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The
Early Poets (750-600 BC)
The
Thinkers of Ionia and Magna Graecia (600-450 BC)
Periclean
Athens (450-325 BC)
Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle
Ancient
Greek History: General Sources
THE EARLY POETS
(750 to 600 BC)
Poetic compiler of Greek traditions about the Olympian Gods (supposedly in ascendancy over the pre-Greek mysteries: Dionysian, Orphic, Elusian) Homer (700s BC?)
Homer's major works or writings:
The Iliad (MIT)
The Odyssey (MIT)Links to other information on Homer:
Homer (Perseus Encyclopedia)
Background to Homer and Epic Poetry (John Burrough's Classics Department)
Iliad: Genre‚ Epic (Brooklyn College: Roger Dunkle)A systematizer of the (more orderly) Olympian pantheon Hesiod (c. 700 BC)
Work and Days (Sunsite)
Theogony (Sunsite)Hesiod (Perseus Encyclopedia)Sappho (c. 620-565 BC)
THE THINKERS OF IONIA AND MAGNA GRAECIA
(600 to 450 BC)
Thales of Miletus (ca. 624-546 BC)
Thales is usually thought of as the "Father" of Western philosophy. For reasons not known to us (until the time of Plato in the late 5th century BC we have no actual writings of the earliest Greek philosophers; only bits and pieces about them told by others--others not necessarily sympathetic observers!) Thales was not content with the idea that things are the way they are because of the doings of the gods.
Thales was well versed in the scientific learning of the East--and probably travelled to Egypt to study the mathematics, geometry and astronomy of the Egyptians. He put his learning to work as a military engineer--and was fabled for his scientific genius. He predicted a solar eclipse, measured the shadows of objects (from pyramids to ships) to estimate their distances or locations. He even diverted a river in order to better position the Milesian army against an enemy city.
But it is in the area of philosphical thought that Thales is best remembered. Thales was interested in discovering, through the process of rational enquiry, the essence or substance of all matter. He looked out on the world as a by-product of some material substance--a single substance which by its own makeup or inner mechanics could bring into being all other things.
For him that single substance was water. Perhaps such a conclusion was inevitable for one who grew up near the sea and who undoubtedly often watched the power of the clouds above and the waves below during a tempest. But remember also that the ancient world widely shared the view that creation emerged from a watery void.
In any case, it is important to understand how significant his probing into the essence of things was. He may not have got the right answers (though he was not really so far off in his view of water as the original substance)--but he was asking what modern science even today considers the right questions.
Thus in ascribing the dynamics of the universe to water as the formative substance, rather than to the gods as the formative powers, he became our first known "materialist" or "secularist."
Thales of Miletus (St. Andrews)
Thales (636-546) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Thales' rational inquiry was taken up by Anaximander, a fellow citizen of Miletus and reported by some to have been a student of Thales.' In many ways he continued the intellectual tradition of Thales, becoming enlightened in a number of the sciences of the day. He is reported to have written down his vast learning on a wide range of subjects--though we have today only a small portion of his work, Concerning Nature. Anaximander of Miletus (ca. 610 - 547 BC)
We know also however that Anaximander objected to Thales' theory--on the basis that water could not be the formative substance of life and yet at the same time one of its end products.
Anaximander speculated that the original substance of the universe was some kind of primal, formless material which is found infinitely throughout creation--the material source of all created things (including water) and the material into which the universe will eventually return.
He also speculated that the world was the result of a process of moving forces, a process that holds the universe steadily on its course--and leads it into the future. He saw this process as one ultimately of moving all things to maintain or restore a primal balance, one in which the multitude of forces in the cosmos work in the long run to counterbalance each in order to produce a basic harmony. Hot balances cold, dry balances wet, etc. to provide a cosmic harmony.
But the actual dynamic of life involves a separation of these opposites--a falling into their particulars (an act of cosmic "injustice"), from which then a basic urge toward harmony (a return toward "justice") moves them forward. This is the cause of motion or action in the universe: the urge to reharmonize.
