Greece, Ancient

The Stone Age. Establishment and formation of the clan structure (c. 100,000 to c. 2900 B.C.). Mans settlement of Greek territory has been established by archaeological excavations, which have revealed Paleolithic sites that extend from Macedonia to Elis and date from the Middle Paleolithic period (c. 100,000–40,000). The skull of a Neanderthal man found on the Chalcidice Peninsula dates from this time. During the Neolithic period (c. middle of the seventh millennium-c. 2800 B.C.) the inhabitants of Greece mastered agriculture and raised livestock, taking up a settled way of life. The clan structure, which had begun to take shape during the Middle Paleolithic epoch, reached its full development during the Neolithic period. In northern Greece the Neolithic period is represented by the Sesklo, Dimini, and Larisa cultures, characterized by fortified settlements on hills, the appearance of the megaron (a rectangular house with a narrow front, wooden columns, and a hearth in the center), and black and gray pottery as well as polychrome pottery with designs in two colors, usually black and red. During the fifth and fourth millenniums local variants of the Neolithic culture developed on mainland Greece, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, and especially on Crete. Tribal migrations occurred on the mainland as well as among the islands. During this period the inhabitants of Greece maintained permanent contacts with the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula, the coast of Asia Minor, and Syria.

The Bronze Age (c. 2800 to c. 1200 B.C.). Origin of early class societies. The Greek culture of the Bronze Age (conventionally called the Cretan-Mycenaean or Aegean culture) is commonly divided into an early, middle, and late period. Differences in the cultural traditions of the various parts of Greece have permitted the identification of geographic variants: the culture of Crete has been called the Minoan culture, that of mainland Greece the Helladic culture, and that of the islands in the Aegean Sea the Cycladic culture.

The Early Bronze Age. extending from approximately the 28th century to the 21st century B.C., was characterized by the rapid development of the Greek islands. By the middle of the third millennium on many of the islands, including Scy-ros. Paros, Melos, Cythnos, and Amorgos, silver, lead, and copper mining was well developed, as well as the manufacture of metal vessels, tools, weapons, and decorative and religious objects. At the same time considerable progress was achieved in the pottery and building crafts. In the second half of the third millennium navigation linked the entire coast of the Aegean Sea. The first cities began to appear, Poliochni on the island of Lemnos and Aghios Kosmas in Attica. The fortified settlement with a palace (the so-called House of Tiles) on a hilltop at Lerna (Argolis) reflected the growing power of the tribal kingdoms on the coast of southern Greece. Elsewhere on the Greek mainland the clan structure was fully preserved. Between 2200 and 2000 tribal wars and migrations destroyed a number of flourishing centers on the islands and the mainland. The ethnic composition of the population during the third millennium was complex. At first the Pelasgians were the dominant tribe, but subsequently they were crowded out and partially assimilated by proto-Greek tribes. Among the latter, the Achaeans and the Ionians began to gain ascendancy.

The Middle Bronze Age. lasting from approximately the 20th century to the 17th century B.C. was marked by considerable economic and social progress on Crete. Small slave-owning states arose here, such as Knossos, Phaestus, Hagia Triada, and Mallia. Between the 23rd and the 17th centuries Cretan writing rapidly evolved from a pictographic to a hieroglyphic system. About the 18th century a new system was developed, the so-called linear script A. After building a large fleet the Cretans subjugated a number of Aegean islands. Extensive trade and diplomatic ties with Egypt and the Near Eastern states assured Crete’s supremacy in the Aegean.

The internal history of mainland Greece from the 20th century to the 17th developed comparatively slowly owing to the stability of communal relations. Only in the 17th century did early slave-owning states, such as Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos, begin to form. The burials of royal families that were discovered in Mycenae in large graves resembling wells (so-called shaft graves) contained a large number of valuable objects (weapons, ornaments, gold masks, and so forth), attesting to the growing power of the Achaean dynasties as early as the middle of the 17th and the end of the 16th centuries.

During the Late Bronze Age (from about the 16th century to about the 12th century B.C.) the Cretan states continued to rise. During the so-called new-palace period (c. 1700–1450) the palaces at Knossós and Phaestus were reconstructed and enlarged, and a new palace was built at Kato-Zakros. Cities grew up and foreign ties were extended. The Cretan sea power, or thalassocracy. of this time lived on in the Greek’s memory for many centuries thereafter. Around 1470 a tectonic disaster on the island of Thera brought about a ruinous earthquake on Crete. Cities and villages, as well as the population and the fleet, were destroyed, causing the islands to be abandoned. The palace at Knossós was restored; a small state survived here until about 1380.

Mainland Greece reached the highest point of its development between the 16th and the 13th centuries. Progress in agriculture and crafts brought about a growth in population. The history of this period was marked by internecine strife among neighboring groups and by defensive and military alliances between dynasties—all of which was reflected in the rich legendary tradition and epic heritage of the Achaeans. The Mycenaean culture of the Achaeans influenced neighboring countries, including even Egypt. The fleets of the kings of Iolcus, Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes, and other states allowed the Achaeans to conduct an extensive maritime trade in crafted articles, which sometimes were produced especially for export. The 15th and 14th centuries saw the widespread distribution of Achaean articles eastward, to the Troad and other regions in Asia Minor and to Cyprus, Phoenicia, Syria, and Egypt, as well as westward, to Sicily and southern Italy. The increasing complexity of the Achaean state led to the development of a system of writing. Having adapted the Cretan script to their own dialect, the Achaeans created an improved script, the so-called linear script B. Household bookkeeping records (clay tablets) in this script have been found in many palaces of mainland and island Greece. Deciphered by M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, these tablets have made it possible to characterize the Achaean states as early slave-owning states.

The largest landlords were the kings and military leaders, who leased and sublet land. Slaves were subordinate to their masters in varying degrees. Settlements were obliged to pay taxes in kind. During the 13th century the Achaean dynasties repeatedly undertook overseas campaigns. Scholars date the Achaeans’ campaign against Troy to approximately 1200. The causes of the Trojan War are unclear; the Achaeans devastated a rich city. This Greek campaign is celebrated in the epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. A rapid decline of the Helladic culture set in at the end of the 13th century, marked by the abandonment of the palace at Pylos about 1200, of Mycenae and Tiryns about 1120, and of a number of settlements in the Argolis. This was probably linked with the great strain brought about by the Trojan War and by internecine conflict, as well as by the decrease in maritime trade with the East that occurred in conjunction with the migrations of tribes of the so-called sea peoples.

The Dorian migration and the beginning of the Iron Age. Further development of class societies (c. 11th to ninth centuries B.C.). Around 1200 tribal invasions engulfed mainland Greece and the islands, including Crete. A new Greek tribe known as the Dorians pushed down from the northern regions and occupied part of central and southern Greece. The only state able to maintain its independence was Athens, to which part of the population of the conquered Achaean states of the Peloponnesus fled. The invasion of the Dorian tribes, who were still living under conditions of a clan structure. brought about the rapid disintegration of the Achaean states and the revival of clan relations in Greek society. The gradual spread of iron tools and weapons established the basis for the subsequent development of productive forces. From the Achaeans and Cretans, the Dorians inherited the plow, wheeled carts, sailing ships, presses, the potter’s wheel, and other tools, as well as the basic principles of architecture, particularly that of temples and fortresses. After the Dorian conquest, small independent communities evolved in Greece; they were ruled by kings (basilei), and everywhere the clan aristocracy grew stronger. In many regions the clan’s land rights became the basis of the landowning system. The subjugated local population became the personal property of the conquering clans, which were breaking up into large family communities. The enslavement of the local population was not the same’everywhere. In Sparta there were the members of the community of conquerors, the Spartiates, and there were the Perioeci, the former indigenous population of Sparta, who had been conquered and driven into the border areas of Laconia. The Perioeci retained a limited self-government and engaged in crafts and trade. In another category of the dependent population in Sparta were the Helots, a farming people of Messinia and other areas who had been subjugated by the Spartiates. Considered to be the property of the state, the Helots were bound to the land belonging to the Spartiates. Subject peoples similar to the Helots existed in Thessaly (the penestae), in Crete (the clarotae), and in other regions of Greece. In Athens enslavement occurred by means of indebtedness and the concentration of land in the hands of the clan aristocracy, the eupatridae.

By the ninth century Greek tribes had settled northern Greece (the Aeolians), central Greece and the eastern part of the Peloponnesus (the Dorians) and Attica (the Ionians). Those Achaean tribes that had retained their independence were pushed into Arcadia and Achaea. The most important event of this period was the beginning of Greek colonization of the islands and of the coast of Asia Minor. The northern regions of Asia Minor were settled by Aeolians. the central regions (Ionia) by the Ionians, and the southern regions by Dorians.

The origin and development of city-states (eighth to sixth centuries B.C.). The further spread of iron implements led to the separation of artisans from the rest of the population. The separation of crafts from agriculture signaled the transition to a broader exchange of goods, to market production, and to the growth of cities. It became vitally important for the cities of Greece to establish regular commercial relations and to supply the urban populations with raw materials and essential food products. Landless peasants accumulated in the cities. The demand for slaves increased at the same time. The planting of colonies became an economic necessity. The primary cause of colonization was the class struggle within the Greek city-states, and it was carried out in order to soften sharp social contradictions. In the middle of the eighth century the cities of the island of Euboea established the first colony—Cumae (in Italy). Colonization flourished during the seventh and sixth centuries. Greek colonies extended along the northern shore of the Aegean Sea, the eastern coast of Sicily, and the shores of the Gulf of Tarentum in Italy and reached the coast of the Black Sea. Miletus alone founded 75 colonies on the Black Sea. As a result, as early as the sixth century Greek trade took on an international character. Greek handicrafts were widely sold both in western and eastern markets. Greece imported slaves, grain and other foodstuffs, raw materials, and luxury objects. Coins, a means of exchange that the Greeks had adopted from the Lydians in the seventh century, gained universal acceptance. Certain cities, such as Delphi and Olympia, became religious centers for all of Greece. The increasing number of slaves in the cities strengthened the position of slaveholders in trade, crafts, and the money economy. However, the principal means of production was land, and political power remained with the clan aristocracy, whose economic power was based on family and clan ownership of land and on the enslavement of small farmers. The struggle of the demos against the clan aristocracy and enslavement through debt was the chief characteristic of the period from the eighth through the sixth centuries. After a long struggle the demos succeeded in abolishing debt slavery in certain cities of Greece. This occurred in Athens, for example, as result of the reforms of Solon in 594–593. Nevertheless, the resistance of the clan aristocracy to these reforms could be crushed only with the aid of force. Such a force was tyranny—one-man rule, established by means of armed conflict and relying on the peasant poor, traders, and craftsmen. Early Greek tyranny existed in the seventh and sixth centuries in a number of cities of mainland Greece, including Sicyon. Corinth (the tyranny of Cyp-selus and Periander), Megara, and later, Athens (the tyranny of Pisistratus and the reforms of Cleisthenes), and in the Ionian cities of Miletus, Ephesus, and Samos (the tyranny of Polycrates). As a result of reforms promulgated by the tyrants, the economic and political privileges of the clan aristocracy were abolished.

From the eighth century to the sixth the unique form of ancient Greek socioeconomic and political organization took shape—the city-state (polis), a group of free citizens, as distinct from slaves and other subject persons (clarotae, penestae. Helots) and from aliens (metics). Membership in the city-state assured to fully enfranchised citizens the right to own land and slaves. Depending on the extent of the victory of the farmers and craftsmen over the clan aristocracy, the constitution of the city-state was oligarchic (as in Sparta and Crete) or democratic (as in Athens). By the end of the sixth century slavery had become widespread in certain economically highly developed city-states, such as Corinth and Athens, where the slaveholders became antagonistic classes. During this same period a number of other city-states, including Sparta and the city-states of Crete and Argos, long retained vestiges of the clan structure along with slavery. In Central and southern Greece tribal farming communities still existed, including Phocis, Aetolia, and Acarnania, in which a barter system of agricultural economy and a tribal structure survived.

Various economic and political factors led to conflict between the city-states. At the end of the sixth century the Peloponnesian League was formed under Spartan leadership. The league was the first major coalition of city-states created to unite the military forces of the Peloponnesus (except for Argos) and to aid Sparta in the event of uprisings by the Helots.

The classical period of the slave-owning city-state. The crisis of the city-state (fifth century to the third quarter of the fourth century B.C.). The fifth and fourth centuries in Greek history represent the highest economic, political, and cultural flowering of the city-state. Slave labor was the basis of the economic system of the city-states, which were economically advanced in trade and crafts. Slaves were employed in crafts (slaves’ workshops), in the mines, and sporadically also in farming. Small-scale peasant farms and free, small-scale handicrafts were also important. Greece’s flowering coincided with the rise of Athens as a result of the Athenian democracy’s victory in the Greco-Persian Wars (500–449) and of the creation of the Delian League in the midst of the struggle against the Persians. Headed by Athens the Delian League, also called the First Athenian Sea League, was made up of the states on the islands of the Aegean Sea and on its northern, eastern, and western shores. Athens’ greatest power, the greatest democratization of its political structure, and the flowering of its culture was attained under Pericles’ rule (443–429). This period, however, was comparatively brief. The conversion of allies into subjects, the transfer of all the most important affairs to the Athenian courts, the limitations imposed on freedom of trade, the exacting of tribute, the use of punitive expeditions, and the settling of cleruchs on the territory of the allies led the latter to strive for liberation, particularly the oligarchic elements among the allies. At the same time a conflict in Athenian foreign affairs came to a head. Athens and Corinth contested for control over trade routes to the west and Athens and Sparta strove for hegemony in Greece. These conflicts led to the Peloponnesian War (431–404). into which most Greek city-states were drawn. This war revealed all the instability of the Athenian League and culminated in the complete rout of Athens. It was deprived of almost all its foreign possessions, and its fleet was given to Sparta. The period of Spartan hegemony in Greece began.

Not only Athens but also many other Greek cities emerged weakened from the war. The intensification of differences in property ownership evoked sharp clashes and armed conflicts within the city-states. Two camps formed in each city, the poor and the rich. The further development of slavery, trade, crafts, and the money economy began to undermine the foundations of the city-state, whose economy was based on small- and medium-scale landowning. The accumulation of money in the hands of rich metics shattered the closed framework of the city-state economy. The ruin of the peasantry and craftsmen created in the city-states a class of poor people who could not find employment. The military power of the city-states was also undermined; the citizen’s army was replaced in some city-states by detachments of mercenaries, since war had become the only possible occupation for the poor. Constant internecine wars among the city-states further intensified their difficulties. In the Corinthian War (395–387), Sparta, which unleashed the war, was opposed by a coalition comprising Athens. Corinth, Thebes, and others cities. The weakness of the city-states and the decline of their finances made them dependent on the wealth of Persia, which in fact in the so-called King’s Peace (also known as the Peace of Antalcidas) dictated peace terms to the warring sides. Persia restored its power over the cities of Asia Minor, alliances were prohibited between the cities of Greece, and surveillance and control over the Greek cities was entrusted to Sparta. Spartan policy was expressed in violations of the autonomy of states, in the punishing of democrats, and in the setting up of oligarchic regimes. Sparta became the principal enemy of Greek freedom and independence. A Spartan garrison was stationed at Thebes, but in 379 Theban democrats led by Pelopidas and Epaminondas drove the Spartans out and restored the Boeotian League, which had existed in the sixth century. In 378–377 the Second Athenian Sea League came into being to fight Sparta, and it was joined by Thebes as well. At the battle of Leuctra in 371 the Thebans defeated the Spartan army, thereby dispelling the myth of Spartan invincibility. After the death of the Theban general Epaminondas at the battle of Mantinea (362) the brief period of Theban ascendancy came to an end, facilitated by the enmity of Athens, which feared the growing strength of Thebes. However, Athenian efforts in the Second Athenian Sea League to establish the kind of system that had existed in the First League encountered the league membership’s resistance and led to the League War of 357–355. This war ended with the dissolution of the league.

