Arts and Humanities Through The Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 b.c.e.-476 c.e.)

A RT S & H U M A N I T I E S

T h r o u g h t h e Era s

A RT S & H U M A N I T I E S

T h r o u g h t h e Era s Ancient Greece and Rome 1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E. James Allan Evans, Editor

Arts and Humanities Through The Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.) James Allan Evans

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Arts and humanities through the eras. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7876-5695-X (set hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5696-8 (Renaissance Europe : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5697-6 (Age of Baroque : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5698-4 (Ancient Egypt : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5699-2 (Ancient Greece : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5700-X (Medieval Europe : alk. paper) 1. Arts—History. 2. Civilization—History. NX440.A787 2004 700’.9—dc22

2004010243

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\ CONTENTS

A B O U T T H E B O O K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix C O N T R I B U T O R S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi E R A O V E R V I E W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii CHRONOLOGY OF W O R L D E V E N T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv CHAPTER 1: ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 T OPICS IN A RCHITECTURE AND D ESIGN Surviving Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Minoan and Mycenaean Architecture . . . . . . . . . 8 Greek Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Etruscan Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Roman Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Late Antique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture . . . . . 39 S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Hadrian. . . . . . . . . . . Pausanias . . . . . . . . . . Plutarch . . . . . . . . . . Suetonius. . . . . . . . . . Vitruvius . . . . . . . . . .

O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 T OPICS IN D ANCE Dance in Prehistoric Greece. War Dances . . . . . . . . . . . . Women’s Choruses . . . . . . . The Dithyramb . . . . . . . . . Folk Dances. . . . . . . . . . . . Dance in the Theater . . . . . Dionysian Dance . . . . . . . . Professional Dancers . . . . . . Dance in Rome . . . . . . . . .

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48 52 57 57 60 63 66 69 70

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Arion . . . . . . . . . . . . Bathyllus and Pylades . Memphius . . . . . . . . . Theodora. . . . . . . . . .

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75 76 76 77

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D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 CHAPTER 3: FASHION I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

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40 40 41 41 41

D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 CHAPTER 2: DANCE I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

T OPICS IN F ASHION Fashion in the Minoan Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Garments in Classical Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 The Toga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Textiles of the Greek and Roman World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Dressing to Impress in Greece and Rome. . . . . 102 The Dress of Roman Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 The Apparel of the Soldier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 v

Contents

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Alcibiades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Constantius II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Diogenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Pindar . . . . . . . . . Claudius Ptolemy . Pythagoras . . . . . . Sappho . . . . . . . .

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229 230 230 231

D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

CHAPTER 4: LITERATURE

CHAPTER 6: PHILOSOPHY

I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

T OPICS IN L ITERATURE The Age of Homeric Epic . . . . . . . . . . . The Boeotian School of Epic . . . . . . . . . The Age of Lyric Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . Poets for Hire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Herodotus, the Father of History . . . . . . Thucydides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History after Thucydides . . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Art of Public Speaking in Greece . . . Greek Literature after Alexander the Great . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roman Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Latin Poetry Before the Augustan Age . . . Latin Prose Writers Before the Augustan Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Golden Age of Latin Literature Under Augustus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Latin Literature of the Silver Age . . . . . . Greek Literature of the Imperial Age . . . .

T OPICS IN P HILOSOPHY Beginnings of Greek Philosophy . . . . . . . . Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans . . . . . . . Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides . . Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists The Atomic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Sophists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Socrates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aristotle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Stoics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Philosophies in the Hellenistic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Epicurus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neoplatonism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Aeschylus . . . . . . . . . Cato . . . . . . . . . . . . Thucydides . . . . . . . Vergil . . . . . . . . . . .

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122 126 128 131 133 136 137 138 144 154

. . . . 155 . . . . 157 . . . . 160 . . . . 162 . . . . 164 . . . . 169 . . . . 172 . . . .

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175 175 176 177

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Aristotle. . . . . . . . . . Epictetus . . . . . . . . . Epicurus . . . . . . . . . Plato . . . . . . . . . . . . Plotinus . . . . . . . . . . Thales . . . . . . . . . . . Zeno of Citium . . . .

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240 240 242 245 247 248 250 254 260 264

. . . 266 . . . 269 . . . 272 . . . . . . .

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273 275 275 276 277 278 279

D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 CHAPTER 7: RELIGION

D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

CHAPTER 5: MUSIC

O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

T OPICS IN R E L I G I O N The Religion of Minoan Crete during the Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Early Greeks on Mainland Greece The Dark Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Gods of Olympus . . . . . . . . . . . Other Gods Beyond the Twelve . . . . . The Underworld and its Inhabitants . . Heroes and Demigods . . . . . . . . . . . . Heracles, the Super-Hero . . . . . . . . . . Discovering the Will of the Gods: Oracles and Divination. . . . . . . . . .

O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 T OPICS IN M USIC Musical Instruments . . . . Music in Greek Life . . . . Music Education . . . . . . Music in Roman Life . . . Women in Ancient Music Music Theory. . . . . . . . .

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189 198 210 212 216 219

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Aristoxenus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 vi

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287 291 292 294 307 309 312 314

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Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Contents

Worshipping the Gods: Sacrifices and Temples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Religion of Early Rome. . . . . . . . . . The Religion of the Roman Republic . . . The Worship of the Roman Gods. . . . . . Immigrant Religions: the Arrival of New Cults from the East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Rise of Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Constantine . . . . . . . Homer . . . . . . . . . . Numa Pompilius . . . St. Paul . . . . . . . . . . Socrates . . . . . . . . . .

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320 323 325 328

. . . . 331 . . . . 335 . . . . .

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338 339 340 340 342

D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 CHAPTER 8: THEATER I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 T OPICS IN T HEATER Origins of Greek Theater. . . . . . . Festivals and Theaters . . . . . . . . . Types of Greek Drama . . . . . . . . The Beginning of Roman Theater. Roman Theaters, Playwrights, and Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Types of Roman Theater . .

. . . . . . . . . 367 . . . . . . . . . 372

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Aristophanes. . . . . . . . . Euripides . . . . . . . . . . . Livius Andronicus . . . . . Lycoris . . . . . . . . . . . . Menander . . . . . . . . . . Gnaeus Naevius . . . . . . Nero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Titus Maccius Plautus . . Quintus Roscius Gallus . Seneca the Younger. . . .

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351 352 357 366

375 376 377 377 378 379 379 380 381 381

Sophocles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 Terence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 CHAPTER 9: VISUAL ARTS I MPORTANT E VENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 O VERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 T OPICS IN V ISUAL A RTS Pottery in the Bronze Age . . . . . The Early Pottery of Greece . . . . The Dominance of Athens . . . . . Hellenistic and Roman Pottery . . Sculpture in Archaic Greece . . . . Sculpture of the Classical Period . The Hellenistic Period. . . . . . . . Roman Sculpture . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roman Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . Portraits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mosaics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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392 394 397 402 404 410 420 425 429 435 439 444

S IGNIFICANT P E O P L E Apelles. . . . . . . . . . . Exekias . . . . . . . . . . Lysippus . . . . . . . . . Phidias . . . . . . . . . . Polygnotus . . . . . . . . Praxiteles . . . . . . . . . Zeuxis . . . . . . . . . . .

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449 450 451 452 453 454 455

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D OCUMENTARY S OURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455 G L O S S A R Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 F U R T H E R R E F E R E N C E S . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 M E D I A A N D O N L I N E S O U R C E S . . . . 483 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 I N D E X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

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\ ABOUT THE BOOK

SEEING HISTORY FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE. An education in history involves more than facts concerning the rise and fall of kings, the conquest of lands, and the major battles fought between nations. While these events are pivotal to the study of any time period, the cultural aspects are of equal value in understanding the development of societies. Various forms of literature, the philosophical ideas developed, and even the type of clothes worn in a particular era provide important clues about the values of a society, and when these arts and humanities are studied in conjunction with political and historical events a more complete picture of that society is revealed. This inter-disciplinary approach to studying history is at the heart of the Arts and Humanities Through the Eras project. Patterned in its organization after the successful American Decades, American Eras, and World Eras products, this reference work aims to expose the reader to an in-depth perspective on a particular era in history through the study of nine different arts and humanities topics: • Architecture and Design • Dance • Fashion • Literature • Music • Philosophy • Religion • Theater • Visual Arts

Although treated in separate chapters, the connections between these topics are highlighted both in the text and through the use of “See Also” references to give the reader a broad perspective on the culture of the time period. Readers can learn about the impact of religion on literature; explore the close relationships between dance, music, and theater; and see parallel movements in architecture and visual arts. The development of each of these fields is discussed within the context of important historical events so that the reader can see history from a different angle. This angle is unique to this reference work. Most history books about a particular time period only give a passing glance to the arts and humanities in an effort to give the broadest historical treatment possible. Those reference books that do cover the arts and humanities tend to cover only one of them, generally across multiple time periods, making it difficult to draw connections between disciplines and limiting the perspective of the discipline’s impact on a specific era. In Arts and Humanities Through the Eras each of the nine disciplines is given substantial treatment in individual chapters, and the focus on one era ensures that the analysis will be thorough. AUDIENCE AND ORGANIZATION. Arts and Humanities Through the Eras is designed to meet the needs of both the beginning and the advanced history student. The material is written by subject experts and covers a vast array of concepts and masterworks, yet these concepts are built “from the ground up” so that a reader with little or no background in history can follow them. Technical terms and other definitions appear both in the ix

About the Book

text and in the glossary, and the background of historical events is also provided. The organization of the volume facilitates learning at all levels by presenting information in a variety of ways. Each chapter is organized according to the following structure: • Chronology covering the important events in that discipline during that era • Brief overview of the development of that discipline at the time • Topics that highlight the movements, schools of thought, and masterworks that characterize the discipline during that era • Biographies of significant people in that discipline • Documentary sources contemporary to the time period This structure facilitates comparative analysis, both between disciplines and also between volumes of Arts and Humanities Through the Eras, each of which covers a different era. In addition, readers can access additional research opportunities by looking at the “Further References” and “Media and Online Sources” that appear at the back of the volume. While every effort was made to include only those online sources that are connected to institutions such as museums and universities, the web-

sites are subject to change and may become obsolete in the future. PRIMARY DOCUMENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. In an effort to provide the most in-depth perspective possible, Arts and Humanities Through the Eras also includes numerous primary documents from the time period, offering a first-hand account of the culture from the people who lived in it. Letters, poems, essays, epitaphs, and songs are just some of the multitude of document types included in this volume, all of which illuminate some aspect of the discipline being discussed. The text is further enhanced by 150 illustrations, maps, and line drawings that bring a visual dimension to the learning experience. CONTACT INFORMATION. The editors welcome your comments and suggestions for enhancing and improving Arts and Humanities Through the Eras. Please mail comments or suggestions to: The Editor Arts and Humanities Through the Eras Thomson Gale 27500 Drake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535 Phone: (800) 347-4253

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

\ CONTRIBUTORS

College from 1994–1998. At Arizona State, she is the founder and co-director of the undergraduate certificate program in classical studies, and she teaches courses in ancient Greek and Latin language and on classical mythology, culture, and literature. She is a recipient of a Whiting Fellowship and an award from the Women’s Classical Caucus of the American Philological Association. Professor George’s research interests range from Greek and Roman drama and Homer to Xenophon and gender studies in antiquity. Her publications include the forthcoming book Prostitutes in Plautus; articles on Plautus and Aeschylus; and chapters on ancient Greece and Rome in Mythologies of the World (New York, 2001).

James Allan Evans, Editor, received the Ph.D. in classics from Yale University in 1957 with a specialty in Greek and Roman social and economic history. He was a Thomas Day Seymour fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, in 1954–1955, and taught at Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Texas at Austin, and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he was a professor of ancient history. In 1972 he accepted a professorship at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and taught there until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1996. Since retiring he has been a visiting professor of history at the University of Washington, Seattle, a visiting special lecturer at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, and a Whitehead Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He is the author of A Social and Economic History of an Egyptian Temple in Greco-Roman Egypt (Yale Classical Studies, 17, 1961), Procopius (Twayne, 1972), Herodotus (Twayne, 1982), Herodotus, Explorer of the Past: Three Essays (Princeton, 1991), The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power (Routledge, 1996), and The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian (University of Texas Press, 2002). He was also editor of the series Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History (AMS Press) from 1977 to 1996. In 1992 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is presently writing a book on the intrigues and the power play of the Byzantine court in the period of Justinian.

John T. Kirby, Advisor, is professor of classics at Purdue University, where he has chaired the programs in classical studies and in comparative literature. His books include The Rhetoric of Cicero’s Pro Cluentio (J. C. Gieben 1990), The Comparative Reader (Chancery Press, 1998), Secret of the Muses Retold (University of Chicago Press, 2000), Classical Greek Civilization (Gale Group, 2001), and The Roman Republic and Empire (Gale Group, 2001). His websites include the popular CORAX site (www.corax.us), a hypersite that offers a comprehensive online classics curriculum. His awards and honors include a Morehead Scholarship, an NEH Fellowship, and teaching awards at the departmental, university, state, regional, and national levels.

Lisa Rengo George received the Ph.D. in classics from Bryn Mawr College in 1997, and has been an assistant professor of classics in the Department of Languages and Literatures at Arizona State University since 1999. She was a visiting assistant professor of classics at Skidmore

William H. Peck was educated at Ohio State University and Wayne State University. For many years he was the curator of ancient art at the Detroit Institute of Arts where he was responsible for Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art as well as the art of Egypt and the Ancient xi

Contributors

Near East. He has taught art history at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. He is currently teaching at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. His books include Drawings from Ancient Egypt (Thames and Hudson, 1978), The Detroit Institute of Arts: A Brief History (Detroit Institute of Arts), and Splendors of Ancient Egypt (Detroit Institute of Arts). He has published scholarly and popular articles on Greek and Roman sculpture as well as Egyptian art and archaeology. He has many years of archaeological experience resulting in a direct familiarity with ancient architectural techniques. His travels in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East have given him the opportunity to study firsthand the major monuments of architectural history. He has been responsible for a number of exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Arts and has also lectured on art and archaeology throughout the United States and Canada.

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Nancy Sultan received the Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 1991. She joined the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan in 1993, where she is professor and director of Greek and Roman studies, and chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. Her scholarly interests are in the areas of Hellenic cultural studies, oral poetics, ethnomusicology, and gender studies. Relevant publications include a book, Exile and the Poetics of Loss in Greek Tradition (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), and several articles on Greek musical traditions: “Private Speech, Public Pain: The Power of Women’s Laments in Greek Poetry & Tragedy,” in Rediscovering the Muses: Women’s Musical Traditions, ed. K. Marshall (Northeastern, 1992), “Women in ‘Akritic’ Song: The Hero’s ‘Other’ Voice,” in The Journal of Modern Greek Studies (1991), and “New Light on the Function of ‘Borrowed Notes’ in Ancient Greek Music: A Look at Islamic Parallels,” in the Journal of Musicology (1988).

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

\ E R A O V E RV I E W

THE BEGINNINGS. The history of Greece and Rome spans more than 2,000 years, from the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of prehistory to the beginnings of the Byzantine Empire which carried on the language and culture of Greece, though now within an environment permeated by Christianity. The history falls into periods that are more or less well-defined. There was the Bronze Age: the era of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete and the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland. Then, for reasons modern historians do not understand, there followed an age of upheaval and invasion affecting the whole eastern Mediterranean. Raiders who came to loot and burn reached even Egypt, where Egyptian sources recorded their attacks and called them “Peoples of the Sea.” In Greece, the years following 1200 B.C.E. are marked by destruction and migrations. Refugees from Greece made their way to the western coast of Asia Minor and the offshore islands where they founded settlements which grew into flourishing cities. COLLAPSE AND RECOVERY. What followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization was a period known as the “Dark Ages,” for little is known about it except what the archaeological remains reveal. Yet it was a period when the characteristic political structure of Greece developed: the polis, or city-state, an urban center with a defensible citadel called an acropolis—the name means merely “the city on the hill”—which was surrounded by the territory of the city-state. A large polis such as Athens grew by amalgamating a number of small states until all of the region known as Attica became the territory of Athens. Another development was the invention of the

Greek alphabet which used letters borrowed from Phoenicia, and still another was the beginnings of literature, as story-tellers and oral bards spun tales about the gods, and about the men and women who lived in the Mycenaean period, which now belonged to the misty past. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD. The “Dark Ages” slipped easily into the archaic period which ended in turn as the sixth century B.C.E. gave way to the fifth. Poets now wrote down their poetry and thinkers began to speculate about the nature of the universe. The twelve Ionian cities that had been founded on the west coast of Asia Minor and the Dodecanese Islands became brilliant centers of Greek culture. In one of them, Miletus, Greek philosophy was born with thinkers such as Thales, Anaximandros, and Anaximenes, and in another, Ephesos, the temple to Artemis, built in the Ionic style, was the largest temple in the Greek world. Towards the end of the period, the Greek cities of the eastern Aegean region fell under the rule, first of the Lydian Empire centered at Sardis, and second of the Persians, who overthrew the last Lydian king, Croesus, in 546 B.C.E. Persian power was advancing, and the historical event that marked the close of the archaic age and ushered in the classical period was the invasion of Greece by the Persian Empire in 490–479 B.C.E. and its defeat. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. The coalition of Greeks that turned back the Persian offensive was led by Sparta, but it was the Athenian fleet that made victory possible, and Athens entered the classical period with new confidence. Athens’ government was democratic, and its culture aroused the admiration even of its enemies. And xiii

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Athens did have many enemies, for it dominated the Aegean Sea with its fleet and, guided by the policies of an imperialist statesman named Pericles, transformed an alliance created for defense against renewed Persian aggression into an empire that paid it tribute. The tribute financed a building program that made Athens the most beautiful city in Greece. The last two decades of the fifth century B.C.E. were consumed by a war between imperial Athens and an alliance led by Sparta, and Athens lost. The brief golden age was over, although the classical period continued until Alexander the Great changed the face of the Greek world with a series of military campaigns that radically expanded Greece’s territory. THE HELLENISTIC AGE. Alexander’s conquests ushered in the Hellenistic world. Alexander’s generals carved out kingdoms for themselves and welcomed Greek immigrants. Royal capitals such as Antioch, Pergamum, and Alexandria rivaled Athens as centers of culture. In Alexandria, the kings of Egypt built a great library and made it a think-tank for Greek intellectuals. But in the west, Rome was expanding. Its chief rival, Carthage, had been humbled by the end of the third century B.C.E. and in the following years, the Romans moved into the eastern Mediterranean. The last Hellenistic kingdom to fall to Rome was Egypt, and in 30 B.C.E. Cleopatra, the last monarch descended from one of Alexander’s generals, committed suicide. THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. Rome’s history falls into two eras: the republican period, when it grew from a

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small city near the mouth of the Tiber River to dominate the Mediterranean, and the imperial period, when emperors ruled a vast region stretching from Britain in the west to Syria and Iraq in the east. The Roman republic was founded traditionally in 509 B.C.E. when a dynasty of Etruscan kings was expelled, and their place taken by elected magistrates called consuls. The republic expanded, first dominating Latium, the Latin-speaking area around Rome, and then extending its rule into Italy and beyond Italy into the lands bordering the Mediterranean. As Rome extended its rule, it extended its citizenship until finally in 212 C.E., long after republican government had given way to emperors, everyone in the Roman Empire became citizens of Rome. THE ROMAN IMPERIAL PERIOD. As the empire expanded, the incompetence of the narrow ruling class that dominated republican government brought about its downfall, and in 30 B.C.E., Octavian, the adoptive son of Julius Caesar, made himself master of Rome and set about establishing a new government structure. It preserved the trappings of the republic, but put power firmly in the hands of the imperator, or commander-inchief. Octavian took the title “Augustus” which would be conferred on his successors too, and the empire enjoyed more than two centuries of prosperity before the tide changed against it. Yet the last emperor in the west abdicated only in 476 C.E., and in the east, an emperor continued to rule in Constantinople until the Turks captured the city in 1453.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

\ CHRONOLOGY OF WORLD EVENTS By James Allan Evans, Michael S. Allen, and Patricia D. Rankine

c. 2000 B.C.E. Greek-speaking people migrate into Greece. c. 1900 B.C.E. During the Proto-Palatial period of –c. 1700 B.C.E. Minoan Civilization on Crete, great palaces are built at a number of sites, principally Cnossos, Mallia, and Phaestos. c. 1700 B.C.E. This is the Neo-Palatial period on Crete –c. 1450 B.C.E. when Minoan civilization reaches its height, and it ends with another destruction of the palaces. c. 1600 B.C.E. A new dynasty at Mycenae on mainland Greece begins to bury their dead in shaft graves with rich offerings, and Mycenae gives its name to the civilization which now develops on mainland Greece. c. 1450 B.C.E. The palace at Cnossos on Crete is reinhabited by Greek-speaking people. c. 1450 B.C.E. The Mycenaean civilization is at its –c. 1200 B.C.E. height; its trading ships ply the eastern Mediterranean and reach Sicily and Italy. c. 1250 B.C.E. The Mycenaean Greeks attack Troy and destroy it. c. 1200 B.C.E. The Mycenaean palaces fall victim to –c. 1150 B.C.E. raids by the “Peoples of the Sea.”

c. 1150 B.C.E. New migrants appear in Greece. –c. 1000 B.C.E. Greece emerges from this period with Dorians in control of the eastern Peloponnesos, Crete, and the southwest portion of Asia Minor, including Rhodes; the Ionians in control of Attica, the island of Euboea and the western central coastline of Asia Minor including the offshore island; and the Aeolians in control of Lesbos and a portion of the northern Asia Minor coastline. 950 B.C.E. Vases are decorated with geometric pat–700 B.C.E. terns with circles, straight lines, meanders, and we find abstract representation in sculpture. This is known as the Geometric Period. c. 900 B.C.E. Sparta is founded when four villages of Dorian Greeks in the Eurotas valley, Limnai, Mesoa, Kynosura, and Pitane unite to form a single settlement. The original inhabitants of the region are made helots, that is, serfs. 814 B.C.E. The Phoenician city of Tyre founds Carthage in modern Tunisia. c. 800 B.C.E. The Indian Aryans continue their ex–c. 550 B.C.E. pansion on the Asian subcontinent, settling westward along the Gangetic xv

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plain. During this period the first of the Upanishads, the chief mystical and philosophical scriptures of Hinduism, are composed. 798 B.C.E. The kingdom of Israel, led by Joash, wars –782 B.C.E. with the Aramaean armies of Ben Hadad II, recovering territories formerly lost to Hazael of Damascus; Judah, including its capital at Jerusalem, subsequently falls to Joash as well, losing its independence. 776 B.C.E. The Olympic Games are founded, and we have a record of the victors from this date up to 217 C.E. 770 B.C.E. The Chou relocate their capital to Loyang, marking the beginning of the Eastern Chou Dynasty. 753 B.C.E. According to traditional sources, the city of Rome is founded by Romulus, the son of a princess of Alba Longa and the god Mars. c. 750 B.C.E. The Greeks expand throughout the –550 B.C.E. Mediterranean in this period, founding colonies in Sicily, southern Italy, southern France, eastern Spain, Libya, the north Aegean, and the Black Sea region. 743 B.C.E. Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria launches his first major campaign against neighboring states to the west, besieging the Urartean allies at Arpad. c. 740 B.C.E. Sparta under king Theopompus con–c. 720 B.C.E. quers Messenia, almost doubling her size and reducing the Messenians to helots. 731 B.C.E. Revolution breaks out in Babylon; Tiglath-pileser III returns from his western campaign in order to put it down. 722 B.C.E. Samaria falls to Assyria; Shalmaneser V is succeeded by his son, Sargon II, at whose orders thousands of Israelites are taken as captives into Mesopotamia. c. 720 B.C.E. In China the Hung Kou (Great Ditch) is constructed, connecting a tributary of the Huai to the Yellow River. xvi

709 B.C.E. Sargon II of Assyria sends Merodachbaladan into exile, declaring himself king in his place. c. 700 B.C.E. After a lengthy and indecisive siege of Jerusalem, Hezekiah agrees to pay tribute to Sennacherib; Sidon and Tyre likewise submit to vassalage under Assyria. Celtic peoples begin to settle in Spain. c. 681 B.C.E. Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s son and heir, puts down a rebellion instigated by one of his brothers, who had murdered their father. Esarhaddon becomes king of Assyria. 668 B.C.E. Assurbanipal succeeds Esarhaddon as king of Assyria; a patron of Assyrian and Babylonian culture, he compiles a vast library of tablets chronicling literature, history, science, and religion. 663 B.C.E. Assyria captures Thebes, defeating Tanuatamun and putting an end to Ethiopian power in Egypt. Psammetichus I becomes Pharaoh of the new dynasty; looking back to Old Kingdom Egypt for his model, he initiates what is known as the Saite Revival, a renaissance in religion, art, and literature. c. 660 B.C.E. The Messenians attempt to throw off –c. 640 B.C.E. their Spartan overlords with help from neighboring Achaea, Elis, and Argos. Sparta represses the revolt only with difficulty and thereafter develops into a militaristic state in order to maintain her domination of her helots. 657 B.C.E. Cypselus makes himself “tyrant” (dictator) of Corinth, driving out the aristocratic clan of the Bacchiads that had controlled the government of Corinth. The tyranny of Cypselus and his descendants lasts until 580 B.C.E. 642 B.C.E. According to tradition, Ancus Martius becomes king of Rome; during his reign he constructs a bridge over the Tiber River. c. 624 B.C.E. Draco draws up the first written law code of Athens.

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Chronology of World Events

c. 616 B.C.E. Tarquinius Priscus, the first in a line of Etruscan rulers, becomes king in Rome; the Cloaca Maxima (a canal through Rome), the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the Circus Maximus (an arena for chariot racing) are all built under his reign. 611 B.C.E. Nabopolassar leads his armies against Harran, where Assuruballit II had been trying to muster his Assyrian forces; however, with his Median allies absent, Nabopolassar is unable to capture the Assyrian fortress. 609 B.C.E. The remaining Assyrian armies, allied with Egypt, attempt to recapture Harran, but without success. Neko II succeeds Psammetichus I in Egypt and leads his armies north to aid Assyria. 608 B.C.E. On his march north, Neko II meets Josiah of Judah at Megiddo. Josiah is killed and Judah conquered, but the Egyptian army is prevented from reaching their Assyrian allies in time to save them from defeat. 597 B.C.E. The Babylonian armies besiege Jerusalem. When it falls, after nearly three months, thousands of Israelites are taken captive to Babylon. 594 B.C.E. Solon is appointed sole archon to make necessary economic and constitutional reforms, and lays the foundations for the later Athenian democracy. 586 B.C.E. Jerusalem falls to Nebuchadnezzar, who razes the city and takes away captive to Babylon a second wave of Jews. This defeat marks the end of Judah as a nation. 578 B.C.E. Rome, under the reign of Servius Tullius, –534 B.C.E. enters the Latin League. 560 B.C.E. Pisistratus makes his first of three attempts to make himself tyrant of Athens. 559 B.C.E. Cyrus the Great ascends to power in Anshan, in what will later be known as Persia. c. 551 B.C.E. Confucius is born.

c. 550 B.C.E. Celtic tribes begin to settle throughout Ireland, Scotland, and England. Lao-tzu, traditionally the author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism, flourishes in China. 547 B.C.E. Cyrus II of the Achaemenid royal house of the Persians, who were vassals of the Medes, overthrows the king of the Medes, Astyaages, and unites the Medes and Persians under his rule. 547 B.C.E. Cyrus, king of Persia, overthrows Croesus, –546 B.C.E. king of Lydia, and absorbs the Greek cities on the coastline of Asia Minor into his empire. 546 B.C.E. Pisistratus finally succeeds in making himself tyrant of Athens and when he dies in 527 B.C.E. his son Hippias takes over as tyrant. 539 B.C.E. Cyrus the Great takes the city of Babylon, and the Jews in exile are released from their captivity. 534 B.C.E. Pisistratus establishes the great festival of the City Dionysia in Athens. Thespis from the deme—that is, the village—of Icaria wins first prize in the tragedy contest. 533 B.C.E. Cyrus the Great enters India, exacting tribute from cities in the Indus River Valley. He establishes, according to Herodotus, what will become the twentieth of the Persian satrapies, or provinces, in Gandhara. 520 B.C.E. The Jewish Temple at Jerusalem is rebuilt –515 B.C.E. at the insistence of the prophet Haggai. 510 B.C.E. A new temple of Apollo is completed at Delphi, with a help of a generous donation from the Athenian family of the Alcmaeonidae, who thus gain the favor of Delphi. Roman tradition dates the exile of Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquin the Proud”), the last king of Rome, to this year. Two elected consuls replace the king as the chief magistrates of the Roman state.

