility of being accused of crimes by its citizens and judged guilty by its jury. To do otherwise would have caused him to break his 'contract' with the state, and by so doing harming it, an act contrary to Socratic principle. The full reasoning behind his refusal to flee is the main subject of the Crito.

According to Xenophon's story of Socrates' defense to the jury, Socrates' purposefully gives a defiant defense to the jury because "he believed he would be better off dead." Xenophon's explanation goes on to describe a defense by Socrates that explains the rigors of old age, and how Socrates will be glad to circumvent these by being sentenced to death. It is also understood that Socrates not only wished to avoid the pains of old age, but also to die because he "actually believed the right time had come for him to die."

Philosophy

Socratic method

Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic Method or method of elenchos, which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. To solve a problem, you would ask a question and when finding the answer, you would also have an answer to your problem.

This led to the beginning of the Scientific Method, in which the first step says to name the problem in the form of a question. For this, Socrates is customarily regarded as the father of political philosophy and ethics or moral philosophy, and as a fountainhead of all the main themes in Western philosophy in general. (The method may have been suggested by Zeno of Elea, but Socrates refined it and applied it to ethical problems.)

In this method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions.

It was designed to force one to examine one's own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."

Philosophical beliefs

The beliefs of Socrates, as opposed to those of Plato, are difficult to discern. Little in the way of concrete evidence demarcates the two. The lengthy theories given in most of the dialogues are those of Plato, and it is thought that Plato so adapted the Socratic style as to make the literary character and the philosopher himself impossible to demarcate.

Others argue that he did have his own theories and beliefs, but there is much controversy over what these might have been, owing to the difficulty of separating Socrates from Plato and the difficulty of interpreting even the dramatic writings concerning Socrates.

Consequently, distinguishing the philosophical beliefs of Socrates from those of Plato and Xenophon is not easy and it must be remembered that what is attributed to Socrates might more closely reflect the specific concerns of these thinkers.

If anything in general can be said about the philosophical beliefs of Socrates, it is that he was morally, intellectually, and politically at odds with his fellow Athenians. When he is on trial for heresy and corrupting the young, he uses his method of elenchos to demonstrate to the jurors that their moral values are wrong-headed. He tells them that they are concerned with their families, careers, and political responsibilities when they ought to be worried about the "welfare of their souls."

Socrates' belief in the immortality of the soul, and his conviction that the gods had singled him out as a divine emissary seemed to provoke if not annoyance, at least ridicule. Socrates also questioned the Sophistic doctrine that arete (that is, virtue) can be taught.

He liked to observe that successful fathers (such as the prominent military general Pericles) did not produce sons of their own quality. Socrates argued that moral excellence was more a matter of divine bequest than parental nurture. This belief may have contributed to his lack of anxiety about the future of his own sons.

Socrates frequently says that his ideas are not his own, but his teachers'. He mentions several influences: Prodicus the rhetor and Anaxagoras the scientist. Perhaps surprisingly, Socrates claims to have been deeply influenced by two women besides his mother. He says that Diotima, a witch and priestess from Mantinea taught him all he knows about eros, or love, and that Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, taught him the art of funeral orations.

John Burnet argued that his principal teacher was the Anaxagorean Archelaus but that his ideas were as Plato described them; Eric A. Havelock, on the other hand, considered Socrates' association with the Anaxagoreans to be evidence of Plato's philosophical separation from Socrates.

Knowledge

Socrates seems to have often said that his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. Socrates may have believed that wrongdoing was a consequence of ignorance, that those who did wrong knew no better. The one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have knowledge of was "the art of love" which he connected with the concept of "the love of wisdom", i.e., philosophy.

He never actually claimed to be wise, only to understand the path that a lover of wisdom must take in pursuing it. It is debatable whether Socrates believed that humans (as opposed to gods like Apollo) could actually become wise. On the one hand, he drew a clear line between human ignorance and ideal knowledge; on the other, Plato's Symposium (Diotima's Speech) and Republic (Allegory of the Cave) describe a method for ascending to wisdom.

In Plato's Theaetetus (150a) Socrates compares himself to a true matchmaker (p??µ??st????), as distinguished from a panderer (p????????). This distinction is echoed in Xenophon's Symposium (3.20), when Socrates jokes about his certainty of being able to make a fortune, if he chose to practise the art of pandering. For his part as a philosophical interlocutor, he leads his respondent to a clearer conception of wisdom, although he claims that he is not himself a teacher (Apology).

His role, he claims, is more properly to be understood as analogous to a midwife (µa?a). Socrates explains that he is himself barren of theories, but knows how to bring the theories of others to birth and determine whether they are worthy or mere "wind eggs" (??eµ?a???).

Perhaps significantly, he points out that midwives are barren due to age, and women who have never given birth are unable to become midwives; a truly barren woman would have no experience or knowledge of birth and would be unable to separate the worthy infants from those that should be left on the hillside to be exposed. To judge this, the midwife must have experience and knowledge of what she is judging.

Virtue

Socrates believed that the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. (Gross 2). He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt that this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace.

His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; as mentioned above, his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach.

The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates' teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that "virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good. Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and that it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know." (Solomon 44)

Ultimately, virtue relates to the form of the Good; to truly be good and not just act with "right opinion"; one must come to know the unchanging Good in itself. In the Republic, he describes the "divided line", a continuum of ignorance to knowledge with the Good on top of it all; only at the top of this line do we find true good and the knowledge of such.

Politics

It is often argued that Socrates believed "ideals belong in a world that only the wise man can understand", making the philosopher the only type of person suitable to govern others. According to Plato's account, Socrates was in no way subtle about his particular beliefs on government. He openly objected to the democracy that ran Athens during his adult life. It was not only Athenian democracy: Socrates objected to any form of government that did not conform to his ideal of a perfect republic led by philosophers (Solomon 49), and Athenian government was far from that.

During the last years of Socrates' life, Athens was in continual flux due to political upheaval. Democracy was at last overthrown by a junta known as the Thirty Tyrants, led by Plato's relative, Critias, who had been a student of Socrates. The Tyrants ruled for about a year before the Athenian democracy was reinstated, at which point it declared an amnesty for all recent events. Four years later, it acted to silence the voice of Socrates.

This argument is often denied, and the question is one of the biggest philosophical debates when trying to determine what, exactly, it was that Socrates believed. The strongest argument of those who claim that Socrates did not actually believe in the idea of philosopher kings is Socrates' constant refusal to enter into politics or participate in government of any sort; he often stated that he could not look into other's matters or tell people how to live their lives when he did not yet understand how to live his own.

He believed he was a philosopher engaged in the pursuit of Truth, and did not claim to know it fully. Socrates' acceptance of his death sentence, after his conviction by the Boule (Senate), can also be seen to support this view. It is often claimed that much of the anti-democratic leanings are from Plato, who was never able to overcome his disgust at what was done to his teacher.

In any case, it is clear that Socrates thought that the rule of the Thirty Tyrants was at least as objectionable as democracy; when called before them to assist in the arrest of a fellow Athenian, Socrates refused and narrowly escaped death before the Tyrants were overthrown.