During this period a new power—Macedonia—arose in northern Greece. By 346 the Macedonian king Philip II had conquered first Thessaly and then Phocis, the Chalcidice, and the Thracian coast. In Athens and other city-states of Greece struggles broke out between the pro-Macedonian parties (Isocrates, Aeschines, Philocrates) and the anti-Macedonian parties (Demosthenes, Hyperides). Through the efforts of Demosthenes a coalition of Greek cities was formed against Macedonia, but it suffered complete defeat at the battle of Chaeronea (338). There, in the words of Lycur-gus, one of the anti-Macedonian leaders, “the bodies of the fallen and the freedom of the Greeks were buried together.” The Congress of Corinth (338–337), convened by Philip II, formally completed Greece’s subjugation to Macedonia, which proclaimed itself the head of a league of the Greek states. Oligarchic regimes backed by Macedonian garrisons were set up in all city-states.

The Hellenistic period and the Roman domination (from the end of the fourth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D.). The battle of Chaeronea and the eastern conquests of the Greco-Macedonian Army under the command of Alexander the Great inaugurated the Hellenistic period. Alexander the Great’s kingdom disintegrated very soon after his death in 323. A prolonged struggle among the diadochoi and their successors, the epigonoi, led to the establishment of a number of independent Hellenistic states. The largest of these were the Seleucid and Ptolomaic monarchies and the kingdom of Macedonia. In Greece the Hellenistic period was marked by the predominance of militaristic states and leagues—Macedonia, the Achaean League, the Aetolian League, and for a certain period Sparta—which continued to struggle for hegemony. Oligarchies or kings held the power in most states. Led by Athens, the struggle of states against Macedonia after Alexander’s death—the Lamian War of 323–322—ended with the victory of Macedonia and the punishment of the Greek democrats. After a second defeat in the Chremonidean War (267–261, named after the Athenian general Chremonides), Athens was devastated and became utterly dependent upon the Macedonian monarchy. However, Macedonia could not restore its power over the entire Balkan Peninsula. Two powerful new leagues fought against it, sometimes separately and sometimes together—the Achaean League (revived about 280) and the Aetolian League (created about 320). The Achaean League encompassed most of the Peloponnesus (save Sparta, which joined the league only after 192) and other large cities (Sicyon, Corinth, and Megara). The Aetolian League included in addition to Aetolia the regions of central Greece (except for Athens), southern Thessaly. and some other cities. The struggle among Alexander’s successors and, later, between Macedonia and the two leagues for power in Greece led to the wholesale destruction of cities, the sale of their inhabitants into slavery, and the settlement of these centers by new colonists. The Greek cities were also laid waste by pirates employed by the Aetolians, who sold the inhabitants of the captured cities into slavery (from Laconia alone as many as 50,000 persons were sold). The result of this struggle was the slow death agony of the cities, the ruin of the Greek middle class, and an increase in the number of poor, whose uprisings became common (Corinth, Argos, Miletus).

After the defeat inflicted by the Romans on Macedonia at the battle of Cynoscephalae (197), the Romans constantly interfered in the internal affairs of the Greeks, supporting the oligarchic classes against the democrats. During the summer of 196 the Roman general Flamininus proclaimed the “freedom” of the Greeks at the Isthmian Games. The Greek’s belief in this “freedom” made Rome popular for a short time in Greece. From this time Greece was continually under Roman influence. Macedonia lost its political importance, and in 148. after the uprising of Andriscus was crushed, it was made into a Roman province along with Illyria and Epirus. The Romans dissolved the Aetolian League. In 146 the Achaean League, which had also attempted to resist the Romans, was destroyed. Thus Greece came under the rule of Rome. With the establishment of the Roman Empire (27 B.C.)Greece—with the exception of Athens, which nominally was considered to be a free city—was made into the Roman province of Achaea and could hardly be distinguished from the other eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Beginning in the fourth century A.D., Greece formed the nucleus of the Eastern Roman Empire—the Byzantine Empire.

SOURCES

REFERENCE

K. M. KOLOBOVA

Depending on the conditions of historical development of the various ancient Greek city-states, different educational systems evolved, of which those of Athens and Sparta are the best known. The Athenian educational system was more rounded and democratic, providing a combination of mental, moral, aesthetic (the so-called “education in the Muses”). and physical education. Until the age of seven, boys were educated at home; thereafter they attended grammar schools, where they were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. Later (or simultaneously) came instruction in music at the cithara schools. From the age of 12 or 13 boys attended the palaestra, where they received their physical education in preparation for the pentathlon. Well-to-do parents who were preparing their children for public careers then sent them to gymnasia.

In Sparta state control over education began in the first days of a child’s life. Newly born infants were inspected by members of the gerousia, and only the healthy children were selected for education by the state. Weak and sickly children, according to legend, were thrown into the ravine of Mt. Taygetus. Up to the age of seven, children were educated at home. The system of state schooling that existed from the middle of the sixth century B.C. was compulsory for every Spartan between the ages of eight and 20. A similar system existed from the fifth century B.C. on Crete, in Thurii, and in Troezen. These schools primarily provided military training and sports as well as social and religious education. In As-typalaea, in Mycalessus, on Chios, and in other city-states there were also private schools in the fifth century B.C These schools had one teacher and specialized in one area Thus, children aged six or seven to 14 attended not one but several schools for instruction in different subjects. Classes were held in private buildings. Pupils wrote on wax tablets and later on papyrus. After the grammar had been mastered, reading was designed primarily to acquaint the pupils with the classics. Instruction in arithmetic, reading, and writing took place at the same time, since numbers were represented by letters of the alphabet.

Children between the ages of 13 and 15 received further education at the gymnasium. In Attica the gymnasia were privately organized for the most part, although they were also under the supervision of elected state officials known as gymnasiarchs. In eastern Greece, and especially in Ionia, two years of instruction in the schools was available to all free-born persons and was conducted by pedagogues paid by the community. In some places, for example, in Pergamum and Teos. similar schools were maintained for girls, who were instructed primarily in music and literature. The gymnasia spread throughout Greece and continued to exist even after the Greeks lost their political independence. Youths aged 18 to 20 underwent military training at the ephebia. The circles that formed around important scholars— rhetoricians, Sophists, medical men—may be regarded as the beginning of higher education in Greece. These “schools” were named after a scholar or after a place of instruction— thus there was Plato’s Academy. Antisthenes’ Cynic School, and Aristotle’s Lyceum in Athens.

As a rule, education in Greece was accessible not only to free persons but sometimes also to those who had been freed. Many teachers and some important rhetoricians and philosophers were of slave origin. As formal education became widespread, pedagogy began to be developed in Greece, primarily as a theory of systematic education (Plato, Aristotle, Democritus). The idea of the harmoniously developed man arose in Greece and was widely accepted. Greek education and its pedagogical theory underwent continual change in the course of history. In the period of the independent city-state, physical eduation and military training occupied an important place not only in Sparta but also in the democratic cities. After the conquest of Greece, at first by Macedonia (at the end of the fourth century B.C.) and then by Rome (in the middle of the second century B.C.), physical education increasingly gave way to education in the humanities. During this period the most famous centers of higher education were found in the cities with great libraries, such as Alexandria. Pergamum, Rhodes, Antioch, and Orontes. The ancient Greek educational system formed the basis not only of Roman but also of later European and Arabic education.

REFERENCE

L. A. EL’NITSKM

The considerable achievements of the Greek city-states in mining and metallurgy, in building techniques, and in the production of ceramics and textiles facilitated the growth of extensive commercial relations among the various parts of the Greek cultural world, dispersed around the Mediterranean. These achievements also ensured the success of Greek colonization, which firmly linked Hellas with the Near East, North Africa, and the northwestern part of the Mediterranean. Business activity and the exchange of ideas between the Greek city-states contributed to the spread of writing based on alphabetical characters, which made literacy possible for a comparatively broad social strata. All this facilitated the rapid growth of science, literature, and the fine arts, which were little hampered by religious limitations, and left a unique and singular mark on all ancient Greek culture, despite the extreme diversity of every kind of local cultural development. Greek culture became the basis—and in a certain sense the supreme model—for mankind’s subsequent cultural development.

Mythology and religion. Ancient Greek mythology passed through a long period of development. In its early stages (during the period of matriarchy) Greek mythology was characterized by elemental, monstrous forms, that is. it was vividly chthonic (from the Greek word for earth, chthō n, which according to the mythological view gave birth to these monsters). During the period of the primitive communal system, the mythological religious conceptions of the ancient Greeks were dominated by totemistic, fetishistic. and animistic ideas of the inseparability of an object’s spiritual essence from the object itself. The god Zeus, for example, was conceived of as an eagle, a swan, lightning, and thunder, and the goddess Athena was depicted as an owl or a serpent. These conceptions were subsequently preserved in vestigial form with animal or inanimate objects appearing as attributes or temporary abodes of a god. for example, Zeus’ assumption of the form of an eagle or a bull and the epithet “owl-eyed” for Athena. During the matriarchal period there was as yet no definite hierarchy of gods. Long before the appearance of the so-called Olympic mythology, a great many local gods having no universal significance were worshipped in individual communities. As the Olympian mythology took shape during the patriarchal period the names of these gods or the places where they were worshipped became merely the gods’ new epithets, for example, Zeus Trophonius, Artemis of Ephesus, and Apollo of Delphi.

Greek mythology reached its greatest flowering in the second millennium B.C., when the Olympian pantheon of gods acquired its final form. They dwelt on “snowy” and “many-ravined” Olympus and were subordinate to the authority of one god, Zeus, “the father of men and gods.” Each Olympian deity had a strictly defined function. Athena was the goddess of war, of the higher arts, and of crafts, as well as the protectress of cities and countries. Hermes was the god of trade. Artemis the goddess of the hunt. Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty, and so on. The Olympian mythology was vividly anthropomorphic: the gods and demons of ancient Greek religious and mythological conceptions had physical bodies, the most ordinary human qualities, and even vices and shortcomings. In place of the former legends of monsters, myths began to appear about heroes, such as Heracles and Theseus, who fought and destroyed these monsters.

This anthropomorphism, however, which testified to the growing power of man over nature, was characteristic of only a definite historically transitional phase in the development of Greek mythology. With the dissolution of clan social relations and the emergence of scientific knowledge, naïve mythological anthropomorphism disappeared. In the works of the ancient Greek poets Hesiod and Pindar, Zeus was already deprived of his anthropomorphic qualities and transformed into a figure that personified the principle of universal justice. In Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, Zeus is depicted as the despotic ruler of the world, hater of mankind, and representative of blind and irrational forces. Other figures in the old mythology also lost their anthropomorphic qualities and became more abstract. At the slave-owning stage of development. Greek mythology passed through the classical period, when it was the bearer and exponent of the city-state ideology and through the Hellenistic-Roman period, when it was transformed into a literary and artistic device—into allegory or metaphor. Parallel to the development of Greek mythology was the development of Greek religion, that is, the belief in the supernatural power of the gods, reinforced by a system of cults and rituals. The religious practices of the ancient Greeks consisted primarily of sacrifices and prayers offered to various deities in temples. Besides the official state religion in Greece, other religious rituals were widespread, open only to initiated devotees—the “mysteries.” Among these were the Eleusinian mysteries in honor of Demeter, the Orphic mysteries in honor of Dionysus, and the worship of the Cabiri, or subterranean gods. Greek mythology and religion adopted certain legends from the peoples of the ancient East, mainly the Hittites and Phoenicians, and individual Eastern deities and heroes joined the Greek pantheon.

The figures of Greek mythology, humane and permeated with a sense of harmony and measure, became the basis for the development of classical art. This mythology influenced ancient Roman religion and mythology. Together with the rest of Greek culture, it was extensively used by the ideologists of the Renaissance, and, variously interpreted in scholarship and arts, it played an important role in subsequent periods.

Philosophy. Greek philosophy arose out of the process of assimilating the physical, mathematical, astronomical, and other sciences adopted by the Greeks from the peoples of the older Eastern civilizations, and out of the process of reworking ancient mythology in art and poetry. Philosophy destroyed the mythological conceptions of the world and man. It was concerned above all with the problem of the origin of the universe or of the nature of things in general: psychology and ethics were based on cosmology. Characteristic of ancient Greek philosophy and distinguishing it from medieval and modern European philosophy, was its cosmologic approach.

The Greek philosophical schools were free associations in which like-minded persons, or students, gathered around the head of the school. The first of such schools was the Milesian school (sixth century B.C.). founded by Thales, who taught that the unity of matter was the universal foundation of being. The Milesian school held that all things must have originated in a single material principle. The basic feature of the world of things—its continuous becoming—is embodied within the original primordial element, which Thaïes considered to be water. His follower Anaximander believed that the basis of all being was chaotic, infinite (apeiron). which eternally acts upon things and contains within itself the contradictory principles out of which worlds are formed. Anaximenes held this infinite and indefinite element to be air: all things are formed from it by the process of thickening or thinning, and by its breath it animates everything, as a soul. A number of fifth-century philosophers belonged to this school—Hippon, Idaeus, and Diogenes of Apollonia.

Another early school of ancient Greek philosophy was Pythagoreanism, founded by Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C. The Pythagoreans considered number to be the foundation of all being. In the beginning things were identified with numbers; later, numbers were thought of as the principles and causes of things. Number realizes the synthesis of unity and plurality, and it is the basis of all measure, harmony, and proportion. Along with the infinite, the Pythagoreans accepted the concept of the finite, and they regarded the universe as a harmonious union, by means of number, of opposing principles. Followers of Pythagoras in the fifth and fourth centuries such as Philolaus, Archytas, Lysias, and Eurytus, developed a unique system of musical, mathematical, and astronomical cosmology, which, after being developed for two centuries by the Pythagorean school, was extensively adopted by Plato’s Academy. The thought of one, unchanging foundation of everything was formulated by the thinkers of the Eleatic school (sixth-fifth centuries) in their doctrine of a truly existing being. The founder of the Eleatic school was the poet Xenophanes of Colophon. The doctrine of the Eleatic thinkers received its final form from Parmenides. who treated the truly existing as one eternally unchanging, immovable being, which could neither originate out of nothing nor return to nothing. There is only positive being; there is no nonbeing. Therefore there is really no plurality of things, there is neither origin nor destruction, and there is no movement, since these would presuppose nonbeing in space (vacuum) and in time. The pluralistic world of the senses is in itself unreal. Melissus and Zeno (fifth century) developed this doctrine in a polemical form. The famous aporias of Zeno reveal the contradictions inherent in the very concepts of plurality, dimension, location, and motion.