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Sparta, at the urging of the Delphic oracle, forces the tyrant Hippias out of Athens. 509 B.C.E. The Roman republic is founded, according to traditional histories; Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus (Lucretia’s husband) are made consuls. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus is constructed on the Capitoline Hill. 509 B.C.E. Under the leadership of Cleisthenes, who –507 B.C.E. belongs to the family of the Alcmaeonidae, Athens establishes a form of democratic government based on equality before the law. 508 B.C.E. A contest in dithyrambic song and dance is established at the City Dionysia in Athens as distinct from tragedy, which had now developed into a dramatic presentation. c. 500 B.C.E. The Bantu peoples of Africa begin their migrations. Iron is introduced in China. The Nok culture of West Africa begins to flourish. A revolt against Persian rule breaks out in Ionia, led by Aristagoras of Miletus, and Athens and Eretria send help to the rebels. 496 B.C.E. The Roman dictator Postumius defeats the Latins at the battle of Lake Regillus. The Latin armies had been led by Lars Porsenna, allied with Tarquinius Superbus, the exiled king of Rome. 494 B.C.E. The Ionian rebel fleet is crushed by the Persian navy at the Battle of Lade, and the embers of the revolt are quickly extinguished. 490 B.C.E. The Athenians, with the help of their little neighbor Plataea, defeat a Persian expeditionary force led by Datis and Artaphrenes at the Battle of Marathon. 480 B.C.E. Xerxes I of Persia is defeated by the Greek navy at Salamis. The Celtic tribes that had earlier spread through the British Isles in small numbers now begin to arrive en masse. xviii

479 B.C.E. The Persian army led by Mardonius is defeated at the Battle of Plataea and in the same year, the Persian fleet is wiped out at the Battle of Mycale. 477 B.C.E. The Delian League is formed under the leadership of Athens to counter any future Persian expansionism. 472 B.C.E. The tragic poet Aeschylus produces The Persians, which is the earliest tragedy that has survived. c. 450 B.C.E. Rome gets her first written law code, the Law of the Twelve Tables. 449 B.C.E. Hostilities with Persia cease, but Athens forces the Delian League allies to continue paying their annual tribute to the League treasury which Athens now uses to finance the Periclean building program. 447 B.C.E. Work begins on the Temple of Athena Parthenos (the Parthenon) on the Acropolis of Athens. 445 B.C.E. Athens concludes a Thirty-Years Peace with Sparta which recognizes Spartan hegemony in the Peloponnesos, and Athens and Sparta each pledge not to interfere in the other’s sphere of influence. 444 B.C.E. Chinese mathematicians accurately calculate the length of the year at 3651/4 days. 443 B.C.E. After the ostracism—exile for a ten-year –429 B.C.E. term—of his last serious political opponent, Thucydides the son of Melesias, Pericles holds unchallenged power in Athens, being elected year after year to the committee of ten generals. His imperialist policy puts Athens on a collision course with Sparta. 437 B.C.E. Construction of the monumental entrance to the Athenian Acropolis (the “Propylaea”) begins and it is completed five years later. 432 B.C.E. The Parthenon is completed and dedicated in Athens. 431 B.C.E. The Peloponnesian War breaks out between Athens and the Spartan alliance.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Chronology of World Events

Euripides’ tragedy, the Medea, is staged in Athens.

her fleet to death for failing to rescue shipwrecked crews.

430 B.C.E. Plague breaks out in Athens, and within four years a third of the population, including Pericles, dies.

The tragic poets Sophocles and Euripides both die in this year.

427 B.C.E. The philosopher Plato is born. 425 B.C.E. The Athenian comic poet Aristophanes produces his Acharnians, an anti-war comedy which is the earliest of his surviving plays. 421 B.C.E. The Fifty-Year Peace known as the “Peace of Nicias” after the Athenian who negotiated it, is concluded between Athens and Sparta, restoring the status quo ante. Building begins on the temple on the Athenian Acropolis known as the Erechtheum. 415 B.C.E. Athens embarks on a great expedition to Sicily which is utterly destroyed two years later. 413 B.C.E. In the last phase of the Peloponnesian –404 B.C.E. War, Sparta occupies Decelea on Athenian territory and uses it as a base to lay waste Athenian territory and to encourage slaves to run away. Persia supplies Sparta with subsidies to build a fleet to challenge the Athenian navy. 411 B.C.E. Athens introduces an oligarchic government to replace its democracy, but the Athenian navy refuses to accept the new constitution and the democracy is restored within the year. c. 410 B.C.E. Celtic tribes later known to the Romans as Gauls begin their southward migration across the Alps.

405 B.C.E. In Sicily, the Carthaginians conquer Acragas, modern Agrigento, and advance on Syracuse. The Greek cities unite under the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius I, and resist the Carthaginian advance. The Spartan fleet under Lysander captures the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami (Goat’s River). 404 B.C.E. Athens capitulates and Sparta takes over the Athenian Empire except for the Greek cities on the coastline of Asia Minor which are returned to Persia. Sparta controls the cities in her empire by setting up pro-Spartan oligarchic governments in them, which were supported by garrisons under Spartan governors called harmosts. 403 B.C.E. Thrasybulus restores democracy in Athens with the acquiescence of the Spartan king Pausanias. 401 B.C.E. On the death of the king of Persia, Darius II, his son Artaxerxes II succeeds to the throne but his younger brother Cyrus rebels, recruits an army including ten thousand Greek mercenaries under a Spartan commander, Clearchus, and advances into the heart of Mesopotamia as far as Cunaxa, where Cyrus is killed in battle with Artaxerxes. The Greek mercenary force retreats north to the Black Sea coast under the leadership of the Athenian Xenophon. 399 B.C.E. Socrates is condemned to death on a charge of corrupting the Athenian youth and introducing new gods.

409 B.C.E. In Sicily, the Carthaginians launch an offensive and destroy the cities of Selinus and Himera.

399 B.C.E. Sparta renews war against Persia to free –394 B.C.E. the Ionian cities but with limited success.

406 B.C.E. Athens wins her last victory of the war over the Spartan fleet at the Arginusae islands, but she puts the commanders of

396 B.C.E. In Italy, Rome, after a war of ten years, conquers and destroys the city of Veii, further up the Tiber River from Rome,

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which had blocked Rome’s northward expansion.

overpowers it, and war between Thebes and Sparta follows.

395 B.C.E. A coalition of Athens, Corinth, Thebes, –387 B.C.E. and Argos, subsidized by Persia, fights Sparta and, in 394, a Spartan fleet is defeated off the island of Cnidus by a Persian fleet led by the Athenian Conon who then sails to Athens and rebuilds the fortifications which had been destroyed at the end of the Peloponnesian War.

Thebes, led by Pelopidas and Epaminondas, aims at uniting all Boeotia under her leadership.

In the same year, Sparta defeats an antiSpartan coalition at Coronea and, faced with signs that Athenian power is reviving, Persia and Sparta settle their differences. 390 B.C.E. The Romans are defeated by Gallic invaders, led by the Brennus, at the battle of Allia. The city of Rome is subsequently besieged, and only the Capitol does not fall. Following the conquest of the Gauls, the Latins and the Hernici end their alliance with Rome. 387 B.C.E. In Italy, Rome is sacked by a tribe of Gauls (Celts) who besiege the Capitol and withdraw with much booty only after receiving ransom. Athens and Sparta sign a peace mediated by the Persian king—hence it is called the “King’s Peace” or the “Peace of Antalcidas” after the Spartan admiral who was the chief negotiator. Persia keeps control of the Greek cities in Asia Minor but guarantees the freedom of the rest of the Greek cities. 386 B.C.E. Plato founds the Academy in Athens where he is to teach for the rest of his life. 382 B.C.E. In a surprise attack, Sparta occupies the Cadmeia, that is, the acropolis of Thebes, and places a garrison there. c. 380 B.C.E. In Rome, after the sack by the Gauls, a fortification wall—the so-called Servian wall—is erected around the Seven Hills which make up the core of the city. 379 B.C.E. A troop of young Thebans surprises the Spartan garrison on the Cadmeia and xx

377 B.C.E. Athens establishes a new naval alliance of sixty autonomous members designed to resist Spartan imperialism. 371 B.C.E. Sparta and Athens sign a general peace, but Thebes will not sign for the terms of the peace would force her to undo the unification of Boeotia. Sparta therefore orders King Cleombrotus who had an army in Boeotia to attack Thebes, and the Theban army under Epaminondas inflicts a disastrous defeat on the Spartans at the battle of Leuctra. 371 B.C.E. Thebes, under the leadership of Pelopidas –362 B.C.E. and Epaminondas, is the chief military power in Greece. A Theban army frees Messenia from Spartan control, thereby depriving Sparta of half its territory. 367 B.C.E. The young Aristotle comes to Athens and becomes a pupil of the philosopher Plato. He remains a member of Plato’s Academy for twenty years until Plato’s death. 362 B.C.E. Thebes defeats a Spartan-Athenian alliance at the Battle of Mantineia, but the Theban statesman and military genius Epaminondas is killed in the battle. 359 B.C.E. Philip II becomes king of Macedon on his brother’s death. 358 B.C.E. In Italy, the Samnites, a warlike Italic people in south-central Italy, expand their territory to the western coast of Italy and form a league. 356 B.C.E. To defend against the Huns, China constructs its first wall along its borders; along with others to be built later, it will serve as part of the Great Wall. 347 B.C.E. Plato dies and is succeeded as head of the Academy by Speusippus, the son of Plato’s sister.

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Chronology of World Events

343 B.C.E. In Italy, war—the so-called First Samnite –341 B.C.E. War—breaks out between Rome and the Samnites, an Italic people in south-central Italy, sparked by an alliance which Rome made with Capua. The war ends with a compromise peace. 342 B.C.E. Aristotle goes to Macedon as tutor to the young Alexander the Great, son of king Philip II of Macedon. 340 B.C.E. The Latin League, a coalition of cities in –338 B.C.E. Latium allied to Rome, attempts to end the alliance and Rome, with Samnite help, crushes their separatist revolt, dissolves the Latin League and instead makes separate alliances with the individual Latin cities. 339 B.C.E. Chuang-tzu, a major interpreter of Tao–329 B.C.E. ism and celebrated literary stylist, flourishes in China. 338 B.C.E. At Chaeronea in Greece, Philip of Macedon defeats the combined armies of Athens and Thebes. Thebes is punished severely; Athens gets lighter terms. 337 B.C.E. The League of Corinth is formed under Philip of Macedon’s patronage. The League names Philip leader and supreme general, guarantees autonomy to all cities, and resolves to make war on Persia to avenge the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 B.C.E. 336 B.C.E. Philip is assassinated, and his son Alexander the Great becomes king. 335 B.C.E. Thebes revolts from Macedon on hearing of Philip’s death, and is vanquished by Alexander, who enslaves the citizens of Thebes and destroys the city, sparing only the house of the poet Pindar. Aristotle returns to Athens and founds the Lyceum where he spends the next eighteen years teaching, writing, and doing research. 334 B.C.E. Alexander launches his campaign against the Persian Empire, defeating the Persian satraps of Asia Minor at the Granicus River in May, and following up his victory

by capturing the Greek cities along the Asia Minor coast, and then striking east through Caria, and Phrygia to Cilicia. He replaces the Persian satraps with Macedonian officers to rule the conquered territory. 333 B.C.E. Alexander defeats the Persian king Darius III Codomannus at the Battle of Issus. Refusing an offer of peace from Darius, he proceeds with the conquest of Syria. 332 B.C.E. Alexander takes the Phoenician city of Tyre after a seven-month siege, and then thrusts down the Mediterranean coast to Egypt where he passes the winter. While there, he visits the shrine of Zeus Ammon at the Siwa Oasis, where the high priest greets him as the son of Zeus. 331 B.C.E. Antipater, whom Alexander had left behind as his deputy in Macedonia, suppresses a revolt of Sparta in Greece. Alexander defeats Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela, and forces him to flee the battlefield. The satrap of Babylon, Mazaeus, surrenders and joins Alexander, who seizes the Persian treasure in Babylon and Susa. Alexander the Great founds the city of Alexandria in Egypt. 330 B.C.E. Alexander captures and burns the Persian ceremonial capital of Persepolis, thus marking the completion of the panhellenic campaign to avenge Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480 B.C.E. 330 B.C.E. Alexander pursues Darius who is taken –329 B.C.E. prisoner by the satrap Bessus, and catches up to him too late to prevent his murder by Bessus, who now assumes the title of king. Alexander proclaims himself the successor to the Achaemenid royal line of Persia. One of Alexander’s generals, Philotas, is implicated, probably wrongly, in a supposed conspiracy against Alexander and is executed; as a precaution, Alexander also

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orders the death of Philotas’ father, Parmenio, who had served under Alexander’s father, Philip of Macedon. 329 B.C.E. Alexander conquers eastern Iran. Bessus is captured and executed. 328 B.C.E. Alexander campaigns in Sogdiana where he meets and marries Roxane, the daughter of a Sogdian baron. Alexander introduces Persian court ceremonial, including proskynesis, that is, kowtowing before the king, which the Macedonians and Greeks in his retinue oppose. 327 B.C.E. The so-called “Pages Conspiracy” is suppressed and Alexander’s court historian, Callisthenes, the nephew of Aristotle, is put to death. Alexander pushes on through modern Afghanistan towards India. 327 B.C.E. Alexander the Great invades India. –325 B.C.E. 326 B.C.E. In Italy, a second war breaks out between Rome and the Samnites. Alexander defeats the Indian rajah Porus at the Hydaspes River in northern India, and then pushes on until a mutiny on the Hyphasis River forces him to turn back. He fights his way down the mouth of the Indus River where he builds a fleet, and embarking part of his army on it, sends it back along the coast to the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers while he himself leads the bulk of his army through the desert regions of Gedrosia and Carmania to Persepolis. 324 B.C.E. At Susa, Alexander pushes ahead with a plan to create a mixed Macedonian-Persian elite by marrying eighty of his officers to Asian women and arranging the marriages of ten thousand of his soldiers to Asians— he himself marries the daughter of Darius III. xxii

After a mutiny at Opis, Alexander reorganizes the empire, giving Persians and Macedonians equal rights. Currency is standardized throughout the empire, thus laying the basis for the great expansion of the economy in the Hellenistic world. 323 B.C.E. Alexander dies at Babylon on the eve of setting out on a new expedition. Perdiccas, to whom Alexander gave his signet ring on his deathbed, becomes regent and guardian of the kings: Alexander’s half brother, Arrhidaeus, and Alexander’s son, as yet unborn—Roxane is pregnant when Alexander dies. Alexander’s generals—the so-called Diadochoi (Successors)—carve out domains for themselves: Antipater, who was left to rule Macedonia in Alexander’s absence, takes Macedonia and Greece, Antigonus the One-Eyed takes Phrygia and Lycia, Ptolemy Egypt and Lysimachus Thrace, while Eumenes, Alexander’s secretary, throws his support behind Perdiccas. On learning of Alexander’s death, Greece tries to throw off the Macedonian yoke in the so-called Lamian War, but the insurrection is crushed by Antipater. The Athenian democracy is suppressed, the anti-Macedonian leaders are killed, and Demosthenes commits suicide to avoid capture. 321 B.C.E. In the Second Samnite War, Rome suffers a humiliating reverse at the Caudine Forks but does not accept defeat. The Via Appia (Appian Way) is constructed south from Rome as a supply-line for the Roman army. 320 B.C.E. In the spring, Perdiccas marches with an army against Egypt to dislodge Ptolemy, but is killed by his own troops as he attempts to cross the Nile Delta. The Diadochoi hold a conference at Triparadeisos (“Three Parks”) in Syria.

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Chronology of World Events

Antipater replaces Perdiccas as guardian of the kings, Ptolemy is left in Egypt, Antigonus the One-Eyed, with Antipater’s son Cassander on his staff, is put in command of the Macedonian forces in Asia with the assignment of eliminating Eumenes, and Seleucus gets the satrapy of Babylon. 317 B.C.E. Alexander the Great’s mother Olympias invades Macedon with an army from Epirus to defend Alexander IV, the son of Alexander and Roxane, and executes Philip Arrhidaeus, his wife Eurydice, and about a hundred of their supporters. Cassander invades Macedon to dislodge Olympias. 317 B.C.E. Cassander appoints the Aristotelian –307 B.C.E. philosopher, Demetrius of Phalerum, to rule Athens as his deputy. When he is driven out by Demetrius Poliorcetes, he goes to Egypt where he advises Ptolemy on the establishment of the Great Library of Alexandria. 316 B.C.E. Eumenes is forced back into the eastern satrapies, fights an indecisive battle at Paraetacene, and in its aftermath, is betrayed to Antigonus and executed. 316 B.C.E. Antigonus the One-Eyed, now in control –301 B.C.E. of Asia after the death of Eumenes, and his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes (Besieger of Cities), make a bid to take over Alexander’s empire. 312 B.C.E. Ptolemy of Egypt, to counter the ambitions of Antigonus the One-Eyed, reinstalls Seleucus as satrap of Babylon. The Seleucid dynasty counts this date as Year One of the Seleucid era which continues to be used in the Middle East long after the dynasty falls. 307 B.C.E. Demetrius, son of Antigonus the OneEyed, attempts to capture Rhodes—the siege gives him his sobriquet “Poliorcetes” (Besieger of Cities) because of the siege engines that he and his engineers designed to breach the Rhodian defenses.

To commemorate their victory, the Rhodians build the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 304 B.C.E. Rome emerges victorious from the long, hard-fought Second Samnite War, and annexes Campania, the region between Rome and Naples, thus preventing further expansion of the Samnite League. 301 B.C.E. Lysimachus, Cassander and Seleucus eliminate Antigonus the One-Eyed at the Battle of Ipsos, though Demetrius Poliorcetes escapes. Four Hellenistic kingdoms result: Macedon under Cassander, Thrace and Asia Minor under Lysimachus, Egypt and Palestine under Ptolemy, and the Persian heartlands and northern Syria under Seleucus. 298 B.C.E. In Italy, the Third Samnite War breaks out. Rome faces a coalition of Samnites, Etruscans, Celts, Sabines, Lucanians, and Umbrians. 297 B.C.E. In Macedon, Cassander dies, and his death is followed by disorder as Pyrrhus of Epirus, Demetrius Poliorcetes, as well as Cassander’s own sons make bids for the throne of Macedon. 295 B.C.E. In Italy, Rome wins a victory over a coalition of Etruscans and the Celts at the Battle of Sentinum, and the Etruscans make a separate peace with Rome. 290 B.C.E. Rome makes peace with the Samnites who are now required to serve in Rome’s army. 286 B.C.E. In Greece, Lysimachus adds Macedon to his kingdom. 285 B.C.E. Rome secures control of central Italy by –282 B.C.E. defeating the Celtic tribe of the Senones. 282 B.C.E. War breaks out between Rome and the Greek city of Tarentum, modern Taranto, when Rome encroaches on Tarentum’s sphere of influence. 281 B.C.E. In Asia Minor, Seleucus defeats Lysimachus at the Battle of Corupedion and takes over his realm, including Macedon.

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280 B.C.E. Tarentum brings Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, with an army of mercenaries into Italy where he defeats the Romans at the battle of Heraclea. Seleucus is assassinated by Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, a renegade son of king Ptolemy I of Egypt. Ptolemy becomes king of Macedon while Seleucus’ son Antiochus inherits his father’s realm in Asia. 279 B.C.E. A horde of Celts, otherwise known as Gauls, invade Macedon, defeating and killing Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, thus leaving Macedon without a king. The Celtic horde pushes down into Greece, bypassing Thermopylae and making for Delphi, but are stopped by the guerilla resistance of the Aetolian League in northwest Greece. In Italy, Pyrrhus of Epirus inflicts a second defeat on the Romans at Ausculum, where his heavy casualties give rise to the aphorism “Pyrrhic Victory,” a victory that is as costly as a defeat. The Roman senate refuses Pyrrhus’ offer of peace. 278 B.C.E. Pyrrhus campaigns against the Cartha–275 B.C.E. ginians in Sicily in the employ of the Greek cities. He forces the Carthaginians back into their fortress at Lilybaeum, modern Marsala, but cannot take it, and his ambition to create a Sicilian kingdom for himself is thwarted by the Greek cities. 278 B.C.E. A horde of Celts is brought into Asia Minor by Nicomedes of Bithynia who hopes to use them against Seleucus’ heir, Antiochus I, so as to secure the independence of the Bithynian kingdom in northwest Asia Minor. The Celts (or Gauls) soon become a menace to Greek Ionia. 275 B.C.E. King Antiochus I, the son of Seleucus, defeats the Celts in the “Battle of the Elephants,” so-called because Antiochus used an elephant corps in his army, but then Antiochus shifts his attention to war with King Ptolemy II of Egypt, and the credit for keeping the Celtic raids in check goes to Philetaerus, a eunuch whom Lysimachus xxiv

left in charge of his treasure in the citadel of Pergamum, but after Lysimachus’ death begins to act independently. Pyrrhus returns to Italy with a depleted army and is defeated by the Romans at Beneventum, after which he returns to Greece. 274 B.C.E. Antigonus Gonatas, son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, on the strength of a defeat which he inflicts on the Celts at the Dardanelles, occupies the vacant throne of Macedon where the Antigonid dynasty will rule until the last king, Perseus, is dethroned by the Romans in 167 B.C.E. 272 B.C.E. Tarentum surrenders to Rome and the Greek cities of southern Italy become allies of Rome. 264 B.C.E. The First Punic War begins, pitting Carthage against Rome. The two powers fight for control of colonies on the island of Sicily. 263 B.C.E. In Asia Minor, Eumenes I, the nephew and successor of Philetaerus, inherits the rule of Pergamum, nominally as a governor of King Ptolemy II of Egypt. 260 B.C.E. Antiochus II regains much of the territo–253 B.C.E. ries in Asia Minor lost by Antiochus I, during the Second Syrian War against Ptolemy II of Egypt. Pergamum remains independent. 260 B.C.E. Rome wins a naval battle over the Carthaginian fleet off Mylae in northeast Sicily, using a grappling-iron called the corvus which allowed the Romans to use boarding tactics effectively against the Carthaginian ships. 256 B.C.E. The Romans win another naval victory off Cape Ecnomus in southern Sicily, and then make a landing in Africa and defeat the Carthaginians. Xanthippus, a mercenary soldier from Sparta, reorganizes the Carthaginian army and defeats the Romans at the Battle of Tunis the next year and forces its surrender.

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Chronology of World Events

The Chou dynasty in China ends. The Chou is the longest dynasty in Chinese history, lasting for 771 years. 251 B.C.E. Aratus of Sicyon adds Sicyon to the Achaean Confederacy. He is an aggressive general of the Confederacy and later adds such city-states as Megalapolis (235) and Argos (229). 250 B.C.E. A newly-built Roman fleet is victorious at Panormus, modern Palermo, but is defeated next year at Drepanum, modern Trapani. In Bactria (eastern Iran), Greeks whose ancestors had been settled there by Alexander the Great acclaim their general Diodotus as king. The kingdom lasts more than a century, though in its final years it splits into two kingdoms under rival kings. 246 B.C.E. The Third Syrian War is fought between –241 B.C.E. Ptolemy III (Euergetes) of Egypt and the Seleucid king Seleucus II, who had replaced Antiochus II. 241 B.C.E. Attalus I succeeds Eumenes I of Pergamum. For refusing tribute to the Galatians, he is given the name Soter (“Savior”). Under Attalus, Pergamum becomes an important power and is pivotal to Roman politics in Greece and Asia Minor. Hamilcar Barca is defeated by the Romans at the Aegates Islands. The First Punic War ends. 238 B.C.E. Carthaginian mercenaries on Sardinia who are in revolt appeal for assistance to Rome, which forces Carthage to cede her the island. 237 B.C.E. Carthage, under the leadership of Hamilcar Barca, begins to expand her empire in Spain. Hamilcar Barca, accompanied by his ten-year-old son, Hannibal, conquers southern and eastern Spain. The new Punic outposts in the region challenge Roman hegemony. 232 B.C.E. Ashoka, the Buddhist monarch of the Maurya empire in India, dies.

227 B.C.E. Rome unites Sardinia with Corsica to form her second province. 226 B.C.E. Hasdrubal, the successor of his father-inlaw of Hamilcar Barca as Carthaginian commander in Spain, makes a treaty with Rome agreeing not to expand north of the Ebro River, but Rome follows this by making an alliance with Saguntum south of the Ebro. 223 B.C.E. Antiochus III (the Great) begins his rule over the Seleucid kingdom. He expands the dynasty to Armenia, and he regains Parthia and Bactria. 221 B.C.E. Hasdrubal is murdered, and Hamilcar Barca’s eldest son Hannibal becomes Carthaginian commander in Spain. 219 B.C.E. Hannibal captures Saguntum, an ally of Rome. Rome demands that Carthage relinquish Saguntum and surrender Hannibal to them, and when Carthage refuses, declares war. 218 B.C.E. The Second Punic War begins. Hannibal crosses the Pyrenees mountains, marches through southern France and over the Alps into Italy with 50,000 men, 9,000 cavalry, and 37 war-elephants. In the autumn he defeats the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio at the Ticinus River in the foothills of the Alps. The other consul joins Scipio and both are defeated at the Trebia River in December. 217 B.C.E. Hannibal defeats the consul Gaius Flaminius at Lake Trasimene. Quintus Fabius Maximus is appointed dictator for a six-month term and avoids battle with Hannibal. 216 B.C.E. At Cannae, Hannibal inflicts a disastrous defeat on the Romans, led by the consuls of the year, after which Rome adopts more cautious tactics, avoiding battle with Hannibal. 215 B.C.E. In the aftermath of Rome’s defeat at Cannae, King Philip V of Macedon makes an alliance with Hannibal, and to stymie Philip, Rome makes an alliance with the

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Aetolian League and initiates the First Macedonian War between Rome and Macedon. In Sicily, Rome’s old ally King Hiero of Syracuse dies, and under his successor Syracuse goes over to Carthage. Led by the consul Marcellus, Rome lays siege to Syracuse, which defends itself with war engines designed by Archimedes who is living in Syracuse. 214 B.C.E. The First Macedonian War begins with Philip V’s attack on Messene. Construction of the Great Wall of China begins when smaller, pre-existing frontier walls are linked together and strengthened. The purpose of the wall is to keep out the Hsiung-nu, nomads from the north of China (Mongolia). 212 B.C.E. Syracuse is captured and, in the sack that follows, Archimedes is killed. Carthage abandons Sicily. 207 B.C.E. Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal brings reinforcements for Hannibal across the Alps, but is defeated and killed at the Metaurus River in northeast Italy. 206 B.C.E. The Romans under the young Publius Cornelius Scipio win control of Spain. Hannibal’s youngest brother Mago takes the Carthaginian fleet from Spain to Genoa to urge the Celts and Ligurians in northern Italy to rise against Rome. 205 B.C.E. Scipio returns from Spain and is elected consul. Philip V of Macedon and Rome make peace, the so-called “Peace of Phoenice,” Rome having withdrawn her troops from Greece two years before. 204 B.C.E. Scipio leads an army to Africa, forcing Carthage to seek peace. Peace negotiations lead to Hannibal’s recall from Italy. 202 B.C.E. Peace negotiations having broken down, there is a decisive battle between the Roxxvi

mans led by Scipio and the Carthaginians led by Hannibal at Zama, where the Carthaginians are beaten. Rome imposes a huge indemnity as part of the peace terms. 201 B.C.E. The Second Punic War ends. Carthage signs a treaty with Rome, surrendering its navy and its territories in Spain. 200 B.C.E. King Antiochus III defeats the army of King Ptolemy V of Egypt at the Battle of Panion and annexes southern Syria and Palestine which had hitherto belonged to Egypt. Jerusalem now falls under Seleucid rule. Rome, having received appeals from Pergamum, Rhodes, and Athens against Philip V’s expansionism, sends a army and navy to Greece, thus beginning the Second Macedonian War. Volcanic islands in the South Pacific are settled by seafaring peoples emigrating from Southeast Asia. The Hopewell culture begins to emerge in central North America in what will become the states of Ohio and Illinois; this society is characterized by moundbuilding. 197 B.C.E. A Roman army under Titus Quinctius Flamininus advances into Thessaly and at the battle of Cynoscephalae defeats Philip V, who is made to retreat to his own kingdom, pay an indemnity and surrender all his fleet except for six ships. 196 B.C.E. At the Isthmian Games, Flamininus proclaims that all the Greek cities should be free, and two years later Roman troops leave Greece. 192 B.C.E. War breaks out with the Seleucid king Antiochus III, who is decisively defeated two years later at Magnesia south of Pergamum in Asia Minor. 188 B.C.E. The Peace of Apamea imposes stiff terms on Antiochus III, thus starting the decline of the Seleucid empire, and Rome is now mistress of the eastern Mediterranean.

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Chronology of World Events

c. 185 B.C.E. The Sungas replace the Mauryas as the ruling empire in India. Pusyamitra becomes the first Sunga ruler and returns India from Buddhism to orthodox Hindu. 175 B.C.E. Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God made Manifest”) becomes king of the Seleucid empire and attempts to halt its decline. His effort to have himself recognized as divine and receive sacrifice as a god leads to a rebellion of conservative Jews in Judeaea, known as the “Maccabean Revolt” after its leader, Judas Maccabaeus. 171 B.C.E. The Third Macedonian War begins between Rome and Perseus, son of Philip V, king of Macedon. 168 B.C.E. After some initial setbacks, Lucius Aemilius Paulus defeats Perseus at the Battle of Pydna. Perseus is taken as a prisoner to Rome and the kingdom of Macedonia is dissolved. Polybius of Megalopolis is one of one thousand hostages from the Achaean League brought to Rome, and while there he composes his Universal History in 39 books. 164 B.C.E. The Maccabees reconsecrate the temple in Jerusalem. The event is from this date commemorated as Hanukkah. Antiochus IV dies. 149 B.C.E. A third war breaks out between Rome and Carthage.

