Socrates

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Socrates
Credited as one of the founders of Western
philosophy, Socrates is an enigmatic figure known
only through the classical accounts of his
students. Plato's dialogues are the most
comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive
from antiquity. Through his portrayal in Plato's
dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his
contribution to the field of ethics, and he lends
his name to the concepts of
Socratic irony and the Socratic method. The
latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide
range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy
in which a series of questions are asked not only
to draw individual answers, but to encourage
fundamental insight into the issue at hand.
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Jacques-Louis David (1787)
The Death of Socrates
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Socrates chose to die for several reasons He
believed such a flight would indicate a fear of
death, which he believed no true philosopher
has. If he fled Athens his teaching would fare
no better in another country as he would continue
questioning all he met and undoubtedly incur
their displeasure. 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 "social contract" with
the state, and so harm the state, an act contrary
to Socratic principle.
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The full reasoning behind his refusal to flee is
the main subject of the Crito. Socrates' death
is described at the end of Plato's Phaedo.
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 legs felt numb. After he lay 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 his death,
Socrates speaks his last words to Crito "Crito,
we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget
to pay the debt." Asclepius (uh-sklee-pee-uhs)
was the Greek god for curing illness, and it is
likely Socrates' last words meant that death is
the cureand 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.
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Plato
Plato was a Classical Greek philosopher,
mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues,
and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first
institution of higher learning in the Western
world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his
student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the
foundations of natural philosophy, science, and
Western philosophy. Plato was originally a
student of Socrates, and was as much influenced
by his thinking as by what he saw as his
teacher's unjust death.
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The Academy
Plato's School
Plato's Teacher (Mentor)
Socrates
Plato's Student
Aristotle
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Plato's Works
Socratic Dialogues
Republic
The Allegory of the Cave
Apology
Detail of Plato (left) and Aristotle (right) from
Sophist
The School of Athens
Crito
By
Raphael
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Allegory of the Cave, Myth of the Cave, Metaphor
of the Cave
Plato imagines a group of people who have lived
chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a
blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on
the wall by things passing in front of a fire
behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these
shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as
close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. He
then explains how the philosopher is like a
prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to
understand that the shadows on the wall are not
constitutive of reality at all, as he can
perceive the true form of reality rather than the
mere shadows seen by the prisoners. The Allegory
is related to Plato's Theory of Forms, wherein
Plato asserts that "Forms" (or "Ideas"), and not
the material world of change known to us through
sensation, possess the highest and most
fundamental kind of reality. Only knowledge of
the Forms constitutes real knowledge. In
addition, the allegory of the cave is an attempt
to explain the philosopher's place in society.
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Aristotle
A student of Plato, Aristotle shared his
teachers reverence for human knowledge but
revised many of Platos ideas by emphasizing
methods rooted in observation and experience.
Aristotle surveyed and systematized nearly all
the extant branches of knowledge and provided the
first ordered accounts of biology, psychology,
physics, and literary theory. In addition,
Aristotle invented the field known as formal
logic, pioneered zoology, and
addressed virtually every major philosophical
problem known during his time. Known to medieval
intellectuals as simply the Philosopher,
Aristotle is possibly the greatest thinker in
Western history, and historically, perhaps the
single greatest influence on Western intellectual
development. It has been suggested that
Aristotle was probably the last person to know
everything there was to be known in his own time.
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Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing
his belief in knowledge through empirical
observation and experience, while holding a copy
of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst
Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his
belief in The Forms.
There is nothing in the intellect, he wrote,
that was not first in the senses.
---Aristotle
The Lyceum
Aristotle's School
Aristotle's Teacher (Mentor)
Plato
Aristotle's Student
Alexander the Great
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Aristotle's Works
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle taught that to achieve the good life,
one must live a balanced life and avoid excess.
This balance, he taught, varies among different
persons and situations, and exists as a golden
mean between two vices one an excess and one a
deficiency

Poetics
De Anima (On the Soul)
Physics
Metaphysics
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Ancient Greek Theater
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The theatre of ancient Greece, or ancient Greek
drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in
ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BCE. The
city-state of Athens, which became a significant
cultural, political and military power during
this period, was its center, where it was
institutionalized as part of a festival called
the Dionysia, which honored the god Dionysus.
Tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play were the
three dramatic genres to emerge there. Athens
exported the festival to its numerous colonies
and allies in order to promote a common cultural
identity. Western theater originates in Athens
and its drama has had a significant and sustained
impact on Western culture as a whole.
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The mask is known to have been used since the
time of Aeschylus and considered to be one of the
iconic conventions of classical Greek theatre.
(thespian)
Earliest Recordrd Playwright
Thespis
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Aeschylus
The Father of Greek Tragedy
Aeschylus was the earliest of the great tragic
poets of Athens. As the predecessor of Sophocles
and Euripides, he is called the father of Greek
tragedy.
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
The Oresteia
Agamemnon
The Libation Bearers
The Eumenides
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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, and The Eumenides. Together,
these plays tell the bloody story of the family
of Agamemnon, King of Argos. 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.
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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.
Orestes, Electra and Hermes in front of
Agamemnon's tomb
Immediately, Orestes is beset by the Furies, who
avenge patricide and matricide in Greek mythology.
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The Eumenides The final play of The Oresteia
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 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 Suppliants, lauds the ideals of a
democratic Athens.
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Orestes pursued by the Erinyes) by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau Art Nouveau
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Sophocles
Among Sophocles' earliest innovations was the
addition of a third actor, which further reduced
the role of the chorus and created greater
opportunity for character development and
conflict between characters. Aristotle credits
Sophocles with the introduction of skenographia,
or scenery-painting. It was not until after the
death of the old master Aeschylus in 456 BCE that
Sophocles became the pre-eminent playwright in
Athens.
Theban Plays (Oedipus Cycle)
Antigone
Oedipus the King
Oedipus at Colonus
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Oedipus and the Sphinx, by Jean Auguste
Dominique Ingres
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Each of the plays relates to the tale of the
mythological Oedipus, who killed his father and
married his mother without knowledge that they
were his parents. His family is fated to be
doomed for three generations. In Oedipus the
King, Oedipus is the protagonist. He becomes the
ruler of Thebes after solving the riddle of the
sphinx. Before solving this riddle, Oedipus had
met at a crossroads a man accompanied by
servants Oedipus and the man fought, and Oedipus
killed the man. Oedipus continued on to Thebes to
marry the widowed Queen, who was, unknown to him,
his mother. Oedipus eventually learns that his
mother and father gave him up when he was just an
infant in fear that he would kill his father and
fulfill the Delphic Oracle's pro-phecy of him.
Upon learning of the completed prophecy, his
mother, Jocasta, realizes the incest and commits
suicide Oedipus, in horror of what he has seen,
blinds himself and leaves Thebes. The couple had
four children, who figure in the remaining plays
of the set.
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In Oedipus at Colonus, the banished Oedipus and
his daughters Antigone and Ismene arrive at the
town of Colonus where they encounter Theseus,
King of Athens. Oedipus dies and strife begins
between his sons Polyneices and Eteocles. In
Antigone the protagonist is Oedipus' daughter.
Antigone is faced with the choice of allowing her
brother Polyneices' body to remain unburied,
outside the city walls, exposed to the ravages of
wild animals, or to bury him and face death. The
king of the land, Creon, has forbidden the burial
of Polyneices for he was a traitor to the city.
Antigone decides to bury his body and face the
consequences of her actions. Creon sentences her
to death. Eventually, Creon is convinced to free
Antigone from her punishment, but his decision
comes too late and Antigone commits suicide. Her
suicide triggers the suicide of two others close
to King Creon his son, Haemon, who was to wed
Antigone, and his wife who commits suicide after
losing her only surviving son.
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Euripides was the youngest of the three great
tragedians of classical Athens (the other two
being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Euripides'
greatest works include
Alcestis
Medea
Trojan Women
The Bacchae
Also considered notable is Cyclops, the only
complete satyr play to have survived.
Euripides
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Euripedes' Medea opens in a state of conflict.