The doctrine of Heraclitus of Ephesus is a vivid example of early dialectic in ancient Greek philosophy. In the spirit of the ideas of Ionian nature philosophy concerning the universal changeability of all things, Heraclitus developed the doctrine of an eternally living fire as the foundation of everything, or a struggle between opposites, wherein agreement is found and a single, harmonious cosmos comes into being. From the struggle between opposites arises the unity which is logos, that is, the “word,” the eternal law of the cosmos.

During the fifth century B.C. doctrines arose in cosmology and nature philosophy that attempted to examine the actual plurality of things and the principle of motion. Such was the doctrine of Empedocles, who believed fire, air, water, and earth to be the four primary elements. The combination and dissolution of these elements by love and hatred lead to the rise and fall of things: love and hatred act as immaterial causes of motion. The doctrine of Anaxagoras also held an immaterial, all-encompassing mind (nous) to be the cause and principle of motion. Together with his doctrine of mind, Anaxagoras taught that there is a multitude of material substances (homoeomeria) composed of various qualities. Each of these substances contains a unique proportion of all existing qualities of things. The representatives of the school of materialist atomism, Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera (fifth-fourth centuries) held that atoms moving in a vacuum were the basis of all being. These atoms, although they are unchangeable, eternal, impenetrable, and indivisible, differ in volume and configuration and thereby cause the differences in phenomena. Democritus advanced the idea of a causal order of all phenomena, of the possibility of attaining reliable knowledge as distinct from subjective opinions. In his doctrine he synthesized a great amount of contemporary knowledge about natural history and worked out an ethical doctrine that subsequently influenced Epicurus.

During the fifth century Greek philosophical thought was concentrated in Athens, which after the Greco-Persian wars, had become the economic, political, and cultural center of Greece. The development of democratic institutions at this time made it necessary to train educated people who would have a mastery of the technique of political and legal oratory and who could handle the problems of political life. Teachers of these subjects began to appear and were known as Sophists. The Sophists popularized philosophy, moving to the foreground rhetoric (Gorgias) and grammar and stylistics (Prodicus and others). They also speculated on moral laws and political institutions (Hippias, Thrasymachus). The philosophical school named after the Sophists was characterized by eclecticism and skepticism. Preceding trends in Greek philosophy, by introducing the principle of being in which the unity of the cosmos was realized, had come to the conclusion that the world of the senses did not encompass true reality. The abstract principles of the early Greek philosophers made knowledge of reality impossible. Knowledge of the changeable world of phenomena merely provided opinion. The Sophists, who examined precisely the phenomena of the world of the senses, were forced to conclude that man’s conceptions about nature were relative. The measure of all things, then, becomes man. his perceptions and evaluations, as Protagoras taught (fifth century). This led either to a skeptical attitude toward human knowledge in general or to attempts to combine eclectically the ancient cosmologic systems.

A new period in ancient Greek philosophy began with Socrates (fifth century). He turned away from the study of cosmology but. on the other hand, rejected the relativism of the Sophists and directed his investigation to the moral sphere. In doing this he strove to find universal and unconditional knowledge, not in something external but rather in himself. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom and of true human activity, theoretical as well as practical. By exposing false knowledge, Socrates sought to find the universal principle of rational cognition. He asserted the moral worth of man as a free and rational being who must bring to pass a higher truth. Socrates himself did not found a school, but after his death his followers, who interpreted his teachings in various ways, founded several philosophical schools (Socratic schools, fourth century). The Megarian school, founded by Euclides (Eubulides, Alexius, and Diodorus Cronus, fourth century), developed the formal Socratic dialectic. Similar was the Elis-Eretrian school founded by Phaedo. Antisthenes founded the school of the Cynics and Aristippus, the Cyrenaic school. Both these schools denied the possibility and the usefulness of rational knowledge and limited philosophy to practical wisdom; but they had differed as to the higher goal to which men should conform. The Cynics considered man’s goal to be virtue, consisting in self-liberation from passions and from needs (apatheia). The Cyrenaics held the goal of life to be pleasure (Aristippus) or the lack of suffering (Hegesias). Plato’s doctrine provided the most fruitful development of the Socratic idea that perfect reason is the source of true knowledge. Here this idea was transformed into speculative idealism.

Plato’s doctrine is a synthesis of Socrates’ teachings of perfect reason and pre-Socratic movements in ancient Greek philosophy (such as the Pythagoreans. Heraclitus. and Parmenides). which attempted to comprehend the changeable and pluralistic world of phenomena as an all-encompassing unity of being. For Plato, the basis of true knowledge is the oneness of ideas, which in its unity (as the idea of the good) represents a particular kind of higher being—true being. This oneness of ideas, or real truth, is embodied in the pluralistic world of the senses and is connected with another principle, that of relative nonbeing. Nonbeing is the condition of realizing the world of ideas in the world of phenomena, but the latter, because it is born and therefore carries within itself nonbeing. is no longer genuine. The world of phenomena achieves truth as well as existence itself thanks only to the participation of ideas. Human cognition is explained by the involvement of man’s soul in this real truth; the soul, being immortal although it undergoes cycles, is originally related to the higher existence. Plato understood the cognition of the truth to be the remembrance of that which the soul contemplated before its birth. Plato’s ethical doctrine is. on the one hand, a contemplative asceticism and, on the other, a striving toward the perfection of human society through moral and educational reform and the establishment of a Utopian state ruled by philosophers. During the last period of Plato’s life his philosophy drew closer to the mystical mathematics of the Pythagoreans. After his death this trend was continued in Plato’s Academy by his closest followers, including Speusippus and Xenocrates.

Aristotle, a student of Plato’s, founded his own independent school, the Lyceum, in 335 B.C. Although he adheres to Plato in his belief in ideal general principles conceived in our reason. Aristotle does not set them in opposition to actuality. As the real causes and the principles of things, ideas are living “energies,” which must determine every motion and development, as well as reality itself. In actuality, there is no abstract matter (absolutely formless potential), nor are there pure ideas for ideas are realized in real things. Nature is defined as the natural gradation of individual things, or “substances.” and it has as its upper limit divine reason, the immobile prime mover of the world and as its lower limit indefinite matter, which is capable of taking on any form. Aristotle made this doctrine of being the basis of a synthesis encompassing an enormous range of erudition in the natural and social sciences. Aristotle’s works in logic have served for two millennia as the basis for the study of logic. His works on natural history are an extensive systematization of the study of nature. The work begun by Aristotle in history and natural science was continued by his students Theophrastus in classical botany, the history of physics, and ethics, Eudemus in ethics and the history of the sciences, Aristoxenus in the theory of music, and Dicaearchus in the history of Greek culture.

The social and political crisis of the Greek city-states and the rise of military and monarchical states brought about profound changes in the intellectual life of ancient Greek society at the end of the fourth and beginning of the third century. Active participation in political life had previously been acknowledged as a citizen’s duty, but now the idea became pervasive that the individual cannot oppose the general necessity of the world order, which included man’s political activity. The task of philosophy was to determine those principles of personal conduct that could assure the thinker of the highest good accessible to him. Ethical questions came to the foreground, but they rested on doctrines of nature and of knowledge. The crisis in ancient Greek philosophy in this period led to the widespread dissemination of philosophical skepticism. Of the philosophical schools that arose during the fourth and third centuries, the most influential was Stoicism (founded by Zeno of Citium). Epicureanism, and Skepticism. As set forth in systematic form by Chrysippus in the third century, the basis of Stoicism is the ethical principle of obedience to universal law. The Stoics, following Heraclitus, sought in fire for the only universal force. This force is god. transformed by its own internal law into the world. Fire is both the prime element and the world soul—the all-moving and all-creating reason. Man is a part of the rational unity of nature, and his virtue consists in subordinating his will to the correctly perceived law of nature. The man who follows rational necessity must determine his conduct according to the welfare of the world as a whole; but it is possible for him to know the world’s welfare only by abstinence and self-control. The doctrine of Epicurus also directed its attention primarily to ethical problems. In developing the materialist atomism of Democritus. Epicurus advanced the hypothesis of the spontaneous deflection of atoms from a straight trajectory. He made use of this hypothesis not only in cosmology and physics but also in ethics, where the deflection of atoms was regarded as the minimum of freedom possible within the framework of causal connections between natural phenomena. On this basis Epicurus constructed his doctrine of man and of the soul, as well as his ethics, whose ideal was the equanimity of the wise man who obeys only necessity and nature. The most important of Epicurus’ followers was the Roman philosopher Lucretius Carus.

Ancient Greek Skepticism, represented by Arcesilaus and Carneades in the third and second centuries B.C. and later by Aenesidemus and Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 A.D.). asserted the reliability of sense perceptions and the capability of proving contradictory opinions. On the basis of these assumptions the Skeptics refused to pronounce any opinions. During the Roman domination of Greece, ancient philosophical doctrines were revived, taking on a religious and mystical coloration. Gnosticism and neo-Pythagoreanism were mystical in nature, the latter philosophy accepting the dualism of god and matter. Efforts to overcome this dualism by introducing intermediary principles dominated the teachings of Philo of Alexandria (first century B.C. to first century A.D.) and of the last ancient Greek philosophical school. Neoplatonism. represented by Plotinus. Porphyry. Iamblichus, and Proclus (between the third and sixth centuries A.D.). Plotinus’ system is a dialectic of descent from an ineffable deity, the primary One. through the intermediary links of Intelligence, the World Soul, and the souls of individual men to nonbeing, or matter. In a reverse movement the human soul, by means of exercises and asceticism, unites with god in ecstasy.

In the sixth century A.D. ancient Greek philosophy ceased to develop independently, but its ideas continued to have an influence on the philosophical thought of all subsequent periods. In Engels’ words, “the manifold forms of Greek philosophy contain in embryo, in the nascent state, almost all the later modes of outlook on the world” (Dialektika prirody, 1969, p. 29). Ancient Greek philosophy was the initial base for the entire subsequent development of West European philosophy, and it had a determining influence on the formation of medieval philosophy (the traditions of Platonism and Aristotelianism). Its ideas were subsequently assimilated and reproduced in the diverse schools of modern European philosophy, both materialist and idealist.

Views on the natural sciences. Ancient Greek natural science rested upon a weak empirical foundation but produced an abundance of general hypotheses and theories that anticipated many later scientific discoveries. Until the Hellenistic period (end of the fourth century B.C.) Greek scientific, political, and philosophical views constituted a single, indivisible body of knowledge. Almost all the philosophers were naturalists.

The homeland of the first ancient Greek scientists was Ionia in Asia Minor, which more than any other part of ancient Greece was closely linked with the culture of the ancient East. Eastern culture had an important influence on the development of ancient Greek science. The first studies in geometry, the use of the compass, the prediction of solar eclipses, the recommendation that seafarers take their bearings and steer by Ursa Minor rather than by Ursa Major, as they had done previously—all these innovations are attributed to Thales, the founder of the Milesian school (sixth century B.C.). Anaximander conducted observations of the animal world and compiled the oldest map of the oecumene (the inhabited world), as well as a chart of the skies for use in steering by the stars. Anaximenes conceived of the existence of “dark, earthy bodies” in addition to the “fiery” celestial lights. Among the scientific disciplines, the greatest development was achieved in mathematics, statics, astronomy, and medicine. Pythagoras and his school began to develop number theory and, in geometry, rigorous, logical proofs and methods of precisely measuring mathematical concepts.

Greek science in the classical period (fifth and fourth centuries B.C.) achieved some of its most important advances. During this time was derived a considerable part of that geometrical knowledge that even today is included in the elementary geometry taught in school. This knowledge was set forth in the works of the mathematicians Hippias of Elis (fifth century B.C.). Hippocrates of Cos (second half of the fifth century B.C.), Menaechmus (fourth century B.C.), and others. Number theory was developed in the doctrines of divisibility and proportions. By the middle of the fifth century solid geometry had reached the stage of development where Anaxagoras and Democritus could provide the first outline of perspective theory. The abstract concept of number, first formulated by Pythagoras, played a role in the development of mathematics. Of enormous importance was the Pythagorean school’s discovery of irrational (incommensurable) numbers. Geometric methods of depicting and studying the properties of numbers were probably developed at the same time. Infinitesimal methods—still far from rigorous—were first used to measure area and volume. At the junction of mathematics and philosophy, the nature of the continuous and the discrete was discussed, as reflected in the aporias of Zeno of Elea. Three famous problems were posed in this period: squaring the circle, doubling the cube, and trisecting an angle. At the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries Leucip-pus and Democritus formulated the principles of atomism, which was the highest achievement of materialism in the classical period.

At the beginning of the fifth century the biologist and physician Alcmaeon of Croton established one of the oldest medical schools. He was the first to dissect animals and to demonstrate that the brain is the center of nervous activity. Empedocles (fifth century), the founder of the Sicilian medical school, attempted to explain the growth of human embryo. Anaxagoras (fifth century) conducted the first experiments in dissecting the brains of animals. Based on the practice of the professional Asclepian physicians, other medical schools were also established in the fifth century: the so-called Cnidean school (with its center at Cnidus in Asia Minor) and the so-called Cosian school (with its center on the island of Cos). The most important representative of the school at Cos was Hippocrates, who generalized from his practical experience in treating patients. He also developed methods for making a diagnosis and compiled descriptions of many diseases (and the methods of treating them).

During the fourth century further development occurred in scientific knowledge, especially in natural science and mathematics. The achievements in mathematics belonged, for the most part, to scholars who had attended Plato’s Academy. Plato believed that mathematical objects stand between visible things and ideas and that mathematical thought prepares one to perceive ideas. Eudoxus of Cnidus created a new theory of irrational numbers, and Aristotle summed up and made generalizations upon most scientific disciplines of the classical epoch, constructing a system of all the sciences known at the time and proposing a way of classifying them. Aristotle established the basic principles of zoology and botany—the elements of biology. His disciple Theophrastus continued to develop botany and established the fundamental principles of mineralogy. Aristotle’s biological works. History of Animals. Parts of Animals, and the Origin of Animals. have played an enormous role in the history of science.

Beginning with the Hellenistic period, the natural sciences gradually broke away from philosophy. Astronomy, as well as the mathematics and mechanics associated with it at this time, became the object of precise and systematic research (Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius of Perga. Diophantus of Alexandria, Aristarchus of Samos, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Hero of Alexandria, and others). There were important achievements in medicine and botany (Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Iulis).

GEOGRAPHY. The oldest geographical works were the per-ipli periegeses—descriptions of voyages and land journeys with an indication of the distances between places—set forth in verse so that they could more easily be learned by heart. Similar to these guides were the descriptions of journeys of the gods and heroes that were related in myths and epic poems. The Homeric epic, along with legendary details of sea voyages, enumerates the Achaean coastal settlements and describes such authentic localities as the island of Crete, as well as semilegendary ones such as Scheria and Thrinacia. the prototypes of which were sought even in antiquity. The question of the real boundaries of Homer’s geographic world may be resolved on the basis of peoples mentioned in his epics. Among these were the Ethiopians, who may be identified as the Negro tribes of Africa, the Pygmies, who are located sometimes in Africa and sometimes in India, and the Cimmerians, Hippemolgi, Galactophagi, and Abii, that is, Scythians.