He did however fulfill his duty to serve as prytanis when a trial of a group of generals who presided over a disastrous naval campaign were judged; even then he maintained an uncompromising attitude, being one of those who refused to proceed in a manner not supported by the laws, despite intense pressure. Judging by his actions, he considered the rule of the Thirty Tyrants less legitimate than that of the democratic senate who sentenced him to death.

Mysticism

In the dialogues of Plato, Socrates often seems to purport a mystical side, discussing reincarnation and the mystery religions; however, this is generally attributed to Plato. Regardless, this cannot be dismissed out of hand, as we cannot be sure of the differences between the views of Plato and Socrates; in addition, there seem to be some corollaries in the works of Xenophon.

In the culmination of the philosophic path as discussed in Plato's Symposium and Republic, one comes to the Sea of Beauty or to the sight of the form of the Good in an experience akin to mystical revelation; only then can one become wise. (In the Symposium, Socrates credits his speech on the philosophic path to his teacher, the priestess Diotima, who is not even sure if Socrates is capable of reaching the highest mysteries.)

In the Meno, he refers to the Eleusinian Mysteries, telling Meno he would understand Socrates' answers better if only he could stay for the initiations next week. Further confusions result from the nature of these sources, insofar as the Platonic dialogues are arguably the work an artist-philosopher, whose meaning does not volunteer itself to the passive reader nor again the lifelong scholar.

Plato himself was a playwright before taking up the study of philosophy. His works are, indeed, dialogues; Plato's choice of this, the medium of Sophocles, Euripides, and the fictions of theatre, may reflect the interpretable nature of his writings. What is more, the first word of nearly all Plato's works is a, or the, significant term for that respective study, and is used with the commonly approved definition in mind.

Finally, the Phaedrus and the Symposium each allude to Socrates' coy delivery of philosophic truths in conversation; the Socrates of the Phaedrus goes so far as to demand such dissembling and mystery in all writing. The mysticism we often find in Plato, appearing here and there and couched in some enigmatic tract of symbol and irony, is often at odds with the mysticism that Plato's Socrates expounds in some other dialogue.

These mystical resolutions to thitherto rigorous inquiries and analyses fail to satisfy caring readers, without fail. Whether they would fail to satisfy readers who understood them is another question, and will not, in all probability, ever be resolved.

Perhaps the most interesting facet of this is Socrates' reliance on what the Greeks called his "daemonic sign", an averting (?p?t?ept????) inner voice that Socrates heard only when he was about to make a mistake. It was this sign that prevented Socrates from entering into politics.

In the Phaedrus, we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of "divine madness", the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself. Alternately, the sign is often taken to be what we would call "intuition"; however, Socrates' characterization of the phenomenon as "daemonic" suggests that its origin is divine, mysterious, and independent of his own thoughts.

An Ahmadiyyah Scholar, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, (the Fourth Caliph of the Ahmadiyyat Movement in Islam) argues that Socrates experienced what can be called a prophetic revelation. He writes in his book, Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth, that "Socrates seems to have a very personalized and intense relationship with the Supreme Being. His very personality is built on the pattern of the messengers of God."

Satirical playwrights

He was prominently lampooned in Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds, produced when Socrates was in his mid-forties; he said at his trial (in Plato's version) that the laughter of the theater was a harder task to answer than the arguments of his accusers. In the play he is ridiculed for his dirtiness, which is associated with the Laconizing fad; also in plays by Callias, Eupolis, and Telecleides. In all of these, Socrates and the Sophists were criticised for "the moral dangers inherent in contemporary thought and literature".

Prose sources

Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle are the main sources for the historical Socrates; however, Xenophon and Plato were direct disciples of Socrates, and presumably, they idealize him; however, they wrote the only continuous descriptions of Socrates that have come down to us. Aristotle refers frequently, but in passing, to Socrates in his writings. Almost all of Plato's works center around Socrates. However Plato's latter works appear to be more his own philosophy put into the mouth of his mentor.

The Socratic dialogues

The Socratic dialogues are a series of dialogues written by Plato and Xenophon in the form of discussions between Socrates and other persons of his time, or as discussions between Socrates' followers over his concepts. Plato's Phaedo is an example of this latter category. Although his Apology is a monologue delivered by Socrates, it is usually grouped with the dialogues.

The Apology professes to be a record of the actual speech that Socrates delivered in his own defense at the trial. In the Athenian jury system, an "apology" is composed of three parts: a speech, followed by a counter-assessment, then some final words. "Apology" is a transliteration, not a translation, of the Greek apologia, meaning "defense"; in this sense it is not apologetic according to our contemporary use of the term.

Plato generally does not place his own ideas in the mouth of a specific speaker; he lets ideas emerge via the Socratic method, under the guidance of Socrates. Most of the dialogues present Socrates applying this method to some extent, but nowhere as completely as in the Euthyphro. In this dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro go through several iterations of refining the answer to Socrates' question, "...What is the pious, and what the impious?"

In Plato's dialogues, learning appears as a process of remembering. The soul, before its incarnation in the body, was in the realm of Ideas (very similar to the Platonic "Forms"). There, it saw things the way they truly are, rather than the pale shadows or copies we experience on earth. By a process of questioning, the soul can be brought to remember the ideas in their pure form, thus bringing wisdom.

Especially for Plato's writings referring to Socrates, it is not always clear which ideas brought forward by Socrates (or his friends) actually belonged to Socrates and which of these may have been new additions or elaborations by Plato — this is known as the Socratic problem. Generally, the early works of Plato are considered to be close to the spirit of Socrates, whereas the later works — including Phaedo and the Republic — are considered to be possibly products of Plato's elaborations.

Plato (Greek: ???t??, Pláton, "wide, broad-shouldered") (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC), whose original name was Aristocles, was an ancient Greek philosopher, the second of the great trio of ancient Greeks –succeeding Socrates and preceding Aristotle– who between them laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture.

Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world. Plato is widely believed to have been a student of Socrates and to have been deeply influenced by his teacher's unjust death.

Plato's brilliance as a writer and thinker can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues. Some of the dialogues,

letters, and other works that are ascribed to him are considered spurious. Plato is thought to have lectured at the Academy, although the pedagogical function of his dialogues, if any, is not known with certainty. They have historically been used to teach philosophy, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and other subjects about which he wrote.

Early life: Birth and family

The exact birthdate of Plato is unknown. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars estimate that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 428 and 427 b.c.e. His father was Ariston. According to a disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus. Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon.

Perictione was sister of Charmides and Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief oligarchic regime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war (404-403 b.c.e.).

Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato as head of his philosophical Academy). According to the Republic, Adeimantus and Glaucon were older than Plato. Nevertheless, in his Memorabilia, Xenophon presents Glaucon as younger than Plato.

According to certain fabulous reports of ancient writers, Plato' s mother became pregnant through a virginal conception: Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione, but failed of his purpose; then the ancient Greek god Apollo appeared to him in a vision, and, as a result of it, Ariston left Perictione unmolested. Another legend related that, while he was sleeping as an infant, bees had settled on the lips of Plato; an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse philosophy.

Ariston appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the precise dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mother's brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, the leader of the democratic faction in Athens. Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes' second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato, who appears in Parmenides.

In contrast to his reticence about himself, Plato used to introduce his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or to mention them with some precision: Charmides has one named after him; Critias speaks in both Charmides and Protagoras; Adeimantus and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic.