Han Wu-ti is emperor in China. He is an innovator in education, economics, and defense. He introduces a public granary to China and makes innovations to the cavalry. 136 B.C.E. A slave revolt breaks out in Sicily led by a –132 B.C.E. Syrian slave, Eunus, who is captured after Enna and Tauromenium, two centers of the revolt, fall to Rome. An estimated twenty thousand slaves are crucified. 133 B.C.E. Attalus III, the last king of Pergamum, dies and bequeaths his kingdom to Rome. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus is elected as tribune (an annual office) and attempts a land reform to settle poor Roman citizens on small farms, and the royal treasure of Pergamum is used to pay the costs of this measure. While attempting to secure his election to a second term as tribune, which his opponents claimed was unconstitutional, Gracchus is killed. 130 B.C.E. An anti-Roman revolt is suppressed in Pergamum which its last king had bequeathed to Rome, and Pergamum is organized as the Roman province of Asia. 129 B.C.E. The death of Antiochus VII marks the end of Seleucid power in the eastern region. The Parthians are left as the major power east of Babylon.

146 B.C.E. A Roman army under Publius Scipio Aemilianus captures Carthage and destroys it.

123 B.C.E. Gaius Gracchus, Tiberius’ younger brother, –122 B.C.E. renews the land reform started by Tiberius, but loses voter support when he attempts to extend citizenship to Rome’s allies. When Gracchus’ party occupies the Aventine Hill, the senate declares martial law, Gracchus’ supporters are slain, and Gracchus has his slave kill him.

Rome suppresses a revolt of the Achaean League in Greece and destroys the city of Corinth. The territories of the Achaean League are annexed, and Rome makes Greece into a Roman province named Achaea.

112 B.C.E. The Jugurthine War in Numidia brings –105 B.C.E. the incompetence of the senatorial government in Rome into sharp focus. Jugurtha is finally defeated by Marius in 106 B.C.E. and next year surrenders to Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

141 B.C.E. A period of Jewish independence in Judaea begins. Simon Maccabaeus becomes high priest after the murder of his brother Jonathan.

113 B.C.E. The Cimbri and Teutones migrate from –101 B.C.E. Jutland into Gaul (modern France) and three times defeat the Roman armies they encounter. There is panic in Rome, and

149 B.C.E. An anti-Roman revolt breaks out in Mace–148 B.C.E. don and after it is suppressed, Macedon becomes a Roman province in 146 B.C.E.

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Marius returns from Africa, is elected consul and is re-elected to successive consulships until 100 B.C.E. He reforms the Roman army so that it is no longer recruited from property owners but rather from the landless proletariat who expect to be settled on small farms when they are demobilized. 102 B.C.E. Marius with his reformed army defeats the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae (modern Aix-en-Provence) in southern France. c. 100 B.C.E. The Belgae, a Gallic people, arrive in Britain. The city of Teotihuacán, twenty-five miles from modern Mexico City, emerges as a major commercial center; it is the home of the Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Sun, the latter being the largest building in pre-Columbian America. 91 B.C.E. A tribune, Marcus Livius Drusus, proposes reviving the Gracchan land reform and extending Roman citizenship to Rome’s Italian allies, but is assassinated. 91 B.C.E. Drusus’ assassination triggers a revolt of –89 B.C.E. Rome’s Italian allies, who were eager for citizen rights and are now bitterly disappointed. They form an independent federation of their own, and the civil war that results ends only when Rome concedes them citizenship. 88 B.C.E. Mithridates VI attacks the Roman province of Asia, and urges the Greeks to rebel against the hated Roman officials and taxation agents. Eighty thousand Romans in Asia Minor are killed in the massacre that results. The Roman senate places Sulla in charge of the war against Mithridates, but the popular assembly transfers the command to Marius. Sulla marches with his army on Rome, drives out Marius’ supporters, reestablishes the rule of the senate and then leaves to conduct the war against Mithridates. 87 B.C.E. Once Sulla is gone, Marius with his supporters returns to Rome, massacres his political opponents, and is elected consul for the seventh time. xxviii

87 B.C.E. In Greece, Sulla besieges and captures –86 B.C.E. Athens, which had supported Mithridates, and after the capture many Greek works of art are shipped to Rome. Plato’s Academy closes down. 86 B.C.E. Marius dies shortly after taking up his seventh consulship. Sulla defeats Mithridates’ army at Chaeronea in Greece, and again next year at Orchomenos. 83 B.C.E. Sulla returns to Italy and destroys the Marian supporters and their allies, the Samnites and Lucanians, next year at the Battle of the Colline Gate, one of Rome’s city gates. 82 B.C.E. Sulla, assuming the office of dictator, –79 B.C.E. draws up a list of enemies to be killed, including ninety senators and two thousand six hundred equestrians, and then reforms the constitution, placing control of the Roman government in the hands of the senate which is dominated by a tight group of old Roman families. c. 80 B.C.E. Invaders from Central Asia begin to spread throughout the Indus River valley. Chinese silk increasingly becomes a major luxury import to wealthy provinces such as Roman Egypt. 79 B.C.E. Sulla resigns the dictatorship voluntarily and dies a year later. 78 B.C.E. On Sulla’s death, one of the consuls of the year, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus attempts to undo Sulla’s constitutional reforms, and when he turns to armed rebellion, the senate grants one of Sulla’s young officers, Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), extraordinary powers to suppress him. 77 B.C.E. Pompey persuades the senate to grant him –71 B.C.E. a special command to suppress an insurrection in Spain led by one of Marius’ former officers, Quintus Sertorius, which Pompey accomplishes after Sertorius is betrayed and assassinated.

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Chronology of World Events

74 B.C.E. War with Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, having broken out again, a former supporter of Sulla, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, is sent to suppress it and is initially very successful. 73 B.C.E. A gladiator, Spartacus leads an uprising of –71 B.C.E. slaves in Italy. The revolt is suppressed by Marcus Licinius Crassus, and the remnants of the slave army are wiped out by Pompey who encounters them as he returns to Italy from Spain. 70 B.C.E. Pompey and Crassus, both successful commanders with armies to support them, demand the consulship and once they are elected consuls, they dismantle Sulla’s constitutional reforms. The Roman poet Vergil is born in the village of Andes near Mantua in the province of Cisalpine Gaul. 68 B.C.E. Pompey is given an extraordinary command to repress piracy in the eastern Mediterranean which he does efficiently within six months. 66 B.C.E. Pompey is sent to replace Lucullus, de–63 B.C.E. feats Mithridates, conquers most of Asia Minor and advances down the Mediterranean coast as far as the border of Egypt. He takes Jerusalem and enters the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple, thereby earning the hatred of the Jews. 63 B.C.E. Marcus Tullius Cicero, famous as a statesman, orator, and author of works on philosophy and politics, is one of the two consuls of the year, and during his consulship, suppresses a conspiracy led by Lucius Sergius Catilina. 60 B.C.E. Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar form the so-called “First Triumvirate,” an unofficial three-man coalition to further their several political goals. 59 B.C.E. With the support of the First Triumvirate, Julius Caesar is elected consul with a diehard senatorial, Bibulus, as his colleague. Caesar carries out Pompey’s political agenda and is himself granted rule of the

provinces of Cisalpine Gaul (Italy north of the Rubicon River), Narbonese Gaul (southern France), and Illyricum (modern Croatia and Serbia) for a five-year term. 58 B.C.E. Caesar conquers all of Gaul (modern –51 B.C.E. France) and crosses the English Channel twice to make probe into Britain. 56 B.C.E. Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus renew their political coalition, agreeing that Pompey and Crassus will both be consuls for the next year and then be given provincial governorships, while Caesar would rule Gaul for an additional five years. Pompey marries Caesar’s daughter Julia to cement the alliance. 55 B.C.E. Pompey and Crassus hold the consulship, and then Pompey is made governor (proconsul) of Spain for a five-year term, and Crassus of Syria, where he plans to win military laurels by attacking the Parthians. Pompey remains in Rome and governs Spain with legates who act as his representative. Britain faces a Roman invasion under Caesar. 52 B.C.E. Because of the gang warfare in Rome, Pompey is elected consul with no colleague to keep law and order, and at the end of his term, he is granted the governorship of Spain for five more years. 51 B.C.E. Uxellodunum becomes the last town in Gaul to succumb to Caesar. The Roman wars against Gaul end. 49 B.C.E. The Roman senate, having refused to accept Caesar’s request to be allowed to stand for the consulship in absentia, thus allowing him to avoid prosecution for illegal acts during his consulship, decrees that Caesar must resign his command, and commissions Pompey to defend the republic. Caesar crosses the Rubicon River separating the province of Cisalpine Gaul from Italy, and heads for Rome, while Pompey evacuates Italy for Greece. Rather than follow Pompey, Caesar goes to Spain and smashes Pompey’s armies there within six months.

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48 B.C.E. Caesar defeats Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus in Greece. Pompey flees to Egypt where he is put to death by the boy king Ptolemy XIII on the advice of his ministers who thought that thus they would win Caesar’s favor. Caesar comes to Egypt in pursuit of Pompey, where he makes the young princess Cleopatra his mistress and becomes embroiled in a war with Ptolemy XIII and the Alexandrians. 47 B.C.E. Cleopatra gives birth to a son by Julius Caesar: Ptolemy Caesar, commonly known as “Caesarion” (Little Caesar). Having established Cleopatra on the throne of Egypt, Julius Caesar goes to Asia Minor, defeats Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates VI and a supporter of Pompey, at Zela (Zila in north-central Turkey) and sends dispatch to Roman senate reading, Veni, vidi, vici (“I came, I saw, I conquered”). Caesar lands in Africa to suppress Pompey’s supporters who had rallied there for a last-ditch effort to “save the republic.” 46 B.C.E. Caesar smashes the Pompeian resistance in Africa at the Battle of Thapsus. Caesar returns to Italy, becomes dictator for ten years, introduces a number of reforms including the Julian Calendar which fixes the year at 365 days with an extra day every four years, and in November leaves for Spain to suppress resistance led by Pompey’s sons. 45 B.C.E. At Munda southeast of Seville in Spain, Caesar defeats the last resistance of the Pompeians. 44 B.C.E. Julius Caesar is assassinated by a cabal of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Octavian, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar whom Caesar had adopted and made his heir in his will, arrives in Rome to take up his inheritance. Burebistas of Dacia is assassinated; his empire is divided into several kingdoms. xxx

43 B.C.E. The Roman poet Ovid is born at Sulmo, about ninety miles from Rome. The “Second Triumvirate” of Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus is set up, and the proscriptions begin the next day—a list of political enemies, including Marcus Tullius Cicero, is drawn up, and they are liquidated. 42 B.C.E. Brutus and Cassius, Caesar’s assassins, are defeated in two separate battles at Philippi in northern Greece. 41 B.C.E. At Tarsus in Asia Minor, Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, meets Mark Antony, who accepts her invitation to spend the winter with her at Alexandria. 37 B.C.E. Herod the Great, with Roman support, –34 B.C.E. rules Judaea. Herod promotes the spread of Hellenism throughout the province, which spawns opposition among his subjects, particularly the Pharisees. 36 B.C.E. Sextus Pompeius, Pompey’s last surviving son, is defeated in the naval battle of Naulochus and is driven from southern Italy and Sicily. Octavian demotes Lepidus after he makes a power grab. c. 35 B.C.E. A system of writing is introduced in Guatemala in Central America. 31 B.C.E. Octavian defeats Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. 30 B.C.E. Octavian enters Alexandria as a conqueror. Antony has already committed suicide, and Cleopatra takes poison to avoid being taken in triumph to Rome. 29 B.C.E. Octavian returns to Rome and holds a triple triumph. 27 B.C.E. Octavian, the heir of Julius Caesar, reaches an agreement with the Roman senate to share power with it. Octavian continues to hold the office of consul each year, but he can claim to have restored the republic, and the senate bestows on him the title “Augustus”—the “Revered One— which all subsequent emperors take.

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23 B.C.E. Augustus resigns from the consulship in mid-year—thereafter he is consul only twice more. Instead, he is granted tribunician power (tribunicia potestas) which gives him the powers that a tribune in the republic once wielded, including a blanket right of veto. 16 B.C.E. The Provinces of Spain and Gaul are re–13 B.C.E. organized under the Roman emperor Augustus. The emperor subdivides Hispania Ulterior into Baetica (Andalusia) and Lusitania. 14 C.E. The emperor Augustus dies and is succeeded by his stepson, Tiberius. 9 C.E. Wang Mang rules China. As with his pre–23 C.E. decessors, the issues that affect his reign are economic (the resistance of wealthy landowners that leads to famine) and military (continued struggles against the Hsiung-nu in the north). c. 30 C.E. The crucifixion of the Jewish leader Jesus –c. 33 C.E. of Nazareth occurs. 37 C.E. Tiberius dies and is succeeded by Gaius Caligula whose ancestry can be traced back to Augustus Caesar through Augustus’ daughter, Julia. 41 C.E. Gaius Caligula is assassinated by the praetorian guard which puts Caligula’s uncle, Claudius, on the throne. c. 45 C.E. St. Paul begins his missionary work to bring Christianity to non-Jewish communities throughout Europe. 54 C.E. Claudius dies, according to rumor poisoned by his fourth wife, Julia Agrippina, who engineers the accession of Nero, her son by a previous marriage, shoving aside Claudius’ own son, Britannicus. 64 C.E. A great fire destroys half of Rome. Nero seizes the opportunity to build his palace known as the Domus Aurea (Golden House) on the area cleared by the fire. St. Paul is executed in Rome. The persecution of members of the Christian sect under the Roman Empire begins.

66 C.E. The “Zealot” party (Jewish nationalists) lead a revolt in Judaea against Rome. 68 C.E. Vindex, the governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, revolts and puts forward Servius Sulpicius Galba, governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, as his candidate to replace Nero. Vindex’s revolt is suppressed but the senate and the praetorian guard in Rome accept Galba as emperor. Nero flees and commits suicide. 68 C.E. After three men, Galba, Otho, and Vitel–69 C.E. lius, succeed each other quickly, Vespasian, general in charge of suppressing the revolt in Judaea, wins the throne. It becomes painfully clear to all that the Roman army can make and unmake emperors. 69 B.C.E. Natives besiege the German town of Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten); Mainz also revolts. 70 C.E. Vespasian’s son, Titus, who has taken over command of the Roman army in Judaea, captures Jerusalem and destroys the Temple. The booty from Jerusalem is brought to Rome and placed in the new Forum of Peace which Vespasian constructs. 78 C.E. As a governor of Britain, the Roman general Gnaeus Iulius Agricola advances into Scotland. The Saka era begins in India. Many scholars favor this date for the beginning of the reign of Kaniska, the Buddhist king responsible for having protected the Kushans from Chinese sovereignty. 79 C.E. Vespasian dies and his son Titus, who had already been made co-emperor, succeeds him. Mt. Vesuvius, near the Bay of Naples in central Italy, erupts and buries Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Oplontis under lava and ash. 81 C.E. On the death of Titus, his younger brother Domitian becomes emperor. 96 C.E. Domitian is assassinated by members of his own household, including his wife

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Domitia. The Roman senate chooses as his successor an elderly senator named Marcus Cocceius Nerva. 97 C.E. Faced with the threat of revolt by the praetorian guard, Nerva adopts the governor of Upper Germany, Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus), and makes him co-emperor. 98 C.E. Trajan succeeds Nerva as emperor. c. 100 C.E. Traders from Indonesia sail along the coast of Africa, possibly leaving settlers on Madagascar. The Funan, a Hindu people that first emerge in Southeast Asia, occupy the Mekong Delta region of present-day Vietnam, as well as portions of Cambodia and Thailand. They trade with both India and China. The Anasazi people begin to develop their culture in the deserts of southwest North America. They make baskets, grow corn, and build adobe structures. 105 C.E. Trajan makes a second campaign into –106 C.E. Dacia and annexes Dacia as a Roman province. 117 C.E. Trajan dies and on his deathbed adopts Hadrian. 122 C.E. Hadrian’s Wall, a frontier rampart running –128 C.E. from Wallsend-on-Tyne to Bowness-onSolway, is built to protect Roman Britain from incursions from the north. 138 C.E. Hadrian dies having adopted Antoninus Pius as his successor, who in turn adopts Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus at Hadrian’s insistence. Evidence of the presence of Moors (or Muslims) appears in Dacia; they occupy the city of Racari. c. 150 C.E. The Goths migrate to the region north of –c. 200 C.E. the Black Sea; previous migrations brought them from southern Scandinavia to the area around the Vistula River. 161 C.E. Antoninus Pius dies after a long, peaceful reign and is succeeded by Marcus Aurexxxii

lius and Lucius Verus who is co-emperor until 169 C.E. 165 C.E. Seleuceia is destroyed by Gaius Avidius –166 C.E. Cassius of Rome. The fall of the city ends a major commercial center in Babylonia; Mesopotamia becomes a Roman protectorate. 166 C.E. Pestilence, brought back to Rome by the troops of Lucius Verus who had been campaigning in the east, sweeps the empire. German tribes cross the Danube frontier and penetrate the empire as far as northern Italy. 180 C.E. Marcus Aurelius dies in camp at Vienna while campaigning on the Danube frontier against barbarian tribes known as the Marcomanni and the Quadi and is succeeded by his eighteen-year old son, Commodus. 184 C.E. The Romans are forced to cede the frontier in Scotland. The Roman frontier in Britain now extends only to Hadrian’s Wall. The rebellion of the Yellow Turbans begins against the Han dynasty in China. The peasant revolt is quelled within six years by Ts’ao Ts’ao. 193 C.E. After Commodus’ assassination, there is a period of civil war, ending with Septimius Severus seizing power. The siege of Byzantium begins, lasting about two years. The city supported general Pescennius Niger’s revolt against the Roman ruler Septimius Severus. 211 C.E. Severus dies while campaigning in Britain, and is succeeded by his sons, Caracalla (co-emperor since 198) and Geta (co-emperor since 209). In 210, Caracalla murders Geta. 212 C.E. The emperor Caracalla extends Roman citizenship to all Roman provincials. 226 C.E. The Sassanians overthrow the Parthian dynasty in Iran. The Parthian empire had covered a great expanse, extending during

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Chronology of World Events

one period from Iberia (east of the Black Sea) to the Persian Gulf. 235 C.E. The Severan dynasty comes to an end with the murder of the emperor Alexander Severus, and fifty years of military anarchy follow. 248 C.E. The Goths invade the Balkan city of Moesia and murder the Roman emperor Gaius Messius Quintus Decius (251); they later sack Nicaea and Nicomedia and raid the Ionian cities.

305 C.E. Diocletian and Maximian retire, and Galerius becomes senior Augustus in place of Diocletian and Constantius Chlorus junior Augustus in the west. 306 C.E. Constantius Chlorus dies at York in Roman Britain and his troops proclaim his son Constantine emperor in his father’s place. 311 C.E. Galerius, Augustus in the east, calls off the persecution of the Christians and dies shortly thereafter.

249 C.E. In order to extirpate Christianity, the emperor Decius issues an edict ordering all citizens to sacrifice to the gods and get a certificate proving they had done so. The order lapses after Decius’ death in 251 C.E.

312 C.E. Constantine defeats Maxentius, the son of Maximian who had seized control of Italy, at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome. On the eve of the battle he converts to Christianity, and once in control of Rome, he builds his first Christian church, the basilica of St. John Lateran.

c. 250 C.E. The Mayan classical period begins in Mexico and Central America; the dedication of monuments for astrology and mathematics distinguishes this era.

313 C.E. Constantine and Licinius, now emperors in the east, agree to allow the Christians freedom of religion (the so-called “Edict of Milan”).

254 C.E. Barbarian attacks in Upper Germany result in the withdrawal of many Roman troops.

The Edict of Toleration of Christian Worship is passed in Trier, Germany.

257 C.E. The Franks, a coalition of Germanic tribes, invade Lower Germany.

317 C.E. The Eastern Chin dynasty begins in China. The rule will eventually succumb to ongoing attacks from the north.

284 C.E. Diocletian becomes emperor and reforms the government of the empire, appointing Maximian as co-Augustus, ruling the western empire while Diocletian himself ruled in the east, and then appointing as Caesars Galerius (in the east) and Constantius Chlorus (in the west).

320 C.E. Candra Gupta I rules in India. He controls the center of the country by the time of his death, establishing a power base from the Ganges to the coast of Bengal.

287 C.E. Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, a former Roman admiral, takes Britain and northern Gaul and declares himself emperor.

324 C.E. Constantine unites the empire by defeating Licinius, the Augustus of the east.

c. 301 C.E. Christianity becomes the state religion of Armenia, making it the oldest Christian civilization. 303 C.E. Diocletian issues an edict authorizing general persecution of the Christians, which continues to be carried out vigorously in the east by Diocletian’s successor, Galerius, but less vigorously in the west.

St. Pachomius establishes the first cenobitic community in Egypt.

Byzantium becomes the foundation site of Constantinople, the Roman capital on the Danubian frontier. 330 C.E. Constantine dedicates his new capital, Constantinople, present-day Istanbul. 337 C.E. Constantine dies and is succeeded by his three sons, Constantine II (337–340), Constans (337–350) and Constantius II (337–361).

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354 C.E. Aurelius Augustinus (St. Augustine) is born; he becomes one of the most important authors of the early Catholic Church. His works include Confessions (circa 400), De doctrina Christiana (On the Christian Doctrine, 397–428), De trinitate (On the Trinity, 400–416), and De civitate Dei (On the City of God, 413–426). 331 C.E. The reign of the last pagan emperor, Julian –363 C.E. who is killed while making a disastrous expedition against the Persian Empire. 370 C.E. The Huns expel the Ostrogoths from Ukraine. The Ostrogoths are a division of the Goths, who earlier migrated from Scandinavia to the region south of the Vistula River. 378 C.E. A Roman army, led by the emperor Valens, is destroyed by the Goths at Adrianople in Thrace. 382 C.E. The emperor Theodosius I settles Goths within the empire as federate troops; they are not assimilated into the Roman army but serve under their own chieftains as allies (foederati) of the Roman Empire. 395 C.E. On the death of the emperor Theodosius, the empire is divided between his two sons, with Honorius ruling in the west and his elder brother, Arcadius, ruling in the east. c. 400 C.E. The first settlers, sailing from the Polynesian islands, arrive in Hawaii. Pelagius, the British Christian writer, is active during this period. He spends some years in Rome, but the political unrest there leads him to Africa and Palestine; Pelagius’s exhortation to Demetrias is called the first British literature.

pulsion marks the end of Roman rule in Gaul. 410 C.E. The city of Rome is captured and sacked by a horde of Visigoths led by Alaric. Britain is abandoned by the Roman Empire. The Saxons and other Germanic peoples become more prevalent; Celtic culture also spreads. Alaric dies. 429 C.E. The Vandals enter North Africa and over the next ten years take over the Roman provinces there. 441 C.E. Attila leads the Huns against the Eastern –443 C.E. Roman Empire; they destroy such cities as Naissus in Moesia. 451 C.E. The Huns are defeated in Gaul by a Roman force, along with the Visigoths, at the Catalaunian plains. The Council of Chalcedon establishes the doctrine of diophysitism, the idea that Christ is both human and divine; the council declares any other doctrine heresy. The Persians defeat the Armenians at the Battle of Avarayr. The Zoroastrian faith replaces Christianity as the official religion in this region. 476 C.E. Odoacer the German deposes Romulus Augustulus in Rome; the Ostrogoths soon establish an empire in Italy. Gaiseric, the king of Vandals and the Alans, who had captured Rome eleven years earlier, dies the following year. The last Roman emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, is deposed.

The Olmec civilization in Central America ends.

490 C.E. The Ostrogoths under their king, Theodoric, invade Italy and establish the Ostrogothic kingdom which lasts until 554.

406 C.E. The Germanic Vandals occupy the Rhine –407 C.E. region after the Huns drive them westward; the nomadic Alans of Russia are also driven to Gaul by the Huns. This ex-

527 C.E. The emperor Justinian reigns in Constan–565 C.E. tinople and directs a campaign to recover North Africa, Italy, and part of Spain for the empire.

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chapter one

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN William H. Peck

IMPORTANT EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TOPICS Surviving Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Minoan and Mycenaean Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Greek Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Etruscan Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Roman Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Late Antique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture . . . . . . 39 SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE Hadrian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pausanias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plutarch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suetonius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vitruvius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

40 40 41 41 41

D O C U M E N T A R Y S O U R C E S . . . . . . . . . . 42

SIDEBARS AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary sources are listed in italics

The Ruins of Mycenae (Pausanias explains the history behind the ruins of Mycenae) . . . . Pausanias Describes the Parthenon (Pausanias explains the historical and mythological significance of the Parthenon’s ornamentation). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . City Planning Was Not Invented Only by the Greeks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Education of the Architect (Vitruvius describes the education required of a Roman architect) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Emperor Augustus Changes the Face of Rome (Seutonius comments on the architectural legacy of Emperor Augustus) . Nero Builds a “Golden House” (Suetonius tells the story of Nero’s luxurious palace). . Bathing Establishments on a Grand Scale (ancient commentary on the grandeur of Rome’s public works) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . 12

. . . 18 . . . 26

. . . 27

. . . 28 . . . 30

. . . 34

have been visible to later Greek travelers, is built.

IMPORTANT EVENTS in Architecture and Design c. 3000 B.C.E. The beginning of the Hellenic civilization in the Greek mainland includes the construction of some early structures for domestic and public use. c. 2000 B.C.E. The first attempts at more carefully designed architecture take place in Greece. c. 2000 B.C.E. The inhabitants of Crete are influenced –c. 1600 B.C.E. through their contacts with other peoples of the eastern Mediterranean to attempt larger and more complete buildings. c. 2000 B.C.E. The Minoan Palace Culture in Crete –c. 1450 B.C.E. flourishes; this architecture is known for its arrangement of buildings around a central court, varying levels connected by small staircases, and monumental entrances. c. 1600 B.C.E. The development of the Mycenaean –c. 1200 B.C.E. Palace Culture spreads through parts of mainland Greece. This architecture is influenced by the Minoan Palace Culture but has more logical ground-plans and are built as fortifications. c. 1450 B.C.E. The palaces of Crete are destroyed, probably by invaders from mainland Greece. c. 1300 B.C.E. The “Treasury of Atreus” at Mycenae –c. 1250 B.C.E. is constructed. It is an almost perfectly preserved example of the “tholos” tomb type. c. 1250 B.C.E. The Lion Gate at Mycenae, one of the few Mycenaean monuments that would 2

c. 1100 B.C.E. At this date or a little earlier a wholesale destruction of palaces and citadels takes place. About four centuries of confusion and poverty ensue, later called by some scholars the “Dark Ages” of Greece. c. 800 B.C.E. Early Greek temples are first constructed –c. 700 B.C.E. using pre-Doric designs. c. 580 B.C.E. The Temple of Artemis at Corfu and the Temple of Hera at Olympia are constructed. These temples are the oldest known examples of archaic Doric architecture. c. 550 B.C.E. The Temple of Apollo at Corinth and the Basilica at Paestum are completed. They are the best known surviving examples of purely Doric-style temples. c. 490 B.C.E. The Temple of Aphaia at Aegina is completed. It is the first temple to meld the Doric and Ionic styles. c. 447 B.C.E. The Parthenon at Athens is constructed. –c. 432 B.C.E. It is the best surviving example of a Doric temple with Ionic elements. c. 437 B.C.E. The Propylaea at Athens is constructed. –c. 432 B.C.E. It is one of the only surviving monumental entrance structures. c. 421 B.C.E. The Erechtheum at Athens is con–c. 405 B.C.E. structed. It is the only temple of importance to be constructed fully in the Ionic style. c. 350 B.C.E. Construction begins on the theater at Epidaurus, one of the best preserved Greek theaters. c. 170 B.C.E. Construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens is begun and will not end until the second century C.E. It is one of the most balanced examples of Doric architecture to incorporate the Corinthian style.

