Classical Greece

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Classical Greece
Living Creatively
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What Does Classical Mean?

• "Classical" means
• Standard against which others are judged or
  evaluated
• Greatest
• Enduring
• Stylistic form (music, art, etc)
• Stylistic period (e.g. after Baroque)
• Golden age of a civilization
• Nearly all senses of the word Classical can be
  found in Classical Greece.

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Politics

• Beginning
• Revolt of Greeks in Ionia (coast of Asia) against
  the Persians
• Eventual defeat of the Persians
• City-states were free and began to expand
• Athens
• Major seaport, expanded its navy and trading zone
• Delian League
• Began to dominate trading cities around the
  Aegean Sea and the Black Sea known as the
• Gave the economic power needed to support
  creativity
• Athens was the center of creativity in the Greek
  Classical Period

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Politics

• Pericles
• Ideal ruler of a city-state
• Created an atmosphere where drama, music, art,
  architecture, and literature could flourish
• Great public works
• Acropolis Parthenon (the Temple to Athena)
• Required architects, sculptors, and carvers

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Pericles' Funeral Oration

• Our constitution does not copy the laws of
  neighbouring states we are rather a pattern to
  others than imitators ourselves. Its
  administration favours the many instead of the
  few this is why it is called a democracy The
  freedom which we enjoy in our government extends
  also to our ordinary life Further, we provide
  plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself
  from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices
  all the year round, and the elegance of our
  private establishments forms a daily source of
  pleasure and helps to banish the spleen while
  the magnitude of our city draws the produce of
  the world into our harbour, so that to the
  Athenian the fruits of other countries are as
  familiar a luxury as those of his own Nor are
  these the only points in which our city is worthy
  of admiration. We cultivate refinement without
  extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy
  wealth we employ more for use than for show, and
  place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning
  to the fact but in declining the struggle against
  it. Our public men have, besides politics, their
  private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary
  citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of
  industry, are still fair judges of public
  matters for, unlike any other nation, regarding
  him who takes no part in these duties not as
  unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able
  to judge at all events if we cannot originate,
  and, instead of looking on discussion as a
  stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it
  an indispensable preliminary to any wise action
  at all.
• Pericles' Funeral Oration (Thucydides,
  Peloponnesian War 2.34-46. Trans. Richard
  Crawley.)

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Politics

• Pericles (cont.)
• Sponsored festivals
• Festival of Dionysus
• Arts were promoted
• Drama competitions
• War
• Sparta and Corinth attacked Athens
• Peloponnesian War
• Lasted 27 years
• Athens was defeated
• Creativity did not cease

Pericles in battle attire
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Politics
What is the effect of war on creativity?

• Helps Creativity
• Weaponry is advanced
• Support functions develop faster
• Production methods are improved
• Economies boom, which eventually support the arts

• Hinders Creativity
• Leisure time is reduced
• Creative people, established or potential, are
  killed
• Money focused on war instead of the arts

War and creativity can co-exist and creativity
may even be helped by the war, but the breadth of
creativity is reduced.
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Daily Life

• Adult Males 50,000
• No daily toil of agriculture because the land was
  not well suited for it
• All menial work was conducted by slaves
• Women raised the children and ran the household
• Males had little to do except be creative
• Women 50,000
• Ruler of the house
• Not able to participate in government
• Protected by law
• Slaves 200,000
• Did menial work
• Foreigners

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Daily Life

• Greeks had few material possessions
• Houses were simple
• Food was simple
• Religion was important
• Common temple rituals
• Seeking favor of the gods
• Loyalty in worshiping gods of the polis

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Drama

• Festivals of Dionysus (God of Wine)
• Playwrights submit 4 plays for competition
• 3 were tragedies
• 1 was a satyr
• Competition was fierce, the winner had a nice
  income for the ensuing year and funding for the
  next play
• Method of presentation
• Actors with masks
• Chorus
• Acoustics are amazingly good
• Themes
• Trojan war characters and their descendents
• Ethics from Heroic period

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Drama

• Tragedy
• Genre invented by Thespis (543 BC) where the word
  Thespians originated
• The most common of the genrés
• Of about 1000 written, only 31 remain all by
  Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
• The change that occurs due to difficulty
• Not about a person dying

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Drama

• Aeschylus (525-456 BC)
• Aware of human weakness
• Discusses pain and suffering
• In the end, justice triumphs
• Oresteia trilogy about the House of Atria
• Agamemnon
• The Libation Bearers
• The Eumenides (The Furies)

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Drama

• Sophocles (496-406 BC)
• Friend of Pericles
• Great prestige and wealth
• Wrote 123 plays, but only 7 exist
• Sophoclean tragic heroes
• Have tragic defects
• Are likeable and we feel sorry for them
• Introduced the use of multiple actors
• Two most famous works
• Antigone, tradition and loyalty to king
• Oedipus the King, Good intentions and fate

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Drama Sophocles

• Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex)
• Epitome of Greek tragedy
• Fate has powerful hold on humans
• Before his birth, destined to kill father and
  marry mother (revealed by oracle)
• Inherent moral outrage of marrying mother and/or
  killing father
• Tragic Flaw?