From these and other references one can reconstruct his family tree, and this suggests a considerable amount of family pride. According to Burnet, "the opening scene of the Charmides is a glorification of the whole [family] connection ... Plato's dialogues are not only a memorial to Socrates, but also the happier days of his own family".

Name

According to Diogenes Laertius, the philosopher was named Aristocles after his grandfather, but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "Platon", meaning "broad" on account of his robust figure. According to the sources mentioned by Diogenes (all dating from the Alexandrian period), Plato derived his name from the breadth (platutês) of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (platus) across the forehead. In the 21st century some scholars disputed Diogenes, and argued that the legend about his name being Aristocles originated in the Hellenistic age.

Education

Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praised Plato's quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the "first fruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study". Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished teachers of his time. Dicaearchus went so far as to say that Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games. Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.[22]

Later life

Plato may have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene. Said to have returned to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western Civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus. The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus... some, however, say that it received its name from an ancient hero" (Robinson, Arch. Graec. I i 16), and it operated until 529 AD, when it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle.

Plato and Socrates

Plato made himself seem as though he were part of the Socratic entourage but never says so explicitly. In the Phaedo the title character lists those who were in attendance at the prison on Socrates' last day and says "Plato was ill" (Phaedo 59b). In the Apology, Plato distances himself from the inner circle. Socrates says there that the brothers of several of his former associates are in the audience. He says that Adeimantus, brother to Plato, was present (Apology 34a). Adeimantus appears in the Republic as a disputant.

Narration of the dialogues

Plato never presents himself as a participant in any of the dialogues, and with the exception of the Apology, he does not claim to have heard any of the dialogues firsthand. Some dialogues have no narrator (examples: Meno, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Crito, Euthyphro), some dialogues are narrated by Socrates, wherein he speaks in first person (examples: Lysis, Charmides, Apology, Republic). In one dialogue, Protagoras, Socrates narrates to an unnamed friend a conversation he had previously with the sophist for whom the dialogue is named.

Three dialogues, Phaedo, Symposium, and Theaetetus, are narrated by disciples of Socrates, and all, apparently, from distant memories. Phaedo, an account of Socrates' final conversation and hemlock drinking, is narrated by Phaedo to Echecrates in a foreign city many years after the execution took place. The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently to Glaucon.

Apollodorus assures his listener that he is recounting the story, which took place when he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered by Aristodemus, who told him the story years ago.

In the Theaetetus (142c-143b), Euclides says that he compiled the conversation from notes he took based on what Socrates told him of his conversation with the title character. With the exception of the Theaetetus, Plato gives no hint as to how these orally transmitted conversations came to be written down, or how he came by them.

Plato's absence from the dialogues is at odds with the traditional belief that he was a disciple and part of Socrates' inner circle. The question of why Plato explicitly distances himself by time, place, and authorship from three of his greatest dialogues has never been satisfactorily answered.

Tradition tends to see Plato as writing a kind of "pseudo-history" of the life of Socrates, but the chronologies of the characters are inconsistent. For example, in the Protagoras, Alcibiades and Agathon are teenage boys growing beards (and are the respective beloveds of Socrates and Pausanias), and Apollodoros and Glaucon are fathers of teenage sons.

When the Symposium allegedly took place, however, Glaucon and Apollodorus were infants and Alcibiades and Agathon were full-grown men (and Alcibiades is said to be older than his beloved Agathon). This chronological discrepancy, which does not appear to be inadvertent, suggests that Plato is not a historical writer.

Plato's dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays, in having no more than three speakers "on stage" (speaking) at one time, and in often having "a chorus" of (silent) listeners.

Trial of Socrates

The trial of Socrates is the central, unifying event of the great Platonic dialogues. Because of this, Plato's Apology is perhaps the most often read of the dialogues. In the Apology, Socrates tries to dismiss rumors that he is a sophist and defends himself against charges of disbelief in the gods and corruption of the young. Socrates insists that long-standing slander will be the real cause of his demise, and says the legal charges are essentially false.

Socrates famously denies being wise, and explains how his life as a philosopher was launched by the oracle at Delphi. He says that his quest to resolve the riddle of the oracle put him at odds with his fellow man, and that this is the reason he has been mistaken for a menace to the city-state of Athens.

The trial of Socrates is anomalous: from what is known about Athens in the fifth century BC, it should not have taken place (see Gorgias 461e and Crito 45e). Atheism or similar charges were not a crime in free-speech Athens. It was not even unusual among intellectuals, nor condemned by the masses. The prize-winning plays of Aristophanes were not merely atheist, but made fun of the gods and their prophets and oracles.

There is no record that Aristophanes was prosecuted for atheism, and some have speculated that comics enjoyed special immunities. However, there is no evidence of this. It is also puzzling that Socrates exonerated himself in large part by claiming to be sent on his philosophic mission by Apollo, an important figure in the standard Greek pantheon.

Unity and diversity of the dialogues

If Plato's important dialogues do not refer to Socrates' execution explicitly, they allude to it, or use characters or themes that play a part in it. Five dialogues foreshadow the trial: In the Theaetetus (210d) and the Euthyphro (2a–b) Socrates tells people that he is about to face corruption charges. In the Meno (94e–95a), one of the men who brings legal charges against Socrates, Anytus, warns him about the trouble he may get into if he does not stop criticizing important people.

In the Gorgias, Socrates says that his trial will be like a doctor prosecuted by a cook who asks a jury of children to choose between the doctor's bitter medicine and the cook's tasty treats (521e–522a). In the Republic (7.517e), Socrates explains why an enlightened man (presumably himself) will stumble in a courtroom situation.

The Apology is Socrates' defense speech, and the Crito and Phaedo take place in prison after the conviction. In the Protagoras, Socrates is a guest at the home of Callias, son of Hipponicus, a man whom Socrates disparages in the Apology as having wasted a great amount of money on sophists' fees.

Two other important dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, are linked to the main storyline by characters. In the Apology (19b, c), Socrates says Aristophanes slandered him in a comic play, and blames him for causing his bad reputation, and ultimately, his death. In the Symposium, the two of them are drinking together with other friends. The character Phaedrus is linked to the main story line by character (Phaedrus is also a participant in the Symposium and the Protagoras) and by theme (the philosopher as divine emissary, etc.)

The Protagoras is also strongly linked to the Symposium by characters: all of the formal speakers at the Symposium (with the exception of Aristophanes) are present at the home of Callias in that dialogue. Charmides and his guardian Critias are present for the discussion in the Protagoras. Examples of characters crossing between dialogues can be further multiplied. The Protagoras contains the largest gathering of Socratic associates.

In the dialogues for which Plato is most celebrated and admired, Socrates is concerned with human and political virtue, has a distinctive personality, and friends and enemies who "travel" with him from dialogue to dialogue. This is not to say that Socrates is consistent: a man who is his friend in one dialogue may be an adversary or subject of his mockery in another. For example, Socrates praises the wisdom of Euthyphro many times in the Cratylus, but makes him look like a fool in the Euthyphro.

He disparages sophists generally, and Prodicus specifically in the Apology, yet tells Theaetetus in his namesake dialogue that he admires Prodicus and has directed many pupils to him. In Cratylus (384b-c), Socrates says that he studied with Cratylus, and took his one-drachma course because he could not afford the full fifty-drachma course. Socrates' ideas are also not consistent within or between or among dialogues.