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Architecture and Design

c. 150 B.C.E. The Stoa of Attalus, a public meeting place with shops in the Agora at Athens, is constructed around this date. It is a typical example of a building designed for practical use and commerce. c. 100 B.C.E. The Temple of Fortuna Virilis is constructed in Rome, incorporating Greek and Etruscan design elements.

c. 111 C.E. The construction of Trajan’s Forum, –c. 114 C.E. the largest of the imperial forums, occurs during this time. c. 113 C.E. Trajan’s Column in his forum at Rome is dedicated. This marks the first column to serve as a burial place as well as a remembrance marker.

c. 40 B.C.E. The Tower of the Winds at Athens is constructed. It is the first truly Roman structure built in Greece.

c. 125 C.E. The Pantheon at Rome is constructed. –c. 128 C.E. It is a good surviving example of the Roman use of concrete to create domes and rotundas.

c. 27 B.C.E. The Pantheon in Rome is begun by Agrippa but it is not completed until the reign of the emperor Hadrian in the second century.

c. 135 C.E. Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli is completed. It is a rare architectural complex that incorporated landscape into the design of various buildings.

c. 16 B.C.E. The Pont du Gard aqueduct is con–c. 13 B.C.E. structed. It is admired for its functionality in carrying water as well as its architectural properties such as its proportionate arches and varied heights.

c. 211 C.E. The Baths of Caracalla at Rome are –c. 217 C.E. constructed, one of the best surviving large bathhouses. It shows the extravagance that architectural designs began to include such as swimming pools, baths, and game rooms.

The Maison Carrée at Nîmes is constructed. It is the best surviving example of the blending of the Greek and Etruscan designs used in Augustan architecture.

c. 300 C.E. The Palace of Diocletian at Spalato is constructed, taking cues of architectural decadence from Persian designs.

c. 64 C.E. Nero’s Golden House is completed. It combines every architectural technique known at the time, including a revolutionary revolving dome. c. 70 C.E. The Colosseum in Rome is completed, an unprecedented four-story structure. It was created using pioneering architectural tools such as arches, columns, and mechanical elements such as pulleys and elevators.

c. 306 C.E. The Basilica of Maxentius at Rome is –c. 313 C.E. constructed. It is one of the most important monuments in classical antiquity and one of the first Christian structures in Rome. c. 310 C.E. The Basilica of Constantine at Trier in northern Gaul is completed. It is the last of the great civilian basilicas constructed before the style was adopted fully by religious structures.

c. 79 C.E. The destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius preserves Roman architecture for future generations.

c. 312 C.E. The Arch of Constantine at Rome is –c. 315 C.E. constructed, marking the regular use of the Roman Corinthian style as well. The arch is also the best surviving example of a triumphal arch.

c. 81 C.E. The Arch of Titus at Rome is completed. It is the best surviving example of a gateway arch.

c. 532 C.E. The Hagia Sophia at Constantinople is –c. 537 C.E. constructed. It is the greatest example of Byzantine architecture.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

OVERVIEW of Architecture and Design THE HERITAGE OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE. The architecture of Greece, Etruria, and Rome is one of the most important parts of the Western world’s heritage from the time of antiquity. Forms and traditions that were developed in ancient Greece and its colonies, with the addition of the influence of Etruscan traditions, were augmented by the innovations of Roman architects and engineers. These have inspired and molded the architectural forms of Europe and the United States as well as all of the cultures touched by them. The traditions of classical architecture have persisted well into the twentieth century, only to be replaced in part by the advent of modern materials and building techniques. The models for banks, railroad stations, and other public buildings were for many years the temples of the Greeks and the bath complexes of the Romans. SOURCES AND EVIDENCE. The sources of knowledge available to modern scholars for a study of the architecture of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans consist mainly of four types. The most obvious type of evidence are the ancient buildings still preserved in whole or in part, although there are very few structures that fit this category. Examples include the Pantheon in Rome and the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, France. The second body of material comes from the excavation of ancient sites and the remains of destroyed buildings. This evidence provides the additional possibility of reconstructing something of the appearance of monuments no longer preserved, and it also provides much of the modern knowledge about domestic architecture, the construction of houses and dwellings. For the third source one may turn to the writings of a limited number of ancient Greek and Roman authors who have preserved some descriptions of the appearance of buildings as well as the methods of construction or the architectural theories employed. To these three sources can be added the representation of monuments and buildings on coins and other works of art. These can provide some idea of the appearance of structures that disappeared long ago. 4

BUILDING MATERIALS. The materials employed by ancient architects were generally simple and somewhat limited by the technology of the time. In the earliest periods unbaked mud brick and plaster were employed, with the addition of wood for roofing material. The development of stone architecture was slow at first, dependant on the metal technology necessary to facilitate quarrying and dressing the material. The employment of stone was first restricted to important structures, mainly cult temples. The principal building technique consisted of a horizontal member supported on two vertical uprights. Even the uses of this simple form were limited by the technical ability to place stone elements at great height. As knowledge of the bearing strength of stone became better understood, buildings could assume larger proportions. At the same time the decoration of buildings progressed as the artistic qualities of architecture were developed and modified. Complex architectural elements employing the use of arches and vaulting and the advanced utilization of brick and concrete were relatively late innovations made mainly during the period of the Roman Empire. These advances allowed for larger structures capable of enclosing vast spaces. MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN CULTURE. The earliest record of designed structures in Greece come from the remains of the palaces on the island of Crete, built by the Minoan civilization between 1700 B.C.E. and 1200 B.C.E. It is necessary to mention them if only because they represent a significant architectural tradition of distant memory in the Aegean area, representing a level of development to which the later Greek architects would later return. The multileveled complexes of these palaces with upper floors supported by columns and walls decorated with fresco painting reached a level of utilitarian design and sophistication not matched in the ancient world. The Minoans were followed by the Mycenaean civilization of the Greek mainland that made significant advances during its last phase (c. 1400–1100 B.C.E). Massive stone architecture for citadels, temples, and tombs became typical, but this tradition was not continued during the so-called “Dark Age” of Greece (c. 1200–800 B.C.E.). Much of the knowledge of architectural achievement and technical advances was lost and had to be reinvented after a period of almost 400 years. GREEK ARCHITECTURE. The early beginnings of traditional Greek architecture can only be demonstrated by very slim evidence. This includes the excavated remains of a building termed a megaron at the site of Themon in Aetolia in Greece dating to around 1000 B.C.E. Terra-cotta models of similar buildings from two centuries later provide additional evidence for the impor-

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tance of the form. The megaron consisted of a single room or hall with an open end and a porch supported by two columns. Buildings of this type were probably more an official meeting hall than a religious building but the arrangement anticipates the general layout of later formal temple design. At the end of the seventh century B.C.E. the two most important arrangements or “orders” of Greek architecture had begun to evolve. The Doric and the Ionic orders take their names from the two dialects of Greek generally spoken on the mainland and in Asia Minor. As architectural styles the Doric developed earlier but the two orders were used concurrently throughout Greece and the colonies. The ground plan of temples from this time was still a simple arrangement consisting of a long room with a porch supported by columns. Some decoration in relief sculpture was added and statues of cult deities were in evidence. By 600 B.C.E. the emerging form of the Greek temple can be demonstrated in the remains of the Temple of Hera at Olympia. This temple also provides clear evidence of the transition from wood architecture to stone. By the early sixth century, around 570, the formal elements of arrangement and decoration had been standardized. The result, as exemplified by the Temple of Zeus, also at Olympia, was an example of impressive and logical design. After the destruction of the Acropolis in Athens by the Persians early in the fifth century, the Parthenon was erected from 447 to 439. Dedicated to Athena, it stands as the epitome of classical architecture and the culmination of a development of architectural design which transformed simple utilitarian structures into artistically realized and awe-inspiring monuments. The architecture of the Hellenistic Period (330–146 B.C.E.) employed variations and elaborations on the developed forms of the classical architecture of the fifth and fourth centuries but maintained standards of proportion and design while striving for more dramatic and impressive effect. ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE. Etruscan architecture began to develop at about the same time as early Greek architecture. The Etruscans, mainly in north-west Italy, were in contact with the Greeks and were a formative influence on the Romans. The evidence for the architecture of the Etruscans consists mainly of the remains of their temples and tombs. The tomb was often an underground chamber or chambers sometimes marked by a tumulus or mound. The typical temple form contained a chamber with a deep porch, usually elevated on a platform with steps leading to it. Much of the preserved decoration from Etruscan temples was made of molded and painted terra cotta rather than the carved stone favored by the Greeks. Etruscan forms such as the raised temple

and the circular tumulus were an influence on the architecture of the following Roman period. CLASSICAL AND BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. In many respects the Romans continued in the traditions of the Greek architects but they were also influenced by the Etruscans. The singular innovations of the Romans were the more general use of the arch and the development of the vault and the dome. These forms were made possible by the employment of building techniques that employed concrete, a material taken for granted in modern times, but one only exploited widely toward the end of the Roman Republic. The theaters, arenas, bridges, baths and aqueducts of the Romans represent an era of engineering advancement almost unparalled in the history of the world. The advancements in engineering and construction techniques made during the late Roman Republic and the early empire were carried on after Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. This was evident mainly in the use of the basilica form—originally a secular administrative building type—for church architectural design, but also in the use of vaulted and domed techniques for the construction of church forms which became increasingly more elaborate. When the emperor Constantine transferred the capital to Constantinople the state fostered this development of monumental structures dedicated to the new religion. CONCLUSION. The architecture of the classical world began simply, to satisfy basic human needs. It was based on practical considerations and restricted by limited technical skills. Its evolution in the Greek homeland and colonies can be traced for over 700 years in the development of a style that is still inspirational today. The complexity of architectural production under the Romans remains one of the great building achievements of history culminating in the religious architecture of the Byzantine Empire. This development of architectural form covered a span of about 1,500 years, a period in which much of the lasting vocabulary of Western architectural design was invented and perfected.

TOPICS in Architecture and Design S URVIVING S OURCES LOSS OF EVIDENCE. The architecture of ancient Greece and Rome never completely disappeared. Many

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examples of buildings or the remains of them have always been visible or have been easily rediscovered, particularly in the Greek mainland and in Italy. However, the remains of classical antiquity can be found throughout the lands of the Mediterranean, the Aegean, North Africa, and the Middle East. Such remains were not always respected and preserved. It is all too obvious that ancient buildings were reused for different purposes than for those for which they were originally intended, often necessitating structural or decorative changes. As an example, in Syracuse, in Sicily, it is possible to see the original columns of a temple imbedded in the wall of the later church that utilized the original site. Marble and sandstone could very easily be reused, and limestone was often burned for the lime it contained. Decorative columns were taken away and pressed into service in later churches and mosques. Metal fittings and other decorative elements were regularly stripped from buildings to be melted down. Many dedication inscriptions in metal lettering have disappeared as a result of this practice. REDISCOVERY IN THE RENAISSANCE. In the late fourteenth century artists and architects, principally in the cities of Italy including Rome and Florence, began to take a new interest in the art and architecture that surrounded them. It was an important part of the general reawakening or “rebirth” of interest in classical antiquity at the time that included all aspects of ancient learning. Scholars, artists, and architects began to investigate the ancient remains, study and copy the preserved decorations, and analyze the proportions of the monuments. The result of this newly developed field of study was an attempt to imitate the art and architecture of antiquity, regarded as a perfected art worthy to serve as models for their time. The writing of Vitruvius was taken very seriously as the guide to proper application of the rules of ancient architecture, disregarding the fact that his work was limited by his own time and experience to a short time in ancient Roman history. However, the revived interest in classical architecture was mainly limited to Roman rather than Greek examples because of the nature of the remains available. This was not a simple copying of Roman buildings but an attempt to understand the elements, systems of proportion, and decorative devices, in order to use them in ways suitable to their own time. Architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377– 1446) and Michelozzo Michelozzi (c. 1396–1472) were among the leaders and innovators in the newly developed style, but it was with artist-architects like Bramante, Michelangelo, and Palladio that it reached its highest expressions. 6

THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL. The Renaissance architecture of Italy had considerable influence on the later developments in France and England, but a revived interest in ancient architecture was also kindled by the discovery and excavation of ancient remains such as the buried city of Pompeii in the mid-eighteenth century. The ancient monuments of Athens were also studied and published, as were the structures of Palmyra, a city in the Syrian desert. The Panthéon in Paris, designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot (1709–1780), modeled on the ancient Roman building in Rome, is a good example of this revived interest. Many products of this reuse of ancient principals and ideas exist throughout Europe. One outstanding example is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, designed by Karl Gotfried Langhans (1733–1808) and built at the end of the eighteenth century. It was clearly modeled after a structure in Athens, although some details have been changed. For the classical revival in America, one of the outstanding names is that of Thomas Jefferson. He believed that Roman architecture was best suited for the important buildings of the new American republic, and he applied his direct knowledge of ancient remains and his theories to a number of projects including the Virginia State Capitol. Greek forms were also employed by other architects in the young country, as in the design of the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia. The architect, William Strickland (1787–1854), used the Parthenon in Athens for his model and inspiration. The ideals of classical architecture have persisted, almost to the present day. Many important buildings have been designed with the models of ancient Greece and Rome in mind. This is such an integral part of the development of American architecture that it almost goes unnoticed today because the forms are so familiar to us. EXISTING BUILDINGS. The architectural remains of the Greek and Roman world survive in varied stages of preservation in a number of places around the Mediterranean basin. Some Roman examples, such as the Maison Carrée at Nîmes in France, dedicated early in the first century, or the Pantheon in Rome, a construction largely of the second century, still stand much as they were built in antiquity. These attest to the methods used in their construction but also to the respect shown them when they were later utilized as Christian churches. By contrast, major monuments such as the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens were not so well treated and are evidence to that neglect. The Parthenon had been used as a church, a mosque, and then for the storage of gunpowder. It was partly destroyed when an explosion of an ammunition cache blasted out much of one side of the structure in 1687. Except for that accident, it might be

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one of the best-preserved Greek temples in the modern world. Not many examples of Greek and Roman architecture have survived even this well, although there are many lesser-known remains outside of Greece and Italy that add to modern knowledge. SURVIVING GREEK ARCHITECTURE. The ancient buildings of Greece are justly famous and include some examples, such as the Parthenon, with the complex of buildings on the Athenian Acropolis, and the temple called the Theseum, also in Athens, that give modern scholars some idea of the appearance of the ancient buildings. Throughout the country are the remains of structures in various stages of preservation. With some monuments, such at the great temple at Olympia, the appearance of the building has only been determined by excavation of the site, extensive study, and reconstruction on paper. With others, where only a few columns might remain upright, the plan of the structure can still be determined from the remains of stone foundations. The most significant examples of Greek architecture away from the Greek mainland are to be found in southern Italy, Sicily, and the western coast of Turkey (East Greece). To study the evolution of early Greek architecture the temples at Paestum, south of Naples, and at various sites on the island of Sicily, including Selinute and Agrigento, provide essential supplementary evidence. By chance of preservation, these more nearly complete or re-constructible examples exist in what were the colonies of the Greek city-states. When the Greeks colonized southern Italy and Sicily they brought their architects and artists and imported their own traditions of art and design. For most constructions they simply used local materials. By contrast, the great temple of Diana at Ephesus, in what is now western Turkey, survived as only the foundation platform; still providing enough evidence for some idea of the appearance of what must have been one of the great buildings of antiquity. SURVIVING ETRUSCAN

AND

ROMAN ARCHITEC-

TURE. The preserved architecture of the Etruscans is lim-

ited to tombs, of which thousands have been found. Etruscan tombs were generally underground structures containing several chambers or rooms. Some of the architectural detail incorporated in the decoration suggests that the tombs were meant to imitate temple and house architecture but few examples of domestic and religious structures have actually been preserved. There are town walls composed of roughly hewn stone which can be dated to the time of the Etruscans but the actual style of buildings can only be reconstructed from the evidence obtained from excavations. In contrast, the evidence for the evolution of Roman architecture during the Repub-

lic and the empire is extensive and a variety of structures are preserved in whole or in part. In addition to famous structures such as the Pantheon and Maison Carrée, there are many monuments in the city of Rome and in the Italian peninsula that give a vivid picture of the variety of Roman building. These include temples and tombs, palaces and theaters, and an assortment of public structures including aqueducts, bridges, bath complexes, markets, administrative buildings and the like. Probably the most familiar examples are the amphitheaters and ceremonial arches, exemplified by the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine in Rome. However, the cities of Ostia, the seaport of Rome, and the two cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, also provide considerable evidence of town planning, layout, and development. Other evidence exists outside of Italy as well. As the Roman Empire grew, the colonies sustained building projects that have left many partly or completely preserved examples. To mention only a few areas, in the colonies of North Africa, whole ancient cities have been preserved, only to be recovered by excavation. In such places the remains of civic centers, religious and political monuments, and domestic complexes have been found. Throughout Europe, notably in France and Spain, amphitheaters, bridges, and aqueducts attest to the skill of Roman architects and engineers. LITERARY AND OTHER EVIDENCE. For Greek architecture and construction methods there is considerable inscriptional evidence preserved. In this material architects are named; contracts for quarrying, transportation of material, and actual construction are itemized and the wages of various class of workmen are detailed. Modern scholars are also fortunate that professional Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio, writing in the time of the emperor Augustus, left an extensive and detailed discussion of the techniques of ancient architecture that has been preserved. He was a practicing architect and military engineer with a knowledge that was both theoretical and practical. In his work De Architectura (On Architecture) he discussed numerous subjects, ranging from the types and characteristics of building material employed during the early empire, to the placement of buildings in respect to the natural environment. His viewpoint was one that looked back at classical Greek architecture as a model to imitate but he also left valuable information about the nature of Etruscan buildings. What he wrote about methods of construction and materials, as well as the rules of proportion employed in architectural design, is very valuable to an understanding of ancient architecture. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) also wrote about the

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N Thrace Ma

ia Sybaris

G Syracuse

Troy

Ae ge an Se a

Aetolia Gulf of Corinth Delphi

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e y

onia

I o ni an Se a

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Ill y r i a

Ancient city Parthenon Palace of Knossos Labyrinth of King Minos

chaea

Corinth

Olympia

Asia Minor

ia Thebes

Athens

Mycenae

Ionia

Pel o p o n n es e Sparta miles 50

0 0

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50 100 kilometers

Crete

M ed it e r r a n ea n S ea

Knossos

Map showing Ancient Greece and Crete, the cities of Delphi, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, Mycenae, Olympia, Sparta, Troy, Knossos, important monuments, the Parthenon, Palace of Knossos, Labyrinth of King Minos. XNR PRODUCTIONS, INC. THE GALE GROUP. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

use of metals and stone in architecture in his encyclopedic Natural History. In addition, many ancient authors or travelers described the buildings they saw. Probably the most important of these was the Greek traveler, Pausanias. He left invaluable descriptions of what impressed him when he visited the important cities of Greece in the second century C.E. In addition to inscriptions and literary descriptions, there are countless examples of the representation of buildings or parts of them on coins, in wall painting, pottery decoration, and even terra cotta models. These often depict structures or monuments that no longer exist and convey supplementary information that can be used to fill out our knowledge of ancient architecture. SOURCES

J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece, 1400–31 B.C.: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965). —, The Art of Rome, 753 B. C.–337 A.D.: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965). 8

Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. Trans. Morris Hickey Morgan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914).

M INOAN AND M YCENAEAN A RCHITECTURE CULTURAL BACKGROUND. Before the flowering of the classic Greek architectural style in the mainland there were two important periods of development in building that had come before. The Minoan (c. 2600–1100 B.C.E.) and Mycenaean (c. 2800–1100 B.C.E.) civilizations flourished in the island of Crete and in mainland Greece for close to 2,000 years. Many of their accomplishments in art and architecture were unknown to the Greeks of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. but some memory of their accomplishments was preserved in mythology and epic poetry such as the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, and some archeological traces of their structures survived. The Minoans are known to modern

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A light well in the Minoan palace at Phaestus in Crete.

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

scholars by the modern name given to them derived from the mythical king Minos who was said in mythology to have a great palace at Knossos in Crete. They were an island people and seafarers who traded widely in the eastern Mediterranean and came into contact with the cultures of Egypt and the Near East. Undoubtedly they knew something of the monumental buildings erected by the peoples of Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley and may have been influenced by them. Fortresses and temples, however, were not an important part of their building concerns. The island location of the culture provided some defense against invaders and marauders so the art of fortification and fortress building was not especially developed. The idea of building shrines or temples to the gods had also not developed to any great extent. Hence the most important examples of Minoan architecture were the result of a highly developed style of complex palace design. What is known of the remains of the palace architecture of the Minoans, as evidenced by palaces such as the one at Knossos, have been revealed by excavation and reconstruction. MINOAN ARCHITECTURE: KNOSSOS. In Crete the bare remains of the ground plans of simple houses from

the late prehistoric period have been uncovered, but it was not until the excavation of the palace of Minos at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans that the complexity and something of the development of Minoan architecture was known. The palace—most likely built between 1600 and 1500 B.C.E.—is essentially a governmental administrative center and a royal residence combined. Arranged around a large central courtyard were dozens of rooms, chambers, small courts, halls, and storerooms. The mazelike arrangement of these elements may have even been the inspiration for the myth of the fabled labyrinth. The building was unusual in that it was several stories high with the upper floors supported by columns. The shape of these architectural elements has been debated but there is considerable evidence to show that the columns were tapered in a manner that was the reverse of the normal shape in later Greek architecture; they were larger at the top and gradually smaller at the bottom. Staircases and light wells provided access and air circulation for this complex building. The walls of the palace were decorated with fresco painting (painting done on the wet plaster) as well as modeled plaster reliefs. Both the complexity of the structure, built over a long period with many changes and additions, and the colorful decoration attest to a

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View across the courtyard of the Minoan palace at Phaestus in Crete.

highly developed civilization with considerable wealth and material resources at its command. OTHER MINOAN ARCHITECTURE. Although the Minoan civilization is best known today from the partly reconstructed ruins of the palace at Knossos, many other remains of this culture exist on the island of Crete. The principal evidence is to be found at Phaestus, Mallia, and Hagia Triada. The final stage of the palace structure at Phaestus in the south of the island is characterized by a more regular plan. Although not symmetrical in its layout it appears to adhere to an almost rectangular grid. One of the important features of the palace is an open court, or peristyle, with columns around it. This seems to anticipate one of the main features of the typical Greek house of a thousand years later but it is probably only an example of a design solution for interior space that might have developed anywhere. The palace at Mallia, on the north coast east of Knossos, is distinguished by a large court with many small rooms leading from it in a confusing arrangement that appears not to have been carefully planned in advance. There is some thought that the maze of rooms supported an upper story where the arrangement of space may have been more formal. Due 10

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

to the terrain, the small palace (or villa) at Haiga Triada on the south coast was laid out without a central courtyard in an “L”-shaped plan. This suggests that architects of the Minoan period were adaptable to the local situation in their design for large administration buildings and domestic quarters. MYCENAEAN ARCHITECTURE. The Mycenean peoples—named after Mycenea, the most prominent city on mainland Greece at this time—ushered in a new attitude toward architecture and building. The Mycenaeans were a dominating culture and soon expanded from the mainland of Greece into the Greek isles, overcoming the Minoans of Crete by 1400 B.C.E. and, being a mainland culture, began building compact citadels and fortresses protected by massive walls instead of large sprawling palace complexes. The citadels at Mycenae and at Tiryns have many common features, including an orderly and compact ground plan, encircling fortress walls, and rooms that were used for administrative purposes as well as residential. The interior walls were of stone with upper parts in sun-dried brick. Interior supporting columns were of wood, floors of plaster or gypsum, and ornamentation in plaster as well as some

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The Lion Gate at Mycenae, Greece, so-called from the sculpture on the limestone slab above the lintel block, showing two lions with their feet resting on an altar. © CHRIS HELLIER/CORBIS.

carved stone. The “megaron” form, basically a long hall used for assembly, is an important element in Mycenaean architecture. It is this general form that is thought by some to be the basis that later Greek temple design took as a starting point. The other major architectural achievement of the Mycenaeans was the Tholos tomb. Originally these were thought to be treasuries or storehouses for valuables, but they are now generally believed to be the tombs of Mycenaean rulers. The tholos tomb was a circular, underground, stone structure with an interior rising to a point. The stone construction was accomplished with the corbelled system where each higher row of stones overlaps or projects farther into space. When a corbelled dome or arch is trimmed or cut to a curve, it is virtually impossible to determine that it is not based on a true arch. The “Treasury of Atreus” at Mycenea (1300–1250 B.C.E.) is a prime example of the tholos type of tomb. It was approached by a straight passage of about 35 meters cut into the hillside. The main entrance doorway was decorated with half columns in green stone with other facing elements in red stone. These were carved with decorations of spi-

rals, chevrons, rosettes, and other geometric designs. The massive size of some of the stones, particularly one of the lintels, which has been estimated at over 100 tons, indicates a level of experience and an organizational ability that made it possible to shape, move, and handle extraordinary construction elements. This ability to work in large stone, also seen in the construction of the citadels, is thought by some scholars to be related to the work of the contemporary Hittites in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). At Pylos in the southwest the remains of a palace has been found. It is a complex, somewhat resembling Minoan architecture, with courts, rooms, stairways and storage areas. There was an original megaron but it is not central to the plan. Two phases of construction can be seen with an expansion that became the more important part of the building. In the latter phase there is a larger and more formal megaron with a central hearth and four columns that once supported a four-sided balcony. This large audience hall was decorated with fresco paintings and mosaic floor in a lavish manner that indicates the wealth and power of the rulers of Pylos.

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THE RUINS OF MYCENAE INTRODUCTION :

In the second century C.E. the Greek traveler Pausanias, who can only be described as an antiquarian— a person who studies ancient remains—left an account of the sights he saw and tried to give historical explanations for them. His descriptions of the monuments of Greece are an invaluable source and reference. He often describes the way a temple area was decorated and he gives the names of the artists who were responsible for the sculpture, as well as the architects. His historical explanations of events are sometimes a little fanciful, but they were based on the knowledge of history available to him in his time. As an example, his description of the citadel of Mycenae and its gate decorated with lions illustrates the fact that the remains of a period in Greek history of over a thousand years earlier were still visible and were still identified with the people who made them.

It was jealousy which caused the Argives to destroy Mycenae. For at the time of the Persian invasion the Ar-

THE DARK AGES. The centers of Mycenaean strength were destroyed from around the beginning of the eleventh century B.C.E. as the Dorians began to invade Greece. Like any invading culture, the Dorians brought their own cultural styles, and the Mycenaean and Minoan influences began to be suppressed. Many historians have termed this the “dark ages” of Greek history, for the Dorians did little to advance any of the cultural aspects of the society, and architecture, which would take on mainly Doric traditions by the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., remained mainly in the Mycenaean style during this time. By the time that the Greek culture began to construct its famous temples and structures of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., many of the architectural designs of the Mycenaeans and Minoans had been lost, but many were the basic elements for what is considered by many scholars to be classical Greek architecture. SOURCES

Reynold Higgins, Minoan and Mycenaean Art. Rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). A. W. Lawrence, Greek Architecture. Rev. R. A. Tomlinson (New York: Penguin Books, 1983): 35–70. SEE ALSO

Greece 12

Religion: The Early Greeks on Mainland

gives made no move, but the Mycenaeans sent eighty men to Thermopylae who shared in the achievement of the Lacedaemonians. This eagerness for distinction brought ruin upon them by exasperating the Argives. There still remain, however, parts of the city wall, including the gate, upon which stand lions. These, too, are said to be the work of the Cyclopes, who made for Proetus the wall at Tiryns. In the ruins of Mycenae is a fountain called Persea; there are also underground chambers of Atreus and his children, in which were stored their treasures. There is the grave of Atreus, along with the graves of such as returned with Agamemnon from Troy, and were murdered by Aegisthus after he had given them a banquet. As for the tomb of Cassandra, it is claimed by the Lacedaemonians who dwell around Amyclae. Agamemnon has his tomb, and so has Eurymedon the charioteer, while another is shared by Teledamus and Pelops, twin sons, they say, of Cassandra, whom while yet babies Aegisthus slew after their parents. SOURCE : Pausanias, Description of Greece. Trans. W. H. S. Jones (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1918): 331.

G REEK A RCHITECTURE GREEK BUILDING TECHNIQUES. Almost all major Greek architecture employed the simple “post and lintel” system. In this method of building, two or more uprights—columns, piers, or walls—support horizontal members of a length limited by the strength of stone able to support its own weight. The “post” is the upright structural part and the “lintel” is the bridging element meant to span openings or support the roofing of the building. The Greeks became proficient in this style of construction as they developed methods of quarrying stone and the transportation and the handling of large stone masses. Ingenious devices were invented for the lifting and hoisting of building materials. From inscriptional evidence we know that the pulley, a device now taken for granted, was used with wooden lifting structures. These primitive cranes had two, three, or four legs, depending on the situation and the weight demands. Systems were developed for lifting stone that employed rope rigging to lift while levers and crowbars were used for placement. These devices seem self-evident today, but in their time they represented technological advances over the ancient technique of moving stone to a height on sleds and ramps. Timbers were used to support and form the structure of the roofing that was usually covered with tile. In domestic architecture, dwellings, shops, and other utilitarian buildings, construction was much simpler. It

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The Treasury (Storehouse) of the Athenians at Delphi, Greece, built after the victory of the Athenians over the Persians at Marathon in 490 B.C.E. PHOTOGRAPH BY HECTOR WILLIAMS. © HECTOR WILLIAMS.

usually consisted of walls of fired or unfired brick laid on rough stone foundations. The tools employed for most architectural work were simple, yet they represent the state of technology of the period. Architects and engineers used cords for measuring, with squares, plumb bobs, and levels to maintain the accuracy of the construction. Masons employed hammers, axes, files, and chisels to work the stone. Iron tools were adequate to shape marble and limestone. EARLIEST TEMPLES. The history of Greek architecture is essentially the history of the development of the Greek temple. In the Bronze Age and the periods of Minoan and Mycenaean strength in Crete and mainland Greece, the temple was not the principal place of worship of the gods. A dwelling place or cult center for the deity was not defined by an elaborate structure so the importance that was to be placed on temple building signaled a new and different attitude to worship. One important consideration must still be remembered. The temple in Greek culture was not a building to accommodate groups of worshipers. It was the house of the god or goddess with a statue of the deity and perhaps

some additional rooms that functioned as treasuries, but the rites and sacrifices made to the god were carried out on an altar in front of the temple. The earliest examples of temples of the Greek age can only be deduced from archaeological evidence. There are pottery models of single-room structures with peaked roofs dating to the eighth century B.C.E. that give some indication of early temple design. The idea of surrounding a temple structure with one or more rows of columns seems to have been a purely Greek invention. In other ancient cultures, particularly in Egypt, columns were mainly used on the interior of temples, sometimes in great profusion. In Greek architecture the exposed column was one of the most characteristic elements. Probably the earliest rectangular temple with a colonnade surrounding it for which there is evidence is the temple to the goddess Hera on the island of Samos. It has been dated to the late eighth century B.C.E. At this stage the columns were of wood set on bases of stone. The temple was rebuilt in the seventh century B.C.E., made slightly larger, and modifications were made that brought it closer to the

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Ruins of the Temple of Hera at Olympia, Greece, dating from the beginning of the 6th century B.C.E.

