HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE

Twin sources, Bible and Homer: from 1000 BC
Two great reservoirs of source material for European literature (and indeed for all European art) are recorded for posterity in regions bordering the eastern Mediterranean during the centuries after 1000 BC. The holy books of Judaism are slightly the earlier of the two. Known to Christians as the Old Testament, they are written down (at first from earlier oral sources) from about 1000 BC onwards. The other comparable body of material derives entirely from an oral tradition. Somewhere around 750 BC the Odyssey and the Iliad are transformed from bardic songs into written texts - the transition from folklore to literature. They are credited to a blind poet, Homer.
The Homeric question
Who was Homer? When did he write? What did he write? These difficult matters, known collectively as the 'Homeric question', have puzzled scholars since as early as the 6th century BC. The problem is neatly avoided in Max Beerbohm's phrase 'those incomparable poets Homer'. And it is well stated in a legendary schoolboy howler: 'Homer was not written by Homer but by another poet of the same name.' The truth is that nothing is known about Homer other than what can be gleaned from the Iliad and the Odyssey (and it is not even certain that they are by the same hand). But a greater truth is that European literature begins, in Homer, with two amazing masterpieces.
Important clues to the date of Homer are provided by physical details recorded in the poems, such as the design of costume and armour, or methods of fighting. These reflect the realities of life (as known from archaeology) at two particular periods, the 13th century and the 8th century BC. The 13th century sees the final flowering of Mycenaean Greece. It is the time when the Greeks probably go to war against Troy and it is therefore the period of the events remembered, in heroic form, in the story of the Iliad (see the Trojan War). The 8th century is when the poems become fixed in approximately the versions now known to us.
In the unsettled centuries following the Trojan War, the art of writing (known in Mycenae in the form of Linear B) is lost. But the events of the war are remembered, celebrated and richly embroidered by generations of bards. At festivals, or in the houses of great men, these bards recite incidents from the story. Their narratives, made more memorable in rhythmic couplets, are the stock in trade of these men. Their livelihood depends on exciting an audience, eager to enjoy the exploits of heroes and gods. A well-told episode, honed in performance, is a valuable property, to be handed on to the next generation.
Newly added details, if found to give pleasure, are included for a while as a regular part of the story. But details added a generation a two or ago are easily recognized by the audience as anachronistic, old-fashioned. They are neither from the heroic past nor up to date. They are yesterday's material. They are dropped. So the bardic recitals at any time tend to consist of the original core of the stories with a sprinkling of contemporary detail. This is the basis for the conclusion that the poems become stabilized (or written down by the mysterious Homer) during the 8th century BC.
Written texts of Homer: 8th - 5th century BC
There is a good reason for this particular date, the 8th century BC. It is when writing returns to Greece, in a more congenial alphabetic form. But it is not a case of someone simply writing down an existing poem. The strongest argument for Homer as a single writer of genius is the accomplished literary form of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The separate incidents which make up the two stories must certainly have been in the repertoire of many performers, but no single bard is likely to have sung all the material that Homer uses. And nobody, in an age before writing, has either the incentive or the opportunity to fashion such skilfully shaped overall narratives - with beginning, middle and end.
The Plot of the Iliad follows one very precise thread, announced in the opening words of the poem: 'The wrath of Achilles is my theme'. Achilles is wrathful at the start of the poem because Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, has taken from him a beautiful girl, Briseis, a prize of war. Achilles, the great warrior, sulks in his tent and the Greek cause suffers. Many dramatic events follow directly from this premise, and while describing them Homer fills in the broader picture of the Trojan War. By the end there is reconciliation; order is restored; Briseis is back in the bed of Achilles. In masterly fashion, and with wonderfully vivid story-telling and characterization, a wide canvas has been sketched without loss of focus.
By contrast the Odyssey is a collection of fantastic adventures, experienced by Odysseus on his ten-year journey home to Ithaca from the Trojan War. But again they are held within a clear narrative frame. At the start of the poem Penelope, wife of the absent Odysseus, is plagued by a crowd of suitors. They abuse her servants and consume her wealth. At the end Odysseus returns home. Having by now the appearance of a beggar, he too is roundly abused. But in a contest to string the great bow of Odysseus, he is the only one with the strength to do so. He uses it to kill the suitors, in a dramatic climax reminiscent of a shoot-out in a western. Even Penelope at first fails to recognize him, but soon the pair are happily reunited.
The oral tradition of Homer: 8th - 5th century BC
The writing down of the Homeric poems in the 8th century BC does not mean that they become available to readers. The texts merely enable his followers to preserve the works and to perform them in a consistent manner. A group of such followers, the Homeridae, become associated with the island of Chios, off the coast of Ionia. Ancient tradition links Homer himself with Ionia, and the language of the poems seems to confirm an Ionic background.