He also looked at his universe in terms of its natural history: things as we know them today are a result of this process--this movement forward of all things from one state or condition to the next. Human beings evolved rather more recently in the long natural history of the cosmos.
Anaximander really was raising the "teleological" issue in philosophy. He looked at creation, at life, from the point of view of where did things (material things) come from, why were they here, and what was their destiny. He too rejected the notion that this was all a matter of the doings of the gods on Olympus. And he too, like Thales, surmised that the vital forces of life are somehow contained within the "stuff" of life itself. He, like Thales, was a materialist--but also an evolutionist!
Anaximandros (Hanover College)
Anaximander (611-547 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Anaximenes was reportedly a pupil of Anaximander's and the third in the trio of great Milesian philosophers. In a way, he stepped past the thinking of Anaximander and reached back to the line of thinking of Thales--in his quest for an actual physical source of all things. Anaximenes of Miletus (flourished in mid 500s BC?)
Anaximenes concluded that the primal substance of life was air or mist. It could be both the source of all things, and yet one of the created things itself--because of its power to change form. Here too, it was probably natural for Anaximenes to accord air the honor of being the primal substance or underlying material of all things. Greeks commonly understood air to be the "breath" of life, the source of the soul, and so it was logical to think that air might be the primal substance of all things, the soul of all life.
In any case, he argued that through a process of becoming more or less dense, air could change form. Thus fire was air in its most rarified form. The natural progress from there as air thickened was: wind, clouds, water, earth, and stone. Also, the soul quality of air (as the Greeks understood it) could also explain movement, events, life itself.
All in all, Anaximines' theory of the substance of life seems more complete than his Milesian predecessors. It was truly a great intellectual accomplishment--though being founded on a faulty premise, we find it interesting only for its methodology and not for its conclusions.
Anaximenes (d. 502 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 580-500 BC)
With Pythagoras, we shift from the East of the Greek world all the way over to the Western part of it--to Southern Italy. Actually Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos, just offshore from Miletus and so he would have been familiar with some of the philosophical doings in and around Ionia. He may have even been a student of Anaximander's.
But Pythagoras was a very original thinker and departed dramatically from the Ionian philosophers in his reflections on life and the universe. Perhaps this was because (as it seems) he traveled and studied extensively in the East, where he might have picked up his more mystical outlook on life.
But in any case, he eventually left Samos (he disliked the politics of his homeland) and made the southern Italian port city of Croton his new home. There he founded a school--one which was to have a deep influence on Greek culture.
Pythagoras is a hard figure to pin down. He was a mystic and his work really was intended for only the "initiates" of his school. It was secret stuff! Further, his work was carried forward by his "devotees"--and probably much of their developmental thinking got mixed in with his to give us "Pythagorean" philosophy.
Also, we can't tell whether he was strongly influence by Orphism--or if Orphism was strongly influenced by him! For it was through Pythagoras that Orphism seems to have gained respectability among the more prominent Greeks--through whom then much of what we know about Orphism was transmitted on to us today.
In any case, Pythagorism forms the polar opposite of the materialistic philosophy of the Ionian philosophers we just outlined above. While the Ionians were looking out into the world around them to find the primal causes of life, Pythagoras was looking beyond--to causes "higher" than merely the surrounding world of material substance. Pythagoras was no materialist. He was no secularist. He was a mystic.
He saw the grand order of the universe not in terms of physical substance or matter--but in the beautiful proportions and mathematical qualities that seemed to stand behind all physical matter. He saw the "secrets" of the universe not in what he observed "out there" but how what was "out there" struck him within. He was interested in probing the mind's understanding, interpretation, or reasoning in response to that physical world.
Here within human consciousness was where true reality--higher reality--was encountered. Here is where, according to Pythagoras, we truly met God. Here is where we in fact became God. To look for these hidden harmonies, these mathematical qualities inhering in life, these abstract formulations of the universe, was a divine enterprise. It linked us up with the eternal power of the heavens.