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN

EVANS.

eventual proportion and design of temples of the classic age. EARLY DORIC STYLE. About 580 B.C.E. a Doricstyle temple was built to the goddess Artemis on the island of Corfu, just off the northwest coast of mainland Greece. Although it has been completely dismantled, enough of the limestone blocks have been found to furnish evidence to suggest its size—about 77 feet wide and about twice that in length. Enough of the pediment—the triangular space at the end under the double-pitched roof—was recovered to show that it had been decorated with carving in relief, representing a gorgon and a battle between gods and giants. This is the one of the earliest examples of pedimental sculpture that can be determined. Around the same time a temple was built to the goddess Hera at Olympia. Only the superstructure has been preserved but it was possible to deduce that it had sixteen columns on the side and six at the ends, the corner columns counted twice. The columns had no separate base but rested on the top step of the platform. Columns of the type called Doric were fluted—carved with a series of shallow vertical chan14

nels—and tapered toward the top. The capital, or top of the column, consisted of a curved pad-like part with a square block above. The plan of the temple at Olympia includes a pronaos, cella, and the first known example of the opisthodomus. The cella was the central hall or sanctuary of the temple, and the pronaos was the small anteroom in front of it. The opisthodomus is a small porch at the back of the cella. There were two rows of columns inside to support the roof and evidence that there had been engaged columns as well, attached to the sidewalls. This temple originally had columns in wood that were only gradually replaced in stone. As a result they are of several different periods and styles from the sixth century B.C.E. to Roman times. In the second century C.E. Pausanias noted one wooden column still standing which had not been replaced. The walls of this temple were of sun-dried brick laid on a stone foundation. The architrave or base for the roof structure that bridged the columns was apparently of wood, and the roof itself was covered in terra cotta tiles. A large limestone base was found inside the cella, probably for the cult statue of the goddess or a

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

Temple of Hera at Paestum in Italy. Built in the mid-sixth century B.C.E.

double statue of Hera and Zeus. This early temple is important not only for its layout and proportions but also for the evidence it gives of temples originally built with wooden elements being replaced by more durable stone construction. In the Doric order the frieze—the horizontal band above the architrave—was decorated with a pattern of alternating triglyphs and metopes. The triglyph is a single block with its face carved to resemble three vertical bars; the metope is a rectangular slab that may be plain but may also be decorated with painting or relief sculpture. It is thought by some that the design of the triglyph was a memory of the beam-ends in wooden architecture, but this explanation is not accepted by all architectural historians. The temple of Apollo at Corinth, dated to about 540 B.C.E., is the only example of a sixth-century mainland temple with some columns still standing. Each column is a monolith—carved from a single block—standing about 21 feet high, made of a porous limestone originally fin-

THE ART ARCHIVE/DAGLI ORTI.

ished with a coat of stucco. There were six columns on the end and fifteen on each side, making the length two and a half times the width. The platform under the colonnades rose in a slight convex curve. This is the earliest example known where this adjustment was made to correct the optical illusion that makes the base line appear to be curved. The interior of this temple was divided into two chambers back to back, each entered from its own porch. Other preserved examples of sixthcentury Doric architecture can be found in the Greek colonies of Sicily and southern Italy. To fully appreciate the early development of the Doric style it is necessary to examine some of these. Three well-preserved temples at Paestum, south of Naples, include one to Hera from the mid-sixth century. It has long been known as the “Basilica” and is still referred to by that name in some publications. All of the peripteral colonnade is still standing and the architrave is still in place, but the walls are completely gone. There were nine

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

Temple E, probably dedicated to Hera, in Selinunte, Sicily. Begun early sixth century B.C.E.

columns at each end and eighteen on a side. This is somewhat unusual with an uneven number on the façade dividing it in half. The cella contained a central row of columns that were the same size as the colonnade. A feature of this early stage in the development of the Doric order is that the columns in this temple were radically tapered from bottom to top so they gave a springy or elastic appearance to the structure. EARLY IONIC ARCHITECTURE. The Doric and Ionic architectural orders have a number of differences but the main one is the placement, shape, and proportion of the columns. The Doric column sits directly on the platform of the temple; the Ionic has a base, usually composed of several elements that may even contain carved decoration. As compared to the simpler Doric capital the Ionic capital has a pair volutes—spiral- or scroll-shaped ornaments—that may suggest construction in other materials than stone and also reflect the influence of cultures from western Asia or Egypt. The Ionic column is generally thinner in proportion to its height than the Doric, 16

THE ART ARCHIVE/DALGI ORTI.

and Ionic temples generally only have two steps where the Doric has three. Two temples built about the same time in the mid-sixth century are examples of the early Ionic-style and are also among the first large-scale temple buildings in Greek architecture. One of these was a second temple dedicated to Hera on the island of Samos and the other to Artemis at Ephesus in east Greece— now the west coast of Turkey. The temple at Ephesus was partially paid for by King Croesus of Lydia, whose wealth became proverbial—“rich as Croesus.” At Ephesus the temple to Artemis had a double colonnade with 21 columns on a side measuring almost 360 feet. This massive building was built of marble with a wooden roof covered with terra cotta tiles. Some of the lower column drums were decorated with relief carving. The temple to Hera at Samos also had a double colonnade and faced east, as was the normal orientation of Greek temples. The temple to Artemis, by contrast, faced west. This may have been influenced by an earlier shrine on the site at Ephesus. A later temple on the Samos site, begun around

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

Exterior view of Parthenon on Athenian Acropolis from the east.

530 B.C.E., was the largest Greek temple of which modern scholars have knowledge. It measured 179 by 365 feet and had columns that were 63 feet high. The columns themselves were of limestone, but their capitals and bases were of marble, probably to conserve the valuable marble. FIFTH CENTURY TEMPLES. In the fifth century the refinement of the relationship of architectural elements and proportions were effectively resolved resulting in the “classic” look of Greek temple architecture. The ideal relationship of the numbers of columns—ends to side—was resolved at six to thirteen. Marble came into prominence as the major building stone, replacing limestone where it was available. An important example of the developing refinement from sixth into fifth-century B.C.E. architecture is the one dedicated to the goddess Aphaia on the island of Aegina, southwest of Athens. A good deal of it has survived, including some of the pedimental sculpture, enabling reliable restoration to be realized. Its position on a hilltop is a reminder that the site of a Greek temple was often chosen for its commanding height and view of the sea or surrounding landscape. The temple had six by twelve columns, not yet the ideal relationship of six to thirteen B.C.E.,

PHOTOGRAPH BY HECTOR WILLIAMS. © HECTOR WILLIAMS.

to come. The interior of the cella in this temple had two rows of smaller columns that supported a second, smaller, row above. This two-story interior colonnade was not unique and can be found in some other temples. Its purpose was to help support the roof construction. Since it was not thought proper for interior columns to be taller than those on the exterior the solution was to have two superimposed levels of smaller columns to reach the height between floor and roof. This arrangement can also be seen in the temple of Hera (once thought to be dedicated to Poseidon) at Paestum in southern Italy. This temple, probably the best example of a Greek-style temple preserved, was also built between the beginning and the middle of the fifth century. The exterior decoration of the temple at Aegina included marble roof tiles on the edge of the roof, water spouts in the shape of lions’ heads, antefixes shaped like palmettes, and a considerable amount of colored detail. Although there is some debate about the amount of decorative color used in Greek architecture, many examples of painted surfaces have been found preserved, giving considerable support to the idea that these structures were not the stark light color of marble or limestone, as they exist today.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

PAUSANIAS DESCRIBES THE PARTHENON INTRODUCTION :

Often it is the description written by a traveler in ancient times that gives us a real impression of how the monuments looked in their own time. When Pausanias, the Greek traveler and historian, visited Athens in the second century C.E. and climbed to the top of the Acropolis, he saw the Parthenon in what must have been near its original condition. As was usual with his writing, he tried to identify the subjects of the decoration and explain their historical or mythological significance.

As you enter the temple that they name the Parthenon, all the sculptures you see on what is called the pediment refer to the birth of Athena, those on the rear pediment represent the contest for the land between Athena and Poseidon. The statue itself is made of ivory and gold. On the middle of her helmet is placed a likeness of the Sphinx—the tale of the Sphinx I will give when I come to my description of Boeotia—and on either

THE ACROPOLIS. The buildings on the Acropolis— literally “high city”—at Athens had a long history extending back into Mycenaean times. The oldest temple of the goddess Athena on the site can be traced back at least to the seventh century B.C.E. Originally a fortified stronghold, the limestone plateau high above the city remained the center of worship for the patron goddess with her main altar after its military importance had diminished. At the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E. the Athenians began a building project to replace the old temple and construct a new propylon—entrance gate— to the sanctuary. This plan was interrupted by the Persian invasion and the destruction and sack of the Acropolis in 480 B.C.E. It was not until after the midcentury that the plans for a new temple for the city goddess were carried out. Modern scholars know this new temple as the Parthenon, so named because it was dedicated to a special aspect of the goddess as Athena Parthenos—Athena the maiden or Athena the virgin. Her cult center eventually contained several important buildings in addition to the main temple. These are the Propylaea or entryway to the Acropolis, the temple of Athena Nike or Victory, and the Erechtheum, a building intended to organize several cults in one structure. THE PARTHENON. Under the leadership of Pericles the old building plan of the 480s was revived at the midcentury. The architects of the new temple to Athena were 18

side of the helmet are griffins in relief. These griffins, Aristeas of Proconnesus says in his poem, fight for the gold with the Arimaspi beyond the Issedones. The gold which the griffins guard, he says, comes out of the earth; the Arimaspi are men all born with one eye; griffins are beasts like lions, but with the beak and wings of an eagle. I will say no more about the griffins. The statue of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa is worked in ivory. She holds a statue of Victory about four cubits high, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Erichthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora in relief. Hesiod and others have sung how this Pandora was the first woman; before Pandora was born there was as yet no womankind. The only portrait statue I remember seeing here is one of the emperor Hadrian, and at the entrance one of Iphicrates, who accomplished many remarkable achievements. SOURCE : Pausanias, Description of Greece. Trans. W. H. S. Jones (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1918): 23, 25.

Ictinus and Callicrates. The cult image for the temple was the work of Phidias, who probably also created the decorative program for the whole building and is traditionally thought to have been the overall director of the works. The temple was begun in 447 and dedicated in 438 but the sculptural decoration was not completely finished until 432. The building was used in later times as a Byzantine church, a Catholic church, and a Muslim mosque. In 1678 an explosion of gunpowder stored in the cella destroyed much of the center of the temple that had been in a good state of preservation up to that time. In the period 1801–1803 the English collector, Lord Elgin, received permission from the Turkish officials to remove some of the sculpture—the so-called Elgin Marbles now in the British Museum (and the source of controversy with the present Greek government). These included some of the pedimental figures and most of the relief frieze that are considered among the most important examples of fifth-century B.C.E. Greek art. The building itself was constructed of Pentelic marble on a limestone foundation that partly covered that of the earlier temple. Some of the column drums from the ruined temple were found in good condition and used in the new one, dictating the size of the columns—34 and one-fourth feet high—but not the overall proportion. The Parthenon has eight columns on the ends and seventeen on the sides because it is somewhat wider in pro-

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

A view of the Acropolis of Athens from the southwest showing the Propylaea (monumental entrance).

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN

EVANS.

portion than had been the rule. It is possible that this extra width was planned to accommodate the interior view of the extraordinary colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena in the cella. The plan included the peripteral colonnade, front and rear porches with six columns, and a chamber behind the cella that may have served as the treasury. The cella had a two-story colonnade on the sides and back, presumably for viewing the Athena statue. By the mid-fifth century Greek architects had achieved a level of design with a refinement and a harmony of proportion that has seldom been equaled. This was done over time by trial and error, taking advantage of technological advances in building and by considerable experimentation with the visual effects of size, shape, and relationships. Visual refinements were made to correct optical illusions. Thus the main horizontal elements in the facade of the building—the platform stylobate and the superstructure entablature—were gently curved downward from the center. The columns and walls lean slightly inward. The columns taper toward the top in a slight curve entasis and even the depth of the column

fluting is less deep at the top. The Doric column of the fifth century B.C.E. has been greatly refined from its predecessor of a hundred years before, and its curved profile is much more subtle. Many scholars have seen this as an incorporation of Ionic aspects into the Doric style. Much has been said about the ideal mathematical proportions that were developed by Greek architects in order to define the visual relationships of building parts. In the Parthenon a number of examples of this principal at work can be seen. The ration of width to length of the temple is 9:4; the space between the columns to their diameter has the same relationship, 9:4, and this can be seen in other aspects of the building as well. The use of simple repeated ratios and geometric relationships imposed a visual order and harmony and resulted in an architectural masterpiece. THE PROPYLAEA. The Propylaea was the grand ceremonial gateway and entrance to the precinct of the Acropolis. It replaced an earlier structure as the Parthenon had replaced an earlier temple. It was the work of the architect Mnesicles, and it was begun in 437

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

The Erechtheum in Athens; the view from the east.

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

B.C.E.,

after the construction of the Parthenon was finished and work on it was halted in 432 B.C.E. The Propylaea was entirely of marble and took five years to build but was never completely finished according to plan. In addition to the grand gateway with a wide central passage it had porches with six columns on the outer side and inside and was to have two large rooms flanking the doorway. One of these rooms was described by Pausanias as a “picture galley” but it has also been suggested that this was a formal dining room. The building was built entirely of costly marble and on such a large scale that some of the ceiling beams had to span a distance of eighteen feet. As a consequence of this size, these have been estimated as weighing over eleven tons. This ability to handle large weight at a height indicates a welldeveloped system of construction techniques. THE TEMPLE OF NIKE AND THE ERECHTHEUM. High to the right of the Propylaea a small temple was begun about five years after work on the ceremonial gateway was suspended. This compact structure was dedicated to Athena Nike—goddess of victory. It was designed in the Ionic style with four slender columns at each end. The cella was entered between two piers or square pillars which were connected to the side walls by bronze lattice screens. A carved frieze representing the Greeks battling the Persians decorated all four sides of the entablature, an element more typical in the Ionic 20

than in the Doric style. The pediment above had carved figures, as can be determined by attachments, and a sculpted parapet on three sides was added later. Another important building on the Acropolis in the Ionic style is the Erechtheum. It takes its name from Erechtheus, a legendary king of Athens, whose palace may have been thought to have once stood on that location. Begun in 421 and finished in 405, it is probably the most unusual structure in the precinct because of its irregular plan. This was perhaps the result of a need to bring together several shrines or cult places. There were three inner chambers and three porches or porticoes of different sizes and on different levels. On the south side the porch had six caryatids—architectural supports in the shape of human figures—supporting the entablature instead of columns. These famous female statues have been removed to the protection of a museum and replaced with copies. One of the important lessons to be learned from the Erechtheum is the fact that Greek architects were able to adapt to the needs of an unusual situation. THE TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS. To the southeast of the Acropolis in Athens a large temple dedicated to Olympian Zeus was begun around 520 B.C.E., but it was left unfinished and only the platform was used in its completion at a much later time. Under Antiochus IV, king of Syria, work was resumed on the tem-

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

The Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, begun in the sixth century B.C.E. but finished by the emperor Hadrian (117–138 C.E.).

COUR-

TESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

ple in the second century B.C.E. but it was not finally finished until 131 C.E. in the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian. It is thought that it was originally planned in the Doric style but when it was completed it was with elements of the Corinthian order including elaborate floral Corinthian capitals. The original plan included a double row of columns in the peripteral colonnade with a third row at each end. This was probably influenced by other early temples on a large scale like that of Hera at Ephesus. The Temple of Olympian Zeus was one of the largest in Athens, measuring 135 by 353.5 feet with columns that were 57 feet high. Its completion hundreds of years after it was started was probably a result of the emperor Hadrian’s admiration for Greek culture. THE GREEK THEATER. Although the temple form is the most important architectural type in Greek history, there are a number of other kinds of structures to consider. In addition to the temple there were many other types of public buildings, monuments, altars, and tombs that should be mentioned. The theater was perhaps the second most typical expression of Greek archi-

tectural design. All festivals, athletic contests, and dramatic presentations were held out of doors. Originally even the Assembly of the citizens of Athens was held in the open air on the sloping rocky outcrop known as the Pnyx. This allowed the participants to see and hear the speakers who were at a lower level. It follows that the performances held in honor of the god Dionysus would be held in a hollow where the audience could be seated on the sloping hillside. In the history of the Greek drama most theaters were constructed where they could take advantage of the natural hillside. The beginnings of the drama were in choral dances so the most important area of the theater was the circular orchestra which literally means “dancing place.” The body of the auditorium or theatron consisted of a semicircular arrangement of gently sloping stone rows of seats. As the idea of the dramatic theater developed and the number of actors was increased, it became necessary to provide a stage with a backing of some sort. This was called the skene and it provided a sounding board to help project the voices of the actors as well as to provide some rudimentary scenery. The idea of the theater as a special building

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

Hellenistic theater at Kourion in Cyprus.

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

seems to have developed at the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E., but one of the earliest still in evidence is the theater of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis. It was later changed or modified when it went through a number of rebuildings during the fourth century and the Roman Imperial period. One of the best-preserved examples of a theater is at Epidaurus on the east coast of southern Greece. According to Pausanias, the architect of this theater was Polykleitos the Younger. It was constructed around 350 when the essential elements of theater design had been formalized. The auditorium, which has a shape slightly more than a semicircle, is cut into the hillside. The stone seats are divided into wedge-shaped blocks or sections with a horizontal passageway separating the lower from the upper part, which is steeper and has higher seats. The design of the seats even provides some leg space beneath to allow the spectators to make room for people passing in front of them. The lowest seats were for special attendees and had backs and arm rests. In some theaters these seats for dignitaries were almost throne-like with elaborately carved decoration. There was presumably an altar in the center of the or22

chestra, as evidenced by a stone base found in place. The stage building must have been a tall one, again to judge from the remaining foundations. This theater could accommodate an estimated twelve to fifteen thousand people, seated in relative comfort and with apparent ease of entrance and exit. The design of Greek theaters changed somewhat to accommodate other types of dramatic presentations when they were developed but the basic parts remained the same and were standard throughout the Greek world. BUILDINGS WITH A SPECIAL PURPOSE. One of the most important buildings in the daily life of the Greeks was the stoa, a one or two-storied structure with a long colonnade that could include shops and serve also as an informal meeting place. The stoa of Attalus in the Agora (open marketplace) at Athens has been reconstructed from the archaeological evidence and serves as a good example of the type. Such colonnaded buildings provided protection from the elements for the public in their daily activities and as a result they were to be found in religious complexes as well as marketplaces. Other public buildings were specifically designed as meeting places for the civic councils, assembly halls for a particular cult, and

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

Interior view of the Stoa of Attalus in the ancient agora of Athens, Greece. Originally built as a gift of King Attalus II of Pergamum (159–138 B.C.E.). PHOTOGRAPH BY HECTOR WILLIAMS. © HECTOR WILLIAMS.

even informal spaces for social clubs. Functional buildings included fountain houses where people would go to fill their water jars. These are often illustrated in Greek vase painting. One special type of building was the clock tower. The only surviving example is the so-called “Tower of the Winds” preserved in Athens. Built in the first century B.C.E., it is an octagonal (eight-sided) building with carved reliefs depicting personifications of the winds at the top of each side. In addition to space for a water clock and reservoir there were sundials mounted on the sides and a wind vane was mounted on the top. HOUSES AND CITY PLANNING. The typical Greek house answered the need for an enclosed space offering privacy and protection. The normal plan of the living space centered on an open court with a peristyle or verandas. A number of examples have been excavated, and they generally follow the same arrangement that consisted of an entrance hall with a small room to one side, a central courtyard with rooms of various sizes fronting on it. These houses were generally of one story and laid out in a square plan, with mud brick walls on a stone or

rubble foundation. The floors in special areas, such as the dining room, could be decorated with mosaics. The dining room was also often provided with platforms for the reclining diners. Bathrooms were sometimes paved and provided with terra-cotta tubs, but other sanitary facilities have seldom been found in excavation. The doors of houses were of wood and from representations in vase painting modern scholars know that they were decorated with metal studs. The regular arrangement of dwellings in an orderly city plan became popular in the early fifth century B.C.E. Greek cities were laid out with provision for public meeting and trading places (the agora or public square), and cult centers and sanctuaries where the temples and shrines were located. The cities were typically surrounded by a protective wall, with towers, moats, and defensible gates. Such fortifications were the result of the need to guard against attack and to assure a sense of security. SOURCES

A. H. Lawrence, Greek Architecture. Rev. R. A. Tomlinson (New York: Penguin Books, 1983).

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

temples and their sites. It always has to be remembered that Vitruvius wrote in the late first century B.C.E. and had a desire to explain and employ classical styles in the work of his own time. He was a practicing architect and had a practical knowledge of materials, working techniques, and other areas of knowledge—such as site planning—that were part of the necessary education of the architect. His motives and the time in which he wrote, at the beginning of the reign of August Caesar, influenced his attitudes. Since he was one of the few ancient authors whose writing on architecture was preserved, he was very much respected in the Renaissance. Architects of that time turned to his work for the clearest explanation of ancient styles and techniques available to them.

The Horologion, known as the “Tower of the Winds,” in Athens, Greece, which served as sundial, water-clock, and weather-vane (built 2nd–1st century B.C.E.). THE ART ARCHIVE/ DAGLI ORTI.

G. M. A. Richter, Greek Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1967): 7–44.

Fashion: Garments in Classical Greece; Religion: The Gods of Olympus; Religion: Worshipping the Gods: Sacrifices and Temples

SEE ALSO

E TRUSCAN A RCHITECTURE BACKGROUND. The study of Etruscan architecture is principally the study of tomb design because the greatest body of evidence preserved consists of subterranean tombs. The examination of architectural types such as temples and other public structures cannot be based on standing buildings, as is possible with the Greek or Roman material. It is necessary to rely on archaeological finds, which consist mainly of foundations and the remains of building parts. However, the descriptions of ancient authors, particularly Vitruvius, supplement modern knowledge. His De Architectura (On Architecture) is a particularly useful reference because, among other topics, he describes his understanding of the basic rules for the design and construction of Etruscan 24

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES. In the earliest beginnings, Etruscan architecture employed the crude wattle and daub technique, a method of construction employing bundled sticks with an overlay of mud. It is clear, from the evidence of tomb decoration that imitates living structures, that timber work was employed by the early sixth century B.C.E. in the construction of houses. From other evidence it can be seen that the Etruscans employed tufa blocks and ashlar masonry in foundations, buildings, and walls. “Tufa” is a porous volcanic rock common in Italy, and “ashlar” describes large, squared stones. Mud brick and half-timber construction on stone foundations was also practiced, a technique that used wood for framing and unbaked brick to fill the spaces between the frames. Mud brick and wood were the main materials of temple wall construction throughout most of Etruscan history. The lack of plentiful physical evidence available for an understanding of temple architecture can be attributed in part to the perishable nature of the material employed. THE ETRUSCAN TEMPLE. Our principal knowledge of Etruscan temple architecture comes from Vitruvius who described in great detail their layout and construction as he understood them. In addition to the scant archaeological evidence and the literary sources for temple planning and construction, there are also imitations of temples found in tombs and on tomb facades and miniature copies used as votive gifts. The Etruscan-style temple, also called the Italo-Etruscan temple, had a form of its own that resisted the growing influence of Greek architecture. The Etruscan temple was more open in plan than the Greek, in part influenced by the need for observation of natural phenomena such as the flight of birds in divination. The material of the Etruscan temple never changed in the way that Greek construction did where wooden ele-

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

ments were later superseded by stone. The materials in Etruria remained wood on a stone foundation with considerable use of terracotta for decorative elements and roof tiling. One of the standard ground plans seems to have been a simple structure with a cella divided into three parts which has been interpreted as a provision for the worship of a triad of gods (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva). There are also examples of ground plans preserved that have one or two rooms, depending on the number of deities worshipped in a particular locality. The main body of the temple opened on a porch supported by columns. The temple usually was raised on a podium or platform approached by a flight of stairs. The raised platform and stairs remained a characteristic of later Roman temple architecture in contrast to the Greek preference for closer visual relationship with the ground plane. ETRUSCAN TOMBS. The earliest Etruscan burials were essentially of two types: pit burial containing an urn with the ashes of the deceased, or a trench burial for the remains. Around 700 B.C.E. more developed tombs began to appear. These were also of two general types. One of these was a chamber-tomb type somewhat similar in design to the tholos tombs of the Mycenaeans, with a domed or “bee-hive” shape constructed of corbelled masonry. The shape varied and could be round or square. Side rooms provided space for the remains of other family members or personal belongings. This type of tomb could accommodate the sarcophagi of the deceased as well as some tomb furniture and personal possessions. The mound, or tumulus, that covered this type became a characteristic element of the landscape and made the location of the tomb clearly visible. Around the year 400 B.C.E. cremations of the dead became a more regular practice and the architecture of tombs gradually underwent a change. Instead of the constructed stone chamber covered with a mound, the tomb was cut into the rock or tufa hillside. Imitations of wooden architectural elements were carved on the façade and in the interior of the tombs. Instead of space for sarcophagi, shelves for cinerary urns were provided to accommodate the cremated remains of several family members. The wall decoration of tombs of both types included relief carving and painting. The subject matter of Etruscan tomb painting included the funerary banquet as well as scenes from Greek mythology. CITY PLANNING AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. Etruscan towns and cities were situated to take advantage of water supply and defensive positions, as were most early communities in the ancient world. Access to the sea was important but most settlements were far

enough inland to offer some protection against sea raiders. City walls for defense did not seem an important part of town planning if the choice of the site offered enough security. An ancient tradition credits the Etruscans with the invention of the type of city plan where streets intersect at right angles forming a northsouth east-west grid. Although this system of city planning became very popular with the Romans, there is not yet enough evidence to prove that it was an Etruscan innovation in the Italian mainland. Etruscan houses of the early seventh century B.C.E. tended to be oval in plan and were placed to take advantage of the terrain, not according to a grid plan. These houses were of the wattle and daub type of construction with a thatched roof. Rectangular houses begin to appear around the middle of the seventh century. These were built on a stone foundation with wooden framing and unbaked mud brick. Gradually house plans developed from a broad layout with an entrance vestibule and a few rooms to one with a long entrance corridor leading to a courtyard surrounded by several rooms. This type of house with an interior courtyard was carried on in later Roman dwellings with an atrium, a larger and more formal central court. SOURCES

Axel Boëthius and J. B. Ward-Perkins, Etruscan and Roman Architecture (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1970). Friedhelm Prayon, “Architecture,” in Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies. Ed. Larissa Bonfante (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986): 174–201.