The ancient Ionian geographers (seventh and sixth centuries B.C.) held the earth to be a flat cylinder floating in a world ocean. The flat top of this cylinder was not entirely inhabited: part of it was called the oecumene (the inhabited world with Hellas as its center), the oldest map of which was made by Anaximander (end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth century). Placing the Mediterranean Sea at the center of his map. he divided the oecumene into two equal parts. Europe and Asia. The boundary between the continents was the Phasis River and. somewhat later, the Tanais River, which was the name used for both the Don and the great rivers of Central Asia. In the works of Hecataeus of Miletus (at the turn of the fifth century) there appeared a third part of the world. Libya (Africa), with its border running along the Nile. Hecataeus believed that the Ister (Danube) and the Nile rivers flowed parallel in a latitudinal direction— the former through Europe and the latter through Libya, with both originating on the shores of the Atlantic. Herodotus (fifth century) mentioned a semifantastic story about Phoenician voyages around Libya (Africa) at the turn of the sixth century and the story of the voyage of Scylax of Caria (end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth century) down the Indus River and across the Indian Ocean (Erythraeum Sea) into the Red Sea. These stories attest to the broadening of the Greeks’ geographical horizons, which occurred to a considerable degree during the period when colonies were being planted all around the Mediterranean, from the shores of Syria to Cyrenaica and Spain.

Although the idea of the earth’s spherical shape had originated among the Pythagoreans as early as the sixth century, Anaxagoras (fifth century) supposed that the shape of the earth was cylindrical. Somewhat later, in the fourth century. Aristotle was already speaking of measuring the length of the earth’s meridian, which Dicaearchus (at the turn of the fourth and third centuries) calculated to be equal to 300,000 stadia. At the end of the third century Eratosthenes, as the result of very precise measurement, reduced this length to 252,000 stadia (39,690 km, compared to the actual length of 40,007 km).

Although at the turn of the fifth century the known inhabited world extended from Gibraltar to India, the areas to the north and south were very little known. Even as late as the third century B.C. the northernmost limit of the inhabited world was considered to be the imaginary island of Thule, north of Albion (Britain) near the Arctic Circle. According to Pytheas of Massili, who supposedly had sailed there in the fourth century B.C., it was impossible to proceed further than this island “because of the complete mixing of the elements.” The most southerly point of the known inhabited world, moreover, as late as Strabo’s time (first century B.C. to first century A.D.) was the southern tip of the Red Sea— Cape Notu Ceras, or Southern Horn—which may be identified as Cape Guardafui at the outlet of the Gulf of Aden.

Pytheas of Massilia determined the latitude of the places that he studied geographically by the relative length of the day at the summer solstice. This method of geographic orientation by measuring the sun’s elevation (later widely adopted) allowed Eratosthenes (at the turn of the second century B.C.) to draw several longitudinal and meridional lines through fixed points. Hipparchus (second century B.C.)used this method to divide the globe into 360 degrees, having adopted 700 stadia as the length of one degree and designated this unit as a climate. Later these calculations were used by Marinus of Tyre (a Syrian geographer of the first and second centuries A.D.) and Ptolemy (second century A.D.). who superimposed upon the network of degrees all the geographical objects they knew.

The intensive military expansion of the early Roman Empire and the development of its commercial relations made it possible for Ptolemy to indicate on his map the outlines of Britain and the island of Ierne (Ireland), Agisymba (in Africa, south of Lake Chad), and the island of Taprobane (Ceylon), as well as the tribes of the Seres and Sinae (Chinese) in the East. Ptolemy’s Geography was the summit of the ancient’s knowledge of geography. But the last centuries of Roman history led rather to a narrowing and obscuring of geographic ideas and to a decline of geography as a science.

Historical scholarship. The first historical works were written by Ionian logographers, of whom the most famous was Hecataeus of Miletus (turn of the fifth century B.C.). author of the Tour Round the World and the Genealogies. In their works the logographers made use of various kinds of chronological and chronicle records—lists of the kings and archons in Sparta. Sicyon. and Athens, as well as lists of victors at the Olympian games, which had been held since 776 B.C. Sometimes included among the logographers is Herodotus, author of the famous historical work entitled History. Along with an exposition of the events of the Greco-Persian Wars, this work provides much mythological-genealogical and ethnographic material, as well as cultural material drawn from everyday life. The events of the Peloponnesian War are the subject of the History of Thucydides (fifth and fourth centuries B.C.). Although Thucydides primarily wrote a military history, he devoted much attention to the sociopolitical struggle. When explaining the origin of a historical event. Thucydides seeks to understand reasons and causes. In his History he provides detailed descriptions of the civil conflicts and clashes between democratic and oligarchic parties. On the whole his exposition is marked by a high degree of objectivity. Thucydides saw’ the historian’s principal task as “seeking out the truth.” and the methods he used made him, to a considerable degree, the forerunner of modern historical scholarship. Unlike Herodotus. Thucydides ascribed great importance to critically checking the information at the historian’s disposal.

Sequels to the works of Herodotus and Thucydides were undertaken at various times during the fourth century B.C.Ctesias (turn of the fourth century B.C.) wrote on Persian and Indian history and geography. Preserved primarily in excerpts from Photius (ninth century A.D.), these works contain much legendary material, presented with almost no attempt to reinterpret it rationally. Xenophon (end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth century B.C.) in his Greek History, which covers the period from 411 to 362. primarily describes military events from a pro-Spartan point of view. His Anabasis is a first-rate example of the military and geographical memoir. Ephorus (fourth century B.C.) wrote a history of Greece from the “return of the Heracleidae” to 340. This work was the first attempt at a complete exposition of an important period in the history of Greece and of the countries connected with it. The works of Timaeus (fourth and third centuries B.C.) are also among the oldest examples of works dealing with “universal” history. Known to us only in fragments, they treat of the history of the western Mediterranean countries (primarily Sicily. Italy, and Carthage), written on the basis of much factual historical and ethnographic material. Specific descriptions of the governments in Greek city-states may be found in the works of the philosophers —Plato’s Republic and Laws and Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia. A “universal” history of the relations between Greece. Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt. Carthage, and Rome during the period 220–46 was set forth by Polybius (second century B.C.), the author of History (40 books). Polybius himself called his History a pragmatic one. meaning that it was primarily an exposition of political and military events. But Polybius considered the historian’s main task to be not the description but rather the explanation of events and the revelation of the causes of phenomena and of their interrelationships. A continuation of Polybius’ work is the History (52 books) of Posidonius, which includes events from 146 to about 80 B.C.

Greek historiography continued to develop even during the period of Roman domination. One of its representatives was Diodorus Siculus (first century B.C.), whose Historical Library (40 books) set forth the history of the known inhabited world from the most ancient times to 58 B.C. Of the historians who wrote in Greek during the Roman period, mention should also be made of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first century B.C.). Plutarch (first and second centuries A.D.). Arrian (second century A.D.). Pausanias (second century A.D.), and Dio Cassius (second and third centuries A.D.).

Literature. Ancient Greek literature—the oldest European literature—arose out of the folklore of the Greek peoples. Literature began to develop in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., at the time of disintegrating clan relationships within the city-state society and of growing self-awareness of the individual, which had as yet not passed into the stage of isolation from the collective. The great epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, ascribed to the blind singer Homer, were created in Ionia. They were based on epic songs about clan and tribal heroes and on historical events. The plots of both these epic poems deal with legends about the Trojan War, but history is interwoven with earlier myths. The Iliad concentrates primarily on the military and heroic material of legends, whereas the Odyssey contains primarily details of everyday life and fantastic elements. Homer’s epics combine an elemental realism with a humanistic world view and a glorification of man’s heroic strength. Using didactic folklore, such as lists, genealogies, and aphorisms. Hesiod (eighth and seventh centuries B.C.) depicted in his Theogony the origin of the world and the gods, and in Works and Days he compiled moral, economic, and religious precepts from the point of view of a farmer oppressed by kings.

During the seventh and sixth centuries lyric poetry began to play an important role in literature, reflecting the growth of individual self-awareness. But the feelings and moods of the individual were frequently combined with religious and moral teachings. Thus, two lyrical genres evolved in Ionia, the didactic elegy (performed with flute accompaniment) with military and political moralizing or erotic subject matter (represented by Callinus, Archilochus, and Mimnermus and on mainland Greece by Tyrtaeus, Solon. Theognis, and others) and the ridiculing, scourging iamb (Archilochus, Simonides. and Hipponax). The poets of Lesbos developed solo songs with lyre accompaniment (monodic lyrics). In the poetry of Alcaeus (beginning of the sixth century B.C.) the motifs of the restless life of a political fighter and emigre were mingled with the imagery of the traditional drinking song. Sappho cultivated the poetry of female companionship, in which erotic and conjugal themes predominate. Following in their footsteps, the Ionian poet Anacreon (sixth and fifth centuries) composed lyrical miniatures for the most part on the subjects of wine and love. The solemn choral lyric and the poetry of hymns also developed. Among the creators of the choral lyric the most renowned were Aleman. Stesichorus. Arion. Ibycus. Simonides. Baccylides. and Pindar.

During the sixth century philosophical and narrative prose began to develop in Ionia. A new type of folk tale came into being—the novella with historical or everyday characters. The vivid “low” character in this prosaic folklore was the slave Aesop, the hero of the anecdote drawn from everyday life and, according to tradition, the author of fables.

The period of Athenian cultural supremacy (fifth and fourth centuries) was the period of the greatest flowering of ancient Greek literature. The development of Athenian democracy elevated the role of the citizens, the members of the community who enjoyed full rights. The central place was occupied by the dramatic genres, which developed out of the combining of the choral lyric with ritual. The foremost genre was tragedy, with its subject matter drawn from mythology. Aeschylus, the poet of the period of the establishment of Athenian democracy, depicted the victory of the democratic system over despotism (The Persians) and of the state and court over the clan order (the Oresteia and Seven Against Thebes), as well as the triumph of the family (The Suppliants) and of civilization (Prometheus Bound). In Aeschylus, the action of divine forces merges with man’s conscious choice and personal responsibility. In the plays of Sophocles, who lived during the flowering of Athenian democracy, people display full independence in their conduct. Dominant personality traits are revealed in the conflict between the laws of the state and the unwritten laws of religion and morality (Antigone), in the clash between honorable directness and crafty wisdom (Philoctetes), and through suffering in the name of duty (Electra). The errors and suffering arising out of man’s ignorance are depicted in the Trachiniae and Oedipus Tyran-nus. The links between strictly motivated events arising from the characters and the actions of the dramatis personae reveal the hidden influence of the rational, divine forces that rule the world. Euripides, the poet of the crisis of Athenian democracy, takes as his point of departure the autonomous ethics of the individual and is critical of traditional myths. Portraying people “as they really are,” he brings his heroes closer to the level of everyday life (Electra) and depicts their sudden outbursts (Heracles) and their uncontrollable passions (Medea and Hippolytus). Suffering no longer has a moral significance (The Trojan Women), and the poet often mentions the role of chance (Ion and Helen).

Comedy, which originated in Sicily (Epicharmus, sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) but was developed in fifth-century Athens (the so-called Old Attic Comedy), retained its original features of carnival and revelry, infusing them with social satire. The comedies of Aristophanes constitute a bold and profound satire on the political and cultural life of Athens at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the fourth, on the aggressive foreign policy of the slave-holding democracy (The Knights, The Wasps), on Sophist philosophy (The Clouds), and on the tragedies of Euripides (The Frogs). In the comedies The Acharnians and Lysistrata the poet calls for an end to the internecine Peloponnesian War. Instead of individualizing the characters, Old Comedy created universalized caricatures by using folkloristic masks.

The crisis of the city-state that occurred during the second half of the fifth century found its ideological expression in the so-called Sophist movement, which led to the rapid development of prose. Ancient Greek prose reached a high artistic level in historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon), the philosophical dialogue (Plato), and oratory. Moreover, prose adopted from poetry its rhythmic quality, abundance of metaphors, and sentence structure (for example, periodic speech). Eloquence flourished in the fourth century both in the courts and in politics (Lysias, Demosthenes), as well as at ceremonial events (Isocrates). In connection with this there arose rhetoric—the theory of style and of oratorical debate. During the fourth century antidemocratic and even monarchical tendencies were becoming widespread at the highest levels of Greek society (Isocrates, Xenophon, Plato); hence the interest in an ideal philosopher-king and the development of the genre of the moralizing biography. The literary portrait in historiography (Xenophon), in eloquence (Isocrates), and in the philosophical dialogue (Plato) was one of the achievements of this time. Literary theory also became an object of inquiry; in his treatises On Poets (which has not been preserved) and the Poetics, Aristotle summed up the results of studies made during the preceding period.

The Macedonian domination of Greece and the formation of Hellenistic states (beginning of the third century) sharply altered the Greek way of life. The establishment of monarchical regimes in the Hellenistic states and the gradual decline of classical Greek culture manifested themselves in the avoidance of important social and political problems. Political eloquence lost its purpose. Literature turned to themes from family and everyday life. Historiography and drama showed the dominant role of chance. At the turn of the third century “New Comedy” began to develop, based on everyday family situations and erotic subjects and with a humane treatment of social contradictions (Menander and others). The plots were constructed on traditional patterns (such as the abandoned child), but the masks became more individualized. In the course of time all forms of serious drama were supplanted by the mime, a seminaturalistic, semifantas-tic farce. In the eastern Greek lands, especially those within Alexandria’s sphere of influence, where Greek domination did not have a basis among the common people, a “learned” mythological poetry developed. Thus, the philologist and poet Callimachus (third century) created minor lyric genres and an epic based on a love story and containing much archaic learned lore. Myths became the material for the ironic depiction of intimate everyday life. In contrast to Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes revived the large-scale epic, introducing into it psychological analysis of love (his epic poem entitled the Argonautica). The “idylls” of Theocritus were little pictures based on mythological themes, small scenes drawn from the life of the urban lower classes portrayed in the style of the mime, and bucolic verses in which shepherds declared their amorous yearnings. The mimiambi (satirical scenes) by Herodas have a naturalistic character. Among the minor poetic forms were epigrams of various types—erotic, drinking, funeral, and satirical. No important historiographic works have been preserved from this period. Pseudohistorical genres, however, did arise—the fantastic Utopian journey (Euhemerus, Iambulus); the aretalogia, or story about the “might” and “marvels” of a god and his prophets; and the novella on a historical, everyday, or sometimes satirical subject.

The Roman conquest (from the middle of the second century B.C.) contributed to the decline of Greek cultural life. It was only from the first century A.D. that the situation in the Greek regions began to improve. The upper classes of Greek society turned to its own past, and the policy of Rome corresponded to these archaic tendencies. In literature they were reflected in the form of Atticism— a turning to the language of Attic prose. The moralist and historian Plutarch (first and second centuries A.D.) portrayed in his Parallel Lives the heroic leaders of the Greek and Roman past. The apogee of Greek archaism was caused by a cultural revival in the second century A.D., behind which, however, was concealed a lack of independent creativity. The so-called second Sophist period led to the cult of the effective word and declamation without content. Along with the triumph and exultation there was a submissiveness to fate, mysticism, and superstition. A criticism of these marks of an ideological decline is contained in the satirical works of Lucian (second century A.D.).