Works

Structure

Some of Plato's dialogues are framed by human elements. The clearest example of this is Phaedo, wherein Socrates dismisses his wife Xanthippe from the prison at the beginning of the dialogue, and again towards the end. The frame elements suggest that Socrates' relationship with his disciples, who mourn the imminent loss of their spiritual "father" is more important to him than his actual family. In this dialogue, an entire chorus of people is said to be silently listening to a very long conversation, and apparently, saying nothing.

Other dialogues, such as Euthyphro and Crito, involve only two characters who are not said to be overheard by anyone else. The characters are meant to be compared and contrasted. Socrates is more like Euthyphro (whom he mocks) than he thinks. Both are pious men whose knowledge of god's will comes from different sources - Euthyphro reads myths and takes them literally, while Socrates relies on divine voices in his head.

Socrates is less compatible with his friend Crito than he thinks, and even says that people who are so morally at odds ought to despise each other. Sometimes characters pop in and out of a dialogue, as a slave and an aristocrat (Anytus) in the Meno.

Two of Plato's dialogues are better described as monologues. The often-read Apology is as brilliant a speech as the little-read Menexenus is tiresome. Gorgias, Protagoras and Lesser Hippias are structurally similar: each depicts Socrates being invited to converse with a well-known wise man who is visiting Athens.

Lysis and Charmides are twin dialogues that picture Socrates chatting with boys who require attendants, slaves or older male relations who are appointed to walk them to and from their lessons at school. Phaedrus and the Symposium are a pair of dialogues linked by the theme of man-boy love.

Many other dialogues ascribed to Plato also use the Socratic character, but do not share this pronounced concern for virtue. In these dialogues, Plato uses Socrates as a mere name, a voice-marker who does not have the distinctive, self-deprecating wit of the important dialogues. The metaphysical dialogues attributed to Plato do not contain material of human interest, but are very abstract and read by specialists.

The dialogues have been divided by influential scholarship into the early, middle and late periods. The late Princeton scholar and classicist, Gregory Vlastos argued that the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo were written first and are a more or less historical record of the philosophy of the historical character Socrates. Vlastos' aim was to account for the obvious contradictions among dialogues.

He argues that Plato's early dialogues represent Socratic philosophy, and that in the so-called middle and later dialogues, Plato expresses his own, quite different philosophy. Even Vlastos admitted that this division is not well-supported by the dialogues themselves. Nevertheless, his theory continues to be extremely influential.

Important analogies

The analogies in the dialogues are as interesting as the arguments, and just as important. Socrates' most enduring analogy is his comparison of the philosopher to the medical doctor. He says that the philosopher cures the mind ("psyche") of its worst affliction, ignorance, just as the medical doctor ("iatros") cures the body of disease. The ancient philosopher Epicurus took up the analogy, and claimed that any philosopher who did not reduce spiritual suffering was worthless.

Socrates never pretended that his cures were pleasant, and never shied from saying that philosophical refutation, which chases false ideas from the brain, was a bitter medicine, and comparable to surgery or cautery. Diogenes of Sinope agreed. He reputedly said that a philosopher who did not hurt anybody's feeling was not doing his job. Even today, doctors of the mind are called "psych-iatrists".

Socrates compares the body to a prison house for the soul, and promoted the distinction that remains today, that a spiritual or wise person has a certain disgust for the body and its functions. In another celebrated analogy, Socrates likens the soul to a charioteer trying to manage a pair of lust ridden horses who ride by a love object, and start sweating and rearing uncontrollably.

In still another comical analogy for the mind, Socrates says the brain is like a bird cage with pieces of knowledge fluttering about in it like doves and pigeons, so that a man might reach in for one fact and pull out the wrong one (Theaetetus).

Socrates frequently compares ideas with children, and says that ideas are the produce of the intercourse that men have with their beloved disciples (Symp. 209a–e). In a related analogy, Socrates compares himself to a midwife to men and boys who are "pregnant with thought" (Theaetetus). In the Protagoras, Socrates compares ideas to food, claiming that sophists are more dangerous to the mind than peddlers of spoiled food are to the body.

In several dialogues, Socrates compares intellectual debate to the physical contests so popular in the ancient Greek world. In the Gorgias he says that trainers cannot be blamed for the misbehaviors of their students.

He says that you would not exile his trainer if a boxing student started punching out his friends and parents, and just so, a teacher of rhetoric cannot be blamed if his students use their skills for unjust purposes. In the Lesser Hippias, Socrates says that a person who lies deliberately is a better man than the man who lies unwittingly, just as a man who throws an athletic contest is better than the man who loses from lack of skill.

Recurrent themes

Much on Plato's mind is the father-son relationship, and the "question" of whether a father's interest in his sons has much to do with how well his sons turn out. A boy in ancient Athens was socially located by his family identity, and Plato often refers to his characters in terms of their paternal and fraternal relationships. Socrates was not a family man, and saw himself as the son of his mother, who was apparently a midwife.

A divine fatalist, Socrates mocks men who spent exorbitant fees on tutors and trainers for their sons, and repeatedly ventures the idea that good character is a gift from the gods. Crito reminds Socrates that orphans are at the mercy of chance, but Socrates is unconcerned. In the Theaetetus, he is found recruiting as a disciple a young man whose inheritance has been squandered.

Socrates twice compares the relationship of the older man and his boy lover to the father-son relationship (Lysis 213a, Republic 3.403b), and in the Phaedo, Socrates' disciples, towards whom he displays more concern than his biological sons, say they will feel "fatherless" when he is gone. Many dialogues, like these, suggest that man-boy love (which is "spiritual") is a wise man's substitute for father-son biology (which is "bodily").

In several dialogues, Socrates floats the idea that Knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of learning, observation, or study. He maintains this view somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues, Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and that it comes from divine insight.

He is quite consistent in believing in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. More than one dialogue contrasts knowledge and opinion, perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul. The only contrast to this is his Parmenides.

Several dialogues tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkeness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus (265a–c), and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well.

In Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he expresses in the Republic. The dialogue Ion suggests that Homer's Iliad functioned in the ancient Greek world as the bible does today in the modern Christian world: as divinely inspired literature that can provide moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.

On politics and art, religion and science, justice and medicine, virtue and vice, crime and punishment, pleasure and pain, rhetoric and rhapsody, human nature and sexuality, love and wisdom, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say.

Metaphysics

"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real.

In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.

Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line.

The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure. (This is exactly the opposite of what Socrates says to Euthyphro in the soothsayer's namesake dialogue. There, Socrates tells Euthyphro that people can agree on matters of logic and science, and are divided on moral matters, which are not so easily verifiable.)

Socrates says in the Republic that people who take sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.

According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.

The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule.

Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.

Labelled Plato's "metaphysics" because Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after ("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"), Socrates division of reality into the warring and irreconciliable domains of the material and the spiritual has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.

Socrates and the female

In two dialogues, the Menexenus and the Symposium, Socrates claims to have been tutored by a woman. In the Menexenus, Socrates says that he was a student of Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, who taught him the art of rhetoric, and that the earth is the "true mother" of men. Women who give birth, she taught him, only imitate the earth, in whose bosom dead soldiers comfortably rest.