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Drama Sophocles

• Antigone
• Thebes attacked by Polynices (son of Oedipus)
• Polynices was fighting his brother
• Both were killed in battle
• Creon, the new king, forbade Polynices burial
• Antigone, Polynices sister, buried him
• Antigone was condemned to death
• Creons son was engaged to Antigone
• Creon revoked his penalty, but only after
  Antigone and Creon's son had committed suicide

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Drama

• Euripedes (484-406 BC)
• Expressed disillusion because of the war
• Acknowledged powers of gods in fate, but did not
  respect them
• Characters pushed to the limits of endurance and
  had determination and wit
• Deep hatred for war
• His play Medea most clearly illustrates Euripedes
  style and feelings

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Drama Euripedes

• Medea
• Barbarian princess (on the coast of the Black
  Sea)
• Helped Jason find the golden fleece against her
  father's wishes
• They married and had two sons
• Medea was ostracized for marrying foreigner and
  had to flee with Jason to Argos (in Greece)
• Jason later married a younger woman
• Medea sent magic robe to the bride causing the
  bride to burn to death
• In further retribution against Jason, Medea also
  killed her two sons

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Drama

• Aristophanes (450-385 BC)
• Father of Greek comedy
• This genré ends happily
• It is not necessarily funny
• Themefutility of war
• The Birds
• Lysistrata
• Poked fun directly at Sophocles and Aeschylus
• Creative Project Play about Aristophanes in the
  BYU library who meets a young woman who agrees to
  write a play in which he can demonstrate his
  superiority to other Greek playwrights

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Music

• Musical scales (Pythagoras)
• Was the beginnings of Middle-Age music
• Opera compositions were motivated by Greek dramas
• Lyrics stems from when the Lyre accompanied
  during a chant or song
• Harmony was considered to be when instruments
  and voices were all in the same rhythm and
  overall pattern
• Instruments Lyre, Cymbal, Tambourine, Pipe
• Aristotle and Plato believed that music was an
  important element of the ideal state

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Art

• Pre-classical
• Simple pottery
• Geometric designs
• Migration to human forms (perfect symmetry)
• Sculpture-generalized to be symbolic of all
  humans
• Relation to Forms
• Generic
• Without dramatic expression
• Lacked realism

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Art

• Classical Sculpture
• Great advances
• Technical ability
• Reality
• Perception of inner qualities
• Greek principles important
• Exact proportionGolden mean
• Phidiasgreatest Greek sculptor
• Parthenon, Temples in Olympia

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Sculpture

• Vases
• Archaic period into the classical
• Why painted?
• My Greek vase

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Architecture

• The Classical Greek architecture has been
  repeated many times throughout history
• Romans
• Renaissance
• Neoclassical period
• Governmental settings (Washington D.C.)
• Obvious elements
• Pillars
• Rectangle building that was based on the Golden
  Mean

Doric Ionic Corinthian
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ArchitectureNomenclature
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Architecture
The Acropolis Parthenon
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Architecture

• The Parthenon
• Erected by Pericles as a tribute to Athena
• Funding from Delian League
• Phidias was the artistic director
• Architect understood how exact proportions are
  portrayed by the human eye
• Columns are thinner at the top
• Tip towards each other
• Corners thicker
• Floor is convex

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Architecture

• The Parthenon (cont.)
• Single main room-statue of the goddess
• Later classical period lacked innovation and
  boldness of earlier period

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Caryatids on the Acropolis
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History

• Herodotus (484-420 BC)
• Father of History
• Tried to record coherent history
• Traveled widely
• Books called Researches
• Made judgments based on humanness
• Most writing were about Persian wars

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History

• Thucydides (470-405 BC)
• Prominent soldier/historian
• Removed from command for failure in battle
• Inserted important speeches into history
• Criticized because he could not have heard all
  these speeches
• His history ended before the war
• Probably died in war

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Medicine

• Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.)
• Natural explanations should be sought for natural
  phenomena
• Established rules (oath)

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Medicine

• Hippocrates
• Separated medicine from philosophy
• Observed the importance of rest
• Resorted to surgery only in an emergency
• Studied drugs
• Studied hereditary nature of diseases

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Medicine

• Four humors, the organs of origin,
  characteristics
• Blood (sanguine/confident)
• Heart
• Hot, moist
• Phlegm (phlegmatic/slow)
• Brain
• Moist, cold
• Black bile (melancholy/sad)
• Spleen or kidneys
• Cold, dry
• Yellow bile (choleric/angry)
• Liver
• Dry, hot
• Health comes when humors are in proper balance

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Medicine

• Found the blood flows into and out of the heart
• Discovered the nervous system
• Identified the brain as center of intelligence
• Surgery improved
• Learned the benefits of some drugs

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Medicine

• Three different medical sects emerged
• Rationalists
• Empiricists
• Methodists

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Creativity

• Why was there a sudden burst of creativity in
  Athens?
• Past Greek history developed a culture of
  creative inquiry
• Greek language and alphabet allowed a higher
  level of education to greater number of people
• Athenss government that empowered the people
• Middle classs involvement with the government
  they were the artisans, technicians and thinkers
  that led in creativity
• Acceptance of the rule of law gave overall
  stability
• Large slave population
• Government support of the arts
• General populations support of the arts

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• Leisure is the basis of culture
• - Aristotle

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Thank You