R OMAN A RCHITECTURE BACKGROUND. Roman architecture is essentially a hybrid composed of elements inherited from the Etruscans combined with the outside influences of the Greeks. As an example, the native Etruscan building traditions can be recognized in the early substructures of the Capitoline Temple in Rome. With archaeological evidence of this kind supplemented by ancient descriptions this temple can be identified as the type described by Vitruvius as typically Etruscan, consisting basically of a wide structure with a deep porch supported by columns. By contrast, the Temple of Apollo at Pompeii, probably built in the late second century B.C.E., is a typical example of a temple that exhibits Greek influence in its plan. Etruscan and early Roman art and architecture were very much influenced by the advances made by the Greeks, particularly by the structures built in the Greek

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

CITY Planning Was Not Invented Only by the Greeks It seems that there was an almost universal need among peoples throughout history to impose some order on their communities by the use of an overall plan where the local terrain allowed. This orderly design of towns and cities can be seen in many parts of the ancient world in cultures as distinct as ancient China and Egypt. Leopold Arnaud, a distinguished professor of architecture, in an essay titled “Social Organization and the City Plan” explained that it would be wrong to credit only the Greeks with the invention of city planning. He said that the idea of a rectangular pattern for town planning is very ancient. The origins of the system might have developed from the method of plowing a field or laying out a military camp but it was a practical arrangement and the idea could have developed independently in many different places. In Egypt, during the Old Kingdom (2175–2134 B.C.E.), the streets of the City of the Dead at the foot of the Great Pyramid at Giza were laid out on a grid pattern with streets intersecting at right angles. This probably imitated

colonies in southern Italy and Sicily. However, the contributions made by Rome to the development of architectural design were eventually of a different character. The development of new materials and techniques made possible revolutionary advances in the creation of monumental structures and especially in the treatment of interior architectural spaces. Greek building, whether in wood or stone, relied heavily on the post and lintel system—uprights supporting a cross bar—resulting in a style that created a strong horizontal sense of stability and solidity. The exterior of a Greek temple generally presented a carefully planned and orderly arrangement of its parts as seen from all views but the interior space was a less important consideration. With the development of concrete as a building material from the second century B.C.E. Roman architects and engineers were free to experiment with building on a colossal scale, enclosing large interior spaces and creating an architectural style that was basically new and extremely inventive. ROMAN BUILDING TECHNIQUES. Building in stone as practiced by the Greeks required skilled stonecutters and masons, the help of engineers and riggers to carry out the actual construction, and little more. Some carpentry was necessary for the wood beams to carry the roof, and tile setters were needed to finish its covering. 26

and resembled the arrangement used in cities for the living. There are other examples of city planning in Egypt recovered by archaeological excavation that show this pattern to have continued throughout Egyptian history. The plan attributed to the Greeks did not develop until late in their history during the time of Alexander the Great and his successors in the Hellenistic Period (Late fourth through late first centuries B.C.E.). This does not mean to suggest that the Greeks learned city planning from the Egyptians but simply that the same kind of organization was seen to be practical in both cultures. The Roman town plan was similar to that developed by the Greeks and may owe some debt to them. In a Roman community the two main thoroughfares were called the cardo, which ran north and south, and the decumanus, east and west. Other streets ran parallel to the cardo and decumanus creating a regular system of city blocks. Large cities like Rome and Athens, however, were not planned according to any organized scheme. They had simply grown and expanded from small settlements over a long history. Attempts were made at various times in both cities to bring some order to their plans but without overall success in either case.

By contrast, the newly developed techniques of the Romans required a larger range of specialists for the greatly expanded building program. Since concrete is initially a liquid, its use requires the cooperation of skilled carpenters to build scaffolds and forms, in addition to masons for some of the stone elements such as foundations and door frames, brick and tile layers for parts of the construction and the roof, plumbers for drainage systems, plasterers and painters for finished work, and artists/decorators for wall paintings and mosaic floors. In ancient Rome the need for this variety of skills resulted in the development of specialized working groups or guilds that could provide the necessary training and the continuity of experience. The initial use of concrete by the Romans may have grown out of a type of packed mud construction, but it more probably developed from the use of clay to bond courses of brick or stone. Once the discovery was made that rubble fragments of stone could be bonded together by pouring a liquid mortar over them, the natural next step was to build forms of wood that would retain the mortar until it hardened. Basically, Roman mortar was comprised of lime, and the best lime mortar used volcanic ash as an aggregate. Casting structural elements from concrete rather than carving them out of stone gave Roman architects the freedom

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

THE EDUCATION OF THE ARCHITECT INTRODUCTION :

The only Roman technical work on the art and science of ancient architecture was written by Vitruvius Polio, who lived during the reign of the emperor Augustus. In The Ten Books on Architecture, he gives detailed treatments of such subjects as town planning, styles of architecture, building materials, and methods of construction. Since he was a practicing architect in addition to being a learned man, the information he left is especially valuable, not only for the study of Greek and Roman architecture but for the descriptions he provides of the Etruscan architecture that no longer exists. Vitruvius’ work has also been described as a practical guide to becoming a Roman architect. In this section he lists what sort of education an architect should have.

1. The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgment that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of a drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the principles of proportion. 2. It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them. 3. In all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are these two points: —the thing signified, and that

to create more complex shapes, achieve greater heights, and span wider spaces. Although the arch, vault, and dome were known in other ancient cultures, it was not until the Romans developed the use of cast concrete that their full potential was realized and exploited. EARLY ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. The Romans retained many ideas about building from their Etruscan predecessors, but they also absorbed some of the ideas of the Greeks that were passed on to them by the Etruscans. Houses for the cults of the gods were obviously important in both cultures. The designs of those cult places or temples in Greece and Etruria varied, but the

which gives it its significance. That which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking; and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. It appears, then, that one who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. He ought, therefore, to be both naturally gifted and amenable to instruction. Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist. Let him be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens. 4. The reasons for all this are as follows. An architect should be an educated man so as to leave a more lasting remembrance in his treatises. Secondly, he must have a knowledge of drawing so that he can readily make sketches to show the appearance of the work which he proposes. Geometry, also, is of much assistance in architecture, and in particular it teaches us the use of the rule and compasses, by which especially we acquire readiness in making plans for buildings in their grounds, and rightly apply the square, the level, and the plummet. By means of optics, again, the light in buildings can be drawn from fixed quarters of the sky. It is true that it is by arithmetic that the total cost of buildings is calculated and measurements are computed, but difficult questions involving symmetry are solved by means of geometrical theories and methods. 5. A wide knowledge of history is requisite because, among the ornamental parts of an architect’s design for a work, there are many the underlying idea of whose employment he should be able to explain to inquirers. SOURCE : Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture. Trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914): 5–6.

first Roman temples were modeled more on Etruscan prototypes. Unlike the Greek temples that had a noble solidity about them, the Etruscan and early Roman temples suggested an openness as well as a sense of mystery. The early temple to Jupiter in Rome, the Capitolium, of the late sixth century B.C.E. was certainly built in the Etruscan style but on a grand scale, to judge from the foundations and some of the blocks that still survive. In following the Etruscan pattern it rested on a high platform or podium, had a broad porch supported by pillars, and a cella divided into three cult chambers. It was approached only from the front up a broad stairway that

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Architecture and Design

THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS CHANGES THE FACE OF ROME INTRODUCTION :

The Etruscans built a great deal of their structures from perishable mud brick, including not only private dwellings but also temples and other public buildings. As Roman civilization developed and Rome became a great power in the Mediterranean world, it was only natural that important structures be constructed of more lasting and attractive materials. Not only was marble more durable, but it was also more beautiful. In his life of the emperor Augustus, Suetonius, the Roman historian, credits the emperor with leaving his mark on Rome. SOURCE :

Suetonius, The Divine Augustus, in The Art of Rome, c. 753 B.C.–337 A.D., Sources and Documents. Ed. J. J. Pollitt (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966): 104.

suggested the change from ordinary life to the precinct of a god or gods. Later Roman temples would retain these characteristics—the design emphasis on the front porch and the raised podium, reached by an imposing flight of stairs.

by the erection of monuments, columns, and arches, and the entertainment of the people was provided for by a well-developed system of theaters and arenas. The final necessary architectural form was the tomb structures for the burial of the dead.

ROMAN TOWN PLANNING. Where it was possible, Roman towns and cities were laid out on a system of streets intersecting at right angles, a type of layout also used for Roman military camps. It is thought that this system may have been inherited from Etruscan town planning, but some Greek cities had also used a grid and it is difficult to prove the exact derivation of the Roman plan. In the Roman system the main north-south street was called the cardo and the main east-west street the decumanus. These two streets were always wider than others and acted as the axes of the plan. Near their crossing in the center of a town were located the forum, the major temples, the main ceremonial and administrative buildings, and other structures central to the life of the community such as the major bathing establishments. In urban town planning some elements were standard and necessary to Roman life. The most obvious necessity was a type of dwelling which in Roman usage could range from a humble structure to a great palace. The provision of clean water for consumption and bathing was probably the next most important consideration—hence the emphasis on developing methods of transporting water over great distances such as the Roman aqueduct. The need for structures devoted to religion and the worship of the gods engendered a large variety of temple designs. The commemoration of military victories or the glorification of emperors and commanders was satisfied

THE ROMAN HOUSE. In the nearly 200 years of the Roman Republic—from 200 to 27 B.C.E.—a number of standard architectural forms developed. One of these, most typically associated with Roman architectural style, was the house form. Like its Greek predecessors, the Roman house looked in on itself. The exterior fronting on a street was not decorated and had only the main entrance door and possibly a few windows, although they were not a prominent feature of the design. The ground plan was often symmetrical and balanced. Beyond the entrance vestibule was the atrium: the central court with an opening in the roof, usually with a pool in the center where rainwater would collect. Around the atrium were the living rooms and bedrooms. Passing through the atrium one entered the tablinum, a formal room for entertaining visitors. Next to the tablinum was the triclinium—the dining room. In a more elaborate house there might be a further peristyle or open court and even an interior garden with more rooms leading off from it. This basic plan could be made more complex depending on the wealth, rank, and position of the owner. Country villas of the Republican Period, such as the Villa of the Papyri at Pompeii of the first century B.C.E. were already extremely elaborate and costly. The basic house plan with atrium and peristyle became the basis to which were added subsidiary wings and separate buildings, gardens, and pools, depending on the size of the household

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Architecture and Design

and the number of family members, servants, and slaves. By contrast to the standard plans, in commercial centers such as Ostia, the port of Rome, there are still preserved examples of apartment houses. These buildings were four or five stories high and arranged in blocks. The ground floor was regularly occupied by shops, and the individual apartments were often provided with a private staircase. The city of Ostia provides an excellent example of city planning intended to accommodate a large population in a limited space while still furnishing the necessary services for a comfortable existence. PALACES AND VILLAS. During the time of the Roman Empire the power and wealth of the emperor was often expressed by the construction of an elaborate palace. After the great fire of 64 C.E. which destroyed a considerable section of central Rome, the emperor Nero had a sumptuous palace—the Domus Aurea or “Golden House”—built for himself modeled on the lines of a sprawling country villa complete with gardens and an artificial lake. Although much of it was later destroyed, there is enough preserved (supplemented by the descriptions left by Roman historians) to give some idea of its design and decoration. One of the surviving parts consists of a large octagonal room with a domed ceiling and smaller rooms radiating from it. The design of the room is radical enough for a villa or a palace but when these remains are taken together with ancient descriptions that describe walls covered with gold and ivory it is possible to imagine the rich impression such a palace would have presented and why it was called the “Golden House.” The villa constructed by the emperor Hadrian at Tivoli around 135 C.E. was more a collection of buildings and accessory parts than a country house with a unified plan. It contained two principal living areas, bathing establishments, at least three theaters, and a stadium, reflecting pools, gardens, and other structures, some of which cannot be easily explained. Because Hadrian was a great traveler he named parts of his “villa” after places he had visited such as the “Canopus” after a city in Egypt. Many of the architectural advances that had been made by the Romans in the use of concrete and vaulting were incorporated in parts of Hadrian’s villa. A strong contrast to Hadrian’s villa, and even to the Golden House of Nero, is the palace plan of the emperor Diocletian at Spalato (Split in the former Yugoslavia), built in the early fourth century C.E. This palace complex was surrounded by a wall with towers and gates. Inside it was laid out like a military camp with two main streets. In addition to residential quarters and rooms for formal audiences, the palace contained a temple (probably dedicated to Jupiter) and a

Scale model of ancient Rome in the Museo della Civilta. In the center, the Colosseum is shown, and above it, the Temple of Venus and Roma designed by the emperor Hadrian. © ARALDO DE LUCA/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

tomb prepared in advance for Diocletian. Piazza Armerina in a valley in central Sicily is the site of another palatial villa that may be contemporary with the palace at Spalato, but the owner has not been conclusively identified. In many ways its plan resembles that of Hadrian’s villa because it is a loosely organized assemblage of colonnaded courts, audience halls, and residential areas. Two aspects of the villa make it unusually interesting. It is situated in a remote area in the center of the island, suggesting a retreat or vacation place. The well-preserved floors are covered with decorative mosaics of exceptional appeal. There are hunting scenes with the capture of exotic animals, probably for the arena, scenes of the chariot race in the circus, and even images of lightly clad female athletes at their exercise. A distinguished person, who is probably the owner of the villa, is represented with his attendants. The quality of these mosaic “paintings” has led some to argue that the villa at Pizza Armerina was also an imperial residence. AQUEDUCTS. As the power of Rome increased and urban centers grew in size, one of the most important

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Architecture and Design

NERO BUILDS A “GOLDEN HOUSE” INTRODUCTION :

Nero’s reputation in popular history characterizes him as the emperor who “fiddled while Rome burned.” The great fire of Rome certainly gave him the opportunity to construct a palace in one of the areas devastated by the fire, but it was also a section of the city occupying considerable space where ordinary Romans had lived. Nero spared himself no luxury. Where crowded tenements had housed a large population, he designed for himself a spacious dwelling with gardens and pools for his own pleasure. Some of this building still exists. Other parts of it were destroyed and later structures built over it. The Roman historian, Suetonius, tells the story.

SOURCE : Suetonius, Nero, in The Art of Rome, c. 753 B.C.–337 A.D., Sources and Documents. Ed. J. J. Pollitt (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966): 143.

general considerations for the public good was the importance of a supply of fresh water. Roman engineers became especially adept at constructing the stone conduits, often many miles in length, which brought water from springs high in hilly terrain into the cities. Since they were exceptionally well built, remains of these remarkable structures can still be found, not only in the vicinity of Rome itself, but also in locations that were once 30

a part of the widespread empire, as at Segovia in Spain or in Tunisia in North Africa. One Tunisian aqueduct ran from Zaghouan, the site of an important spring in the south of the country, for 45 miles to reach ancient Carthage on the seacoast. It was constructed so well that many sections of it still stand. The more familiar and probably more typical example of aqueduct construction is the one represented by a section called the Pont du Gard that bridges the Gardon river at Nîmes in France. Constructed between 20 and 16 B.C.E., the complete aqueduct ran for 31 miles with a downward grade calculated at 1 in 3000. The part that bridged the river is one of the most visible examples of Roman aqueduct building—standing almost 300 yards long and 160 feet high. The structure is in three levels with arches of smaller size in the top course to carry the water conduit. One of the chief ancient sources on the construction and maintenance of Roman aqueducts is a work by Sextus Julius Frontinus, an administrator and tactician, who wrote a treatise on the water supply of Rome in the first century C.E. TEMPLES. The typical Roman temple, mainly derived from an Etruscan prototype, is well exemplified by the so-called temple of Fortuna Virilis on the Tiber in Rome. Built in the latter half of the second century B.C.E., it has a façade of four Ionic columns in Greek style plus two on each side of the porch, known as the prodomus. The columns on the sides of the cella—the main hall or sanctuary—are not free standing but are “engaged”—they appear to project from the wall and are actually parts of it. This use of engaged columns is a characteristic that can be seen in many Roman temples. A good comparison is the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, one of the best preserved examples of temple architecture from the time of the emperor Augustus in the late first century B.C.E. It is larger than the temple of Fortuna Virilis, with six columns at the front and back and eleven on a side, eight of which are engaged. The capitals are of a more elaborate Corinthian style—fluted columns with flowered capitals—but otherwise a comparison of these two temples shows that it is really only the size of the building that is different. The basic elements of raised podium, steps, and deep porch are the same. By contrast, near the temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome is a round temple that is much more Greek in spirit. The podium is stepped all round and not just in front. The twenty Corinthian columns make a circular colonnade surrounding a circular cella. This building is difficult to date but it demonstrates the fact that temples in Greek style could coexist with those in a more Italian tradition and that temples with a special purpose

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Architecture and Design

Pont du Gard, an aqueduct at Nimes, France, built before the fifth century C.E. It was the highest bridge structure in the Roman world. NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY COLLECTION/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

could assume special shapes. A further example of the variety possible in Roman temple plans is the Pantheon in Rome, one of the best-preserved buildings from classical antiquity. The translation of the name signifies that this structure was meant as a temple to all the gods. Its preservation is due to the fact that it was converted into a Christian church by the seventh century C.E. The Pantheon is unusual because it has rectangular porch with a round interior, a traditional temple façade with an innovative inner space. Much of the structure can be dated to the time of the emperor Hadrian in the early second century C.E. but there has been considerable discussion as to the dating of the whole temple. The sixteen Corinthian columns that support the porch are granite shafts 38 feet high, an engineering accomplishment in its own right. The proportion of the “rotunda” is mathematically harmonious because the height of the interior is the same as the diameter of the interior. The construction of the main part of the building relies on an elaborate system of relieving arches within the walls to help distribute the weight vertically. In addition, the

concrete of each ascending level of the walls was purposely made with progressively lighter materials. The architects and engineers of the Pantheon worked together to produce what is not only one of the best preserved, but also one of the most beautiful buildings from Roman times. BASILICAS AND BATHS. Two types of construction that best exemplify the Roman architectural achievements of inventive use of concrete as a material and the enclosure of large spaces are the basilica and the bathing establishment. Both of these types were places of public assembly. A basilica can be defined simply as a large hall used for civic and administrative purposes capable of accommodating large crowds. The Roman bath was also often a large and complex structure built on a grand scale. The Basilica of Maxentius in Rome, built in the fourth century C.E. is a good example of the size and complexity a civic building could attain. In size it was larger than a football field—213 by 328 feet—with a large central space covered by enormous vaults. On

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

The Maison Carrée in Nîmes, France.

ARCHIVO ICONOGRAFICO, S.A./CORBIS.

either side of this were three large bays. This reflects the plan of the later basilica form used in Christian churches made up of a high central aisle with two lower side aisles. The building was finished by the emperor Constantine so the structure is sometimes referred to with his name rather than that of Maxentius. One side of this basilica still stands as a vivid example of the size and scale of late Roman architecture. Compared to the basilica the Roman bathing establishment could be far more complex. Early in the third century C.E. the emperor Caracalla completed an enormous public bath that had been begun by his father, Septimius Severus. The Baths of Caracalla were meant as a form of imperial propaganda, built for the public good at great expense, reflecting the emperor’s desire to appear as a concerned ruler. Whatever Caracalla’s motives, the ruins of his baths survive as another example of construction on a grand scale, with the main building alone measuring over 800 feet wide. There were three essential parts of any Roman public bath: the frigidarium, 32

the tepidarium, and the caldarium, a series of rooms that got progressively hotter. The standard method of heating baths employed a system of hypocausts, conduits for steam or hot water beneath the floor. In the Baths of Caracalla, as in many large bathing establishments, in addition to the changing rooms and rooms for washing there were also areas for exercise and games, swimming pools, gardens, libraries, and other social areas. The visit to the baths was an important part of a Roman’s social life and it was well provided for here. The scale of Caracalla’s baths can only be compared in modern times to grand structures such as large train stations and public libraries. THEATERS AND ARENAS. The Roman theater was significantly different in its construction from the type developed by the Greeks. Although Greek and Roman theaters appear to be very similar, all they really had in common was that they both had areas for the dancers or actors and provided seating for the spectators. The

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, completed 125–128 C.E.

The Pantheon in Rome, dating to the reign of the emperor Hadrian, showing the portico in front.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

Architecture and Design

BATHING ESTABLISHMENTS ON A GRAND SCALE INTRODUCTION :

The Roman baths were far more than the word “bath” suggests. The elaborate structures provided in every Roman city for bathing were also social centers—places of recreation and sport. Almost as important, they provided an opportunity for the ruler or an important official to make a show of generosity for the populace. If the emperor wanted to express his interest and concern for his subjects he could do so by building important public buildings such as markets and baths. After the Roman engineers and architects had developed methods of spanning large interior spaces it was only natural that such techniques would be used in grand building plans as part of imperial propaganda. The Baths of Caracalla, which even in ruins is one of the most imposing buildings in Rome, stands as evidence of this. In the Historia Augusta, a collection of imperial biographies written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, the possible method of the construction of the baths is discussed.

Imaginative drawing of the interior of the Thermae (Baths) of Caracalla, the most splendid of the imperial baths at Rome, built 212–217 C.E. with huge, vaulted rooms and an intricate heating system. © UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

SOURCE : Historia Augusta, Antoninus Caracalla, in The Art of Rome, c. 753 B.C.–337 A.D., Sources and Documents. Ed. J. J. Pollitt (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966): 196.

auditorium of the Greek theater was more than a half circle in plan where the Roman type was almost always a semicircle. The orchestra in the Greek theater was the focus of much of the action but the stage with an elaborate permanent backdrop of complex design—the 34

scaena—was the place where the Roman drama was acted. The theater at Aspendus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), built in the second century C.E. is a prime example of the developed and elaborate nature of the Roman type. The auditorium has a diameter of over 300 feet and the elevated stage is over twenty feet deep. It is estimated that this building could accommodate over 7,000 people. Such construction on a large scale attests to the importance of the theater in Roman life. In many respects the amphitheater for gladiatorial and other games was just as important. One of the most visible and imposing monuments in Rome is the Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the Colosseum, but it is only the best known example of a type that was built in many parts of the empire. The Colosseum was begun by Vespasian and finished by his sons Titus and Domitian between 70 and 80 C.E. It occupied the site of Nero’s Golden House and gave back to the people a

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Aerial view of the interior of the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome, popularly known as the Colosseum, inaugurated in 80 C.E. with a festival lasting 100 days. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

part of the city he had occupied for himself. The Colosseum was a masterpiece of construction supported on an interlocking structure of passages, stairways, and ramps, all necessary and carefully planned for the movement of forty-five to fifty thousand spectators. Below the arena level was a subterranean maze of corridors, storerooms, and cages to accommodate prisoners and wild animals. The exterior decoration reflected the debt to Greek practice by using columns of the Doric order on the ground floor, Ionic on the second, Corinthian on the third, and engaged Corinthian pilasters for the fourth tier. There was also a system of awnings to provide some shade from the bright Roman sun. Amphitheaters similar to the Colosseum were built throughout the empire—at Pompeii and Verona in Italy, Nîmes and Arles in France, and El Djem in southern Tunisia, to name just a few. The arena in El Djem, which held only about 30,000 spectators, is one of the

best-preserved examples partly because it is now in a sparsely populated part of the country. Preserved Roman theaters and amphitheaters stand today as vivid reminders of the popular entertainments enjoyed by the Roman people and provided for them by the emperors. As examples of a highly developed engineering and architectural tradition they nevertheless call to mind the dramatic and comic literature of the Roman stage as well as the often bloody spectacles of the arena. MONUMENTS. The Romans were especially fond of commemorating their achievements in war by the celebration of a “triumph”—a victory procession voted by the Senate—and the erection of a monumental triumphal arch. A typical example is the Arch of Titus at the east end of the Roman Forum. It celebrates his victory in the Jewish war of 70 C.E. and the two large relief carvings on the interior illustrate the victory procession. On one Titus is shown in his chariot

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Architecture and Design

Arch of Trajan at Benevento, Italy, marking the terminus of the Via Traiana. COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

Column of Trajan in Rome.

COURTESY OF JAMES ALLAN EVANS.

accompanied by the goddess Roma and a winged victory. On the other the victorious soldiers carry the booty from the Temple at Jerusalem, including a giant menorah, the seven-branched candlestick. An example of a monumental arch commemorating an event that was not a military triumph is the arch erected by Trajan at Benevento south of Rome. On this arch, dated 14–17 C.E. Trajan is shown distributing food to the poor of the city. The arch is also decorated with images of victories and the seasons, and also with some later additions that include the young Hadrian, stressing his relationship to Trajan. Not all arches commemorate a special event. Some mark the entrance to a city, to a forum, a market, or even the end of a bridge, and some serve only as civic decoration. A type of monument comparable to the “triumphal” arch is the commemorative column. The Column of Trajan in the forum he constructed memorializes his two wars against the Dacians in a band of relief carving that slowly spirals to the top of its 125 feet. Constructed of drums carved from marble that weigh an estimated forty tons, the shaft con36

tains a spiral staircase of 185 steps as well as a tomb chamber for the ashes of the emperor. It is a documentary in stone with a mixture of stock scenes of the emperor addressing his troops and carefully detailed views of the Roman army at war where even the insignia of the various units have been faithfully reproduced. Its aim was to emphasize the nobility of the emperor and the character of the Roman army. The Column of Trajan is one of the most successful examples of narrative in Roman art even though the higher parts are almost impossible to appreciate. Commemorative arches and columns such as this one and the later Column of Marcus Aurelius reveal a great deal about the Roman desire to commemorate important events and military campaigns. They acted as decoration and focus to the cityscape and served as visible reminders of the might of the Roman Empire. BURIAL OF THE DEAD. Like the Etruscans before them, the Romans practiced both cremation and inhumation. The purpose of the tomb was twofold: to protect the remains and commemorate the dead. Tombs could take a variety of forms as different as a simple square box, a cylindrical structure resembling a tumulus, a tower, and even a pyramid depending on the social position of the deceased and the local custom. In one case the tomb of a baker was designed to look like an oven; in another, the tomb of Cestius on the Appian way, the shape is pyramidal for reasons that have

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Architecture and Design

Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, erected in 81 C.E. to commemorate the victory of the emperors Vespasian and Titus in the Judaen War (70 C.E.). FRANCIS G. MAYOR/CORBIS.

not been explained. The tomb of the emperor Augustus was a cylindrical monument, 280 feet in diameter, built in the Campus Martius just outside of Rome. It was constructed of several layers with a circular colonnade at the second stage. The emperor’s intention was to make his tomb a monument to the Julian family, and he had the ashes of other members of the family collected to be entombed with him. A little more than a hundred years later Hadrian also had his tomb designed as a large cylindrical building, perhaps in imitation of Augustus. The tomb of Augustus had been filled with the remains of Nerva, the last to be deposited in it. Trajan’s ashes, in a break with tradition, were entombed in his column, so Hadrian was actually building a mausoleum for the continued use of the imperial family and it was used as such until the burial of Caracalla. Hadrian’s tomb is now known as the Castel Sant’ Angelo and by the sixth century it was used as a fortress. Its decorative elements were lost long ago and in one

account sculpture was hurled from its heights as missals. This was the fate shared by many of the monuments of Rome. Buildings were robbed of their stone to be reused in new construction. The Pantheon was converted into a Christian church and towers were added to it which have since been removed. The Arch of Titus was incorporated into the wall of a medieval fortress, and the Roman Forum became an area where animals were sent to graze. SOURCES

Axel Boëthius and J. B. Ward-Perkins, Etruscan and Roman Architecture (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1970). Richard Brilliant, Roman Art from the Republic to Constantine (London: Phaidon, 1974). Nancy H. Ramage and Andrew Ramage, Roman Art: Romulus to Constantine (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991).

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Arch of Constantine in Rome, built by the Roman senate to commemorate Constantine’s victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 311 C.E. TRAVELSITE/DAGLI ORTI.

T HE L ATE A NTIQUE THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE. With the accession of Constantine in the early fourth century C.E. architecture entered a stage of transition from traditional Roman forms to those used in Christian Byzantine buildings, a period given the convenient designation of “Late Antique.” The Arch of Constantine, from this time, is one of the most visible monuments in Rome. It is situated near the Colosseum, and in some aspects it is a prime example of a continued respect for tradition. Its general design, with three arched entrances, is very like the Arch of Septimius Severus at the west end of the forum, built about a hundred years earlier. The main difference between the two monuments is that the sculptural decoration of Constantine’s arch is in several different styles. Some of the reliefs represent him and are in the style of his time, others have been reused from the time of Hadrian and others. It is almost as if a con38

venient model was used and available decorations were pressed into service without regard for their stylistic relationships. Side by side, the realistic representations of the time of Hadrian and the more stylized figures of the period in which the arch was built can be seen. THE BASILICA FORM. The term “basilica” simply designates a hall used for assemblies and meetings. In Roman use this usually meant a civic building with administrative purposes. The Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum was an example of the type carried to its most elaborate design with side bays and vaulted ceilings. The more typical form was of a much simpler design. As an example, at Trier on the Moselle River in northern Gaul the emperor Constantine completed a vast palace complex begun by his father. This included residences, a large bath establishment, a circus, warehouses, and other structures. One of the most significant buildings for the history of architecture, included in it

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is the audience hall or basilica, much of it still preserved. It was a simple plan—a large rectangular hall 95 by 190 feet with a semicircular apse—a curved recess usually at the end of a building as it is here. Before entry to the main hall was a transverse crossing, fore-hall, or narthex, and a portico or vestibule. To add some width without resorting to vaulting over aisles on both sides of the nave, as the central hall was known, the ceilings of the side aisles were lower. This gave an opportunity to include windows in the side walls of the nave, helping to light the interior. As the Christian church developed from the secular Roman form for civic use, the architectural parts served to focus the attention of the worshipper on the ceremony. This was accomplished with the single direction of the tunnel-like space ending in the apse aided by the rhythmic repetition of the columns on either side. Examples of this form can be found in the plan for the old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or in fifth century C.E. churches such as Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Sabina, also in Rome. The great space-enclosing forms exemplified in structures like the Roman baths were not completely forgotten. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, built under Justinian in the mid-sixth century, preserves the basic basilica plan, but on a scale and with the use of an elaborate system of domes that it is almost unrecognizable as such. What Hagia Sophia shows us is the continuation of Roman values in an architectural tradition that produced monumental results, but it was in the service of the Christian faith and not the Roman state. SOURCES

John Beckwith, Early Medieval Art (New York: Praeger, 1969). Axel Boëthius and J. B. Ward-Perkins, Etruscan and Roman Architecture (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1970). Richard Brilliant, Roman Art from the Republic to Constantine (London: Phaidon, 1974). David Talbot Rice, Byzantine Art (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1968). D. S. Robertson, A Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture (London: Cambridge University Press, 1964).