The Menexenus is thought to mock the Athenian custom of giving a funeral oration for soldiers who had died in battle. Aspasia's speech pretends that the land of Athens gives life to its citizens/soldiers/sons, and that they "belong" to the land rather than to their human parents.

In the Symposium, Socrates tells a company of his friends that he learned everything he knows about love from the sorceress Diotima. Diotima taught him that ideas, which are the offspring of the intellectual intercourse between men and boys, are superior to the offspring of the bodies of women. Socrates says that he learned that men who are sexually attracted to women are misguided, searching for immortality through children. Ideas, she told him, are more likely to make a man famous.

In the Apology (Plato) Socrates tells the jury that he will not weep and wail before the jury and beg for mercy because men who use such tactics for acquittal are "no better than women". In the Republic (Plato), Socrates appears to completely change his mind, and appears to be not just liberal, but a radical feminist.

He argues that gender is irrelevant to aptitude for the professions and declares that women ought to be educated along with the men, and in particular, be trained in combat. Socrates says that in his ideal world, women will perform their military exercises naked alongside the men. When his partner in conversation objects that foreigners will laugh, Socrates says that it is no matter, because the women will be "clad in virtue."

Socrates also abolishes the nuclear family in his design of a more perfect city than Athens. He says that women will be held in common, and be bred like hounds. The bravest warriors will have maximum access to women. Besides rewarding battle courage, the system will produce a better class of warriors in time. This suggestion has a parallel in Aristophanes' play, "Women at the Assembly", where women themselves rewrite the laws of Athens and abolish the private household.

Theory of Forms

Plato's Theory of Forms indicates that the sensory world that is the reality which we as human beings experience, is only a shadow of a higher realm. In this higher realm, Plato assures us that there exist the Forms that embody the true nature of the pale shadows. What we know as sweet is only an afterimage of the Form of Sweetness. The luminous brightness of the sun is only a corporeal display of the Form of Brightness.

The Forms should be understood as a unity amidst disparate things. The disparate things are the things of the sense world, the forms are our intellectual apprehension of the true meaning of those things; and even the lifeblood of the empirical things themselves. The Forms are static, perfect and unchanging: necessary characteristics if they are going to be used to make sense of the empirical world.

Following this logic, then, Plato infers a unity to the forms themselves that could be considered the Ultimate Form, or the Form of Form. This is one quality which all Forms share. This is the Form of the Good. Later Christian thinkers influenced by Neo-Platonists would identify this Ultimate Form with God; though certainly famous pagan Neo-Platonists such as Plotinus would do the same.

Epistemology

Many have interpreted Plato as stating that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view which informed future developments in modern analytic epistemology. This interpretation is based on a reading of the Theaetetus wherein Plato argues that belief is to be distinguished from knowledge on account of justification.

Many years later, Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the problems of the justified true belief account of knowledge. This interpretation, however, imports modern analytic and empiricist categories onto Plato himself and is better read on its own terms than as Plato's view.

Really, in the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, and the Parmenides Plato himself associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in Dialectic). More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained.

In other words, if one derives their account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives their account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because these forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. It is only in this sense that Plato uses the term "knowledge."

The state

Plato's philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or government. There is some discrepancy between his early and later views. Some of the most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic during his middle period, as well as in the Laws and the Statesman. However, because Plato wrote dialogues, it is assumed that Socrates is often speaking for Plato. This assumption may not be true in all cases.

Plato, through the words of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul.

Productive (Workers) — the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the soul.

Protective (Warriors or Auxiliaries) — those who are adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the "spirit" part of the soul.

Governing (Rulers or Guardians) — those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the "reason" part of the soul and are very few.

According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule. Instead of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato says reason and wisdom should govern. This does not equate to tyranny, despotism, or oligarchy, however. As Plato puts it:

"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." (Republic 473c-d)

Plato describes these "philosopher kings" as "those who love the sight of truth" (Republic 475c) and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine. Sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part of the Republic then addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings.

However, it must be taken into account that the ideal city outlined in the Republic is qualified by Socrates as the ideal luxurious city, examined to determine how it is that injustice and justice grow in a city (Republic 372e).

According to Socrates, the "true" and "healthy" city is instead the one first outlined in book II of the Republic, 369c–372d, containing farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and wage-earners, but lacking the guardian class of philosopher-kings as well as delicacies such as "perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries", in addition to paintings, gold, ivory, couches, a multitude of occupations such as poets and hunters, and war.

In addition, the ideal city is used as an image to illuminate the state of one's soul, or the will, reason, and desires combined in the human body. Socrates is attempting to make an image of a rightly ordered human, and then later goes on to describe the different kinds of humans that can be observed, from tyrants to lovers of money in various kinds of cities. The ideal city is not promoted, but only used to magnify the different kinds of individual humans and the state of their soul.

However, the philosopher king image was used by many after Plato to justify their personal political beliefs. The philosophic soul according to Socrates has reason, will, and desires united in virtuous harmony. A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists.

Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. For instance he asks which is better - a bad democracy or a country reigned by a tyrant. He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant (since then there is only one person committing bad deeds) than be a bad democracy (since here all the people are now responsible for such actions.)

According to Plato a state, which is made up of different kinds of souls, will overall decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honorable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by the people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant). Perhaps Plato is trying to warn us of the various kinds of immoderate souls that can rule over a state, and what kind of wise souls are best to advise and give counsel to the rulers that are often lovers of power, money, fame, and popularity.

Platonic scholarship

Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". However, in the Byzantine Empire, the study of Plato continued.

The Medieval scholastic philosophers did not have access to the works of Plato, nor the knowledge of Greek needed to read them. Plato's original writings were essentially lost to Western civilization until they were brought from Constantinople in the century before its fall, by George Gemistos Plethon.

Medieval scholars knew of Plato only through translations into Latin from the translations into Arabic by Persian and Arab scholars. These scholars not only translated the texts of the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes).

Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become widespread again in the West. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance, with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici, saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's.

Notable Western philosophers have continued to draw upon Plato's work since that time. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. It inspired the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, due to Gottlob Frege and his followers Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, and Alfred Tarski, the last of whom summarised his approach by reversing Aristotle's famous declaration of sedition from the Nicomachean Ethics (1096a15: Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas): Inimicus Plato sed magis amica veritas ("Plato is a friend, but truth is yet a greater friend").

Albert Einstein drew on Plato's understanding of an immutable reality that underlies the flux of appearances for his objections to the probabilistic picture of the physical universe propounded by Niels Bohr in his interpretation of quantum mechanics. Conversely, thinkers that diverged from ontological models and moral ideals in their own philosophy, have tended to disparage Platonism from more or less informed perspectives.

Thus Friedrich Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being, and Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's alleged proposal for a government system in the Republic was prototypically totalitarian.

Leo Strauss is considered by some as the prime thinker involved in the recovery of Platonic thought in its more political, and less metaphysical, form. Deeply influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss nonetheless rejects their condemnation of Plato and looks to the dialogues for a solution to what all three thinkers acknowledge as 'the crisis of the West.'

Bibliography

Plato's writings (most of them dialogues) have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.

Those works ascribed to Plato that have a separate Wikipedia article can be found in Category:Dialogues of Plato

Tetralogy

One tradition regarding the arrangement of Plato's texts is according to tetralogies. This scheme is ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus.

