Hand in hand with the social and polticial transformation of the Greek world came a cultural revolution which was to have the most profound implications for the future of western civilization.
Literature
At first the new sea-going Greeks used the alphabet which the Phoenicians had perfected to aid them in their commercial transactions. However, by 700 BC at the latest they had adapted it to suit their own language better. As with all scripts, this would first have been used for everyday business purposes, but within another hundred years the long, brilliant tradition of Greek literature had begun.
This started with the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor; it was here that the poet Homer produced his epics, “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”, which were committed to writing not long after 700 BC. These works set an extraordinarily high standard, some scholars even today regarding them as the finest works of European literature ever produced.
The works of the poet Hesiod are at not regarded in quite so exalted a light, but his “Works and Days”, composed before 700 BC though possibly written down later, sheds light on the everyday working life of contemporary early Greece rather than on a glorious but mythical past.
Within a century, two other poets of note had enriched Greek literature: Archilocus of Paros and the lady Sappho of Lesbos. These poets developed a new “lyric” style. Perhaps tellingly, both travelled widely across the sea, between the “Old” Greek world of Greece and the Aegean and the “New” in Italy and Sicily.
Art and Architecture
Another product of the contacts the Greeks now had with the wider world was in art and architecture.
The already ancient civilization of Egypt made an immense impression on the Greeks who travelled there. Egyptian statuary profoundly influenced Greek styles. The elegant but traditional Geometric styles in pottery decoration and statuary gave way to the “Oriental” style, influenced by the formal styles in Egyptian art: the link between the huge statues in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and Greek statues of the Archaic period are clear to see.
Egyptian temple design was also hugely influential. It formed the basis for the first major style of Greek architecture, the “Ionic”.
Stone temples in this style began to appear in the Greek city-states in the decades before 600 BC, although the truly magnificent structures of Classical Greece did not appear for another hundred years or more.
The Revolution in Thought
Most significant of all, the thought-world of ancient Greece was being transformed out of all recognition. Indeed, it was laying the foundations for the whole of Western thought.
Again, these developments took place initially in Ionia. Here is not the place to deal with this subject in any detail, but after 600 BC a series of Ionian philosophers, including Anaximandros, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Pythagoras (who actually spent the most productive part of his career in Sicily and Italy), Parmenides and Herakleitos, moved the frontiers of scientific thought, mathematical theory and religious speculation outwards as never before in world history.
Their ideas and approaches differed widely, and the conclusions they reached often seem to us absurd. But the root of all was a refusal to receive knowledge from earlier generations and to think things through to one’s own answers.
Freedom in the Air
Why did this development occur, here and now, amongst the ancient Greeks?
One part of the answer must be to do with the changes transforming Greek society during this period – they must have made it easier to break free from traditional modes of thought. The overseas experience of many Greeks must also have been something of an eye-opener. They were discovering that different peoples had different customs, and what was good and proper in one society was unacceptable in another. This caused people to ask, are there things that are intrinsically good?
But other ancient peoples experienced change, and others had expanded their horizons into different regions of the world. What was it that made the ancient Greeks break through into new modes of thought when others did not?
The fundamental answer has already been alluded to: these people were living in the first republics known to history. For all the factionalism, stupidity and indeed violence of these republics, they allowed a certain freedom of thought. Moreover, when things got too hot for a “free thinker” in one state, he could (and sometimes did) move to another. Finally, these city-states were comparatively tiny. Not all were outward looking, mercantile and maritime; but in those that were, the merchant classes and others who had travelled overseas must have had a far greater influence on the climate of thought than would have been the case in a large territorial kingdom.
New horizons and change must have been “in the air”, and that air was a great deal freer than in most other places in the past.
Next:
The History of Ancient Greece, Part 5: Athens and Sparta
Article © TimeMaps 2007.
Last updated: 13th August 2007