It is not until about 425 BC that a book trade develops in Athens, with educated people acquiring papyrus scrolls to read in the privacy of their homes. Plato, writing in the Phaedrus in about 365 BC, expresses strong disapproval of this new-fangled fashion for reading by oneself. So the first great flowering of European literature reaches its original audience through their ears rather than their eyes, in public performance. This convention provides not only the beginning of epic poetry, in Homer. It also produces another extraordinary Greek innovation - the theatre.

Greek theatre: from the 6th century BC
The origins of Greek theatre lie in the revels of the followers of Dionysus, a god of fertility and wine. In keeping with the god's special interests, his cult ceremonies are exciting occasions. His female devotees, in particular, dance themselves into a state of frenzy. Carrying long phallic symbols, known as thyrsoi, they tear to pieces and devour the raw flesh of sacrificial animals. But the Dionysians also develop a more structured form of drama. They dance and sing, in choral form, the stories of Greek myth.
In the 6th century BC a priest of Dionysus, by the name of Thespis, introduces a new element which can validly be seen as the birth of theatre. He engages in a dialogue with the chorus. He becomes, in effect, the first actor. Actors in the west, ever since, have been proud to call themselves Thespians. According to a Greek chronicle of the 3rd century BC, Thespis is also the first winner of a theatrical award. He takes the prize in the first competition for tragedy, held in Athens in 534 BC.
Theatrical contests become a regular feature of the annual festival in honour of Dionysus, held over four days each spring and known as the City Dionysia. Four authors are chosen to compete. Each must write three tragedies and one satyr play (a lascivious farce, featuring the sexually rampant satyrs, half-man and half-animal, who form the retinue of Dionysus). The performance of the plays by each author takes a full day, in front of a large number of citizens in holiday mood, seated on the slope of an Athenian hillside. The main feature of the stage is a circular space on which the chorus dance and sing. Behind it a temporary wooden structure makes possible a suggestion of scenery. At the end of the festival a winner is chosen.
The Greek tragedians: 5th century BC
Only a small number of tragedies survive as full texts from the annual competitions in Athens, but they include work by three dramatists of genius. The earliest is the heavyweight of the trio, Aeschylus. Aeschylus adds a second actor, increasing the potential for drama. He first wins the prize for tragedy in 484 BC. He is known to have written about eighty plays, of which only seven survive. One of his innovations is to write the day's three tragedies on a single theme, as a trilogy. By good fortune three of his seven plays are one such trilogy, which remains one of the theatre's great masterpieces - the Oresteia, celebrating the achievement of Athens in replacing the chaos of earlier times with the rule of law.
Sophocles gains his first victory in 468 BC, defeating Aeschylus. He is credited with adding a third actor, further extending the dramatic possibilities of a scene. Whereas Aeschylus tends to deal with great public themes, the tragic dilemmas in Sophocles are worked out at a more personal level. Plots become more complex, characterization more subtle, and the personal interaction between characters more central to the drama. Although Sophocles in a very long life writes more plays than Aeschylus (perhaps about 120), again only seven survive intact. Of these Oedipus the King is generally considered to be his masterpiece.
The youngest of the three great Greek tragedians is Euripides. More of his plays survive (19 as opposed to 7 for each of the others), but he has fewer victories than his rivals in the City Dionysia - in which he first competes in 454 BC. Euripides introduces a more unconventional view of Greek myth, seeing it from new angles or viewing mythological characters in terms of their human frailties. His vision is extremely influential in later schools of tragic drama. Racine, for example, derives Andromaque and Phèdre from the Andromache and Hippolytus of Euripides.
The beginning of Greek comedy: 5th century BC
From 486 BC there is an annual competitition for comedies at Athens - held as part of the Lenaea, a three-day festival in January. Only one comic author's work has survived from the 5th century. Like the first three tragedians, he launches the genre with great brilliance. He is Aristophanes, a frequent winner of the first prize in the Lenaea (on the first occasion, in 425 BC, with the Acharnians). Eleven of his plays survive, out of a total of perhaps forty spanning approximately the period 425-390 BC. They rely mainly on a device which becomes central to the tradition of comedy. They satirize contemporary foibles by placing them in an unexpected context, whether by means of a fantastic plot or through the antics of ridiculous characters.