In the list below, works by Plato are marked (1) if there is no consensus among scholars as to whether Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars generally agree that Plato is not the author of the work. Unmarked works are assumed to have been written by Plato.

Tetralogies

I. Euthyphro, (The) Apology (of Socrates), Crito, Phaedo

II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman

III. Parmenides, Philebus, (The) Symposium, Phaedrus

IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), Hipparchus (2), (The) (Rival) Lovers (2)

V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis

VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno

VII. (Greater) Hippias (major) (1), (Lesser) Hippias (minor), Ion, Menexenus

VIII. Clitophon (1), (The) Republic, Timaeus, Critias

IX. Minos (2), (The) Laws, Epinomis (2), Epistles (1).

Works not in Thrasyllus' tetralogies

The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, most of them already considered spurious in antiquity, and so were not included by Thrasyllus in his tetralogical arrangement. These works are labelled as Notheuomenoi ("spurious") or Apocrypha.

Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams, Eryxias (2), Halcyon (2), On Justice (2), On Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2).

Stephanus pagination

The usual system for making unique references to sections of the text by Plato derives from a 16th century edition of Plato's works by Henricus Stephanus. An overview of Plato's writings according to this system can be found in the Stephanus pagination article.

Chronology

The exact order in which Plato's dialogues were written is not known, nor is the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. However, according to modern linguistic theory there is enough information internal to the dialogues to form a rough chronology. The dialogues are normally grouped into three fairly distinct periods, with a few of them considered transitional works, and some just difficult to place.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose translation of Plato into German still stands uncontested in Germany, is very likely the first to have divided Plato's dialogues into three distinct periods. However, his ordering is quite different from the modern one, and rather than being based upon philology, he claims to have traced Plato's philosophical development. Schleiermacher divides the dialogues thus:

Foundation: Phaedrus, Lysis, Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Parmenides;

Transition: Gorgias, Theaetetus, Meno, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Sophist, Statesman, Symposium, Phaedo, Philebus

Culmination: The Republic, (Critias, Timaeus, The Laws)

The final three dialogues above, in parentheses, were not translated by Schleiermacher, though ten other dialogues (including Ion, etc.) were translated and deemed spurious. Finally, Schleiermacher maintained that the Apology and probably the Crito were Plato's memory of Socrates' actual words.

Lewis Campbell was the first to make exhaustive use of stylometry to prove objectively that the Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman were all clustered together as a group, while the Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus belong to a separate group, which must be earlier (given Aristotle's statement in his Politics[23] that the Laws was written after the Republic; cf. Diogenes Laertius Lives 3.37).

Many of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed. The generally agreed upon modern ordering is as follows.

Early dialogues

Socrates figures in all of these, and they are considered the most faithful representations of the historical Socrates; hence they are also called the Socratic dialogues. Most of them consist of Socrates discussing a subject, often an ethical one (friendship, piety) with a friend or with someone presumed to be an expert on it.

Through a series of questions he will show that apparently they don't understand it at all. It is left to the reader to figure out if "he" really understands "it". This makes these dialogues "indirect" teachings. This period also includes several pieces surrounding the trial and execution of Socrates.

Apology

Crito

Charmides

Laches

Lysis

Euthyphro

Menexenus

Lesser Hippias

Ion

The following are variously considered transitional or middle period dialogues:

Gorgias

Protagoras

Meno

Middle dialogues

Late in the early dialogues Plato's Socrates actually begins supplying answers to some of the questions he asks, or putting forth positive doctrines. This is generally seen as the first appearance of Plato's own views. The first of these, that goodness is wisdom and that no one does evil willingly, was perhaps Socrates' own view.

What becomes most prominent in the middle dialogues is the idea that knowledge comes of grasping unchanging forms or essences, paired with the attempts to investigate such essences. The immortality of the soul, and specific doctrines about justice, truth, and beauty, begin appearing here. The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centrepieces of Plato's middle period.

Euthydemus

Cratylus

Phaedo

Phaedrus

Symposium

Republic

Theaetetus

Parmenides

Late dialogues

The Parmenides presents a series of criticisms of the theory of Forms which are widely taken to indicate Plato's abandonment of the doctrine. Some recent publications (e.g., Meinwald (1991)) have challenged this characterisation. In most of the remaining dialogues the theory is either absent or at least appears under a different guise in discussions about kinds or classes of things (the Timaeus may be an important, and hence controversially placed, exception).

Socrates is either absent or a minor figure in the discussion. An apparently new method for doing dialectic known as "collection and division" is also featured, most notably in the Sophist and Statesman, explicitly for the first time in the Phaedrus, and possibly in the Philebus.

A basic description of collection and division would go as follows: interlocutors attempt to discern the similarities and differences among things in order to get clear idea about what they in fact are. One understanding, suggested in some passages of the Sophist, is that this is what philosophy is always in the business of doing, and is doing even in the early dialogues.

The late dialogues are also an important place to look for Plato's mature thought on most of the issues dealt with in the earlier dialogues. There is much work still to be done by scholars on the working out of what these views are. The later works are agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. On the whole they are more sober and logical than earlier works, but may hold out the promise of steps towards a solution to problems which were systematically laid out in prior works.

Sophist

Statesman

Philebus

Timaeus

Critias

Laws

The Greek theatre (AE theater) or Greek drama is a theatrical tradition that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC.

Athens, the political and military power in Greece during this period, was the center of ancient Greek theatre. Tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (~486 BC), and satyr plays were some of the theatrical forms to emerge in

the world. Greek theatre and plays have had a lasting impact on Western drama and culture.

It is in ancient Greece that the origin of western theatre is to be found. It developed from a state festival in Athens, honoring the god Dionysus. The Athenian city-state exported the festival to its numerous allies in order to promote a common identity.

The Early Tragedy

The origins of Greek drama are obscure. Early tradition holds that drama and comedy evolved from the dithyramb, the songs, folk tales and dances offered to Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility and wine. Our oldest source for this tradition is Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle states:

"In any case, tragedy did grow out of an improvisational beginning, both it and comedy, the former from those who led off the dithyramb, the other from those who led off the phallic performances."

The word tragoidia, from which the English word tragedy is derived, is a portmanteau of two Greek words: tragos, "the goat", which is akin to "gnaw", and odia meaning song, from aeidein, to sing. This explains the very rare archaic translation as "goat-men sacrifice song". At the least, it indicates a link with the practices of the ancient Dionysian cults.

It is impossible, however, to know with certainty how these fertility rituals became the basis for tragedy and comedy. Also, until the Hellenistic period, all tragedies were unique pieces written in honor of Dionysus, so that today we only have the pieces that were still remembered well enough to have been repeated when repetition of old tragedies became fashion. It was considered a decline of the original, one-time-played tragedy.

According to legend, Greek tragedy as we know it was created in Athens, ca. 530 BCE by a man known as Thespis. He was the exarchon, or leader, of the dithyrambs performed in and around Attica, especially at the rural Dionysia. By Thespis' time the dithyramb had evolved far away from its cult roots. Under the influence of heroic epic, Doric choral lyric and the innovations of the poet Arion, it had become a narrative, ballad-like genre.