Atticism and the Sophist movement contributed to the further development of the Hellenistic genres of narrative prose. The passive suffering hero is one of the favorite characters in this literature. The last narrative genre of antiquity—the Greek novel, primarily romantic, of the first to third centuries A.D.—described ideal lovers who remain faithful to each other despite the blows of fate and various temptations (Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Iamblichus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus). Beginning in the fourth century ancient Greek literature yielded first place to that of the Christians, although the old forms survived for some time.

The portrayal of the broad scope of reality in its essential connections and the creation of the ideal man, although as yet in a limited, static form—such is the universal historical service rendered by ancient Greek literature, and this determined its importance for the subsequent literary development of Europe, beginning with Roman literature. The creative contact of later literature with that of ancient Greece— either directly or through Roman literature—has never ceased. As noted by K. Marx, Greek art and literature reflect “the childhood of human society in the place where it developed most beautifully” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 12, p. 737).

Theater. Greek theater and drama originated in village festivals held in honor of the god Dionysus. At such festivals dithyrambs and phallic songs were performed, which contained elements of dialogue and dramatic action. The subsequent development of the dithyramb is attributed to the poet Thespis (second half of the sixth century B.C.), who is also credited with introducing the first actor. The chorus was an essential part of drama until the Hellenistic period. During the second half of the sixth century B.C. the actor, who was the playwright himself, was first set apart from the chorus as an individual performer.

Theater occupied an important place in the social life of the Greeks from an early period. Its significance was especially great during the flowering of the city-state democracy (fifth century B.C.). The works of the great playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes reflected the most important aspects of the social, political, and spiritual life of the Greek people and created a theater of large ideas and perfected artistic form.

The popular nature of classical theater determined the way in which theatrical productions were organized and the arrangement of the building. The state, in the person of high officials called archons, undertook the organization of these presentations. The expense of maintaining and training the chorus was borne as an honorable social obligation by rich citizens who came to be known as the choragoi. The plays were staged on the holidays in honor of Dionysus: the Little, or Rustic, Dionysia held in December and January, according to the Gregorian calendar; the Lenaea in January and February; and the Great, or City, Dionysia in March and April. They were competitions, with each of three rival playwrights entering a tetrology consisting of three tragedies and a satyr play.

In the ancient Greek theater men performed the women’s roles. The same actor would play several roles, and he was required not only to recite the verses of the play well but also to sing and dance. Greek actors wore masks which were changed for different roles and even while playing one role. In order to increase their height, tragic actors wore cothurni, a special kind of thick-soled boot.

The ancient Greek theater consisted of three basic parts: the orchestra, the skene, and the theatron. The oldest theater building in Greece was the Theater of Dionysus in Athens, dating from the end of the sixth to the fourth century B.C.

The period of the consolidation of Athenian democracy was the time of Aeschylus’ creative activity. He was the author of heroic patriotic tragedies that raised historical, religious, and philosophical problems: The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, and the Oresteia. Aeschylus introduced a second actor, thereby opening the way for a more profound development of tragic conflict and a strengthening of the action of theatrical presentations. In the time of Aeschylus the classical structure of the tragedy was defined as well as the method of presentation.

The powerful political and cultural upsurge of the Athenian state during the second half of the fifth century B.C. brought about a new period in the development of theatrical art and drama. The tragedies of Sophocles, including Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, and Electra, expressed the civic and moral ideals of classical democracy during the period of its flourishing. The lofty humanism of Sophocles’ tragedies and his concern with liberating the human personality from the ties of the city-state determined the dramatization of his theatrical presentations, that is, the appearance of a third actor, a decreasing importance of the chorus, and an increasing importance of dialogue in the tragedy. The introduction of stage sets is also attributed to Sophocles. Euripides’ tragedies Andromache, Hecuba, Heracles, Hippolytus, Medea, Iphigenia in Tauris, The Phoenician Women, and The Trojan Women depict the misfortunes caused by war, criticize the old religious conceptions, and unmask tyranny. They reveal a greater concern with man’s inner world and with conveying the heroes’ psychological experiences. The Old Attic Comedy reached its artistic flowering in the works of Aristophanes. In his satirical comedies, including The Knights, The Peace, Lysistrata, and The Wasps, Aristophanes sharply criticized the instigators of war, sly and greedy demagogues who for base ends exploit the people’s trust, and hypocritical leaders from the rich, slaveholding upper class. In addition to tragedies and comedies, satyr plays were also staged; these were joyous plays in which the chorus depicted satyrs—the companions of Dionysus.

During the epoch of Hellenism, theatrical art became one of the bearers of Greek culture to the East. The New Attic Comedy, whose most important representative was Menan-der, depicted contemporary life solely on the level of everyday domestic relations and of man’s personal experiences. The tendency of the New Comedy to portray everyday life necessitated corresponding changes in the acting style; for the greatest possible individualization of the traditional characters of comedy there was an increase in the number of masks. The Hellenistic period saw the appearance of professional actors, as well as acting companies, membership in which was limited to men and, moreover, to freeborn men. The best-known theaters of the Hellenistic period were those in Epidaurus, Megalopolis (in the Peloponnesus), Priene, Ephesus (Asia Minor), and Oropus (Northeast Attica). The plays of the New Comedy, which no longer had a chorus, were performed not in the orchestra but on a platform called the logeion.

Beginning in the fifth century B.C. short (usually improvised) farcical and satirical scenes from everyday life called mimes were introduced into some presentations. The development of the mime in all its forms facilitated the reinforcement of realistic tendencies in the classical theater. There were also women among the performers of the mime, and the actors performed without masks. The pantomime, a mimetic dance, usually based on a mythological subject, was also widespread in the Hellenistic period. As a rule the actor in a pantomime performed alone. Women’s roles were played, for the most part, by men. In southern Italy and Sicily during the fourth and third centuries B.C., phlyakes were performed—brief comic scenes distinguished from mimes by the obligatory use of masks. The phlyakes parodied tragedies, but they also took themes from everyday life.

The theater of ancient Greece had an enormous influence on the development of world theatrical art. The Romans (especially in the early stages of development) made extensive use of the Greek theatrical heritage, as did the men of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The democratic traditions of the ancient Greek theater have retained their importance for subsequent periods. The posing of important sociopolitical, philosophical, and ethical questions, the patriotism of the dramatic works, the concern with man, and the profundity of the heroic characters, awakening civic consciousness in the spectators—all these constitute the life-affirming force of the ancient Greek theater.

Architecture and art. Greek architects, sculptors, and vase painters (almost no painting has been preserved) created monuments of art that have served the most diverse peoples for many centuries as models of beauty, harmony, and good taste. Revealing its potentials most fully during the classical period when slaveholding democracy flourished, Greek art achieved a profound human quality in its artistic imagery. Although the creative work of the Greeks was based to a large extent on naïve, mythological concepts (in Marx’ words “Greek mythology constituted not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its ground” [K. Marx, and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 12, p. 736]), it is not set in opposition to real life. Greek art is permeated with a sense of balance between man and the world and consciously embodies the beauty of the natural existence of man, particularly the beauty and harmonious structure of the healthy human body. The an-thropometric principle is present not only in art but also in architecture; mathematical analysis of the proportions of ancient Greek temples demonstrates that their proportions are similar to those of the human figure. Greek artistic monuments have been preserved not only in the Balkan Peninsula but also in Asia Minor, in southern Italy, and on the islands and coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as along the northern Black Sea Shore.

Greek art as such arose out of Mycenaean art. The continuity from Mycenaean art to the art of the turn of the first millennium B.C. may be traced especially clearly in painted ceramics and architecture—in the consecutive evolution of vase painting from the late Mycenaean through the sub-Mycenaean and the protogeometric to the vase painting in the Geometric style of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. and in the preservation in early Greek architecture of the mega-ron, which was widespread in Mycenaean architecture. Several periods may be distinguished in ancient Greek art proper (from the 11th to the first century B.C.), the so-called Homeric, the archaic, the classical, and the Hellenistic.

In the so-called Homeric period (11th to eighth centuries B.C.) painted ceramics, were extensively developed. The Geometric style lasted until the seventh century. During the period of its flowering (eighth century B.C.) dipylon vases for funeral purposes were created, as well as vessels for everyday use. Paintings on the best monuments of the Geometric style were marked by a clear rhythmic quality and by expressive lines forming patterns and figures of people. Also created in the Geometric style were terra-cotta figurines and sculptured decorations for vessels—primarily attachments to covers and figured handles made of clay and bronze. The few remnants of buildings, terra-cotta models of temples, and literary descriptions provide a meager conception of the architecture of the Homeric period. Judging by archaeological data, the building techniques of this time were inferior to those of Mycenae or Crete.

The archaic period (seventh and sixth centuries B.C.), which followed the Homeric, was characterized by the development of city-states and cities. The main elements in the layout of a city were the sanctuary (acropolis) and the public market place (agora), around which were situated the residential quarters. Temples—the “dwellings of the gods” within which a statue stood—occupied the foremost place in the building of cities and acropolises. Initially built of wood, the temples from the beginning of the sixth century B.C. were made of limestone and from the middle of the sixth century B.C. more and more often of marble. The predominant type of temple was the peripteral, a rectangular area enclosed on the outside by a colonnade around its perimeter. The peripteral temple was the result of a long evolution from the ancient dwelling, the megaron, to the templum in antis and to the prostyle and the amphiprostyle. Along with temples, public buildings were constructed for various functions, including bouleuteria (buildings for assemblies), stoae, lesche, theaters, stadiums, palaestras, and gymnasiums. With the transition to stone construction, the principal types of orders took shape, thereby facilitating the creation of structurally distinct architectural forms and the development of anthro-pometric architectural scales. Buildings of the Doric order include the Temple of Hera in Olympia (last years of the seventh century or beginning of the sixth), the Temple of Apollo in Corinth (c. 550), the Temple of Artemis on the island of Corcyra (beginning of the sixth century), the Temple of Hera I (the so-called basilica; middle of the sixth century) and the Temple of Demeter (second half of the sixth century) in Posidonia, and temples C and D in Selinus (both dating from the sixth century). The severity of the Doric temples built during the archaic period is consonant with the moods of an epoch of tense social struggle within the Greek city-states. The Ionic order, which closely resembles the Aeolic (for example, the capitals from Neandria), arose during the sixth century in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Refinement of the capitals and a balance of proportions distinguish it from the Doric order. The Ionic order was used in the enormous, multicolumned dipteroi (the temples of Artemis at Ephesus and of Hera on the island of Samos; both dating from the middle of the sixth century) and, with some modifications, in the small elegant treasuries and sanctuary at Delphi.

The archaic sculptors decorated temples with reliefs of friezes and metopes, with statues on pediments, with figured and ornamental acroteria, and with antefixes made of stone and terra-cotta. Severe sculptures depict gods or heroes (Theseus, Heracles, Perseus, and others), struggling against terrible monsters—personifications of evil and vices. The massiveness of the figures of Perseus vanquishing Medusa with the aid of Athena standing beside him and of Heracles carrying the bound dwarfs (the metopes at Selinus) are in keeping with the architectural forms of the archaic temples, as if to round out the shafts of the thick columns and the high, cumbersome entablatures. The continuous sculptured friezes of the Ionic temples are characterized by dynamism and complexity of composition. From the individual, loosely interconnected scenes in the earlier friezes there is a transition to harmonious and integral compositions, as exemplified by the frieze of the Sicyonian treasury at Delphi (c. 525). The reliefs on the early pediments (the Temple of Artemis on the island of Corcyra) were replaced by round sculpture with a generalized working of the side turned to the rear, for example, Typhon in the form of a serpent-like creature with three human torsos and heads (c. 570) on the pediment of the Athenian Hecatompedon.

Archaic statuary sculpture developed from small bronze statuettes of the Apollo of Thebes type (gift of Manticles; first half of seventh century) to the statues of the nude kouros, or youth, and of the kore, or maiden, dressed in long garments; especially perfected among these are Attic statues dating from the mature and late archaic period. In a naïve and integral manner the kouros statues embodied the archaic period’s aesthetic conceptions of the physical perfection of man, the valor of the defender of the city-state, and the prowess of Apollo—the perfect deity. The immobility of the Artemis of Delos (middle of the seventh century) and of the Hera of Samos (second quarter of the sixth century) was replaced by the conventional movement of the Nike of Delos (middle of the sixth century), attributed to Archermus. The sculptors, while making little use of human facial expressions (the so-called archaic smile), were capable, nevertheless, of creating an emotional mood by means of abundant modeling of the mass and by a masterful, plastic treatment of the clothing, whose folds might be severe, elegant, or capricious. Archaic sculpture reveals local variations: the Ionian kore and kouros have a lyrical, contemplative quality and a smooth, flowing form that distinguishes them from the severe and sharply modeled Doric statues, for example, Cleobis and Biton, carved around 600 B.C. by Polymedes of Argos.

During the archaic epoch the basic varieties of ancient Greek vases—the amphora, krater, kylix, hydria—acquired their final forms. The vase painters of the seventh century created compositions in the so-called carpet style, which replaced the rigid lines and conventional designs of the Geometric style with flexible outlines, plant motifs, and frequently in island pottery with scenes relating a story. At the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth century the black-figure style of vase painting was firmly established in Corinth and later in Athens; its foremost masters were Clitias, Execias, and Amasis. The transition around 530 B.C. from black-figure to red-figure vase painting is connected with the name of Andocides.

During the classical period (fifth century to the last quarter of the fourth century B.C.) ancient Greek cities attained their highest flowering, and a system of regular planning evolved (Miletus, Piraeus), the main principles of which are attributed to Hippodamus, including the laying out of a rectangular network of streets and the building of houses of equal size in residential quarters. The Hippodamian system responded to progressive social ideals and corresponded to the democratic structure of the city-state. The typical dwelling of the classical period was a house made of stucco, whose main rooms were grouped around a courtyard and the pastada (a covered passageway supported by pillars) adjoining it. The architecture of the classical temples (which were not only holy places but also a unique symbol of the city-state) combined typical features with individual ones. The design of one order would be varied by means of altering the proportions and scale of a particular type of building. This was linked to the striving of each city-state to attain a unique quality in the architecture of its main buildings. Hence the many variations within the general plan and identity of order elements in the Temple of Athena Aphaea on the island of Aegina (c. 500–480), the Temple of Hera II (the so-called Temple of Poseidon) in Poseidonia (second quarter of the fifth century), and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (468–456).