Thus Pythagoras plunged into study of the world around him--and came up with some of the most astute observations about the structure of the universe. We remember him for discovering the formulas for computing the sides of a right triangle; we remember him for uncovering a number of basic rules that geometry rests on; we remember him for discovering the mathematical rules for the musical harmonies or scales; we remember him for arguing that the universe is a perfect sphere--as well as the sun, moon and earth.
Obviously Pythagoras was not able to reduce all dynamics in life to mathematical formulations. But he certainly laid out the case that the universe could and should be studied on these terms.
Western science would be impossible without this understanding. True--he was pursuing a mystical agenda in doing so. But so is science--though it pretends not to be doing so!
It is hard to appreciate fully the impact of Pythagoras on Western thought. Mostly we look back to Plato and Aristotle as the heavy-weights of Western philosophy. But these two philosophers, coming over a century and a half later, were really only building on--or reacting to--the intellectual edifice which Pythagoras himself had laid out for Greek civilization. The West owes Pythagoras much--very much.
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans (Hanover College)
Pythagoras (fl. 530 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Pythagoras and His Scholarly Society
Pythagoras of Samos (St. Andrews)An Ionian from Ephesus, Heraclitus continued the quest for the material origins of life--yet holding all the while a mystical view of life. Heraclitus (ca. 535-475 BC)
Heraclitus concluded that fire was the primordial element of an eternal, uncreated earth (it has always existed!).
But he took up some of the logic of Anaximander in his view of the essense and the dynamics of things. To Heraclitus, all things come into existence by being separated from something else. Yet all is structurally one--at least potentially so. This structural unity he called the Logos. It is a higher order of being than the world of separate things. The Logos is what draws all things back to unity.
What we see in the world is perpetual flux. Things are ever changing. Nothing is permanent. They are constantly struggling to achieve a unity through the combination of their opposites. They are drawn forward by the Logos. Yet because things balance, the movement forward of one thing produces the retreat of its opposite. This will always be--as it has always been since the beginning.
It is this movement, this flux, that constantly changes things, thus causing day to turn to night, winter to turn to summer, fire to turn to water (as he understood it).
Peri phuseos (On Nature)Heraclitus: The Fire Priest
Heraclitus (535-475 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)A major shaper of the Eleatic (Graecia Minor: Southern Italy) philosophy which contended that behind changing appearances stands a pure, unified, permanent or unchanging Reality which our thoughts and logic point to. Parmenides of Elea (fl. early 5th cent BC)
Parmenides held that the actual observable world is merely a dim and broken reflection of this pure, holistic Reality. This Reality is always present with us: the past is a merely present memory only. The notion of of determining some distant origin of life is itself absurd, because the material of life could not have come into being out of nowhere; indeed, Reality always is.
On Nature (Randall)Parmenides (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)A philosopher-scientist or naturalist living in Graecia-Minor: Sicily. Empedocles (ca. 495-435 BC)
He posited the four-substance theory of life's fundamental structuring: earth, air, fire and water--shaped into various natural forms through the opposing forces of love and strife. He combined his naturalistic observations with somewhat mystical observations (perhaps under Pythagorean influence) to leave an impressive intellectual legacy within Graecia-Minor.
Empedocles (fl. 450 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Not much is known directly about Leucippus except that he lived in Thrace, in the town of Abdera, and was Democritus' teacher and, with him, developed the the atomic theory of matter: namely, that all material forms are the result of various combinations of small, indivisible particles called atoms. Leucippus (ca. 480-420 BC)
Leucippus (St. Andrews)
Leucippus (fifth century BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Democritus was undoubtedly the most brilliant of the Greek natural philosophers. He was a contemporary of Socrates--but chose to remain in his native Thrace where he grew up and studied under Leucippus. Here he was closer to the older philosophical environment of the materialists--of whom he was undoubtedly the greatest of all. Indeed, even in his own time he was considered the equal to Plato in intellectual stature and clarity of thought. Unfortunately we have none of his own works today. But he was reported so widely by others that we have a fairly clear understanding of his incredible thinking.
Democritus (ca. 460-370 BC)
We know that he came from a very respected (and wealthy) family from Abdera in Thrace. Democritus was well traveled (certainly to Egypt and possibly Babylon) and well educated in astronomy and mathematics.