Jason has abandoned his wife, Medea, along with
their two children. He hopes to advance his
station by remarrying with Glauce, the daughter
of Creon, king of Corinth, the Greek city where
the play is set. All the events of play proceed
out of this initial dilemma, and the involved
parties become its central characters. Outside
the royal palace, a nurse laments the events that
have lead to the present crisis. After a long
series of trials and adventures, which ultimately
forced Jason and Medea to seek exile in Corinth,
the pair had settled down and established their
family, achieving a degree of fame and
respectability. Jason's recent abandonment of
that family has crushed Medea emotionally, to the
degree that she curses her own existence, as well
as that of her two children. Fearing a possible
plot of revenge, Creon banishes Medea and her
children from the city. After pleading for mercy,
Medea is granted one day before she must leave,
during which she plans to complete her quest for
"justice"--at this stage in her thinking, the
murder of Creon, Glauce, and Jason. Jason accuses
Medea of overreacting.
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By voicing her grievances so publicly, she has
endangered her life and that of their children.
He claims that his decision to remarry was in
everyone's best interest. Medea finds him
spineless, and she refuses to accept his token
offers of help. Appearing by chance in Corinth,
Aegeus, King of Athens, offers Medea sanctuary in
his home city in exchange for her knowledge of
certain drugs that can cure his sterility. Now
guaranteed an eventual haven in Athens, Medea has
cleared all obstacles to completing her revenge,
a plan which grows to include the murder of her
own children the pain their loss will cause her
does not outweigh the satisfaction she will feel
in making Jason suffer. For the balance of the
play, Medea engages in a ruse she pretends to
sympathize with Jason (bringing him into her
confidence) and offers his wife "gifts," a
coronet and dress. Ostensibly, the gifts are
meant to convince Glauce to ask her father to
allow the children to stay in Corinth. The
coronet and dress are actually poisoned, however,
and their delivery causes Glauce's death. Seeing
his daughter ravaged by the poison, Creon chooses
to die by her side by dramatically embracing her
and
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absorbing the poison himself. A messenger
recounts the gruesome details of these deaths,
which Medea absorbs with cool attentiveness. Her
earlier state of anxiety, which intensified as
she struggled with the decision to commit
infanticide, has now given way to an assured
determination to fulfill her plans. Against the
protests of the chorus, Medea murders her
children and flees the scene in a dragon-pulled
chariot provided by her grandfather, the Sun-God.
Jason is left cursing his lot his hope of
advancing his station by abandoning Medea and
marrying Glauce, the conflict which began the
play, has been destroyed, and everything he
values has been lost in the deaths that conclude
the tragedy.
Medea kills her son, red-figure amphora, ca.
330 BC, Louvre
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Title Jason and Medea Artist John William
Waterhouse Painting Date 1907 Pre-Raphaelite
Title Medea Artist Eugene Delacroix Painting
Date 1838 Location Louvre, Paris
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Known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of
Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to
recreate the life of ancient Athens more
convincingly than any other author. His powers of
ridicule were feared and acknowledged by
influential contemporaries - Plato singled out
Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander
contributing to the trial and execution of
Socrates although other satirical playwrights had
caricatured the philosopher.
Lysistrata
The Clouds
The Birds
Aristophanes
The Frogs
The Wasps
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Terence
Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic,
of north African descent. His comedies were
performed for the first time around 170160 BC,
and he died young, probably in Greece or on his
way back to Rome. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman
senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave,
educated him and later on, impressed by his
abilities, freed him. All of the six plays
Terence wrote have survived.
Adelphoe (The Brothers) (160 BC) Andria (The Girl
from Andros) (166 BC) Eunuchus (161 BC) Heauton
Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor) Hecyra (The
Mother-in-Law) (165 BC) Phormio (161 BC) Famous
quotes from Andria Moderation in all things
Charity begins at home
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Herodotus
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian
who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded
as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He
was the first historian known to collect his
materials systematically, test their accuracy to
a certain extent and arrange them in a
well-constructed and vivid narrative. He is
almost exclusively known for writing The
Histories, a record of his "inquiries" into the
origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred
in 490 and 480-479 BCespecially 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. Although some of his
stories were not completely accurate, he claimed
that he was reporting only what had been told to
him.
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Thucydides and his immediate predecessor
Herodotus both exerted a significant influence on
Western historiography.
Herodotus
The Histories (Persian War)
Thucydides
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author of
the History of the Peloponnesian War, which
recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta
and Athens to the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has
been dubbed the father of "scientific history"
due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering
and analysis in terms of cause and effect without
reference to intervention by the gods, as
outlined in his introduction to his work.