A good example is The Frogs, a literary satire at the expense of Euripides. After the death of the great man, Dionysus goes down to Hades to bring back his favourite tragedian. A competition held down there enables Aristophanes to parody the style of Euripides. As a result Dionysus comes back to earth with Aeschylus instead. In The Wasps the Athenian love of litigation is ridiculed in the form of an old man who sets up a law court in his home, to try his dog for stealing cheese. In Lysistrata the horrors of war are discussed in a circumstance of extreme social crisis; the women of Greece refuse to make love until their men agree to make peace.

Herodotus, the father of history: 5th century BC
The next great achievement of Greek literature is the writing of history. No one before Herodotus has consciously attempted to discover the truth about the past and to explain its causes. He is rightly known as the 'father of history'. The saga which inspires him to undertake anything so new and so difficult is the one which has overshadowed his own childhood and youth - the clash between Greeks and Persians. Herodotus grows up in Halicarnassus, in Ionia. At the time of his birth the Greeks are winning great battles in mainland Greece. During his adult life they drive the Persians from the Greek colonies of Ionia.
Asia Minor lies between these two great civilizations, Greece and Persia. Brought up within the first, Herodotus determines to find out about the second. He spends much of his life travelling within the Persian empire, which extends at this time into Egypt. So this first work of history is also, in a sense, the first travel book. In the way of travel books, it includes exotic details - such as how the Egyptians make mummies. Copies of Herodotus are available by 425 BC. By then his story has a patriotic urgency, with its account of a time when all the Greeks combined against a common enemy. In strong contrast is the bitter contemporary squabbling of the Peloponnesian War, which has entered a new phase in 431 BC.
Thucydides and contemporary history: 431 - 411 BC
The second Greek historian, Thucydides, adds a new dimension - that of contemporary history. An Athenian, born probably in about 460 BC, he is a young man when war is renewed between Athens and Sparta in 431, after a peace of sixteen years. Although the complete work of Herodotus is not yet published, Thucydides is certain to know the work of the older historian - who has made his living by reciting the highlights of his narrative. Herodotus has told the story of the last great war, between Greeks and Persians. In 431 Thucydides recognizes the onset of the next major conflict, between Greeks. He resolves to record the Peloponnesian War as it happens.
He is immediately in the thick of events. In the summers of 430 and 429 Athens is stricken by plague. The Athenian leader, Pericles, dies of the disease. Thucydides himself catches it but survives. His Account of the symptoms is a first-hand report of unprecedented vividness. In 424 he is elected one of the ten strategoi or military commanders for that year. Put in charge of an Athenian fleet in the northern Aegean, he fails to prevent the Spartans capturing an important city in the region. As a result he is exiled from Athens. He says later that the misfortune helps him in his great task, forcing him to travel and enabling him to view the conflict from different perspectives.
An important characteristic of Thucydides' work is his determination to achieve an objective view of what has happened, and of its causes. He states this clearly at the end of his introduction, saying that he will begin by listing the precise complaints of each side which, in their view, led to war. But he then adds that he believes such arguments obscure the issue. In his own considered opinion, 'what made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta'.
A clear statement of the available evidence, leading to an informed conclusion, has remained the basic principle of history. The serious historian is advocate for both sides as well as presiding judge. To this end Thucydides uses a method which seems strange to a modern reader. His protagonists put their points of view in long speeches, perhaps in an assembly or before a battle. In the narrative these fall naturally enough. But since Thucydides himself was usually not there, his method is a fictional one which now seems out of place in history. His account ends abruptly in 411. Whatever the reason may be, it is not his own death. He returns from exile to Athens at the end of the war, in 404.
Xenophon and eyewitness history: 400 BC
Thucydides' history is continued from 411 BC by the third and last of the great trio of Greek historians - Xenophon. The fact that a contemporary continues the work so precisely from this date proves that Thucydides did indeed finish his work there, rather than the remainder being lost. But Xenophon, though a vivid writer, proves a very inadequate historian at a serious level. A supporter of Sparta, he lacks any sense of objectivity. Fortunately this does not spoil the work which has made him famous. In 400 BC he finds himself part of a Greek force making a desperate retreat from Persia. Objectivity is irrelevant. He describes only what he sees and hears. The result is vivid eyewitness history, akin almost to journalism.
Xenophon's Anabasis (Greek for 'the journey up') is full of fascinating detail, as the Greek mercenaries struggle homewards from defeat in Persia. Desperate for provisions, they are constantly skirmishing with hostile tribesmen. Xenophon is voted into the leadership group and he gives himself much of the credit (possibly with justification) for their safe return to Greece, five months later. The most famous moment in his account is when the leaders of the column come over the ridge of a mountain and begin shouting Thalassa, Thalassa (the sea, the sea). They have reached the Black Sea and relative safety.