His great importance lies in his development (along with his teacher, Leucippus) of the atomist understanding of the cosmos. According to Democritus' atomist theory, the world is comprised of invisibly minute, solid, unchanging and eternal atomic (atomon: indivisible) particles suspended in a airy void. Those two things, atoms and the void, is all that truly "exists." All else, particularly the things that we are able to actually see--visible matter--is merely a result of various combinations of atoms as they move mechanically through the void.
Atoms do not come into being or go out of being. They are eternal in existence. What changes, what comes into life and what eventually wears down and dies, producing the vibrant or "lively" qualities that we recognize as the nature of all living things, is simply the way these atoms are constantly rearranged to produce the action or "motion" we observe about such life.
Also eternal are the principles undergirding such motion or such rearrangement of these atoms. That is, the quality of motion itself is also eternal. Thus the basic "stuff" of reality is eternal: atoms and their motion. What changes is the resultant visible structures that we observe about life.
Such a materialist vision of life necessarily raised the question of the origins and characterof human consciousness--of the existence of the soul (nous). Democritus' answer was that the human soul too is made up of atoms, atoms of a certain variety that are particularly lively and easily airborne--entering the body in our breathing.
Human death occurs--as we well know--when a person draws his last breath. Thus to Democritus, breath or pneuma was that special conveyance of life that gave a person a living spirit. (the Greek for air, breath and spirit are all pneuma). At death all of that breaks down, disintegrates. The vital qualities of a human life simply cease when no more breathe is drawn into the body. There is no eternal nous that lives on after death.
Nor was there in the theories of Democritus the existence of an eternal Nous that was Divine, that constituted anything we might call God. His theories required no such ingredient for them to function properly. What undergirded the working of his hypothesis about life, about the cosmos, was simply the eternal laws of nature which directed the atoms in their movement from one structure or arrangement to the next.
In short, his theory was entirely mechanistic.
He was also an embryologist, carefully studying the growth and behavior of biological life. He was also an evolutionist--in that he saw human form and life developing originally out of the structure of water and mud--like worms! (the ancient presumption about worms was that they grew out of the ground the way a plant does, drawing on the earth to supply it with the building blocks of stalks, leaves, flowers, fruit.)
In so many ways he anticipated--by thousands of years--the direction modern science would take in its development within the West!
Democritus (St. Andrews)
Democritus (460-370 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Democritus (UMich)
PERICLEAN ATHENS
(450 to 325 BC)
Pericles (490-429 BC)
Although we could not call Pericles a major philosopher (more a statesman or politician), it is important to acknowledge him in this section for having given definition to the great age of Athenian cultural leadership. Indeed that it why this period (450 BC) of Greek history--marking the rise of this Athenian leadership-- is commonly known as the Age of Pericles.
Funeral Oration (Melian Dialogue) (Knox: Boise State)Aeschylus (525-456 BC)
Pindar (c. 520-440 BC)
Anaxagoras was an Ionian who moved to Athens where he lived under the protection of Pericles and helped to build up Athenian philosophy. Anaxagoras (ca. 500-428 BC)
He speculated that the sun is a red-hot stone (not the god Helios), as are the distant stars. The moon merely reflects the sun's light. He offered a mechanistic explanation of most things (in anticipation of modern science) but reserved the view that the Eternal Mind (nous) is what activates living things.