Thespis probably aided in the final transition from dithyramb to tragedy by adding characters who speak (rather than sing) with their own voice (rather than a single narrative chorus). Because of these, Thespis is often called the "Father of Tragedy"; however, his importance is disputed, and Thespis is sometimes listed as late as sixteenth in the chronological order of Greek tragedians.

For example, the statesman Solon is credited with creating poems in which characters speak with their own voice, and spoken recitations, known as rhapsodes, of Homer's epics were popular in festivals prior to 534 B.C. Thus, Thespis' true contribution to drama is unclear at best, but he is forever immortalized in a common term for performer, thespian.

Tragedy was something new and important to the Athenians - this is made clear by the creation of a tragedy competition and festival in City Dionysia. This was organized possibly to foster loyalty among the tribes of Attica (recently created by Cleisthenes). The festival was created roughly around 508 B.C.

While no drama texts exist from the sixth century, we do know the names of three competitors besides Thespis: Choerilus, Pratinas, and Phrynichus. Each is credited with different innovations in the theatre. Little is known of the first two: Choerilus apparently innovated with costume and mask, and Pratinas may have invented the satyr play.

More is known about Phrynichus. He won his first competition between 511 BC and 508 BC. He produced tragedies on themes and subjects later exploited in the golden age such as the Danaids, Phoenician Women and Alcestis. He was the first poet we know of to use a historical subject - his Fall of Miletus, produced in 493-2, chronicled the fate of the town of Miletus after it was conquered by the Persians.

Herodotus reports that "the Athenians made clear their deep grief for the taking of Miletus in many ways, but especially in this: when Phrynichus wrote a play entitled “The Fall of Miletus” and produced it, the whole theatre fell to weeping; they fined Phrynichus a thousand drachmas for bringing to mind a calamity that affected them so personally, and forbade the performance of that play forever." He is also thought to be the first to use female characters (though not female performers).

Golden age: new inventions

After the Great Destruction by the Persians in 480 BC, the town and acropolis were rebuilt, and theatre became formalized and an even more major part of Athenian culture and civic pride. This century is normally regarded as the Golden Age of Greek drama. The centerpiece of the annual Dionysia, which took place once in winter and once in spring, was a competition between three tragic playwrights at the Theatre of Dionysus. Each submitted three tragedies, plus a satyr play (a comic, burlesque version of a mythological subject). Beginning in a first competition in 486 BC, each playwright also submitted a comedy.

Aristotle claimed that Aeschylus added the second actor, and that Sophocles added the third actor. Apparently the Greek playwrights never put more than three actors on stage, except in very small roles (such as Pylades in Electra). No women appeared on stage, female roles were played by men.

Violence was also never shown on stage. When somebody was about to die, they would take that person to the back to "kill" them and bring them back "dead." The other people near the stage were the chorus which consisted of about 4-8 people who would stand in the back wearing black.

Although there were many playwrights in this era, only the work of four playwrights has survived in the form of complete plays. All are from Athens. These playwrights are the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comic writer Aristophanes. Their plays, along with some secondary sources such as Aristotle, are the basis of what is known about Greek theatre. Because of this, there is much that remains unknown about theatre.

Hellenistic period

The power of Athens declined following its defeat in the Peloponnesian War against the Spartans. From that time on, the theatre started playing old plays again. Although its theatrical traditions seem to have lost their vitality, Greek theatre continued into the Hellenistic period (the period following Alexander the Great's conquests in the fourth century BC).

However, the primary Hellenistic theatrical form was not tragedy but 'New Comedy', comic farces about the lives of ordinary citizens. The only extant playwright from the period is Menander. One of New Comedy's most important contributions was its influence on Roman comedy, an influence that can be seen in the surviving works of Plautus and Terence.

Characteristics of the building

The plays had a chorus of up to 51 people, who performed the plays in verse accompanied by music. The performance space was a simple half-circular space, the orchestra, where the chorus danced and sang. The orchestra, which had an average diameter of 78 feet, was situated on a flattened terrace at the foot of a hill, the slope of which produced a natural theatron, literally "watching place".

Later, the term "theatre" came to be applied to the whole area of theatron, orchestra, and skené. The choragos was the head chorus member who could enter the story as a character able to interact with the characters of a play.

The theatres were originally built on a very large scale to accommodate the large number of people on stage, as well as the large number of people in the audience, up to fourteen thousand. Mathematics played a large role in the construction of these theatres, as their designers had to able to create acoustics in them such that the actors' voices could be heard throughout the theatre, including the very top row of seats.

The Greeks' understanding of acoustics compares very favorably with the current state of the art, as even with the invention of microphones, there are very few modern large theatres that have truly good acoustics. The first seats in Greek theatres (other than just sitting on the ground) were wooden, but around 499 BC the practice of inlaying stone blocks into the side of the hill to create permanent, stable seating became more common. They were called the "prohedria" and reserved for priests and a few most respected citizens.

In 465 BC, the playwrights began using a backdrop or scenic wall, which hung or stood behind the orchestra, which also served as an area where actors could change their costumes. It was known as the skené, or scene. The death of a character was always heard, “ob skene”, or behind the skene, for it was considered inappropriate to show a killing in view of the audience. The English word 'obscene' is a derivative of 'ob skene.' In 425 BC a stone scene wall, called a paraskenia, became a common supplement to skenes in the theatres.

A paraskenia was a long wall with projecting sides, which may have had doorways for entrances and exits. Just behind the paraskenia was the proskenion. The proskenion ("in front of the scene") was columned, and was similar to the modern day proscenium. Today's proscenium is what separates the audience from the stage. It is the frame around the stage that makes it look like the action is taking place in a picture frame.

Greek theatres also had entrances for the actors and chorus members called parodoi. The parodoi (plural of parodos) were tall arches that opened onto the orchestra, through which the performers entered. In between the parodoi and the orchestra lay the eisodoi, through which actors entered and exited.

By the end of the 5th century BC, around the time of the Peloponnesian War, the skene, the back wall, was two stories high. The upper story was called the episkenion. Some theatres also had a raised speaking place on the orchestra called the logeion.

Props

There were several prop items commonly used in Greek theatre:

machina, a crane that gave the impression of a flying actor (thus, deus ex machina).

ekeclema, a wheeled wagon used to bring dead characters into view for the audience

trap doors, or similar openings in the ground to lift people onto the stage

Pinakes, pictures hung into the scene to show a scene's scenery

Thyromata, more complex pictures built into the second-level scene (3rd level from ground)

Phallic props were used for satyr plays, symbolizing fertility in honor of Dionysis.

Writing

Tragedy and comedy were viewed as completely separate genres, and no plays ever merged aspects of the two. Satyr plays dealt with the mythological subject matter of the tragedies, but in a purely comedic manner. However, as they were written over a century after the Athenian Golden Age, it is not known whether dramatists such as Sophocles and Euripides would have thought about their plays in the same terms.

Comedy and Tragedy masks

The comedy and tragedy masks have their origin in the theatre of ancient Greece. The masks were used to show the emotions of the characters in a play, and also to allow actors to switch between roles and play characters of a different gender. The earliest plays were called Satyrs; they were parodies of myths. Their style was much like what we know as Burlesque.

The actors in these plays that had tragic roles wore a boot called a buskin that elevated them above the other actors. The actors with comedic roles only wore a thin soled shoe called a sock.

