Greek Literature

I

Introduction

Greek Literature, literature of the Greek-speaking peoples from about the 8th century bc to the present. This literature developed as a national expression with little outside influence until the Hellenistic Age (4th to 1st century bc), and it had a formative effect upon all succeeding European literature. See also Greece.

II

The Early Period

Writings produced during the early period of Greek literature were almost exclusively in verse. For explanations of the meters and other elements of verse structure discussed in this section, see Versification. For explanations of the Greek dialects mentioned, see Greek Language.

A

Epic Poetry

The early inhabitants of Greece, the people of the Aegean and Mycenaean civilizations, possessed an oral literature largely composed of songs concerning wars, harvests, and funerary rites (see Aegean Civilization; Mycenae). The songs were taken over by the Hellenes in the 2nd millennium bc, and although no fragments are known to exist, the subsequent art of the ballad singers who celebrated the actions of heroes must have developed from them. Shaped by the Indo-European verse forms that the Hellenes brought with them, these folk ballads, in turn, became the basis of Greek epic poetry.

The Greek epic reached its height in the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed by the poet Homer probably sometime in the 8th century bc (see Epic; Poetry). They were written in the dialect of the Greek language later called Ionic, with an admixture of the Aeolic dialect. The richly elaborated poetic language and the perfection of the dactylic hexameter meter indicate that the poems represent the culmination rather than the beginning of a literary tradition. The Homeric epics were disseminated by the recitations of professional poets who, in succeeding generations, made alterations in the originals, substituting contemporary phrases for recently obsolete ones.

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Mythical and heroic events that are not celebrated in the Homeric works or that are mentioned without being fully narrated became the subject matter of a number of subsequent epics, some fragments of which are extant. A group of these epics, composed from the 8th century to the 6th century bc by a number of unknown poets called the cyclic poets, concerns the Trojan War and the war of the Seven against Thebes. Among the known epic poets, most of them of a later period, are Peisander of Rhodes, author of the Heracleia, concerning the deeds of the mythological hero Heracles (see Hercules); Panyassis of Halicarnassus, author of a work also called the Heracleia, of which only fragments survive; and Eugammon of Cyrene, author of the Telegonia.

A number of works formerly attributed to Homer have been established as of later authorship. The earliest of these are probably the 34 so-called Homeric Hymns, composed between 700 and 400 bc, a series of magnificent hymns to the gods, written in dactylic hexameter. Among other such poems is the Batrachomyomachia (Battle of the Frogs and Mice), a parody of an epic poem.

Not long after Homer, the poet Hesiod produced his major works. Works and Days, composed like the Homeric epics in the Ionic dialect with some admixture of Aeolic, is the first Greek poem to abandon legendary subject matter in favor of a theme drawn from everyday life: the experiences and thoughts of a Boeotian farmer. The Theogony, usually attributed to Hesiod, although some critics consider it of later authorship, is an account of the establishment of order from chaos and the birth of the gods.

The elegiac couplet, or elegiac distich, became popular throughout Greece during the 7th century bc and was used for compositions of all kinds, ranging from dirges to love songs. The first known writer of elegiacs was, perhaps, Callinus of Ephesus, who wrote in the early 7th century bc. Other celebrated elegiac poets of the 7th century were Tyrtaeus of Sparta; Mimnermus of Colophon; Archilochus of Paros; and the first Athenian poet, Solon. The elegiac poet Theognis of Megara lived in the 6th century.

Archilochus is said to have invented iambic verse and he used it extensively in biting satires. Solon and many other poets used this meter also for reflective poems. Because it represents the rhythms of ancient Greek speech more faithfully than does any other meter, iambic verse came to be used also for the dialogue in tragedies, in the form of the iambic trimeter. The fables of Aesop were written originally in iambic trimeter, although the surviving texts are all of a much later date.

B

Lyric Poetry

The lyric was originally a song to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. Two main types of lyrics were composed in ancient Greece: the personal and the choral lyric.

The personal lyric was developed on the island of Lesbos (now Lésvos). The poet and musician Terpander, who was born on Lesbos but lived much of his life in Sparta, introduced the seven-string lyre and set the poems of Homer to music. Most of his poems were nomes, or liturgical hymns, written in honor of a god, especially of Apollo, and sung by a single performer to the accompaniment of the lyre. The surviving fragments of his work are of doubtful authenticity.

Terpander was followed later in the 7th century bc by the great poets of Lesbos. Alcaeus treated political, religious, and personal themes in his lyrics and invented the Alcaic strophe. Sappho, the greatest woman poet of ancient Greece, invented the Sapphic strophe and wrote also in other lyric forms. Her poems of love and friendship are among the most finely wrought and passionate in the Western tradition. The Lesbian poets, as well as a number of later lyric poets from other Greek cities, composed their poems in the Aeolic dialect.

In the 6th century bc the playful lyrics of the poet Anacreon on wine and love were written in various lyric meters. Subsequent verse similar in tone and theme was known as anacreontic. Anacreon also wrote elegiac distichs, epigrams, and poems in iambic meters.

The choral lyric was first developed in the 7th century bc by poets who wrote in the Dorian dialect. Dominant in the region around Sparta, the Dorian dialect was used even in later times, when poets in many other parts of Greece were writing choral lyrics. The Spartan poets first wrote choral lyrics for songs and dances in public religious celebrations. Later they wrote choral lyrics also to celebrate private occasions, such as a victory at the ancient Olympic Games.

The earliest choral lyric poet is said to have been Thaletas, who in the 7th century bc reputedly came from Crete (Kríti) to Sparta in order to quell an epidemic with paeans, or choral hymns addressed to Apollo. He was followed by Terpander, who wrote both personal and choral lyrics; by Alcman, most of whose poems were partheneia, processional choral hymns sung by a chorus of young girls and partly religious in character and lighter in tone than the paeans; and in the late 7th century by Arion. Arion is said to have invented both the dithyramb, or hymn to Dionysus, and the tragic mode, which was used extensively in Greek drama. Later great writers of choral lyrics include Stesichorus, a contemporary of Alcaeus, who introduced the triadic form of choral ode, consisting of a series of groups of three stanzas; Ibycus of Rhegium, author of a large extant fragment of a triadic choral ode and of erotic personal lyrics; Simonides of Ceos, whose choral lyrics included epinicia, or choral odes in honor of victors at the Olympian Games, encomia, or choral hymns that celebrated particular persons, and dirges, as well as personal lyrics, including epigrams; and Bacchylides of Ceos, a nephew of Simonides, who wrote both epinicia, of which 13 are extant, and dithyrambs, of which five are extant.

The choral lyric reached its height about the middle of the 5th century bc in the works of Pindar, who wrote many choral lyrics of every type, including paeans, dithyrambs, and epinicia. About one-quarter of his works are extant, chiefly epinicia having the triadic structure invented by Stesichorus. Contemporary with the work of these later poets, many great choral odes, both triadic and nontriadic in structure, were written as integral parts of Greek tragedies.