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Hippocrates
Hippocrates (ca. 460 BC ca. 370 BC) was an
ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles
(Classical Athens), and is considered one of the
most outstanding figures in the history of
medicine. He is referred to as the Western father
of medicine in recognition of his lasting
contributions to the field as the founder of the
Hippocratic School of medicine. This intellectual
school revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece,
establishing it as a discipline distinct from
other fields that it had traditionally been
associated with (notably theurgy and philosophy),
thus making medicine a profession.
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Galen of Pergamum
Galen (born 129died 216) was Arguably the most
accomplished of all medical researchers of
antiquity, Galen contributed greatly to the
understanding of numerous scientific disciplines.
He became chief physician to the gladiators in
157. Later, in Rome, he became a friend of Marcus
Aurelius and physician to Commodus. Galen saw
anatomy as fundamental and, based on animal
experiments, described cranial nerves and heart
valves and showed that arteries carry blood, not
air. However, in extending his findings to human
anatomy he was often in error. Following
Hippocratic concepts, he believed in three
connected body systemsbrain and nerves for
sensation and thought, heart and arteries for
life energy, and liver and veins for nutrition
and growthand four humours (body fluids)blood,
yellow bile, black bile, and phlegmthat needed
to be in balance. A revival of interest in the
16th century led to new anatomical
investigations, which caused the overthrow of his
ideas when Andreas Vesalius found anatomical
errors and William Harvey correctly explained
blood circulation.
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Archimedes
Archimedes (290280BC212/211BC) was a legendary
Greek inventor and mathematician. His principal
discoveries were the Archimedes screw, an
ingenious device for raising water, and the
hydrostatic principle, or Archimedes'principle(a
body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force
equal to the weight of the displaced fluid). His
mathematical proofs show both boldly original
thought and a rigor meeting the highest standards
of contemporary geometry.
In his native city, Syracuse, he was known as a
genius at devising siege and countersiege
weapons. In one story, he was asked by Hiero II
to determine whether a crown was pure gold or was
alloyed with silver. (Continued next slide)
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Archimedes was perplexed, until one day,
observing the overflow of water in his bath, he
suddenly realized that since gold is more dense
(i.e., has more weight per volume) than silver, a
given weight of gold represents a smaller volume
than an equal weight of silver and that a given
weight of gold would therefore displace less
water than an equal weight of silver. Delighted
at his discovery, he ran home without his
clothes, shouting "Eureka," which means "I have
found it." He found that Hiero's crown displaced
more water than an equal weight of gold, thus
showing that the crown had been alloyed with
silver (or another metal less dense than gold).
In the other story, he is said to have told
Hiero, in illustration of the principle of the
lever, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move
the world." Archimedes' many contributions to
mathematics and mechanics include calculating the
value of p and devising a mathematical
exponential system to express extremely large
numbers (he said he could numerically represent
the grains of sand that would be needed to fill
the universe).
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A Boeotian of aristocratic birth, Pindar was
educated in neighboring Athens and lived much of
his life in Thebes. Almost all his early poems
have been lost, but his reputation was probably
established by his later hymns in honor of the
gods. He developed into the greatest lyric poet
of ancient Greece, respected throughout the Greek
world. Of his 17 volumes, comprising almost every
genre of choral lyric, only four have survived
complete, and those lack his musical settings.
The extant poems, probably representing his
masterpieces, are odes commissioned to celebrate
triumphs in various Hellenic athletic games.
Lofty and religious in tone, they are noted for
their complexity, rich metaphors, intensely
emotive language.
Pindar (518-438 BC), Greek poet, generally
regarded as the greatest lyric poet in Greek
literature
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The term Pindaric ode refers to a verse form used
primarily in England in the 17th and 18th
century. The form, based on a somewhat faulty
understanding of the metrical pattern used by
Pindar, originated with Abraham Cowley in his
Pindarique Odes (1656) and was later used by John
Dryden, among others. It is characterized by
irregularity in the rhyme scheme, length of the
stanzas, and number of stresses in a line.
Quotes "A graceful and honorable old age is the
childhood of immortality."Learn what you are
and be such.""Whatever is beautiful is
beautiful by necessity.""Not every truth is the
better for showing its face undisguised and
often silence is the wisest thing for a man to
heed.""The days that are still to come are the
wisest witnesses."