In order to play female roles, actors wore a “prosterneda” (a wooden structure in front of the chest, to imitate female breasts) and “progastreda” in front of the belly.

Melpomene is the muse of tragedy and is often depicted holding the tragic mask and wearing buskins. Thalia is the muse of comedy and is similarly associated with the mask of comedy and comic’s socks. Some people refer to the masks as “Sock and Buskin".

Democritus (Greek: ??µ????t??) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (born at Abdera in Thrace around 460 BC).

Democritus was a student of Leucippus and co-originator of the belief that all matter is made up of various imperishable, indivisible elements which he called atoma (sg. atomon) or "indivisible units", from which we get the English word atom.

It is virtually impossible to tell which of these ideas were unique to Democritus and which are attributable to

Leucippus.

The soul

Though intelligence is not allowed to explain the organization of the world, according to Democritus's father Euphodox, he does give place for the existence of a soul, which he contends is composed of exceedingly fine and spherical atoma (now called atoms, as mentioned earlier). He holds that, "spherical atoma move because it is their nature never to be still, and that as they move they draw the whole body along with them, and set it in motion." In this way, he viewed soul-atoma as being similar to fire-atoma: small, spherical, capable of penetrating solid bodies and good examples of spontaneous motion.

Democritus explained senses along these lines, as well. He hypothesized that different tastes were a result of differently shaped atoms in contact with the tongue. Smells and sounds could be explained similarly. Vision works by the eye receiving "images" or "effluences" of bodies that are emanated. He stated that, "Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, color by convention; but in reality atoms and the void alone exist." This means that senses could not provide a direct or certain knowledge of the world. In his words, "It is necessary to realize that by this principle man is cut off from the real." Later philosophers use this to assert that any reliable knowledge can be obtained, but Democritus felt differently:

There are two forms of knowledge: one legitimate, one bastard. To the sort belong all the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The legitimate is quite distinct from this. When the bastard form cannot see more minutely, nor hear nor smell nor taste nor perceive through the touch, then another finer form must be employed. - Democritus, Fragment 11, The Symmetry of Life

One view purports that this finer form is reasoning, although Democritus does not explain reason's place in the atomistic view.

Epistemology

The knowledge of truth according to Democritus is difficult, since the perception through the senses is subjective. As from the same senses derive different impressions for each individual, then through the sense-impressions we cannot judge the truth. We can only interpret the sense data through the intellect and grasp the truth, because the truth (aletheia) is at the bottom (en bythoe).

“ And again, many of the other animals receive impressions contrary to ours; and even to the senses of each individual, things do not always seem the same. Which then, of these impressions are true and which are false is not obvious; for the one set is no more true than the other, but both are alike. And this is why Democritus, at any rate, says that either there is no truth or to us at least it is not evident.”(Aristotle, Metaphysics IV, 1009 b 7).

“ Democritus .. says: By convention hot, by convention cold, but in reality atoms and void, and also in reality we know nothing, since the truth is at bottom.” (Fr. 117, Diogenes Laertius IX, 72).

There are two kinds of knowing, the one he calls “legitimate” (gnesie: genuine) and the other “bastard” (skotie: obscure). The “bastard” knowledge is concerned with the perception through the senses, therefore it is insufficient and subjective. The reason is that the sense-perception is due to the effluences of the atoms (aporroai) from the objects to the senses. When these different shapes of atoms come to us, stimulate our senses according to their shape, and there from arise our sense-impressions. (Fr. 135, Theophrastus De Sensu 49-83).

The second sort of knowledge, the “legitimate” one, can be achieved through the intellect, in other words, all the sense-data from the “bastard” must be elaborated through reasoning. In this way one can get away from the false perception of the “bastard” knowledge and grasp the truth through the inductive reasoning. Therefore, the man after taking into account the sense-impressions, can examine the causes of the appearances, draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances, and find out the causality (aetiologia) by which they are related. This is the procedure of thought from the parts to the whole or else from the apparent to non-apparent (inductive reasoning).

“ But in the Canons Democritus says there are two kinds of knowing, one through the senses and the other through the intellect. Of these he calls the one through the intellect ‘legitimate’ attesting its trustworthiness for the judgement of truth, and through the senses he names ‘bastard’ denying its inerrancy in the discrimination of what is true. To quote his actual words: Of knowledge there are two forms, one legitimate, one bastard. To the bastard belong all this group: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The other is legitimate and separate from that. Then, preferring the legitimate to the bastard, he continues: When the bastard can no longer see any smaller, or hear, or smell, or taste, or perceive by touch, but finer matters have to be examined, then comes the legitimate, since it has a finer organ of perception.” (Fr. 11 Sextus, Adv. Math. VII, 138).

“ In the Confirmations .. he says: But we in actuality grasp nothing for certain, but what shifts in accordance with the condition of the body and of the things (atoms) which enter it and press upon it.” (Fr. 9 Sextus Adv. Math. VII 136).

“ Democritus used to say that 'he prefers to discover a causality rather than become a king of Persia'.” (Fr.118)

(Excerpt from Democritus' Gnoseology 'Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments', Nikolaos Bakalis, Trafford Publishing 2005, ISBN 1-4120-4843-5.

Scientific interest

Mathematics

He was also a pioneer of mathematics and geometry in particular. We only know this through citations of his works (titled On Numbers, On Geometrics, On Tangencies, On Mapping, and On Irrationals) in other writings, since most of Democritus' body of work did not survive the Middle Ages. Democritus was among the first to observe that a cone or pyramid has one-third the volume of a cylinder or prism respectively with the same base and height.

Astronomy

Democritus was also the first philosopher we know who realized that the celestial body we perceive as the Milky Way is formed from the light of distant stars. Other philosophers, including later Aristotle, argued against this. Democritus was among the first to propose that the universe contains many worlds, some of them inhabited:

"In some worlds there is no Sun and Moon while in others they are larger than in our world and in others more numerous. In some parts there are more worlds, in others fewer (...); in some parts they are arising, in others failing. There are some worlds devoid of living creatures or plants or any moisture."

Atoms and the void

Democritus agreed that everything which is must be eternal, but denied that "the void" can be equated with nothing. This makes him the first thinker on record to argue for the existence of an entirely empty "void". In order to explain the change around us from basic, unchangeable substance he created a theory that argued that there are various basic elements which always existed but can be rearranged into many different forms.

Democritus' theory argued that atoms only had several properties, particularly size, shape, and (perhaps) weight; all other properties that we attribute to matter, such as color and taste, are but the result of complex interactions between the atoms in our bodies and the atoms of the matter that we are examining.

Furthermore, he believed that the real properties of atoms determine the perceived properties of matter--for example, something that solid is made of small, pointy atoms, while something that has water like properties is made of large, round atoms.

Some types of matter are particularly solid because their atoms have hooks to attach to each other; some are oily because they are made of very fine, small atoms which can easily slip past each other. In Democritus' own words, "By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: but in reality atoms and void."

Aristotle tells us that this theory of matter, commonly called atomism, was a reaction to Parmenides, who denied the existence of motion, change, or the void. Parmenides argued that the existence of a thing implied that it could not have "come into being", because "nothing comes from nothing". Moreover, he argued, movement was impossible, because one must move into "the void" and (as he identified "the void" with "nothing") the void does not exist and cannot be "moved into".