Contexts and Concepts
Classical Greece
PERSIAN WAR
• Xerxes I invades mainland Greece in 480 BC
– 60,000 Troops
• Medes, Persians, Assyrians, Arabs and Ethiopians
• Coalition army lead by the Spartans met with the
troops at Thermopylae
– They were betrayed and Athens was destroyed
• Themistocles and the Greek navy won a critical
naval battle near the small island of Salamis
• Plataea – critical battle lead by the Spartans
• Persian war officially ended 30 years later, but
the Persians never came back to Greece.
The “Golden Age” of Pericles
• Athens claimed to be the Greek savior and set out to
liberate the rest of the country.
• Delian League
– Formed in 478 BC
– Band of city states and Athens who developed a common
foreign policy and contributed ships and money when
Athens needed it.
– Became a highly prosperous Athenian empire.
• Athens became the richest Greek city state
– Political decisions made by citizen majority
• Golden Age lasted less than 50 years.
• Pericles dominated Athenian politics from 450-429
Peloponnesian Wars
• The Greeks never really existed peacefully.
• Athens
– Cultural society, democracy, and artistic
• Sparta
– Old ways, militarism, and oligarchy
• Spartans won in 404
– Athens was humiliated
– Athens forced to tear down defense systems
– Athens put under control of a council of conspirators
called the 30 Tyrants
– Sparta did not assume cultural leadership and did not
have much long-lasting influence.
The Hellenistic Age
• King Philip II seized the throne of Macedon and allied
with the Greeks. Two years later he was assassinated
by his own men
• Alexander
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Pupil of Aristotle
More interested in a world order
Carried Greek culture to Asia
Defeated Darius and took over the Persian Empire
Founded Alexandria
• A city BY Greece not a city OF Greece
• One of the most influential and important cities in Hellenism
• Syncretism – the fusion of diverse religious beliefs and
practices
– Intercultural relationships blossomed
Concepts
• History
• Sophistry
• Stoicism
• Epicureanism
• Cynicism
• Skepticism
• Mystery Cults
• Ethics
• Aesthetics
• Classicism
• Hellenism
History
• Pre 5th Century = Oral Tradition
– More myth than fact
• Herodotus = Father of history
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Wrote History of the Persian War (9 volumes)
Retained neutral stance
Examined the reliability of his sources
Wanted others to draw their own conclusions
• Thucydides
– History of the Peloponnesian Wars
• Reveals an unbiased compilation that strives to show human
motives to draw a larger picture.
• Sought to instruct readers so that they would be armed with
knowledge when events of the past recurred.
Sophistry
• The rise of Sophistic philosophy demonstrated
the contemporary concern of humankind,
challenging the existence of truth.
• Reason had lead to deception
• Persuasion and Practicality
– Debating and rhetoric skills became necessary
– Sophists – those who used the art of persuasion,
rhetoric, grammar, diction and logical argument.
• Protagoras
– Sophist who believed that man is the measure of all
things.
– What seems true for one may not be true for another.
– Truth is relative
Stoicism
• Founded by Zeno
• Humans are the incarnation of reason which produces
and directs the world.
• The good life follows reason, wisdom and virtue, but
the only way to achieve these goals is to renounce and
accept simplicity.
– Leave everything to God and accept whatever happens.
– Approach life with apathy
• Happiness is the ultimate goal
• The senses are important in understanding underlying
moral law and the divine plane for the world.
• Took an optimistic viewpoint
Epicureanism
• Founded by Epicurus
• Life of strict quietude
• Humans consisted of a temporary arrangement of
atoms that dissolved at death.
• Because it was temporary the good life was an
untroubled life.
– Avoid entanglements, maintain good health, tolerate
pain, and accept death without fear
• The senses could be relied upon to give an accurate
picture of reality and the mind functioned as a
storehouse for those observations
Cynicism
• Humans are animals
– Good life is about having animalistic needs met
– Needs are troublesome and a wise person will
have as few needs as possible.
• If a person wanted nothing he needed nothing
• “Society” kept them from pursuing freedom
and independence
– Isolated themselves
• Had little appeal to the masses or aristocracy
Skepticism
• Founded by Pyrrho of Elis
• Nothing was certain – Universal Doubt
• The senses were completely unreliable as sources
of knowledge.
• The only certainty = “Truth is unattainable”
• Everything in life is relative
• Even less popular than Cynicism
Mystery Cults
• Hellenistic times were uncertain times
• People developed a belief that fate will do whatever fate
wants to do.