Anaxagoras (Hanover College)
Anaxagoras (500-572 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Sophocles (c. 495-405 BC)
Oedipus the King (D.W. Myatt)
Oe dipus at Colonus (gopher: ccat/UPenn)
Antigone (MIT) Antigone (D.W. Myatt)
Ajax (MIT)
Electra (MIT)
Philoctetes (MIT)
The Trachiniae (MIT)Sophocles (Leigh Denault)
Sophocles(Angela DeHaven)
Sophocles (495--406 BC) (Great Books Index)Sophist. Quest for absolute truth leads only to contradictions; all truth is relative, probabilistic. "Things" exist for our understanding only through the words we give them (abstractions). All religions and philosophies are merely social conventions useful to good order (the heart of the Sophists' philosophy). The absolute measure of the good in anything is in its relative utility to someone. Knowledge is valuable in its ability to bring success to human effort--as in public affairs. A terribly modern philosopher! Protagoras (ca. 490-421 BC)
Protagoras (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Herodotus, as historian of the Peloponesian War, attributed the war's outcome to the interventions of the Olympian gods. Herodotus (ca. 484-425 BC)
The History of Herodotus (440 BC) (MIT)Her odotus (Perseus Encyclopedia)Euripides (c. 480-405 BC)
Thucydides (c. 470-400 BC)
History of the Peloponesian War (431 BC) (MIT)Th ucydides (Perseus Encyclopedia)
Lecture on Thucydides (Malaspina: McNeil)"father" of medicine Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BC)
Titles by Hippocrates (MIT)
The Hippocratic Oath and Law (Wiretap)Aristophanes (c. 448-385 BC)
Greek general and historian. Xenophon (ca. 430-350 B.C.)
Agesilaus (Perseus)
Anabasis (Perseus)
Apology (Perseus)
Cavalry Commander (Perseus)
Constitu tion of the Lacedaimonians (Perseus)
Cyropaedi a(Perseus)
Economics(Perseus)
Hellenica (Perseus)
Hiero(Perseus)
Horsemansh ip (Perseus)
Hunting( Perseus)
Memorabili a (Perseus)
Symposium (Perseus)
Ways and Means (Perseus)Xen ophon (Perseus Encyclopedia)The great Athenian orator, whose verbal gifts made him sought after as a defender in the public courts. He was also a fiery political speaker, perhaps most famous in his speeches warning the Athenians of the danger to their liberties posed by the rising Macedonian ruler to the North, Philip. This anti-Macedonian position was later to produce his exile, then condemnation and suicide. Demosthenes (384-322 BC)
Demosthen es (Perseus Project)Demosthe nes(Perseus Encyclopedia)
The Sophists (Brooklyn College: Roger Dunkle)
SOCRATES, PLATO AND ARISTOTLE
Socrates (469-399 BC)
Socrates is known largely through Plato's heroized representation of him.
Objective reality and what our minds understand of reality are separated by a great mental divide (the general consensus of Greek philosophy by that time). But rational inquiry, meticulously but humbly pursued (his dialectical method), could close this divide. In using rational methods of inquiry, human mind and soul could be brought to discover transcendent (thus absolute) truth and goodness--and personal happiness.
Socrates felt optimistically that knowing the truly good would necessarily direct a person to act in line with this knowledge. Also, the quest for such knowledge was the very heart of life itself--its highest form (almost a divine enterprise).
Unfortunately, the Athenians proved not to be so enlightened by the truth as he had hoped, and ordered him to poison himself for "teaching the youth not to reverence the gods."
The Life of Socrates
Greek Philosophy: Socrates (Richard Hooker)
Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.) (Garth Kemerling)Plato (427-347 BC)
His pupil Plato took up Socrates' cause and carried the matter further--much further. Reflecting on life in a way not dissimilar to Pythagoras, Plato felt that though the visible world itself might at times appear chaotic and threatening, behind this visible world was a world of perfection. Our visible world was only a dim reflection of this perfect world. This perfect world on the other hand was composed of perfect formulations: mathematical and geometric--like Pythagoras' world. But to Plato such abstract perfections also included things such as goodness, virtue, beauty.
These perfections were idealized Forms--like geometric forms that describe life ideally. But though these Forms existed only as ideas, they were more real than the visible world around us. But how could Plato be so sure that these Forms we had never ever seen were so real?
His thinking went something like this. We know, for instance, that there are no perfect circles to be found anywhere in nature. Some things in nature only tend toward a perfect circular form and thus may be called circular. But how is it that we know that they are not perfectly circular? Only because for some strange reason our minds can indeed hold clearly a distinct understanding of a perfect circle--though we have never seen such anywhere in the world around us.