At the turn of the fifth century there were definite changes in Greek art. Overcoming the conventionality of the archaic forms, sculptors, vase painters, and painters created images that were closer to life, depicted the human figure and its movements more perfectly, and executed multi-figured scenes more boldly on pediments and friezes. The principles of the “severe style,” which had arisen at the beginning of the classical period, were especially clearly embodied in vase painting. Epictetus, Euthymides, Euphronius, Duris, and the vase painter Brygus—all of whom employed the red-figure technique—created paintings based not only on mythological themes but also on those of everyday life, showing scenes of banquets, classes in schools, and athletes in stadiums. The “severe style” also manifested itself in sculpture during the first half of the fifth century, bringing to life such masterpieces of plastic art as the pediments of the Temple of Athena Aphaea on the island of Aegina and the pediments and metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. In early classical plastic art, along with heroic figures (for example, the group sculpture The Tyrannicides by Critius and Nesiotes, 477; the statue of Nike by Paeonius, c. 455; and the statue of Poseidon or Zeus from Cape Artemisium, c. 450), lofty lyrical works were created (the reliefs of the so-called Ludovisi Throne, second quarter of the fifth century). The efforts of the masters of the first half of the fifth century were fully realized in the work of Myron. The perfection of his plastic execution of the human figure enabled him to express ideas unsurpassed in their importance: the victory of beauty over ugliness, as in the group Athena and Marsyas, and the beauty of the harmonious tension of human forces, exemplified by the statue Discobolus.

In the middle of the fifth century classical art attained its highest flowering (the so-called high classicism). Athens during the rule of Pericles became the chief political and cultural center of Hellas. On the Acropolis, which had been devastated by the Persians during the Greco-Persian Wars, new temples were erected and statues were set up, forming a picturesque ensemble that combined elements of asymmetry and symmetry, of the Ionic and Doric style and that was intended to provide a continuous and successive change in point of view. The best architects and sculptors worked here under the direction of Phidias. Ictinus and Callicrates designed the temple of Athena, called the Parthenon (447–438), embodying in its austere forms, in its harmonious proportions, and in its overall ceremonial appearance the triumph of victory in the Greco-Persian Wars. Mnesicles built the stately Propylaea (437–432), and an unknown master created the fancifully designed, elegant, Ionic Erechtheum (421–406). The severely architectonic sculptural ornamentation of the Parthenon (created by 432) is permeated with a perception of the world that eschews trifles, particulars, and details and glorifies beauty and harmony. The statues and reliefs of this temple, depicting the lofty virtue of the gods, the Athenians in a triumphant procession, and the struggle between centaurs and Lapithae, are devoted to the theme of the triumph of the rational Hellenic principle over the dark forces of barbarism. The lofty ideals of classicism—civic valor and the spiritual, moral, and physical perfection of the free Hellene—vividly expressed in the works of Phidias and the sculptural ornamentation of the Parthenon, were also embodied in the works of Alcamenes and Cresilas and in the statues of the Peloponnesian sculptor Polycleitus (second half of the fifth century). These ideals also found expression in vase paintings, in the frescoes of Polygnotus (second quarter of the fifth century), in terra-cotta figurines, and in reliefs on coins.

From the beginning of the fourth century (after the Peloponnesian War), during the crisis of Greek city-state democracy, the interests of the individual gradually began to predominate over the interests of the city-state. A great deal of attention was now directed not to the construction of religious buildings but, rather, to the building of structures more closely linked with the everyday needs of human beings: gymnasiums, palaestrae, odeums, and theaters (of which the best preserved is the theater at Epidaurus, 350–330; architect, Polyclitus the Younger). The functionally precise composition of the Greek theaters laid the foundation for the subsequent development in world architecture of places of entertainment. There was also a trend to immortalize the individual personality in memorials such as the mausoleum in Halicarnassus (c. 350) designed by the architects Pytheas and Satyrus and the choragic monument of Lysicrates in Athens (c. 335).

In the visual arts the increased interest in the human character stimulated the development of the sculptured portrait (Demetrius of Alopece, end of the fifth and first half of the fourth centuries). The contradictions of reality were keenly reflected in the creative work of Scopas, whose mythological compositions captured the drama of struggle and the force of man’s spiritual and physical transports (the frieze of the mausoleum in Halicarnassus, the pediments of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, and the statue of the maenad). In the statues of Praxiteles, including Hermes With the Infant Dionysus and Aphrodite of Cnidus, the predominant traits are a dreamy pensiveness, melancholy, peace, and a contemplative quality. The works of Lysippus, the court sculptor of Alexander of Macedon, reveal an acute sense of the changefulness and dramatic complexity of life. Woven into the heroic subject matter are notes of excitement and alarm, as in the statues Apoxyomenos (Athlete Scraping Himself), Hermes, and Heracles. The works of Leochares, who strove to imitate the lofty figures of fifth-century classicism, bear the imprint of academic coldness.

The Hellenistic period (end of the fourth to the first century B.C.) is characterized by a major extension of the area encompassed by Greek culture and by the interaction of Greek culture with the cultures of the peoples who became part of the kingdom of Alexander of Macedon and, later, of the states of his successors. Athens ceased to be the principal center of artistic life. The major cities of Asia Minor became the arbiters of taste. During this period building reached an unprecedented scope. Numerous new cities arose, built according to regular pattern (Alexandria, Antigoneia on the Orontes, Seleucia on the Tigris), huge structures were erected (the Pharos Lighthouse, at Alexandria), and magnificent architectural ensembles were created (the Acropolis at Pergamum). Dwellings—from modest houses to palaces— were built according to a particular style, and the traditional inner courtyard was transformed into the peristyle. The figures of Hellenistic sculpture (the impetuously striving Nike of Samothrace, the giants of the Pergamum Altar of Zeus frieze perishing in combat, Laocoön straining with his last strength) are permeated with anxiety and tinged with the tragic outlook of the epoch. Characteristic of the art of Hellenism is a multiplicity of regional schools, trends, and artistic imagery. The sculptural portrait flourished. The classical ideal of the harmonious man-citizen was replaced by the exaltation of the ruling monarchs (for example, the statues of the diadochs) and by the boundless monumentalization of deities (the statue of Helios—the so-called Colossus of Rhodes). There was also an interest in people on various rungs of the social ladder (including the lowest), in the characteristic traits of the different stages of man’s life, and in the ethnic differences of barbarian peoples. After the Roman conquest of Greece the art of the Hellenes became a part of the cultural development of the conquerors, enriching the latter with its traditions of many centuries but losing more and more of its own independent character. The artistic culture of subsequent epochs has turned extensively to ancient Greek art for inspiration. Permeated in its best manifestations with a humanistic spirit and marked by a wholeness of perception and by a lofty harmonious quality in its aesthetic transformation of the world, Greek art, according to Marx, continues “to provide us with artistic pleasure and in a certain respect to serve as a standard and unsurpassed model” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 12, p. 737).

Music. Music occupied an important place in the social life of the Greeks. Instruction in music constituted an integral part of the education of young people, and singing and the playing of musical instruments were included in gymnastic and artistic competitions. In ancient Greece there were special associations (collegia) of singers, musicians, and dancers. The music of the ancient Greeks was primarily syncretic, uniting verse, singing (the intoning of verse), instrumental accompaniment, dance, and eurythmics. Music was monophonic; the chorus sang in unison. A few fragments of written Greek music have survived to our time, including music to a stasimon in Euripides’ drama Orestes (verses 338–344), two hymns to Apollo (138 and 128 B.C.), funeral and lyrical songs, 12 lines of a paean, and a few lines of music about the suicide of Ajax. Nevertheless, conclusions may be drawn about the essence and principles of ancient Greek music primarily from literary data, theoretical treatises, and art works. Tetrachords formed the basis of the ancient Greek musical scale. Two tetrachords formed a mode.

Depictions of the oldest stringed instruments (lyres and others) date from the third and second millenniums B.C.—scenes in which the lyre and aulos are being played from the island of Crete, as well as figurines of harpists and flutists from the Cyclades. In Homer’s epics there are references to music being used in work, religious ceremonies, and popular festivals. The rhapsodists and aoidos were professional singers of epics about gods and heroes; the aoidos who were in the service of communities or kings, accompanied their improvisations on instruments.

Among the earliest forms of ancient Greek music are the linos songs (sung at grape harvests to the accompaniment of the phorminx, a stringed instrument), wedding songs, paeans (hymns of joy in honor of Apollo), and threnodies (funeral songs). The aoidos and professional mourners took part in the funeral processions of important persons. Depictions of such processions have been preserved on Attic vases of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.

The oldest period of musical development was associated in Greek legends with the mythical aulos players Olympus and Marsyas. The Phrygian origin of these musicians points to the influence of Asia Minor, and especially of the Hittites, on Greek culture. Olympus is considered to be the founder of the oldest rules (nomoi) for playing the aulos and of the laws of harmony, understood to be concord, pleasing sound, and perfection. His student, according to tradition, was Thaletas of Gortyn (on Crete), who brought to Sparta the custom of the musical accompaniment (on the flute) of paeans to Apollo and introduced choral singing (probably recitation set to music). Homeric tradition (in the Iliad) also supports the view that choral singing originated on the island of Crete.

During the seventh century the music of Asia Minor continued to exert a great influence on Greek musical culture. This was the era of Terpander from the island of Lesbos, who, according to tradition, won a victory in a musical competition in Sparta around 676. He is credited with introducing the cithara—a seven-stringed lyre that was used to accompany the singing of the Homeric narrative poems—and with establishing the rules for playing the instrument. In 586 at the Pythian games in Delphi an aulos player from Argos named Sacadas was the victor. He performed a work describing Apollo’s slaying of the dragon; it had five parts and may be the oldest example of program music.

The growth of cities where great religious and civic festivals were held, led to the development of choral music accompanied by wind instruments. Metallic horns came into use along with the aulos. Music, and especially choral singing, acquired a political significance. Military themes became popular. At the same time there was a development of lyric music—all lyric poetry was sung either in unison by a chorus or as a solo accompanied by the aulos or cithara. The poet Archilochus, who founded a music school around 650, contributed to the flowering of this musical form. Archilochus introduced into poetry iambic and trochaic trimeters, which were reproduced vocally with instrumental music.

No less important for the history of ancient Greek music were the poets and musicians of Lesbos Alcaeus and Sappho, the former as an author of politically oriented verse and the latter as a writer of lyric and love poetry. New musical stringed instruments—the barbiton and the pektis—were introduced to accompany the performance of their works. A master of the choral lyric was the poet and musician Pindar, the author of hymns and dithyrambs, drinking songs, and victory odes, which were distinguished by their formal diversity and by their rich and intricate rhythms. The dithyramb, based on Pindar’s hymns, was developed. It was performed at the festivals of Dionysus from the sixth to the fourth century B.C. and transformed by Arion into a choral hymn. Arion is also credited with separating the solo part of the coryphaeus from the chorus. All of this served as the basis for the creation of Attic tragedy, which united drama, music, and other art forms. The tragedians, like the lyric poets, were also musicians (Aeschylus, Phrynicius, Sophocles, and Euripides). The chorus from Sophocles’ Antigone, “Many are the wondrous forces in the world, but there is no force stronger than man” became the Athenian anthem. In his works Euripides limited the introduction of choral parts, concentrating instead on the solo parts of the actors and coryphaei. In this he was following the example of the so-called new dithyramb—a new style in music distinguished from the previous style by its greater individuality, emotional vibrancy, and virtuosity. The creators of this new style were Cinesias (450–390); Philoxenus of Cythera (436–380), an exponent of the virtuoso solo performance who elevated and affirmed the importance of music written for poetical works; and Timotheus of Miletus (c. 400), a cithara player who extended the instrument to 11 strings and made it (instead of the aulos) the principal accompaniment in choral singing.

The prevalence of music in Greek daily life gave rise to the need to comprehend it and to create a theory of it. Efforts to explain the emotional forces found in music are present in the myths about Orpheus, Apollo, Arion, and others. Many of the most important classical thinkers dealt with questions of musical theory and musical aesthetics. Heraclitus (sixth and fifth centuries) pointed to the dialectical nature of music. Pythagoras (sixth century) and the representatives of his school discovered many acoustical laws of music. The followers of Pythagoras, known as canonists, defended the Pythagorean system, based on the purely mathematical relationships among the tones, which were obtained by dividing the string. Their opponents, the so-called harmonists, supported Aristoxenus (fourth century), who held that the criterion of a musical work is hearing, the living perception of the music by man. Ethical and theoretical doctrines of music were developed by many ancient scholars, including Aristotle (fourth century), who ascribed to music a civic and pedagogical as well as a diversionary importance. Concepts established by the ancient Greek theoreticians, such as melody, rhythm, and scale, exist even in present-day music, although they are interpreted somewhat differently. In ancient Greece musical notes were designated by Greek and Phoenician letters.

REFERENCES

A. F. LOSEV (religion and mythology),
V. P. GAIDENKO (philosophy), N. N. PIKUS (natural science), L. A. EL’NITSKII (geography, historical scholarship, music), I. M. TRONSKII (literature), V. V. GOLOVNIA (theater), G. I. SOKOLOV (architecture and art)