• People developed pietistic religious beliefs
– Emotionalism takes the place of intellectualism or rationalism.
• Cult of Dionysus
– God of revelry and wine
• Serapis
– New god invented by Ptolemy I to unite Egyptians and Greeks
• Cult of Isis
– One of the most antagonist forces met by early Christians
– Emphasized resurrection after death, which put it in direct
conflict with Christianity.
• Appeal probably lies in the mystery of the cult
– Secret initiation rites gave the member a special status
Ethics
• The general nature of morals and of the specific
moral choices to be made by the individual in
relationship with others.
• Socrates = father of ethics
– Condemned the Sophists for their lack of belief in a
universal moral order.
– Called on others to examine their own lives
– Psyche = the mind or soul
• Immortal and much more important than the body
• Everyone had a responsibility to raise his/her psyche to the
highest level possible
– Knowledge created virtuous behavior
• If you were evil it was because of your lack of knowledge
Aesthetics
• Plato = inventor of aesthetics
– The study of the nature of beauty
• Art derived from Techne
– The skill of knowledge and making
– The ability of an artist to command a medium, to know what
the end result would be, and to know how to execute the
artwork to achieve the results
– Fundamental principles = Proportion and Measure
• Forms and Ideas are reality
– Everything on earth imitates reality
– Ideas are not thoughts of an individual human or divine mind,
they are the objects of thought
– They exist independently and we think of them no matter what
• The arts are practiced to create imitations of forms
– Plato mistrusted the arts because the individual artist may fail to
understand the ultimate reality.
• The artist must have artistic inspiration
Aristotle
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Teacher of Alexander the Great
Set up the Lyceum (school)
Writings on nature make him the first real scientist.
All arts imitate nature.
Classicism
– Fundamentals: elements of composition must display
symmetry, harmony, and definition
• Differs from Plato (artistic imitation fuels passions and
misleads the seeker of truth)
– Aristotle believed that the arts repair deficiencies in nature
and makes a moral contribution.
– Rejects Plato's vie of the centrality of beauty and of
metaphysical idealism.
– He agrees with Plato that art is a kind of Techne
– The purpose of art is to give pleasure
Classicism VS Hellenism
• Classicism
– Artistic style and cultural perspective based on
principles associated with the art and thought of
ancient Greece and Rome.
– Striving for harmony, order, reason, intellect,
objectivity, and formal discipline.
– Represent idealized perfection rather than real life
• Hellenism
– Anti-Classical principles
– Moving toward reflections of emotions and
naturalistic (NOT Idyllic) depictions.
The Arts of the Classical and
Hellenistic Ages
Painting
• Classical Style
– New idealization in figure depiction
• Stereotype vs real person
– Foreshortening issues were fixed
• Figures have a new sense of depth
– Vase painting still an important source of art
– Four Characteristics of Classical Style Vase Painting
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Portrayal of figures in simple line drawings
Monochromatic color scheme
Palette dependent on earthen tones (red)
Heroic and idealized subject matter continually changed
– Began spacing figures higher than others rather thank
keeping them on a single base line
Vase Painting
Sculpture
• Greek Classical Style sculpture continually changed.
– One artist’s work was very different than others
• Greek philosophy reflect the idealized, vigorous,
youthful bodies that exhibit self control and physical
perfection
• Weight shift
– moving away from absolute symmetry
– Contropposto – weight shift onto one leg
• Myron
– The Discus Thrower
• Increasing vitality of figure movement (frozen pose of movement)
• Polyclitus
– Developed a set of rules for constructing the ideal human
figure
Myron’s The Discus Thrower
Late Classical Sculpture
• Greater emphasis on motion
• Praxiteles
– Cnidian Aphrodite
• Lysippus
– Scraper
Hellenistic Sculpture
• Increasing interest in the differences between
individual humans
• Turned away from idealism toward sorrow or
flights of technical vertuosity.
– Powerful emotion, often tragic as if acting out a
drama on stage
• Winged Victory – Nike of Samothrace
• Laocoon and his Two Sons
• Dying Gaul
Winged Victory
Laocoon and his Two Sons
Classical Architecture
• Doric Order
– Ancient origins
– Used in Classical Greece
• Ionic Order
– Classical Greek column
– Volutes
• Corinthean Order
– Hellenistic style column with Greek elements