We can thus make such assertions about circularity--not because we have seen perfect circles, but because we certainly hold the idea of a circle clearly in our mind. If we could not conceive of such perfect ideas in our minds, then we would not be able to think clearly or rationally. The fact that we can think about circles, to Plato proved their existence. This existence of course was not in the immediate world around us, but in some mysterious realm of higher being or thinking.
Plato was interested in uncovering this perfect world of the Forms--in bringing it to light to human understanding. Indeed, this was to Plato (and he many "Platonists" who came after him) a religious enterprise--not just a matter of detached scholarship.
Apology(MIT)
Charmides (MIT)
Critias (MIT)
Crito (MIT)
Euthydemus (MIT)
Euthyphro (MIT)
Gorgias (MIT)
Ion (MIT)
Laches (MIT)
Laws (MIT)
Meno (MIT)
Parmenides (MIT)
Phaedo (MIT)
Phaedrus (MIT)
Philebus (MIT)
Protagoras (MIT)
Republic (MIT)Republic (UVa)
Sophist(MIT)
Statesman (MIT)
Symposium(MIT)
Theaetetus (MIT)
Timaeus (MIT)Plat o(Perseus Encyclopedia)
Plato(Glass Bead)Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle went in a direction opposite that of his teacher, Plato. While Plato focused his attentions on the mysterious world of the perfect Forms, Aristotle focused his attentions on the messier visible world immediately around him. Aristotle was greatly fascinated by this empirical or physical world. He was looking for Plato's Forms contained within this visible world.
But Aristotle eventually surmised that these Forms were merely abstractions in our mind which we use to categorize the immense information that comes to us about the surrounding world. The Forms, though useful to human logic, were themselves only mental constructs. They had no separate existence like gods or defining spirits (as Plato had asserted).
However, when it came to discussion of things beyond this earthly realm--the heavenly realm of the the sun, moon and stars--Ariostotle evidenced a religious awe. Though the earth might be marked with physical imperfections, these heavenly bodies were the essence of the divine, for they were perfect--perfect in their circular shape and circular movement. Thus for Aristotle the perfect-imperfect dualism in life occurred not between things seen and unseen (as it had for Plato), but between the imperfect things seen on earth and the perfect things seen in the heavens.
Thus even in his religion, Aristotle remained focused on the visible universe around him.
The Athenian Constitution (MIT)
Eud emian Ethics (Perseus)
Categories (MIT)
History of Animals (MIT)
Metaphysics (MIT)
Meteorology (MIT)
Nicomachean Ethics (MIT)
On the Heavens (MIT)
On the Soul (MIT)
Physics (MIT)
Poetics (MIT)
Politics (MIT)
Posterior Analytics (MIT)
Prior Analytics (MIT)
Prophesying by Dreams (MIT)
Rhetoric (MIT)
Topics(MIT)
Virtues and Vices (MIT)Aristotle (384-322 BCE.) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Aristotle(Perseus Encyclopedia)
Aristotle(Glass Bead)
ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY: GENERAL SOURCES
The Greek Quest for Ideal Order (500 to 300 BC) (Spiritual Pilgrim)
A very valuable source of information about the theories and views of the early Greek philosophers comes to us through the research of John Burnet in his Early Greek Philosophy (1892). Here are quoted ancient fragments and testimonies concerning Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, etc. This is available as an HTML document by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy as Presocratic Fragments and Testimonials John Burnet's 1892 fragments and testimonials of early Greek philosophers
Overview of Archaic and Classical Greek History (Martin: Perseus Project) [ample--but awkward] Other Sources:
Ancient Greece (Hooker: Washington State U)
History of Western Civilization (BoiseStateU: Ellis Knox):
The Persian Wars
The Peloponnesian War
History of Greece (The Tourist Guide of Greece)
The Nature/Extent of Neopalatial Minoan Influence in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean (Indiana)
The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean (Dartmouth)
Peloponnese: History (Peloponnese) [3 excellent maps of the development of ancient Greece]
The Ancient Greek World (UPenn)
Daily Life: Ancient Greece (Mrs Donn's Special Sections) [excellent material for youth!]