The foundations of the study of ancient Greek culture were already laid in antiquity by the works of Greek and Roman historians and philologists, called grammarians by the ancients. Loss of interest in ancient Greece during the transition to the Middle Ages was not absolute. The Byzantines preserved the most important ancient Greek texts, which served as school exercises or fulfilled practical needs, despite their “pagan” origin. Beginning in the middle of the ninth century the collection of ancient texts and commentary work was resumed and did not cease until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. Interest in ancient Greek culture was awakened in Western Europe during the Renaissance. There followed a period of intensified collection of Greek manuscripts and monuments of Greek art (for the most part, in Roman copies), which were obtained by means of excavations. The printing of ancient Greek texts began at the end of the 15th century. The first historical descriptions of classical art began to appear, based entirely on the works of ancient authors. The view of classical art as a high point followed by a decline at the beginning of the Middle Ages and by a new flowering during the Renaissance (which returned to the ideals of classical antiquity) was especially clearly expressed in a book by the Italian G. Vasari. This view was subsequently developed further in the works of the 17th-century theoreticians of classicism, such as the Italian scholars G. Agucchi and G. P. Bellori and the French scholars N. Poussin and A. Félibien. During the 16th and 17th centuries ancillary disciplines began to develop that made later scholarly research in Greek history and philology possible. Problems of chronology (J. C. Scaliger) and of the use of source materials (the Dutch scholar G. Vossius) began to be worked out, dictionaries were compiled (the Greek-Latin dictionary of Henri Estienne, 1572–73; the dictionary of Medieval Greek of C. Du Cange, 1688), and the principles of Greek paleography began to be established (B. de Mont-faucon, 1708). To a certain extent Greek philosophy retained its normative significance, as exemplified by the emergence of the Cambridge Platonists in the 17th century, by the influence of Aristotle on classical literary theory, and by the revival of Stoicism by the Dutch philologist J. Lipsius (16th century) and of Epicureanism by the French philosopher P. Gassendi (17th century). However, during the period of absolutism and feudal-Catholic reaction primary interest was directed toward the study of later antiquity. Philology in the 17th and 18th centuries eschewed generalizations and acquired a primarily formal and particular character (the “Dutch” school). The antiabsolutist and anticlerical tendencies of the Enlightenment, the ideas concerning historical laws that were developed in the 18th century (the Italian thinker G. Vico), the linking of culture with the geographic environment and the state system (the French Enlightenment figure C. Montesquieu), the interpretation of literature as an expression of the spirit of the people (the German J. Herder)—all these factors shifted interest from the late periods of classical antiquity to the early ones, from Rome to Greece. The foundation for the scholarly study of classical art was laid by the German humanist J. Winckelmann, who was the first to examine classical art in relation to the history and culture of the society in which it arose and who proposed the division of the history of classical art into five periods, a division retained down to the present time. Following Winckelmann, the “neohumanist” movement in German thought and literature (J. W. von Goethe, F. von Schiller, W. von Humboldt, J. C. f. Hölderlin) regarded early Greece as human society’s ideal youth, when, under conditions of democratic freedom, the harmony of the individual and the universal was realized. Ancient Greek literature began to be interpreted as literature “of the people,” and in this ideological atmosphere the idea arose that the Homeric epics represented the collective creative work of folk poets. The 18th century was also marked by important achievements in the philological criticism of ancient texts and in the establishing of the authenticity of literary monuments (the British philologist R. Bentley). Proceeding from his conception of classical culture (for the most part, Greek culture of the classical period) as a unified harmonious whole established by the “folk spirit,” the originator of the “Homeric question,” F. A. Wolf, outlined a program for the all-inclusive “science of antiquity” (or classical philology), encompassing all aspects of classical life. Wolf and his followers introduced the historicocritical principle into the study of Greek culture. During the 18th century works of Greek architecture dating from the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. were discovered in southern Italy. Classical monuments of Greece and Asia Minor began to be studied (the founding of the Society of Dilettanti in Great Britain in 1733 played a large role in this). During the 1780’s and I790’s works on ancient Greek philosophy began to appear, written from primary sources and containing a great number of classical texts (the German scholars C. Meiners, D. Tiedemann, H. Bulle, and G. Tennemann). At the beginning of the 19th century there evolved a scientific trend in the study of the history of the classical world (particularly that of ancient Greece). This approach is associated with the German scholar B. G. Niebuhr, who subjected classical authors to critical analysis and provided the first examples of the scientific reconstruction of ancient history (the so-called critical school). Another representative of this trend, the Englishman G. Grote, gave the first critical exposition of ancient Greek history. The 1830’s saw the beginning of the specialized study of the Hellenistic period, for example, the works of the German scholar J. G. Droysen. It was during this same period that the German scholar A. Boeckh, a student of Wolfs, laid the foundation for the systematic publication of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, conducted research on the economy of Athens, studied metrology, the Greek calendar, and Greek meters, and wrote commentaries on the Greek authors. Boeckh’s student K. O. Müller was also a versatile scholar. Opposed to this “real” philology in the first half of the 19th century was the school of “formal” philology (the German scholar G. Hermann), which limited itself to grammatical analysis, metrics, and the interpretation and criticism of texts. During the first half of the 19th century more and more archaeological material was accumulated—the temples on Aegina and at Bassae and Corinth, as well as the ruins of Mycenae and Tiryns were discovered. At the beginning of the century Europe marveled at the Parthenon sculptures, which were brought from Athens by Lord Elgin. In Asia Minor the reliefs from the mausoleum at Halicarnassus were discovered, as well as the monuments at Xanthus and Didyma. Remarkable examples of Greek toreutic work were found in Scythian burial mounds in southern Russia. Greek and Latin dietionaries were published in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century, and during the 1840’s the Kossovichi brothers published an extensive Greek-Russian dictionary. M. S. Kutorga helped the Russian school of classical scholarship that produced a number of important Greek scholars, including M. M. Stasiulevich, V. V. Bauer, and V. G. Vasil’evskii.

The continuous accumulation of new archaeological and epigraphic material from the time of Greek independence (1830) made more detailed specialization necessary. From about the middle of the 19th century it was more convenient to treat the study of various aspects of ancient Greek culture separately.

Philosophy. From a methodological and conceptual standpoint the most important exposition of ancient Greek philosophy was that of G. Hegel in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1833–36). The development of classical philosophy is here presented as the successive unfolding of definite logical categories, each of which corresponds to a philosophical system of antiquity. From the middle of the 19th century the study of ancient Greek philosophy developed along the lines of either abstract metaphysics or of positivism. Representative of the metaphysical approach are the works of the German scholars H. Ritter and C. Brandis, who endowed Greek and Roman philosophy with a precise, albeit abstract, logic. The positivist approach to the study of ancient Greek philosophy may be found in the work of the German philosopher E. Zeller, whose history of Greek philosophy remains unsurpassed to the present. In Zeller’s work extensive use of primary sources is combined with critical commentary, a vivid picture of the epoch is provided, and philosophy is expounded in connection with the general history of ancient Greek culture. Among Zeller’s followers were the British scholar J. Burnet, the Austrian scholars T. Gomperz and his son H. Gomperz, and the French scholar P. Tannery.

During the last quarter of the 19th century a reaction against the positivist approach to the study of ancient Greek culture and philosophy set in, for example, F. Nietzsche’s work of the 1870’s. Nietzsche’s aesthetic and symbolic conception was developed on the basis of extensive philological material by E. Rohde and K. Jöel in Germany and by Viach. Ivanov in Russia. An important contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy was also made by other opponents of positivism—the representatives of the so-called Marburg School of neo-Kantianism (Germany)—who analyzed the mythological-artistic and metaphysical conceptions of the ancient Greeks as a system of transcendental principles (H. Cohen and especially P. Natorp; later A. Gerland, W. Kinkel, C. Hebbel, and N. Hartmann). W. Windelband’s work on the history of ancient philosophy (Russian translation, 1893, 1908, and 1911) was written in the spirit of neo-Kantiansim.

The study of the history of ancient Greek philosophy in the 20th century has been characterized by detailed exposition and sharp criticism of primary sources (for example, the German scholar U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff’s work on Plato). Characteristically, there is an interest in the relation of classical philosophy to the general spiritual culture of antiquity, as in the works of the German (FRG) scholars R. Hönigswald, E. von Aster, L. Stein, E. Hoffmann, H. Leisegang, and W. Capelle. Most important in this regard are the works of the German scholars W. Nestle and B. Snell (FRG), and of O. Gigon (Switzerland). Among the more recent general works on the history of ancient philosophy, reflecting contemporary developments in philology, terminology, and social history and including extensive bibliographical surveys, the most notable are those of the French scholars J. Chevalier and E. Bréhier, of the British scholar W. Guthrie, and of the Italian scholar F. Adorno.

In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries a great deal of work was done in publishing standard texts of the ancient Greek philosophers, at first in Germany, then in Great Britain (Oxford and Cambridge), and since the 1950’s in Italy as well.

The dictionaries of the German scholars F. Ast (on Plato) and H. Bonitz (on Aristotle) reflect the further development of textual analysis. Of the numerous publications of fragments of ancient Greek philosophical works the most valuable editions are those of F. Mullach (1860–81), H. Diels (pre-Socratic philosophers; 1903, latest edition, 1964, FRG), H. F. A. von Arnim (Stoics; 1903–24), and C. de Vogel of the Netherlands (1959–63). De Vogel’s work is an extremely valuable collection of texts of the Greek philosophers with an English translation and an extensive bibliography.

Of prerevolutionary Russian works the most noteworthy are the studies by O. Novitskii and P. Redkin. Novitskii’s work on the development of ancient philosophical doctrines in connection with the development of pagan beliefs is permeated with a Hegelian tendency, and it provides a clear classification of the doctrines, as well as a subtle description of the unique qualities of different systems. Redkin’s work on the history of legal philosophy is noted for its extremely detailed exposition of all classical philosophy in a positivist vein. Also showing talent are the lithographed lectures on the history of ancient philosophy of M. I. Karinskii (1889), F. A. Zelenogorskii (1908), A. I. Vvedenskii (1911–12), and L. M. Lopatin (1900–01), as well as A. D. Guliaev’s (1915) lectures on the history of ancient philosophy. Subtle analysis distinguished the works of S. N. Trubetskoi and V. F. Ern. Outstanding for their great philological scholarship from a positivist standpoint are the works of A. P. Kazanskii (on Aristotle, 1891) and M. I. Mandes (on the Eleatics, 1911).

After the October Revolution, P. P. Blonskii made an important contribution to the study of Neoplatonism with his dialectical interpretation of Plotinus. A. F. Losev’s works of the 1920’s and early 1930’s are devoted to the problems of classical symbolism and to the interpretation of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Losev’s works from the 1940’s to the 1960’s analyze problems of classical mythology, aesthetics, and philosophy from the Marxist position. S. Ia. Lur’e’s polemic with A. O. Makovel’skii over Democritus was of great importance. Among works by Soviet philosophers the most noteworthy are those of B. S. Cher-nyshev (on the Sophists, 1929), M. A. Dynnik (on Hera-clitus, 1929), G. F. Aleksandrov (on Aristotle, 1940), S. F. Kechek’ian (on Aristotle, 1947), A. O. Makovel’skii (on the atomists, 1946), and V. F. Asmus (on Democritus, 1960; on the history of ancient philosophy, 1965; on Plato, 1969). Also important are the studies of Aristotle by A. S. Akhmanov (1960) and V. P. Zubov (1963) and S. Ia. Lur’e’s edition of the fragments of Democritus, which includes a Russian translation and extensive commentary (1970).

History. Major achievements in the study of ancient Greek history date from the second half of the 19th century and are connected with brilliant archaeological discoveries (see below: Art), with the further development of epigraphy (the German scholars A. Kirchoff, U. Köhler, W. Dittenberger), papyrology (publications of the British scholars B. Grenfell, A. Hunt, and F. Kenyon and of the Swiss scholar V. Martin), and numismatics (publication of a multivolume catalog of ancient coins by the British Museum). The introduction of new materials casting light on the life and daily habits of ancient peoples and the revolution brought about in the social sciences by the works of Marx and Engels could not fail to influence the development of bourgeois historiography. Although they rejected Marxism and struggled against it, the bourgeois historians, nevertheless, were compelled to be more attentive to the problems of economics and of social relations. A school arose that concerned itself for the most part with socioeconomic problems in the history of the classical world (the works of the German researchers E. Meyer, K. J. Beloch, R. Pöhlmann). At the same time, however, there were signs of a decline in bourgeois scholarship on classical antiquity. This decline was expressed in hypercriti-cism (important representatives included K. J. Beloch and E. Pais in Italy) and in the modernization of ancient history (E. Meyer, R. Pöhlmann, M. I. Rostovtzeff). Opposed to the modernizing trends were the French historian Fustel de Coulanges and his school (P. Guiraud and others), as well as the German economist K. Bücher, whose own conceptions of “domestic economy” in antiquity also do not withstand rigorous scientific criticism.

In the last third of the 19th century a new approach to the study of ancient Greece began to develop in Russia in connection with the increased role of epigraphy. This was the historicophilological school, which investigated specific problems of political history, basing its research on inscriptions. The most prominent representatives of this trend were F. F. Sokolov and his students, who included the paleographer V. K. Ernshtedt, the epigraphists V. V. Latyshev, A. V. Nikitskii, and N. I. Novosadskii, and the specialist on the history of the late Hellenistic and Roman period S. A. Zhebelev. In addition there were schools that devoted much attention to the study of Greek culture (D. F. Beliaev, F. G. Mishchenko, who was also well known for his translations of ancient Greek historians, and F. F. Zelinskii). At the turn of the 20th century interest in the socioeconomic history of Greece and the Hellenistic world (M. I. Rostovtzeff, M. M. Khvostov) and, in political history, in Athenian democracy (V. P. Buzeskul and others) became ever more apparent. The history of the classical cities of the Northern Black Sea Shore has always received special attention from Russian scholars. Historical research on this region included the archaeological investigations of Iu. A. Kulakovskii and V. V. Shkorpil in Kerch, on the site of ancient Panticapaeum, and those of K. K. Kostsiushko-Valiuzhinich at Chersonesus, and of B. V. Farmakovskii at Olbia; the epigraphic publications of L. Stefani, I. V. Pomialovskii, and V. V. Latyshev; and the historical studies of V. V. Latyshev, S. A. Zhebelev, and M. I. Rostovtzeff.

Modern Western scholarship has accomplished a great deal in the study of various periods and aspects of ancient Greek history. Especially important have been the archeolog-ical excavations in Greece, in Asia Minor, and particularly on Crete and the further development of epigraphy (including the German scholars F. von Hiller von Gaertringen and J. Kirchner, the French epigraphist L. Robert, the British scholar M. N. Tod, and the American epigraphist B. D. Meritt). of papyrology (the German scholars U. Wilcken and W. Schubart), and of numismatics (the German scholars B. Pick and K. Regling, the British numismatists H. Matting-ly. E. A. Sydenham, and C. Seltman, and the French classicist E. Babelon). This period was characterized by intensive development in the study of political and socioeconomic history, especially of the Hellenistic period (the works of the German scholar J. Kaerst, the British historian W. Tarn, and the Russian scholar M. I. Rostovtzeff, who emigrated to the USA after 1918). There was also a growing interest in the city-state in general (the works of the Belgian scholar H. Francotte and of the French historian G. Glotz).

During the second half of the 20th century great advances have been achieved in the study of the Aegean culture, including the deciphering of Linear Script B by the British scholars M. Ventris and J. Chadwick and the studies by the Austrian scholar F. Schachermeyer, the German (FRG) scholar F. Matz, and the Greek scholar S. Marinatos. Important studies in the period of the establishment of the city-state include those of the British researcher C. Crymes, the American scholar C. Starr, and the German (FRG) scholar H. Berve. Interest in the classical period of ancient Greece has revived particularly in the crisis of the city-state (the French scholars P. Cloché and C. Mossé). There has been intensive study of the history of agrarian relations and land mortgages in Athens (the American researcher J. Fine and the British scholar M. Finley), of slavery (the American scholar W. Westermann and the German (FRG) scholars P. Focht and S. Lauffer), and of the city-state in general and Athenian democracy in particular (the German scholar V. Ehrenberg, who has been working in Great Britain since the late 1930’s, the French scholar P. Cloché, the British scholar A. Jones). Major studies have been published on the history of Greek religion (the Swedish scholar M. Nilsson), as well as on the history of social thought and culture (the German (FRG) scholars W. Jaeger and E. Wolf and the British scholar G. Thomson). New syntheses of Greek history appeared, such as the works of the French scholar G. Glotz. the German (FRG) historians H. Berve and H. Bengtson. and the British scholar N. Hammond. Greek history was elucidated in detail in multivolume collective works such as the Cambridge Ancient History (first ed., vols. 1–12, 1923–39) and in the monumental reference work of Pauly-Wissowa (first ed., 1839–52; new ed., since 1893).

In the USSR the efforts of scholars studying the history of ancient Greece have from the start been aimed at the study of socioeconomic problems, the life of the popular masses, and the status of slaves. Relying on the Marxist theory of socioeconomic formations, Soviet scholars have subjected to critical reexamination earlier conceptions of ancient Greek history. New general programs in ancient Greek history have been established (A. I. Tiumenev, V. S. Sergeev, S. I. Kova-lev, S. Ia. Lur’e). Special attention has been devoted to the study of the period of the formation of the slaveholding city-state (K. M. Kolobova, K. K. Zel’in), and since the mid-1940’s the most ancient Cretan-Mycenaean and Homeric periods have received thorough study (S. Ia. Lur’e, Ia. A. Lentsman, T. V. Blavatskaia). The Hellenistic period has been intensively studied (A. B. Ranovich. K. K. Zel’in, A. I. Pavlovskaia), and in connection with this the crisis of the city-state has also received much attention in recent years (L. M. Gluskina and others). A prominent place has been occupied by research on slavery (Ia. A. Lentsman, E. L. Kazakevich [Greis], K. M. Kolobova) and on the ideology of ancient Greek society (S. Ia. Lur’e, A. I. Dovatur). The multifaceted study of the Greek cities on the Northern Black Sea Shore continues—the archaeological, numismatic, and historical investigations of V. D. Blavatskii, V. F. Gaidukevich, B. N. Grakov, A. N. Zograf, A. N. Knipovich, D. P. Kallistov, T. N. Karasev, E. I. Levi, L. M. Slavin, and D. B. Shelov, as well as the publication of the monumental Corpus of Bosporan Inscriptions. In paleography and papyrology work has been done by G. F. Tsereteli, P. V. Ernshtedt, and O. O. Kriuger.