E ARLY C HRISTIAN AND B YZANTINE A RCHITECTURE THE EARLY CHRISTIAN BASILICA. When the emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as the official state religion early in the fourth century, Christians were able to practice their faith openly. Whereas before they had met in secret in the catacombs and in other

non-public places, they were now free to act as an organized and recognized cult. The first Christian meeting places were private houses and it was only when the religious ritual became more formalized that a special building was needed. It was probably to divorce themselves from the old religions that the forms of the “pagan” Greek and Roman temples were not utilized for Christian worship. The long rectangular form of the civil basilica was easily adapted for this use, although some changes had to be made. The basilica was basically a meeting house where large groups could be accommodated to conduct business and carry on other civil functions, although some changes had to be made to the form for its new religious purpose. The normal civic basilica had its entrance on one side, and this was altered to accommodate the interior orientation and direction necessary in the church. One of the best examples of an early Christian basilica was the original Church of St. Peter in Rome. It was erected by order of the emperor Constantine on the site of the Circus of Nero where the apostle Peter was martyred. Its construction was begun in 324 C.E. but it was destroyed at the end of the fifteenth century to make room for a later church. There is considerable evidence in drawings and plans to indicate its design. Its general layout included an atrium, a large open courtyard that the participants passed through to enter the body of the church. Although the main meeting hall followed the general plan of the civil basilica, the addition of the atrium recalled the form of the private houses originally used for worship. In the Church of St. Peter a large central aisle known as the nave was flanked on each side by two parallel side aisles. Only the largest churches had five aisles; it was more typical to have a large central nave with only two side aisles. The focus of the religious ritual was at the altar at the far end from the entrance, exactly like the arrangement in most Christian churches even today. While the exterior and interior walls and columns were of stone, the roof over the nave and side aisles was of wood. This was a pattern followed in most early Christian churches of the basilica type, disregarding the use of stone or brick vaulting in favor of economical and easily constructed wooden roofing. The form that had been designed as a meeting place to accommodate large crowds for the conduct of business and government affairs used throughout the Roman world had evolved into the standard for a place of Christian worship. The pattern established by the first Church of St. Peter was followed in many early churches. A typical example is the Church of Santa Sabina in Rome, begun in 425. Its arrangement follows the basilica pattern with the addition of a half dome over the apse, the semicircular niche at the end of the

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nave. In it, as in many early churches, the columns supporting the side walls of the nave were taken from earlier buildings. In some cases the reuse of such building elements was done without any concern for their style or order. Mosaics were used extensively for decoration on the façade, in the interior on the side walls and in the apse. These enlivened the interior with color and reflected light but they also served as informative and devotional illustrations of scripture. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BYZANTINE CHURCH. The city known in antiquity as Byzantium was re-founded by Constantine as the “New Rome” in 333 C.E. At the breakup of the Roman Empire by the successors of Constantine in 335 it became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire with the new name of Constantinople. The development of church architectural style in the east, while serving the same purposes as in the west, took on somewhat different form. There are a number of reasons suggested to explain the difference, including the scarcity of wood for the roofing, resulting in a return to the arches and vaulting developed by Roman architects. Although this may be part of the explanation, it is more likely that the church architecture in the east—Byzantium—was the result of a combination of local traditions of construction and the influence of Eastern (Persian) architecture. While Roman architects had been comfortable with the design of round buildings such as the Parthenon that could be roofed with a dome, Byzantine architects were faced the problem of a circular dome resting on a square or rectangular building. This problem could be solved in two ways: by the use of squinches or by pendentives. The squinch uses an octagonal arrangement formed by bridging the corners with a lintel or an arch. The pendentive uses a second dome form from which sections have been removed leaving a circular base supported by four triangular sections resting on four piers. Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which essentially follows the layout of a basilica, is an example of the use of domes supported by pendentives. One variation of a plan popular in the east was a central arrangement in a circular or octagonal building, as can be seen in the Church of San Vitale in northwest Italy, constructed between 526 and 547. The central arrangement or circular form never became popular in the west except for baptisteries and other special purposes. The separate architectural traditions of east and west continued into modern times and are still evident in the differences between modern churches of the Greek Orthodox rite and those of the more Western tradition. SOURCES

John Beckwith, Early Medieval Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1964). 40

Jean Lasuss, The Early Christian and Byzantine World (London: Paul Hamlin, 1967). David Talbot Rice, Byzantine Art (Harmondsworth, England: Pelican Books, 1968). SEE ALSO

Religion: The Rise of Christianity

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE in Architecture and Design H ADRIAN 76 C.E.–138 C.E. Emperor PATRON OF MONUMENTS. Publius Aelius Hadrianus (Hadrian) was emperor from 117 to 38 C.E. He became the ward of the emperor Trajan at his father’s death. He held a number of important military and civic posts including the governorship of Syria until Trajan’s death in 117. Trajan had designated Hadrian as his successor on his deathbed. An important aspect of Hadrian’s reign was his extensive travel throughout the Roman Empire, literally from one end (Britain) to the other (Syria). His reasons for years of travel combined the need for inspection tours and a desire to show himself as the ruler to the far-flung provinces. His importance to the architectural history of Rome includes the completion of the Pantheon in Rome, the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, his imposing tomb in Rome (the Castel San Angelo), and his imperial villa at Tivoli. SOURCES

Michael Grant, “Hadrian,” in The Roman Emperors (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985). J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece 1400–31 B.C. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965): ix–x.

P AUSANIAS Middle to late second century C.E.–Late second century C.E. Antiquarian Traveler GREEK TRAVELER. Traveler and antiquarian Pausanias left an extensive account of the parts of Greece he

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visited in his book Descriptions of Greece, including detailed descriptions of numerous monuments and buildings. The book also discussed the history of the site described as well as some of the local customs, systems of worship, and local myths. His accounts read very much like a modern guidebook. He was very interested in sanctuaries, tombs, and statues and wrote lengthy sections on Attica, Megara, Argolis, Laconia, Messenia, Elis, Olympia, Achaia, Arcadia, Boeotia, Phocis, and Delphi. He also took care in describing scenes of notable battles, and historic and artistic monuments. He was selective about what he described and omitted, calling attention to what he found important in the realms of architecture, culture, and art. Often Pausanias is the only surviving source for the original appearance of a temple or a sanctuary, at least as it appeared in his time. Little else is known about the man except that he probably was a native of Lydia and the time he lived and wrote can only be inferred from internal evidence in his text. SOURCES

Pausanias, Guide to Greece. 2 vols. Trans. by Peter Levi (New York: Viking/Penguin, 1984). J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece 1400–31 B.C. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965): ix–x.

work. His accounts add life to the historical record through the medium of biography. SOURCES

N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989): 848–849.

S UETONIUS c. 69 C.E.–c. 140 C.E. Scholar Civil servant CAESAR BIOGRAPHER. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus had a distinguished career in the Roman imperial civil service and was most likely secretary to the emperor Hadrian. He was a scholarly man, recognized for his qualities by Pliny the Younger and others. His Lives of the Caesars is a history consisting of twelve biographies from Julius Caesar to Domitian, but it is also a valuable source for information about the buildings erected during their reigns. His work is particularly useful as a source of information on architecture that no longer exists. SOURCES

c. 50 C.E.–c. 120 C.E.

N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989): 1020.

Priest Antiquarian Biographer

V ITRUVIUS

P LUTARCH

GREEK BIOGRAPHER. Plutarch was a man from a distinguished Greek family with considerable influence in governing circles. For the last thirty years of his life he was a priest in a temple at Delphi. He was also a prolific writer who used his works to influence greater cooperation between Greece and Rome. His body of writings includes philosophical, rhetorical, and antiquarian works, but he is best known for his Lives of famous men. He arranged the biographies in parallel pairs: for example, he portrays the Greek and Roman orators Demosthenes and Cicero side-by-side for contrast and comparison. Some of the biographies are particularly informative about architectural projects. Plutarch’s life of Pericles is a prime source for detailed information on his building projects on the Acropolis at Athens. It includes lists of the types of craftsmen employed, the names of the architects of the various buildings, and even the fact that the sculptor Phidias was the general overseer of the

fl. first century B.C.E. Architect Military engineer WROTE ARCHITECTURAL HANDBOOK. Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer who lived and worked during the early part of the reign of the emperor Augustus. Aside from his architectural achievements, his major work was a treatise titled De architectura (On Architecture). This was based on his own experience as well as on works written by other (mainly Greek) architects. The contents of this handbook includes chapters on town planning, architecture in general and the qualifications of the architect, building materials, temples, civic buildings, domestic buildings, pavements and plaster work, water supplies, measurement and geometry, and machines. His work is especially valuable because it reflects his practical experience and for the careful analysis he provided of the

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architectural orders and the standards of proportion. His description of “Tuscan” temple design contributes to modern knowledge of the appearance of lost Etruscan architecture. The sections on materials and construction methods are particularly useful to an understanding of ancient building techniques. Besides his written work and buildings attributed to his design, little else is known of Vitruvius. SOURCES

N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989): 1130.

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES in Architecture and Design Pausanias, Description of Greece (second century C.E.)—Pausanias traveled extensively in the Mediterranean world and was a keen observer of the places he visited. In his account of his travels through Greece he gives a brief sketch of the history and the layout of the important cities, but it is his detailed description of many of the important architectural monuments—temples, shrines, treasuries, and other public buildings—that has proved

to be one of the most valuable sources for the history of Greek architecture. His travels in Greece included most of the major cities such as Athens, Olympia, and Delphi. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), Natural History (first century C.E.)—Pliny’s compendium of facts included a discussion of building materials and construction as well as the techniques of the artists and decorators of major architectural works. Suetonius (Gaius Paulinus Suetonius), History of the Caesars (second century C.E.)—Suetonius’ account of the lives of the twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian contains descriptive material about the buildings and monuments of Rome. Often he describes works which no longer exist or gives a description of them—if they are in ruins—as they existed in his time. Vitruvius (Vitruvius Pollio), On Architecture (end of the first century B.C.E.–beginning of the first century C.E.)— Virtruvius’ work on architecture is the single extant source written by a professional architect of the time that has survived to modern times. In it he deals with virtually every aspect of the craft as it was then understood, including architectural history, style, site design, and construction. His section on the education of the architect is especially interesting because it outlines the various areas of knowledge and expertise for which an architect was responsible.

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chapter two

DANCE James Allan Evans

I M P O R T A N T E V E N T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 O V E R V I E W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 TOPICS Dance in Prehistoric Greece . War Dances . . . . . . . . . . . . Women’s Choruses . . . . . . . The Dithyramb . . . . . . . . . Folk Dances. . . . . . . . . . . . Dance in the Theater . . . . . Dionysian Dance . . . . . . . . Professional Dancers . . . . . . Dance in Rome . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

48 52 57 57 60 63 66 69 70

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE Arion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bathyllus and Pylades . . . . . . . Memphius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theodora. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

75 76 76 77

D O C U M E N T A R Y S O U R C E S . . . . . . . . . . 78 SIDEBARS AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary sources are listed in italics

The Minoans Were Famous Dancers (Homer decribes the shield Hephaestus fashioned with its depiction of Minoan dances) . . . . . . . 49 Theseus Dances the Geranos (an excerpt from Plutarch’s biography of Theseus) . . . . . . . . . . 50

Dancing in Plato’s Ideal State (Plato describes the characteristic movements of war dances) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 War Dances of the Greeks (Xenophon describes several war dances performed by armored soldiers) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Curetes and Corybantes (Lucretius describes the ritual dance of the Corybantes) . . . . . . . . . 56 Aeschylus Reinvents the Tragic Dance (Athenaeus comments on the dance innovations introduced by Aeschylus) . . . . . . . 63 The Importance of Gesture (excerpt from Quintilian’s discussion of useful gestures for an orator) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 The Ecstasy of the Maenads (Euripides writes of the ritual dance and madness of the maenads) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 A Dancer Entertains at a Banquet in Athens (Xenophon describes the dancers perfoming at a banquet attended by Socrates) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Death of a Roman Impresario (inscription marking the grave of a third century dance master). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Lucian of Samosata Argues the Virtues of the Pantomime Dance (Lucian contrasts pantomime with contemporary tragedy) . . . . . . 73 The Pantomime Dancer, Pylades (Macrobius recalls Pylades, who revolutionized pantomime during the reign of Augustus) . . . . . 74

each comedy production, who defrays the cost and oversees the training of the 24 dancers in the chorus. 423 B.C.E. Aristophanes in his comedy The Clouds attacks the new experiments in song and dance that are being introduced to the Athenian stage at this time.

IMPORTANT EVENTS in Dance c. 1500 B.C.E. A small steatite (black soapstone) vase found at Hagia Traiada on Crete dated from this time period shows a harvest dance carved in relief. c. 1300 B.C.E. A small earthenware figurine found at Palaikastro on Crete from this time period shows women dancing in a circle around a lyre-player. 544 B.C.E. The “Festival of the Naked Boys” is organized in Sparta where Spartan youths as well as older men dance naked in the marketplace and sing hymns in honor of the dead who fell at the Battle of Thyrea, fought with Sparta’s northern neighbor, Argos. 534 B.C.E. The Festival of the City Dionysia is established in Athens by the tyrant Pisistratus in which Thespis wins first prize for his “tragedy”—a dithyramb (choral song) where he impersonates the main character himself. 508 B.C.E. At the City Dionysia, a separate contest for dithyrambic song and dance is established. 501 B.C.E. A day of comedy is added to the three days of tragedy at the festival of the City Dionysia in Athens. The characteristic dance of comedy, the kordax, is considered vulgar if danced offstage. 486 B.C.E. Comedy is produced for the City Dionysia in the same way as tragedy: the chief magistrate of the state called the “archon” assigns a “choregus” to 44

364 B.C.E. Rome is smitten by plague, and to placate divine wrath, the Romans introduce Etruscan dancers who put on performances of dancing in the Etruscan style, without singing or miming of the song. 334 B.C.E. The playwright Lysicrates erects his choregic monument which still stands in Athens to commemorate the victory of his chorus in a dithyrambic contest of 335–334 B.C.E. c. 300 B.C.E. A guild of Dionysiac artists—actors, musicians, and dancers—is formed in Athens. 279 B.C.E. Soon after this date, the guild of Dionysiac artists of Athens have their rights to unhindered travel in Greece confirmed by the Amphictionic League, a league of states centered at Delphi which supervises the governance of the temple-state of Delphi. 240 B.C.E. Lucius Livius Andronicus of Tarentum produces his first dramatic presentation in Rome, which includes songs accompanied by interpretative dance. c. 200 B.C.E. Dancing becomes a social accomplishment in Rome, and upper-class parents begin to send their sons and daughters to dancing school. c. 150 B.C.E. In Rome, general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus attempts to close down the dancing schools. c. 22 B.C.E. The famous pantomime Pylades, a protegé and probably an ex-slave of the emperor Augustus, introduces a new type of pantomime dance into Rome.

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2 C.E. The Sebasta, games of the Greek type, are founded at Naples to rival the great festivals of Greece such as the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games. Sometime shortly after the emperor Augustus’ death in 14 C.E. contests in pantomime dancing are added to the Games, along with other contests in the arts of the theater. 23 C.E. The emperor Tiberius bans all pantomimes from Rome because of the disturbances that pantomime perfor-

mances cause in the theaters. They are not allowed to return to Rome until Gaius Caligula becomes emperor in 37 C.E. 162 C.E. The emperor Lucius Verus brings back –165 C.E. to Rome the famous pantomime dancer Apolaustus, known as “Memphius,” from his military campaigns in the east. c. 525 C.E. Theodora, a former pantomime dancer in Constantinople, marries Justinian. They will become emperor and empress of the Roman Empire in 527.

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OVERVIEW of Dance THE REALM OF TERPSICHORE. Dance belonged to what the Greeks called mousike, the arts of the Nine Muses, the daughters of Zeus. Four of them—Polyhymnia, Calliope, Euterpe, and Erato—gave poets inspiration; Melpomene presided over the theater of tragedy, and Thalia, the theater of laughter; Urania marked the movements of the stars and planets; and Clio preserved the memories and myths of the past. Chief of them all, however, was Terpsichore, sovereign of the dance. Dance had a place in festivals, religious rituals, productions in the theater, entertainment at banquets, education of the young, and military training. The sway of Terpsichore extended over all movements of the body, including acrobatics, and in particular, gestures of the hands and arms—what the Greeks called kheironomia. Modern knowledge of ancient dance comes from widely scattered sources: paintings on vases, inscriptions carved on stone, and references in Greek and Latin writings. Most of the information comes from the period of the Roman Empire, when many of the ancient dances, if they were still danced, were much changed. The names of a number of ancient Greek and Roman dances, and the traditions attached to them, are known, but there are informational gaps in this knowledge. One example is the Gymnopaideia (“Dance of the Naked Boys”) which was danced every year in the marketplace of ancient Sparta. There is record that the dancers were naked, yet this information also shows that men as well as boys took part in the dance, leaving open to interpretation both the meaning of the dance as well as the title. Another example is the geranos (“Crane Dance”) which was performed on the sacred island of Delos. While it is clear from records that this was a dance closely tied to religion, there is no indication what, if anything, the dance had to do with cranes or birds of any sort. The most well known example is that of the “tragic chorus” which danced and sang in Greek tragedies. While much is not known of the origins of many Greek dances and traditions, their influence in numerous different realms, from religion to literature to fashion, is evident. 46

ORIGINS. The purpose of dance in Greek and Roman society is similar to the role that dance played in almost every early culture in which dance was tied directly to the rites of religion. Dancing commemorated the changing of the seasons, life and death, social solidarity, and the connection between humanity and the unseen powers that affected human existence. If a tribe depended on hunting wild beasts for its food, the hunters might dress in animal skins and dance for the success of the hunt. Since religious ritual was intensely conservative, dances where the dancers impersonated animals continued to be performed long after the society depended for its food more on its harvests than it did in the hunt. Following the domestication of plants and animals, another type of dance came into being: the community danced on threshing floors after the harvest, thus expressing not merely its pleasure that the crops were gathered in, but also the hope that next year’s crops would be bountiful. Dances performed in spring festivals where the dancers made great leaps into the air were intended to encourage the fertility of the fields. Then, too, there were dances to celebrate weddings, war dances intended to keep warriors in peak physical condition, and some dances that served as a release from the pressures and restrictions of the workaday world. Once dance moved into the theater, it evolved into spectacle. In the Roman Empire, dance competed with gladiatorial games and chariot races for audiences’ interest, and famous dancers went on tour, playing in provincial theaters found in towns of any size in the Roman Empire. THE CONTRIBUTION OF CRETE. The earliest description of a dance comes from Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, on which the blacksmith god Hephaestus portrayed two dance scenes. One is a dance of the grape-harvesters as they pick the grapes for the vintage. The other is a dance that specifically recalls Minoan Crete, a prehistoric civilization found on an island off of mainland Greece. The dance was performed on a dancing floor similar to the one that belonged to Ariadne, daughter of Minos of Crete. Homer’s reference to dance in the Iliad indicates that the Greeks recognized Crete’s contribution to dance, which included the hyporchema, a lively dance of song, pantomime, and instrumental music played on the lyre or the aulos. The geranos—the “Crane Dance”—also came from Crete. According to legend, the dance was brought to the sacred island of Delos by the Athenian hero Theseus on his way back from Cnossus where he had killed the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster that was kept in a maze-like building called the “Labyrinth.” The geranos continued to be danced on Delos at a festival held every July.

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THE DANCE AS RELIGIOUS RITE. It would not be incorrect to state that all Greek dance had a connection with religion, for dances took place at festivals which were held in honor of one god or another. There were some dances, however, that were vital to specific religious rites. The Great Mother goddess, Cybele, whose center of worship was in Phrygia in western Asia Minor on the fringe of the Greek world, was attended by eunuch priests called Corybantes who performed ecstatic dances as part of her ritual. Better known, however, is the dance of the maenads, where female devotees of the wine-god Dionysus danced wild dances or orgia in paroxysms of temporary madness, during which they might capture wild animals and tear them limb from limb. They are frequently shown on Greek vases as attendants of Dionysus. In many Greek states, congregations of women assembled in mid-winter every other year, journeying up even snow-covered mountainsides to dance their “orgies” in honor of Dionysus. THE MANY VARIETIES OF GREEK DANCE. Apart from the maenads, Greek literature mentions many varieties of dance. There was the Pyrrhic dance, a war dance that imitated combat between warriors. It was the national dance of Sparta, a militaristic state, but similar dances took place elsewhere in the ancient world, including a very early dance in Rome begun, according to tradition, by Rome’s founder, Romulus. The Herakeio was a dance of women in honor of the goddess Hera, and the epilinios was a dance performed while treading grapes during the harvest in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine. The dance performed by the chorus in the production of a Greek tragedy was the emmeleia. It was a dignified dance, whereas the dance of Greek comedy, the kordax, was not. The satyr plays staged at the close of a day of three tragedies during a festival included the sikinnis, in which the dancers were costumed as satyrs. The partheneia (“dance of virgins”), was a chorus of ten or eleven girls who were eligible for marriage, whereas the himenaios was a wedding dance, danced by the bride with her mother and some friends. The hormos was a dance of men and women who formed a chain, and the young man who led the chain displayed his skill at dance and, incidentally, his abilities as a warrior. The hyporchema which came from Crete, was a combination of pantomime and dance, and it was performed by boys and girls who sang to musical accompaniment as they danced. THE DITHYRAMB. The dithyramb was a choral song and dance performed in honor of Dionysus. According to Aristotle’s essay, The Art of Poetry, Greek tragedy began with the dithyramb because the chorus told a story

from myth with song and dance. About 600 B.C.E. a famous artist of the dithyramb, Arion, whose patron was the tyrant or dictator of Corinth, Periander, gave it a definite form. Its development into tragedy began in Athens when the festival known as the “City Dionysia” was founded, and a leader of the dithyramb, Thespis, took a solo part. Tragedy, however, did not displace dithyrambs at the City Dionysia, for in 508 B.C.E. dithyrambs were given their own place in the festival. They were staged at other festivals as well; in fact, the theater of Dionysus in Athens was used more often for dithyrambs than it was for tragedy and comedy. DANCE AS A PROFESSION. Most professional dancers remained nameless in ancient Greece. They were for the most part slaves, owned by the master of a troupe. In the Banquet of Xenophon, which describes a banquet attended by Socrates in 421 B.C.E., the owner of a troupe from Syracuse in Sicily provides dancers to entertain the banqueters. It would have been considered disgraceful for an Athenian citizen to own a troupe of dancers, but this master was an alien, and hence not bound by Athenian conventions. There was also interpretative dancing by professionals in Greece although little is known about it. One story relates the performance by the tragic actor Neoptolemus of the myth of Cinyras, the king of Cyprus who founded the cult of Aphrodite there and unwittingly committed incest with his own daughter who gave birth to Adonis. Presumably it was a performance of song and dance, a forerunner of the Roman pantomime. PANTOMIME. Pantomime is supposed to have been introduced into Rome in 22 B.C.E. by the artist Pylades and his rival Bathyllus. Mime performances and songs were performed on the Roman stage earlier than 22 B.C.E., but Pylades and Bathyllus introduced a new kind of interpretative dance that became wildly popular. Pylades and the pantomime artists after him danced while an assistant recited the story, and a small orchestra provided the music. Emperors had their favorite pantomimes: Augustus backed Pylades while his minister of public relations, Maecenas, was Bathyllus’ patron; Gaius Caligula (r. 37–41 C.E.) doted on Mnestor, and Lucius Verus (r. 161–180 C.E.) was an aficionado of Memphius, who supposedly taught the philosophy of Pythagoras with his dance. Unlike mimes, pantomime artists were usually men who impersonated characters by using masks, and a swift change of mask allowed them to switch quickly from one character to another whenever the script demanded it. They were, however, masks with closed mouths, not the open-mouthed masks of theatrical dramas. There were also dances in mimes, which were skits involving unmasked actors who were occasionally

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women. Galeria Copiola, for instance, was remembered because she performed her first dance on stage in 82 B.C.E. and her last in 9 C.E., at the age of 104. By the time of the later Roman Empire, pantomime and mime were intermingled, and women danced roles on stage taken from mythology. The empress Theodora, the wife of the emperor Justinian (r. 527–565 C.E.) was a pantomime actress before she met her future husband. The skit for which she was best known told the myth of the rape of Leda by the god Zeus disguised as a swan. Theodora’s choreography was simple, for though she was a talented comedienne, she was not a skillful dancer. She took off all her clothes except for the girdle around her groin that the law required, and reclined on stage while an attendant sprinkled her with grain. A gaggle of geese then waddled on stage and ate the grain off of her body. Although the Roman Empire was largely Christianized by Theodora’s day, the Christian church’s disapproval of the theater failed to eradicate the staging of ancient myths.

TOPICS in Dance D ANCE

P REHISTORIC G REECE

MINOAN CRETE. The Bronze-Age civilizations of Greece bear labels applied to them in modern times. The Minoan civilization on Crete, which flourished from 2000 to shortly before 1400 B.C.E., was a non-Greek culture with an indecipherable language likely linked to contemporary societies in Asia Minor. The Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece developed a few centuries after the Minoan civilization began and ended at about the same time. Its name comes from the first site of its discovery: Mycenae, the legendary capital of Agamemnon who led the Greek coalition in the Trojan War. Since the initial archeological discoveries, at Mycenae in the 1870s and on Crete at the so-called Palace of Minos at Knossos at the start of the twentieth century, archaeologists and historians have discovered a great deal of information about these Bronze-Age cultures. For instance, at a Minoan site in eastern Crete, Palaikastro, archeologists discovered a primitive figurine made of earthenware, portraying women dancing in a circle in the center of which stood a man playing a lyre. Found with the figurine were six clay birds. The figurine dates to after 1400 B.C.E. when Greek-speaking immigrants from mainland Greece had already invaded the island, 48

and it is the earliest portrayal that has survived of a musician playing the lyre, surrounded by dancers in a circle. Harvesting was a time for dance on Crete; as evidenced by the so-called “Harvester Vase”—a small vase of black soapstone showing a procession of harvesters, which was discovered at Hagia Triadha on Crete. The “Harvester Vase” gives scholars a glimpse of a harvest dance performed on Crete around 1500 B.C.E. The vase shows harvesters striding along, four abreast, singing and lifting their knees high with every step. They carry long objects over their shoulders that have been identified as flails or winnows, tools used to separate grain. The lead harvester is a man who shakes a sistrum, a kind of rattle used in Egyptian religious ceremonies, and appears to be singing heartily. Another Cretan dance ceremony is shown on a gold seal-ring, discovered in tombs dating to the fifteenth century B.C.E. at Vapheio close to Sparta in Greece. The seal-ring depicts a woman dancing under a tree wearing the fashionable court dress worn by ladies in the Palace of Minos on Crete. To her right a youth leaps to pluck either fruit or a flower from the tree. While visual references are clues to dance in ancient Cretan civilization, the best evidence of the tradition of dance comes not from archaeology, but from Greek literature centuries later. THE EVIDENCE OF LITERATURE. One of the first literary texts dealing with the Cretan tradition of dance after the collapse of the Bronze-Age civilization came from the poets of the island of Lesbos. One poem, from seventh century B.C.E., attributed to either Sappho or Alcaeus, reads “Once upon a time the girls of Crete / were wont to dance in harmony like this / their soft foot beats circling the fair altar. …” Other examples of the reputed Cretan dance rituals came from the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad tells how the blacksmith god Hephaestus made new armor for the hero Achilles so that he could rejoin the battle after his best friend, Patroclus, was killed while wearing Achilles’ armor. The shield that Hephaestus made showed scenes from the everyday life of early Greece, at peace or war, and among them were two dance scenes. One portrayed a dance as the grapes were harvested from the vineyard, which is reminiscent of the “Harvester Vase.” The other depicted a dance on a dancing floor that Homer explicitly likens to one which the legendary craftsman Daedalus built at Knossos for Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos of Crete. The Odyssey tells how the hero Odysseus in his wanderings reached the island of Phaeacia. Phaeacia, ruled by a generous king and a wise queen, is thought to be based on folk memories of the world of ancient Crete, though the Odyssey was written at least six

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THE MINOANS WERE FAMOUS DANCERS

Crete, on the dancing floor of Ariadne, who in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete. Homer is recalling the tradition that Minoan Crete, where a pre-Greek civilization reached its height in 1700–1450 B.C.E., was famous for dancing.

