Greek Literature

V

The Greco-Roman Period, 2nd Century bc to 4th Century ad

After the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 bc, the Greek historian Polybius wrote an account of that conquest, and a century later the geographer Strabo compiled his Geographica, a systematic study of places, animals, and objects of interest. In the late 1st and early 2nd centuries ad Plutarch produced his famous Parallel Lives, in which biographies of celebrated Greeks are paired with those of notable Romans. Later in the 2nd century ad, Galen, the greatest of the ancient anatomists, and Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer, wrote works that determined the course of Western medical practice for 1400 years.

The early Christian writers who transcribed and compiled the New Testament made use of a variety of the Koine (Greek for “common”), the court and literary language of Hellenistic Greece. The Koine dialect is distinct from the one used by the classical Greek writers and their imitators, the so-called Atticists, the best of whom was the satirist Lucian, author of Dialogues of the Dead, Dialogues of the Gods, and True History, the latter a comic narrative work.

According to modern scholars, the prototype of the novel probably was developed in Greece sometime before the 2nd century ad. The most important extant fragments of an early Greek novel, those of the so-called Ninos Romance, dealing with the love of Ninos, legendary founder of Nineveh, are thought to be of the 1st century bc. Five extant complete Greek novels were written after ad 100 and before ad 300: Chaereas and Callirhoe, by Chariton, considered the earliest of the five works; Aethiopica, or Theagenes and Charicleia, by the skillful writer Heliodorus of Emesa; Daphnis and Chloe, by Longus, the most famous and probably the best of these novelists; Ephesiaca, or Anthia and Habrocomes, by Xenophon, possibly of Ephesus, the least skillful of the novelists; and Leucippe and Clitophon, by Achilles Tatius, thought to be the latest of the five extant novels. All of the works are romantic stories of love and adventure in which virtuous lovers or spouses are separated and made to endure many perils, but are reunited in the end.

Stoic philosophy (see Stoicism) was represented in the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The Neoplatonists (see Neoplatonism) found their chief exponent in Plotinus.

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Some of the finest verse of the period consists of anonymous epigrams in the Greek Anthology, a collection of Greek poetry and prose covering almost 2000 years. It is composed of two books conjoined in the 10th and 14th centuries ad, known, respectively, as the Palatine Anthology and the Planudean Anthology.

VI

The Byzantine Period, Mid-4th Century to 15th Century

From the beginning of the reign of Constantine the Great in ad 324, until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, Greek literature lacked the homogeneous character of the earlier periods and was strongly influenced by both Latin and Eastern elements. The greater part of the writings of this period are theological and attack the various heresies that arose during the first millennium of the Christian era. Thus, Saint Athanasius in the 4th century assailed Arianism, and in the 6th century Anastasius of Antioch and Leontius of Byzantine attacked Monophysitism. The Cappadocian Fathers—Saint Basil of Caesarea, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus—were of importance both as writers and as influences on subsequent theology. In the 8th century the last of the great Greek theologians, Saint John of Damascus, wrote polemics against the Iconoclasts (see Iconoclasm), as well as one of the earliest books on Christian dogma, The Foundation of Knowledge. In the 10th century Symeon Metaphrastes compiled the Acts of the Martyrs, which revised and compared older accounts of saints’ lives. Numerous hymns were composed by Romanus Melodus in the 6th century, and by the early Fathers of the Church, particularly by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and by Cosmas of Jerusalem in the 8th century.

Because of ecclesiastical influence, the writing of secular verse declined. An important legendary and historical poem, however, was the remarkable popular epic Digenis Akritas, a work that originated among the common people in the 10th or 11th century and was spread orally by folk singers before being written down.

Also of importance from the literary point of view were the Byzantine historians, critics, and philosophers. Noteworthy among the historians were Procopius, Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Michael Psellus, Anna Comnena, Georgius Pachymeres, and John VI Cantacuzene. The greatest of the Byzantine critics was Photius, whose summaries and extracts of 280 classical works still extant in the 9th century preserved much that might otherwise have been lost. In the 12th century Eustathius of Thessalonica wrote a commentary on the works of classical authors, including Hesiod, Pindar, and the Greek tragedians. Of importance among Byzantine philosophers was the highly original thinker Georgius Gemistus Pletho, who introduced Platonic philosophy to the Italian Renaissance.

VII

The Modern Period

The Fourth Crusade, launched in 1204, carried with it a horde of Frankish invaders who established themselves in central and southern Greece with such titles as duke of Athens or baron of Thebes (see Crusades). A major literary work that resulted from this occupation was The Chronicle of the Morea (14th century), a long epic poem in swinging Greek verse, probably written by a Greek-speaking Frenchman of the third generation. The epic is remarkable for the beauty of the poetry, its dramatic force, and the easy flow of a vividly descriptive colloquial idiom.

In the mid-15th century the Byzantine Empire and the remnant of the Franks in Greece were swept away by the Ottoman Empire, and Greek literature suffered an eclipse. Until the end of the 18th century it continued to flourish only on the periphery of the Greek world, outside the Ottoman Empire.

A

Cretan Writings

Crete, under the control of the Venetians, was the literary center of Greece during the 16th and 17th centuries. Dramas written during this period, such as the Erophile of Georgios Hortatzis, were largely patterned after Italian models. The period also saw the production of two of the greatest Cretan works in demotic, or colloquial, Greek: the romantic poem Erotókritos by Vitzéntzos Kornáros, now ranked by some as a national epic, and The Sacrifice of Abraham (1635), a psychological drama of family relationships by an anonymous author, perhaps Kornáros; both were translated into English in 1929. A large number of popular songs were written, including the pastoral poem The Fair Shepherdess, a well-known version of which was published in 1627. The composition of such songs also abounded on Cyprus and the Aegean Islands.

The flourishing Cretan school was all but terminated by the Ottoman capture of the island in the 17th century. The ballads of the klephts, however, survive from the 18th century. These are the songs of the Greek mountain fighters who carried on guerrilla warfare against the Ottomans.

B

Classical Versus Demotic Greek

Toward the end of the 18th century, dreams of liberation began to inspire the Greeks. While patriots and poets wrote copiously, a language problem developed that was to afflict Greek literature for many decades. Under Ottoman domination, the education of all Greeks was undertaken by the church. Instruction was conservative, and the language that was used preserved the antique forms of Byzantine Greek. Furthermore, many of the Greek patriots writing abroad, assuming that ancient Hellas was about to arise from its ashes, imposed an archaic vocabulary and grammar on the modern idiom. Adamantios Korais, a learned classicist living in Paris, urged the use of a combined language, one that was neither ancient nor modern.

The language dichotomy can easily be traced in the area of poetry. Since the Byzantine period (4th century to 15th century) a rich, orally transmitted, self-perpetuating folk poetry had flourished in Greece. It was written in demotic Greek, a natural medium for narrative and lyrical verse. In the 18th century some poets turned to the classical tradition instead. Among these were Konstantinos Rhigas and Iakovos Rhizos Neroulos. A number carried on the classical tradition in the 19th century, among them Alexandre Rizos Rangabé, poet, historian, and novelist. In the 19th century, however, poets tended increasingly to use the more expressive demotic Greek, and for decades, fierce controversy raged around the issue of language. Today, demotic is used for literature, and a more classical form of Greek for professional and scientific writing.

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