Literature:

- Homeric poems: instructional => offered a guide to values, social attitudes and conduct
- each polis => encouraged arts
    - drama: performed in open air amphitheaters constructed at public expense; the actors (male) - paid by the state
    - tragedies: the themes came from mythology;  the hero (a man or woman) faced with a conflict impossible to solve
    * chorus: commented on the action

Ex:
Aescylus (525 - 456) - tragedy
Sophocles (495 - 406) - Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Electra
Euripides (484 - 406)
Aristophanes (450 -388) - comedy: a political satire

Poetry: Hesiod, Sappho, Archilochus, Pindar (about the Persian War)

History: Herodotus - the father of history - an Ionian Greek from Halicarnassus (Asia Minor): History of the Persian War => cultural historian (details about the ancient world, its culture and its myths)
              Thucydides - The history of the Peloponnesian Wars - Athenian; believed that human nature is constant and history repeats itself; event-type of history (fr: evenimentielle)

Art - served public purposes: monumental sculpture and architecture
- Greeks built temples to the gods who protected the polis - the temple was placed on the acropolis
 * Construction: basic post and lintel
                          the important Greek contribution => proportions and details

- temple: rectangular plan => the heart of the temple was an inner sanctuary (very small room) - housed the statue of the deity => it was surrounded by a colonnade supporting the roof with triangular pediments at each end
- the columns - capitals (decorated or not) - were wider in the middle and tapered toward the top (to appear straight)
Greek architecture: three orders (styles):
    - doric (oldest; traditional; heavier)
    - ionic
    - corinthian (interior)
the difference - the capital

- the temple - was painted with bright colors

Sculpture: What is a sculpture?

- concentrated on the lifelike portrayal of the human figure.
Chronologically: - Archaic Style
                          - Classical Style
                          - Hellenistic Style

Archaic Style: formal, abstract quality; representations of gods, goddesses, heroes, athletes
Male figures - are nude
Female figures - clothed

Classical Style: more lifelike image
Phidias and Praxiteles: did not copy the reality => their sculptures represent an idealized vision of human beauty (no old people represented)
Hellenistic Style: representation of old people; more realistic style; pain, suffering, hard life - part of the art

Greek Thought:

- Greeks were concerned with the nature of the physical universe (what are the element on which the universe is based ?

Thales of Miletus - probably introduced geometry and astronomy to Greece from Egypt (6 c. B.C.); he believed that the universe was based on water
Heraclitus (c.500) - the universe was in a state of perpetual movement
Empedocles: 4 elements: earth, air, fire, and water
Aristotle - embraced Empedocles theory - this formed the basis of most physical speculation until the scientific revolution (16th century)
Leucippus and Democritus - everything was composed of atoms (invisible particles that combined and separated to produce various forms of matter)
Pythagoras - interested in ethics; social aspects; he discovered the mathematical basis of musical harmony; the number - was the fundamental organizing principle of the universe; the theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun
Very influential in the teaching of ethics - the Sophists (itinerant teachers) => Protagoras ( Man is the measure => the individual's experience is the only basis for knowledge of judgment => everything is relative); some Sophists: the truth was objectively out of reach)
In opposition with those ideas: the teachings of Socrates and Plato
Plato - founded the Academy - an institute for advanced studies in mathematics, physical science and philosophy
Socrates argued that the form of a thing has an objective reality ( universal or idea) - that can be understood by intellect, exists apart from any object perceived by senses => Platonic Idealism (Realism - affirms the reality of ideas) - a fundamental philosophical school opposed to subjectivism
Plato's reality:

1. Absolute Ideas
2. Gods
3. Our world (Reality) - reflection of the absolute ideas: mathematics
          art - reflection of reflections

Aristotle (384 - 322) studied at Plato's Academy; tutor to the future Alexander the Great
336: established his school - Lyceum - in Athens
- his basic viewpoint - teleological: things could be understood only in relation to their end purpose ( actions must be judged in terms of the result they produce)
- his major contribution: logic; he wrote 6 treatises on logic - the Organon; he codified the logical method of the discourse; its basis is the syllogism (if all A is B and all C is A, than all C  must be B); he described other forms of syllogism and the nature of language
Aristotle in the physical sciences: wrote on biology, physics and human psychology => he dominated thought until the scientific revolution
Method: observation of natural phenomena; logical inference from empirical observations
he did not use experiments or mathematical models

==> the insistence on observation and logically constructed argument remains an important (not sufficient) part of the scientific tradition today
Aristotle => the most influential Greek thinker => his philosophy will impact later generations