Important advances have been achieved in other socialist countries in epigraphy, papyrology. and the history of ancient Greek culture (the Bulgarian scholar G. Mikhailov, the German (GDR) scholar W. Pech, and the Polish scholar R. Tauberschlag). Significant contributions have been made in the study of various problems of ancient Greek history, including ethnogenesis and the most ancient Cretan-Mycenaean period (the Bulgarian scholar V. Georgiev), the establishment of the city-state system (the Czech historians B. Borecky and P. Oliva), and various aspects of socioeconomic relations, in particular, slavery (the Bulgarian scholars V. Velkov and Kh. Danov, the German (GDR) scholars E. Welskopf and D. Lotze, the Polish scholar I. Biezunska-Matowist, and the Rumanian scholar E. Condurachi).

Literature. During the second half of the 19th century neohumanism. which had paid primary attention to Greek classicism, was superseded by a historically oriented positivism. Interest intensified among scholars in the literature of the Hellenistic period, in the Greek novel, and in the links between Christian literature and the Greek tradition (the German scholars U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, E. Rohde, and R. Reitzenstein and the French scholar Susemihl). At the same time there was a growing interest in the Greek archaic period and in the pessimistic and mystical aspects of classical Greek culture, which contradicted neohumanist ideas about Greek joyfulness and clarity (the German scholars F. Nietzsche and E. Rohde and the Swiss scholar J. Burckhardt). The cultural-historical method in combination with the philological method became dominant in the study of ancient Greek literature during the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. This approach was expressed most clearly in the History of Greek Literature (vols. 1–5, 1887–99) of the French philologists the brothers A. and M. Croiset and in the unfinished work on Greek literature of the classical period of the German philologist W. Schmid (1929–48). The stable and self-contained quality of the Greek classical genres with respect to plot (myths), standard forms (recurrent epithets, traditional masks), and composition and style stimulated scholarly interest in the origin and development of various genres and their components. There were studies on the Greek epic (the British scholar G. Murray), tragedy (U. von Wilamo-witz-Möllendorff and the Swedish scholar M. Nilsson), mime (the German scholar H. Reich), epigram (the German R. Reitzenstein). rhetoric (the German F. Blass), dialogue (the German R. Hirzel), the novel (the Germans E. Rohde and E. Schwartz), biography (the German F. Leo), and autobiography (the German G. Misch).

Various works have been analyzed by scholars primarily in commentaries, for example, those of the British scholars W. Leaf on the Iliad and R. Jebb on Sophocles, of U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff on the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides, and of the Dutch scholar J. van Leeuwen on Aristophanes. The contributions to the study of ancient Greek literature of the Russian scholars F. F. Sokolov. P. V. Niki-tin, F. F. Zelinskii, I. F. Annenskii, and F. G. Mishchenko deserve praise.

Since the end of the 19th century papyri dating from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, which are being discovered in the deserts of Egypt, have enriched our knowledge about those elements of ancient Greek literature that were eliminated from the school curriculum in late antiquity and in the Byzantine period, including classical lyric poetry (Alcaeus, Sappho, Bacchylides), the New Attic Comedy (Menander), Alexandrian poetry (Callimachus. Herondas), and uncanoni-cal early Christian writings (gospels and apocalypses). The Egyptian papyri provided additional material on the creative work of better known writers, such as Pindar and the tragedians.

The British “anthropological school” (E. Tylor, E. Lang, and J. Frazer) in the course of its comparative study of ethnography and folklore established that the sources of Greek mythology and ritual were to be found in the culture of “primitive” societies. On the basis of this, new interpretations of the Greek myths arose (the German scholars H. Usener and W. Mannhardt and the British scholar Jane E. Harrison), as well as new theories of the origin of tragedy and comedy (the British scholars W. Ridgeway and F. Cornford). Aleksandr N. Veselovskii examined the development of ancient Greek literature on an even broader scale of comparative literary scholarship, and this line of study was continued in the works of the British comparatists of the 20th century (the husband and wife M. H. and N. C. Chadwick and M. Bowra). Discoveries about Eastern cultures (Hittite. Ugaritic) have revealed multiform ties with the Hellenic world in the oldest periods as well as in late classical antiquity. Ancient Greek literature has emerged from isolation and has become part of the universal-historical literary process. Over the last half-century in the West the cultural-historical method has been superseded by neo-Hegelian trends, for example, B. Croce in Italy, and, for the most part, by intuitionist currents, such as the German “spiritual-historical” school represented by B. Snell (FRG) and A. Lesky (Austria). Concurrent with these are existentialism, personalism, psychoanalysis, and structuralism.

Soviet literary scholars study the history of ancient Greek literature in close contact with historians of classical antiquity. They struggle against the modernizing distortion of ancient Greek literature, and in order to elucidate its relationship to folklore and mythology, upon which it is based, they are using folklore material of the peoples of the USSR, material hitherto not applied to this goal (I. I. Tolstoi, S. Ia. Lur’e, V. Ia. Propp, O. M. Freidenberg). Efforts to reexamine the development of ancient Greek literature have been made in educational courses of S. I. Radtsig and I. M. Tronskii. Particular attention is being devoted by Soviet scholars to the essential factors in this development and to individual authors, including Homer (A. F. Losev, A. A. Takho-Godi, N. L. Sakharnyi. I. I. Tolstoi, I. M. Tronskii), tragedy in general (S. I. Radtsig, S. Ia. Lur’e, B. V. Kazanskii, I. I. Tolstoi), and specifically Aeschylus (V. N. Iarkho). Aristophanes (S. I. Sobolevskii. V. N. Iarkho), the emergence of artistic prose (S. V. Melikova-Tolstaia), Herodotus (S. Ia. Lur’e. A. I. Dovatur). Menander (G. F. Tsereteli,I. M. Tronskii, A. A. Takho-Godi), and Theocritus (M. E. Grabar’-Passek).

The relation of ancient Greek literature to folklore is also being studied in other socialist countries, including I. Tren-csényi-Waldapfel in Hungary; T. Sinko, K. Kumaniecki, V. Steffen, and W. Klinger in Poland; A. Piatkowski, A. M. Frenkian, and N. I. Barbu in Rumania: J. Irmscher in the GDR; and A. Nichev in Bulgaria.

Art. Radical changes in the study of classical art occurred during the second half of the 19th century, when earlier gaps were filled in by extremely important archaeological discoveries. From the 1840’s to the 1880’s France, Germany. Great Britain, and the USA established archaeological schools in Greece. The excavations begun between the 1870’s and the 1890’s in Athens, Delphi, and Olympia led to the discovery of many monuments of architecture, sculpture, and vase painting from the so-called Homeric and archaic periods. Conceptions about the art of the first half of the fifth century B.C. were fundamentally broadened with the discovery of the pediments of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Study of the Greek cities of Asia Minor (the discovery of the frieze from the Altar of Zeus at Pergamum and the excavations in Priene and Magnesia on the Maeander) provided abundant material for studying the art of the late classical and Hellenistic periods. In the course of this work a scientific method for conducting archaeological excavations was developed.

The work of the German archaeologist H. Schliemann in Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns should be regarded as the most important event of the last third of the 19th century. Schliemann discovered a previously unknown Bronze Age culture in Greece. The errors he made were partly corrected by his successor, W. Dörpfeld. At the same time that field investigations were being undertaken museum collections were being studied. On the basis of information provided by classical authors, whose works were meticulously studied by the German scholars H. von Brunn and J. A. Overbeck, many works by Greek sculptors were identified, including the Doryphorus, Diadumenos, and Wounded Amazon by Poly-clitus. the Athena Lemnia and Amazon by Phidias, and the Athena and Marsyas by Myron. The results of this archaeological activity and research were systematized in the work of the German scholar A. Michaelis.

At the end of the 19th century general, basic scholarly works began to appear on the history of classical art (the French scholars G. Perrot, C. Chipiez, and M. Collignon), in which works of art were studied on the basis of archaeological data combined with critical analysis of the style of the monuments. The clearest example of this approach is to be found in the works of the German scholar A. Furtwängler, whose studies are important even today. At the end of the 19th century Russian scholars began to take an active part in the study of classical art. Among these were A. A. Pavlovskiy B. V. Farmakovskii. and V. K. Mal’mberg.

Fruitful archaeological activity continued into the 20th century. In 1900 the British archaelogist A. Evans laid the foundation for studies on Crete, where he discovered a palace at Knossus dating back to the second millennium B.C. The work done by Evans and by a number of French and Italian archaeologists attested to the full flowering of Cretan culture during the Bronze Age. During the first decade of the 20th century a Neolithic culture was discovered in Greece (the settlement at Sesklo in Thessaly). Since the beginning of the 20th century archaeological studies have stressed new centers as well as those that had previously been little researched, such as the islands of Corcyra, Delos, and Samos and the cities of Miletus, Ephesus, and Olbia. After World War I the investigations of the British archaeologist A. J. B. Wace at Mycenae and of the American archaeologist C. Blegen at Troy led to important modifications in the data provided by H. Schliemann and W. Dörpfeld. For re-creating the history of Greek art, especially that of vase painting at the beginning of the first millennium B.C., the projects in Athens have been especially important—the investigations of German archaeologists in the Ceramicus cemetery and those of American archaeologists in the Agora. The excavations of the American archaeologist D. M. Robinson led to the discovery of Olynthus, a city dating from the classical period.

On the basis of the new archaeological discoveries that were made between the 1920’s and the 1940’s a number of major works were written on the history of ancient Greek art as a whole and on its various branches, such as the studies by the German scholars G. Rodenwaldt, W. Schuchhardt, L. Curtius, E. Pfuhl, and E. Buscher. Outstanding among these for their depth and thoroughness are the works of the French scholar C. Picard on the history of Greek sculpture. The period from the 1920’s to the 1940’s was a time of the active formation of contemporary ideas about classical art. Since the 1930’s the formal method of analysis has become widespread in foreign scholarship on antiquity, which sets out to precisely identify various artistic monuments and to group them around specific masters (often nameless). This method, which has continued to predominate in the postwar years as well, is applied especially widely in the study of vasepainting (the British scholar J. D. Beazley).

In the USSR a Soviet school of classical studies has formed since the October Revolution. During the 1920’s B. V. Farmakovskii worked successfully at directing excavations at Olbia. The older generation of Soviet historians of classical art studied under him. At the end of the 1920’s and in the 1930’s they were led by the outstanding researcher O. F. Val’dgauer.

After World War II archaeological activity took on still greater scope. Particularly outstanding results have been achieved in the study of Aegean culture. Work is being conducted at the major center of Trojan culture, Poliochni on Lemnos, which was discovered during the 1930’s. A palace at Kato-Zakros has been discovered on Crete, as well as new shaft graves at Mycenae. Investigation has continued at Phaestus and Mallia (Crete) and at Pylos (in the Peloponnesus). Numerous discoveries have also been made during the postwar years in other fields of ancient Greek art. The most important finds have been the early archaic reliefs from a temple at the mouth of the Sele River (southern Italy), first-rate bronze statues in Piraeus, examples of Greek painting from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in the tombs of Campania and Lucania, mosaics dating from the fourth century B.C. in Pella, and an early Hellenistic painted crypt in Kazanluk (Bulgaria). Research is continuing in Athens, Corinth, Miletus, and Ephesus. The writings of the postwar years include extensive publication of newly found monuments and monuments from old collections. Popular works and numerous albums are being published. A compilation of present-day knowledge about classical art and material culture is contained in the Encyclopedia of Ancient Classical and Eastern Art, published in Rome in seven volumes (1958–66). In addition to the scholars who had already begun their activity in the 1920’s and 1930’s (the American scholar G. Richter, the German scholar E. Langlotz. the French scholar J. Charbonneaux. and the Italian scholar R. Bianchi Bandinelli) a number of scholars of the following generation have met with success in their work, including R. Lullies (FRG) and K. Schefold (Switzerland). Standing at the center of attention in contemporary scholarship on antiquity is the study of the culture of the Aegean world and its ties with Greek culture proper.

As a result of archaeological excavations by Soviet archaeologists on the Northern Black Sea Shore (at Olbia, on the island of Berezan’, at Chersonesus, Panticapaeum [present-day Kerch’], Phanagoria, and Tanais, as well as in Transcaucasia) many monuments of ancient art have been discovered, which have enriched the collections of Soviet museums. Especially valuable is the classical jewelry found in Scythian burial mounds in the Ukraine and in the Kuban’ region, as well as in cemeteries at Vani and Armaziskhevi (Georgia).

From the 1930’s to the 1960’s Soviet scholars have published a number of general works on the history of ancient Greek art: the first book of the second volume of the General History of Architecture (1949); the first volume of the General History of Art (1956); and monographs by V. D. Blavatskii, A. I. Voshchinina, A. P. Ivanova, M. M. Kobylina, Iu. D. Kolpinskii, and A. P. Chubova. A large place in the scholarship on ancient literature is occupied by works that elucidate the culture of the classical cities of the Northern Black Sea Shore.

The most important scholarly centers for the study of ancient Greece are found at universities and academies of sciences in the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria. Belgium. Great Britain, Greece, Italy, the USA, France, the FRG, Switzerland, Sweden, and other countries. There are about 150 periodicals dealing with problems of ancient Greek history and culture. The most important of these are Vestnik drevnei istorii (Moscow, 1937—); Sovetskaia arkheologiia (Moscow, 1957—); Acta antiqua (Budapest, 1951—); Das Allertum (Berlin, 1955—); Hermes (Berlin, 1866—); Klio (Berlin, 1901—); Philologus (Berlin, 1846—); Eos (Warsaw, 1894—); Meander (Warsaw, 1946—); Eirene (Prague, 1960—); The Journal of Hellenic Studies (London, 1880—); Rivista di filologia e l’instruzione classica (Turin, 1873—); Revue des études anciennes (Bordeaux, 1899—); Revue des études grecques (Paris, 1888—); Gnomon (Berlin, from 1925; Munich 1956—); Historia (Wiesbaden, 1950–51—); Revue archéologique (Paris, 1844—); Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (Paris. 1877— ); American Journal of Archaeology (New York-London, 1885—); Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Berlin, 1886—); Annual of the British School at Athens (London, 1895—); Bolletino d’arte (Rome, 1907—); Hesperia (Cambridge [Mass.], 1932—); and Archaeology (Boston-Cambridge [Mass.], 1948—).

REFERENCES

I. M. TRONSKII (introduction, literature),

A. F. LOSEV (philosophy), E. D. FROLOV (history),

N. A. SIDOROVA (art)