INTRODUCTION:

Homer’s Iliad reflects the tradition that the Minoans in Bronze Age Crete were famous dancers. The passage quoted here describes how the blacksmith god, Hephaestus, made new armor for Achilles, for Achilles had loaned his armor to his friend Patroclus who was killed by the Trojan hero Hector. The shield that Hephaestus fashioned was a work of art. On it he depicted scenes from Greek life, including two dance scenes, one of which specifically recalls the dances that were once held at the Palace of Minos in Knossos. The first scene is of a vintage dance where youths, both men and women, dance as they harvest the grapes, while in their midst a boy plays the lyre and sings the Linus-song, which is a dirge that marked not joy but sadness. Perhaps here it was a lament for the passing of the summer and the advent of winter. The second dance scene, which is described below, showed boys with daggers and girls wearing garlands on their heads. Both are dressed in their best clothes—the men have rubbed theirs with olive oil to make them gleam—and they perform an intricate dance, first forming a circle and dancing a round dance, and then reforming into two ranks which moved to meet each other. In the middle of the circle were two gymnasts or tumblers, who performed somersaults and made great leaps into the air. This sort of acrobatic dance was considered a Cretan specialty. Homer makes the point that this was like the dances that were danced at Knossos in

centuries after the peak of the Minoan civilization. King Alcinous of Phaeacia had five sons and they all need clean clothes to wear at dances. Alcinous’ daughter, Nausicaa, took the laundry to the seashore where she met Odysseus and directed him to her father’s palace. There he attended a banquet where the Phaeacians displayed their special skill at dancing. The dancing floor was swept clean, the minstrel took his place in the center of the floor with his lyre, and the young dancers performed in a circle around him. Then two dancers showed off their expertise at dancing with a ball. The one threw the ball into the air; the other leaped up and caught it before his feet touched the ground. Then they danced, the one throwing the ball to the other, who caught it and threw it back. From this example, it appears that ancient Cretan dance covered a broad range of movement: juggling, turning somersaults, and making gestures with arms and hands. It was all part of mousike, the arts sacred to the muses of dance, music, and poetry. THE GERANOS DANCE. One dance that originated on Crete was the geranos. Many scholars originally trans-

Also did the glorious lame god depict a dancing floor like unto that which once upon a time, Daedalus fashioned for Ariadne of the lovely tresses in broad Knossos. On it were youths dancing, and maidens whom it would cost many oxen to wed, their hands holding one another’s wrists. The maidens were clad in fine linen, and the youths had well-woven doublets faintly glistening with olive oil. Fair garlands the maidens wore, and the youths had daggers of gold hanging from silver baldrics. And now they would dance round in a circle, light and deftly on their feet, as when a potter sits by his potter’s wheel which fits neatly between his hands and tries it out, to see whether it spins smoothly; and then they would form into lines and move quickly to meet each other. A large crowd stood joyously round about the lovely dancingfloor, [and among them a god-like minstrel was making music on his lyre], and in the midst of the dancers, leading their dance steps were two acrobats swooping and doing somersaults. SOURCE : Homer, The Iliad, ix, 689–709. Trans. Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers (London: Macmillan, 1911). Text revised by James Allan Evans.

lated geranos as the Greek word for “crane,” creating speculation that the geranos was a dance where performers imitated the flight of cranes, or costumed themselves as cranes. Animal and bird dances of this variety were well known in Greek culture. However, from portrayals of the geranos that have been discovered on pottery, it is clear that the dancers did not costume themselves as cranes. One attempt to explain the title of the dance suggests that the dance merely simulated the migratory flight of the cranes. A more widely accepted theory suggests that the word geranos was mistranslated as “crane.” Rather it is derived from a word meaning “to wind” in Indo-European, the ancient language from which most modern European languages were derived. This idea of winding is backed up by visual representations of the geranos that show dancers with joined hands forming a row that wound back and forth, sometimes even reversing direction, as if it was making its way through a maze. Many scholars began to speculate that the geranos was a “winding dance,” meant to represent a snake, and was done in rituals to honor a great serpent such as a python. There is archaeological evidence for

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THESEUS DANCES THE GERANOS INTRODUCTION :

The lifetime of Plutarch of Chaeronea stretched from the forties of the first century C.E. into the reign of Hadrian (117–138 C.E.) He is best known for his Parallel Lives which matched biographies of eminent Greeks with eminent Romans. He devoted one biography to the hero Theseus, and in the excerpt below, he describes how the dance called the “Crane” came to Crete. Dicearchus, whom Plutarch cites as a source, was a pupil of Aristotle.

On his way back from Crete, Theseus touched at Delos. There, when he had sacrificed to Apollo and dedicated in his temple the statue of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he and the Athenian youths with him executed a dance, which they say is still performed by the people of Delos, and which consists of a series of serpentine figures danced in regular time and representing the winding passages of the Labyrinth. The Delians call this kind of dance the Crane, according to Dicaearchus, and Theseus danced it round the altar known as the Keraton, which is made of horns all taken from the left side of the head. They also say that Theseus founded games at Delos and that he began there the practice of giving a palm to the victors. SOURCE : Plutarch, “Theseus,” in The Rise and Fall of Athens; Nine Greek Lives by Plutarch. Trans. Ian ScottKilvert (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1960): 27.

rituals involving snakes in Minoan Crete, and Greek mythology relates that Apollo killed a sacred python which was worshipped at Delphi when he took over the shrine and made it his own. MYTHICAL ORIGIN. Another possible origin for the geranos comes from Greek mythology. According to one myth, King Minos of Crete forced Athens to send him tribute every year of seven youths and maidens who would be fed to the Minotaur, a half-human and halfbull monster who was kept in the Labyrinth, a maze of winding paths and corridors, at Knossos. Whether the Labyrinth was a building, or an open-air area, or even a dancing floor, as one scholar suggested, is not clear. The hero Theseus, the son of the king of Athens, insisted on going to Knossos as one of the seven youths to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, and once there, he killed the Minotaur and escaped the twists and turns of the 50

Labyrinth by following a cord which the daughter of Minos, Ariadne, had given him. On his way back to Athens, Theseus stopped at the sacred island of Delos, where he and the rest of the young Athenian youths who had escaped with him danced the geranos. This scene from the myth is depicted on the François Vase, a famous vase painted in black-figure style, named after the excavator who discovered it in an Etruscan grave in Italy in the early part of the nineteenth century. On one side of the vase, under the rim, Theseus and his companions are shown disembarking from the boat, and forming a row of dancers, hands joined, alternating by gender. The dancers then wound back and forth to commemorate the twists and turns that they faced in the Labyrinth. Records exist showing the geranos was performed yearly on the island of Delos around a horned altar, similar to those found in the Palace of Minos on Crete, lending even more credence to the theory that the geranos was Cretan in origin. THE GERANOS IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. Regardless of the origin of the geranos, it continued to be danced on the sacred island of Delos into the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The dancers were both male and female and they formed a sort of chorus line with a leader at each end who were known as geranoulkoi (“ones that pull the crane”). Some inscriptions from Delos survive which furnish other evidence about the dance. It was usually performed during a festival held in the month which the Greeks called Hekatombaion—equivalent to July on the modern calendar—and it was danced at night by the light of lamps and torches. The inscriptions show payments for torches, wicks for lamps, and olive oil to fuel the lamps. They also show that the dancers were paid ten drachmas each, not a small sum when a stonemason might make between one and two drachmas a day. The inscriptions also state that the dancers were supplied with branches, which were tokens of victory, and ropes or cords which the dancers carried, props that point back to the Labyrinth myth. Because the geranos was danced at night, it was most likely part of rituals that were performed to honor the deities of the Underworld, the chthonic (“earth”) deities. Some scholars believed this is further proof that the geranos was a ritual snake dance, for snakes were creatures of the Underworld. The geranos survived into the early Roman period of Greek history, but was no longer performed after the first century B.C.E. OTHER ANCIENT DANCES. There were other dances as well that the Greeks thought originated from Crete. One was the hyporchema, a lively choral hymn sung to the god Apollo which included interpretative

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dancing. The paean was also attributed to Crete; it was a hymn of supplication to Apollo similar to the hyporchema. When festivals and sacrifices to Apollo were held on the sacred island of Delos, choirs of boys danced and sang both the hyporchema and the paean to the accompaniment of the aulos, a woodwind instrument similar to an oboe, and the lyre. The nomoi, poems telling the adventures of heroes or gods, which also had a Cretan origin, were sung to the music of the lyre or the double-aulos. In early Greece, the nomoi were only accompanied by a series of gestures, but later versions included dance steps as well. Dances that involved men bearing their arms—originally war dances—were widespread in the Greek world, but the traditional war dance of Sparta, known as the pyrrhike or “Pyrrhic Dance,” had a Cretan origin. A Spartan myth surrounding the founder of the Spartan constitution, Lycurgus, told of Lycurgus’s desire for dances that befitted a society of warriors and so he persuaded a musician and choreographer named Thaletas to come from Crete and instruct the Spartans in song and dance. Thaletas of Crete was an historical figure: he was a musician and teacher of dance who was known to have practiced his profession in Sparta in the seventh century B.C.E. He may have given new shape to pyrrhic dance in Sparta, but records show that Sparta had the pyrrhike warrior dance long before Thaletas arrived there. Because of their widespread influence, the Cretans deserved the reputation for dancing that they had among the ancient Greeks. Long after the Minoan civilization on Crete receded into the shadows of mythology, the tradition of their ancient dances continued. THE PAEAN AND THE HYPORCHEMA. The paean was named for a ritual shout of worshipers invoking the god Apollo: “ie ie paian.” It was a rhythmic cry accompanied by a dance: three short syllables followed by a long, or in musical notation, three quarter notes followed by a half note. This rhythmic beat came to be known as the “paean.” The paean was sung to drive out pestilence or celebrate victory, though it probably began as a hymn to Apollo. Paeans were also sung and danced to Artemis and Ares, and also to Poseidon in his capacity as “EarthShaker,” the god of the earthquake. Fragments survive of more than 22 paeans written by Pindar, providing scholars with evidence that these dances and songs were part of religious rituals. Sometimes confused with the paean, the hyporchema also played an important role in religious ceremonies. The choir singing the hyporchema was divided into two sections: one sang without dancing, or if it danced, it used a simple dance-step, whereas the other did not sing, but instead danced an interpretative dance adapted to the text of the song. It used a

rhythm similar to the paean, though the hyporchema seems to have been the livelier of the two. Sometimes the term “hyporchema” simply means a lively dance when mentioned in literature. ANIMAL DANCES. Another type of dance with prehistoric roots was the animal dance, where the dancers wore animal masks, or even impersonated wild animals without wearing masks. One animal dance was performed at Brauron outside Athens at a shrine to Artemis. During the Brauronia festival held every four years, girls between the ages of five and ten danced a dance of little bears. The founding legend for the Brauronia told that a band of Athenian youths killed a bear at Brauron, thus provoking the anger of Artemis who sent a plague; the Brauronia with its choral dances of young girls expiated the sacrilege. Another animal dance focused on bulls. A Greek vase in the British Museum depicts in black silhouette three dancers who wear bull masks, the tails of bulls, and hoof-like coverings on their hands. This scene is reminiscent of the legend of the Minotaur who was kept by King Minos in the Labyrinth at Knossos on Crete. Further proof of bull dances comes from the Palace of Minos where a fresco depicts acrobats, both male and female, leaping over the back of a charging bull in graceful somersaults. The Greeks would have considered acrobatic stunts like this a form of dance, and on Crete, the tradition of acrobatic dancing lived on into later periods. Greek literature makes mention of owl dances—the owl was sacred to Athena—and a wine jug in the British Museum shows two dancers costumed as birds dancing as a piper plays the aulos. Another piece of archaeological evidence for animal dances comes from the sanctuary of the goddess known as Despoina at Lycosura, in the mountainous region of Arcadia. Despoina is not a proper name; it means “Mistress,” or “Lady” and probably this goddess was a manifestation of the ancient goddess called the “Mistress of the Wild Animals,” who was honored with animal dances. A broken piece of marble carved in low relief on the colossal statue of Desponia at Lycosura shows ornamental motifs such as eagles, thunderbolts, and girls riding on dolphins. Also included is a group of female dancers wearing animal masks. Several wear masks portraying rams’ heads; at least one wears a horse’s head. More evidence comes from finds near an altar on the slope above the temple of Despoina. Some exploratory digging turned up a large number of earthenware figurines of dancers wearing animal heads that were buried there. Lycosura was visited in the second century C.E. by the Greek traveler Pausanias who described what was left of it in his day, and noted that it was the oldest of all the cities on earth, leading scholars

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to believe that the worship of the “Mistress” with her animal dances was an ancient rite that was still recognized in later Greek periods. SOURCES

I. R. Arnold, “Local Festivals of Delos,” American Journal of Archaeology 37 (1933): 452–458. A. Burns, “The Chorus of Ariadne,” Classical Journal 70 (1974–1975): 1–12. Claude Calame, Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece. Trans. Derek Collins and Janice Orion (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997): 53–58. Lillian B. Lawler, “The Dance in Ancient Crete,” in Vol. 1 of Studies Presented to David M. Robinson (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington University Press, 1951): 23–51. —, “The Dancing Figures from Palaikastro: A New Interpretation,” American Journal of Archaeology 44 (1940): 106–107. —, “The Geranos Dance–A New Interpretation,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 77 (1946): 112–130. S. H. Lonsdale, “A Dancing Floor for Ariadne (Iliad 18.590–592): Aspects of Ritual Movement in Homer and Minoan Religion,” in The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule. Eds. J. B. Carter and S. B. Morris (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995): 273–284. Steven Lonsdale, Animals and the Origin of Dances (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1981). —, Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion (Baltimore Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). L. Mueller, “The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies: A Study of Homeric Metaphor,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 93 (1990): 59–101. P. Perlman, “Acting the She-Bear for Artemis,” Arethusa 2 (1989): 111–133. C. Sourvinou-Inwood, “Ancient Rites and Modern Constructs: On the Brauronian Bears Again,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 37 (1990): 1–14.

W AR D ANCES THE PYRRHIKE. The most famous war dance in ancient Greece was the pyrrhike which became the national dance of Sparta, and persisted there long after Greece became a province of the Roman Empire and similar war dances had died out in other cities. The Greeks had several stories that accounted for the name of the pyrrhic dance. One said that it was invented by a Spartan called Pyrrhicus, though an alternative version claimed that Pyrrhicus was a Cretan. Another story connected the 52

dance with the son of the hero Achilles, who bore two names: Pyrrhus as well as Neoptolemus. After Achilles was killed in battle at Troy, Pyrrhus came to Troy to take his father’s place, and his greatest exploit was killing Eurypylus, leader of a force of Hittites that had come to help the Trojans. After he slew Eurypylus, he performed an exultant victory dance, and from his dance the pyrrhike took its name. The pyrrhike and many other war dances were common among the peoples in the Greek world, as well as in neighboring countries between the tenth and seventh centuries B.C.E. Dancing had a practical purpose in the warfare of early Greece when warriors often fought in single combat, and nimble feet made the difference between a warrior dodging the spear that his foe hurled at him, and being impaled by it. In Homer’s Iliad, the Trojan prince Hector tells the Greek hero Ajax that he is not frightened by him, for he knows the steps of the “deadly dance of Ares,” the god of war. By the mid-seventh century B.C.E., however, the complexion of war had changed. Battles became contests between two battle lines of heavily-armed infantrymen called “hoplites,” and a good hoplite did not dodge or dance; rather, he stood firmly in his place in the battle line and shoved the enemy that faced him with his shield and thrust at him with his spear. Dance ceased to be an important part of military training, except in Sparta, which maintained its militaristic traditions long after it ceased to be a military power. By the end of the second century C.E. the pyrrhike was performed only in Sparta, where boys were still trained to dance it from the age of five. Yet the pyrrhike remained the dance most often portrayed in war sculptures and vase paintings. ACCESSORY TO MILITARY TRAINING. Spartan education, which was intended only for the warrior elite that controlled the state, aimed to produce superb soldiers, physically fit and skilled at handling arms. Hoplomachia (weapons training) between men was an important part of a warrior’s education, and it resembled a type of dance. When the philosopher Plato discussed the pyrrhic dance in the Laws, he described it as part of the hoplomachia. However, as pyrrhic dance developed in Sparta, youths who were being hardened for battle would first have their training session where they practiced their skill with the weapons of war, and then when it was over, they danced. A piper played the aulos, which had a timbre not unlike bagpipes, and the young warriors formed a line and danced to a quick, light dance step. While they danced, they sang songs which were composed by musicians who worked in Sparta in the seventh century B.C.E. such as Thaletas, who was credited with organizing the Gymnopaidiai (a

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DANCING IN PLATO’S IDEAL STATE INTRODUCTION :

In Plato’s old age, he returned to the subject of his most famous work, the Republic, and tried once again to outline what the government and society of an ideal state should be. The result is the Laws, Plato’s last attempt to frame a utopia. It is to be a city-state named Magnesia, of precisely 5,040 citizens, plus slaves and some resident aliens whose sojourn in Magnesia will be limited to twenty years. The education of the citizens is important. Plato deals with the type of literature to which youth should be exposed, the kind of music they should hear and what sort of physical training they should have. The topic of physical training brings him to dancing, which he divides into two classes, the reputable and the disreputable, and reputable dancing can in turn be divided into two classes, war dances, and dances of peace. The following passage deals with war dances, that is, pyrrhic dances.

So let’s accept what we’ve said so far as an adequate statement of what wrestling can do for a man. The proper term for most of the other movements that can be executed by the body as a whole is “dancing.” Two varieties, the decent and the disreputable, have to be distinguished. The first is a representation of the movements of graceful people, and the aim is to create an effect of grandeur; the second imitates the movements of unsightly people and tries to present them in an unattractive light. Both have two subdivisions. The first subdivision of the decent kind represents handsome, courageous soldiers locked in the violent struggles of war; the second portrays a man of temperate character enjoying moderate pleasures in a state of prosperity, and the natural name for this is “dance of peace.” The dance of war differs fundamentally from the

Spartan festival). Hence, the pyrrhic dance was most likely not part of the weapons training, but was done to enhance the nimbleness of the warriors. CHANGED TO PANTOMIME. Another literary source for information about the development of the pyrrhic dance came from an author named Athenaeus who wrote a discursive work at the end of the second century C.E. called Learned Men at a Banquet. In it, Athenaeus imagines banqueters displaying their knowledge on a host of subjects, including dance. According to the Learned Men at a Banquet, the Spartans, who had a penchant for war, still trained armor-clad boys from the age of five in the pyrrhic dance in the second century C.E. The dance, however, was no longer truly a war dance by this time. Athenaeus described it as a kind of Dionysiac pan-

dance of peace, and the correct name for it will be the “Pyrrhic.” It depicts the motions executed to avoid blows and shots of all kinds (dodging, retreating, jumping into the air, crouching); and it also tried to represent the opposite kind of motion, the more aggressive postures adopted when shooting arrows and discharging javelins and delivering various kinds of blows. In these dances, which portray fine physiques and noble characters, the correct posture is maintained if the body is kept erect in a state of vigorous tension, with the limbs extended nearly straight. A posture with the opposite characteristics we reject as not correct. As for the dance of peace, the point we have to watch in every chorus performer is this: how successfully—or how disastrously—does he keep up the fine style of dancing to be expected from men who’ve been brought up under good laws? This means we’d better distinguish the dubious style of dancing from the style we may accept without question. So can we define the two? Where should the line be drawn between them? “Bacchic” dances and the like, which (the dancers allege) are a “representation” of drunken persons they call Nymphs and Pans and Sileni and Satyrs, and which are performed during “purifications” and “initiations,” are something of a problem; taken as a group they cannot be termed either “dances of peace” or “dances of war,” and indeed they resist all attempts to label them. The best procedure, I think, is to treat them as separate from “war-dances” and “dances of peace,” and put them in a category of their own which a statesman may ignore as outside his province. That will entitle us to leave them on one side and get back to dances of peace and war, both of which undeniably deserve our attention. SOURCE :

Plato, “Dancing,” in The Laws. Trans. Trevor J. Saunders (London: Penguin, 1970): 307–308.

tomime—the dancers performed an interpretative dance that related various myths of the god Dionysus, including his expedition to India and his return to his native state of Thebes. By the time that Athenaeus lived, pyrrhic dances were staged for Roman tourists, and in fact, pyrrhic dancers sometimes performed at Rome to amuse the crowd in the public games as a prelude to the deadlier entertainments offered by gladiatorial games and wild beast fights. Julius Caesar staged pyrrhic dancing at Rome, and so did the emperors Caligula, Nero, and Hadrian. The North African rhetorician and philosopher, Apuleius of Madauros (c.123–c. 190 C.E.), whose novel, the Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety, described a typical dance entertainment staged in the amphitheater at

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Young Athenian males performing the pyrrhic dance. A marble relief from Athens, 4th century B.C.E.

THE ART ARCHIVE/ACROPOLIS MU-

SEUM ATHENS/DAGLI ORTI.

Corinth in his own day. First there was a pyrrhic dance, performed by boys and girls, beautifully costumed, then there was a pantomime—a ballet on the “Judgement of Paris” in which the young Trojan prince Paris judges a beauty contest of goddesses—and finally, the pièce de resistance, a convicted murderess torn apart by wild beasts. THE GYMNOPAIDIAI. Another famous war dance of Sparta was one performed for the Gymnopaidiai, which scholars first translated as “Festival of the Naked Youths.” The central feature of the festival, usually held in the heat of the Spartan midsummer in honor of the god Apollo, was a dance contest in which contestants danced naked. The contest was not just restricted to young boys, however, but was divided into three groups that were graded according to age: retired warriors too old for active service, warriors of military age, and youths still too young to serve in the army. Many scholars have 54

come to believe that the word Gymnopaidiai should be translated as the “Festival of Unarmed Dancing,” for instead of wearing armor, as did the dancers of the pyrrhike, the dancers of the Gymnopaidiai wore nothing at all. The dancers pantomimed scenes from wrestling and boxing matches, but at all times, their feet moved in time to the music. As they danced, they sang songs by Thaletas and by another musician, Alcman, who plied his trade in Sparta about the same time. ARMED DANCES OUTSIDE SPARTA. The pyrrhike may have been the national dance of Sparta where it was part of the regular exercise of warriors keeping themselves in good physical condition for battle, but it was found elsewhere in the Greek world as well. In Sparta, the pyrrhic dance was sacred to the divine twins, Castor and Polydeuces, whom the Romans knew as Pollux. In Athens, the pyrrhic dance honored the warrior goddess

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WAR DANCES OF THE GREEKS INTRODUCTION :

Xenophon (ca. 430–ca. 354 B.C.E.) was a disciple of Socrates who—against Socrates’ advice—joined a force of soldiers of fortune who were recruited by the younger brother of King Artaxerxes II of Persia, Cyrus, who plotted to overthrow Artaxerxes and make himself king. But in the decisive battle fought at Cunaxa in Mesopotamia, Cyrus was killed and his Asian supporters melted away, leaving the force of Greek mercenary soldiers to find their way home. To make matters worse, the Persians invited the Greek officers to a parley and killed them, thinking that the Greek troops would be helpless without their leaders. But the troops chose new officers, one of them Xenophon himself and they made their way north to the Black Sea, and from there the survivors disbanded to find new employers. When they reached Paphlagonia in Asia Minor, the ruler of Paphlagonia sent envoys to the Greek officers, who gave them a dinner, and the various ethnic groups in the little Greek army entertained them with war dances, with the dancers bearing arms. The Paphlagonian visitors were surprised that all the dancers wore armor as they danced, whereupon a dancing girl was brought on, who performed the “Pyrrhic” dance, a Spartan war dance named in honor of the hero Achilles’ son, Pyrrhus, otherwise known as Neoptolemus. The Paphlagonians were even more impressed. They wondered if the Greek women fought in battle side by side with the men, and the Greeks replied in jest that it was their women who had routed the king of Persia, Artaxerxes II. Xenophon describes the scene in a vivid passage in his Anabasis (The March into the Interior), which tells the story of how the ten thousand mercenary soldiers that Prince Cyrus recruited from among the Greeks and their neighbors—for not all the recruits were Greeks—marched into the interior of the Middle East and returned again.

After we had poured wine on the ground to honor the gods, and had sung a hymn, first two Thracians stood up and began to dance in full armor to the sound of the pipe, making nimble leaps high into the air as they wielded their sabers. Finally one of them struck the other, and everyone thought the man was mortally wounded. His fall was artfully done, I suppose. The other man stripped him of his armor as the Paphlagonians howled, and made his

Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. It was part of the ceremony of the annual Panathenaic festival that was held in honor of Athena, as well as the Great Panathenaic festival when non-Athenians were allowed to compete in the athletic events. The dancers were called pyrrhicists and they were chosen from among the ephebes (youths over eighteen years of age). Several relief sculptures have

exit, singing a Thracian war song known as the “Sitacles.” The other Thracians bore the fallen dancer away, as if he were dead. But he had been not at all hurt. Next some Aenianians and Magnesians got to their feet and danced the dance called the Karpaia, wearing their armor. The dance was like this: One man is driving his oxen as he sows a field, his arms laid at his side, and he casts frequent glances around him like a person who is afraid. A robber approaches, and when the sower sees him, he grabs his arms and goes to meet him and fights to save his team of oxen. These soldiers did this to the rhythm of the reed pipe. And at last the robber ties up the man and takes off the oxen. But sometimes the owner of the oxen trusses up the robber. When that happens, he yokes him beside his oxen with his hands tied behind his back and drives off. Then a Mysian came on with a light leather shield in each hand. And at one moment he danced, pantomiming a battle against two opponents. Then he wielded his shields as if he were fighting a single opponent. Then he would whirl around and do somersaults, still holding his shields. So it was a fine sight to see. Finally he danced the “Persian dance”—clashing his shields together, he would crouch down and then leap up. He did all this keeping time to the music of the pipe. Then the Mantineans and some others from region of Arcadia came forward, wearing the finest armor they had, and they performed a drill to a tune with a marching tempo played on the pipe, and they sang a warrior hymn. And they danced in the same way as they did in the processions with which they honored the gods. And as the Paphlagonians looked on, they thought it odd that all the dances were performed wearing arms. A Mysian who saw that they were amazed, retorted by persuading one of the Arcadians who had acquired a dancing girl to dress her in the finest costume he could, fit her with a light shield and bring her on to give a graceful performance of the “Pyrrhic” dance. Thereupon there was a roar of applause, and the Paphlagonians asked if the Greek women also fought side by side with their men. The Greeks answered that these were the very women who had routed the king from his camp. SOURCE :

Xenophon, Anabasis. Book 6 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998): 466–470. Translated by James Allan Evans.

survived that portray the Athenian pyrrhic dance. One shows youths, naked except for helmets, shields, and swords, dancing a light dance-step; another shows them in a chorus line, presenting their shields. Their training for the festival was financed in the same way as dramatic productions; a well-to-do citizen was chosen as choregus (“leader of the chorus”) and he paid the costs and had

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CURETES AND CORYBANTES INTRODUCTION :

The Curetes and the Corybantes had one thing in common: both danced wild ritual dances, but they should not be confused. According to legend, the dance of the Curetes was taught them by the Rhea, a Mother Goddess who belonged to the generation of the Titans, and it was first danced to protect Rhea’s infant son, Zeus. When Zeus was born his mother spirited him to a cave on Mt. Dicte on Crete to save him from his father Cronus who would have swallowed him as he had swallowed his other children to prevent their birth, and around his hiding place, the Curetes danced their frenzied dance with great leaps and clashing weapons. In the classical period, the Curetes were a Cretan tribe who performed a ritual dance on the sacred island of Delos, an ancient dance similar to the one which the Roman priests known as the Salii performed. The Corybantes were priests of the great Mother Goddess Cybele, whose center of worship was Pessinus in Phrygia in western Asia Minor, where the most sacred object in her cult center was a black stone which embodied the divinity of the goddess. The cult of Cybele and her young lover Attis, a god of vegetation, was brought to Rome in 205–204 B.C.E., and a temple was built to her on the Palatine Hill, one of Rome’s seven hills, but until the reign of the emperor Claudius (41–54 C.E.) she was confined to her temple and served only by eunuch priests who were immigrants from the east, for her rites and the ecstatic dancing of her devotees shocked the Romans. In the following passage, Lucretius, writing in the first century C.E., describes a procession of Corybantes, whom he claims the Greeks called “Phrygian Curetes,” and compares them to the Cretan Curetes, understandably, for both performed wild dances in the service of a Mother Goddess. Since Lucretius wrote in Latin, he gives the gods their Latin names: Cronus is Saturn and Zeus is Jove or Jupiter.

general oversight of the production. Crete was another source of war dances, the best known of which was the dance of the Curetes. It had a legendary origin: when the mother goddess Rhea gave birth to the infant Zeus, she hid him in Crete in a cave on Mt. Dicte to save him from his father Cronus, and the Curetes performed their dance, which Rhea had taught them, to camouflage his hiding place. They whirled about their shields and banged them with their swords as they made great leaps into the air. This performance was a primitive ritual connected with the cult of Zeus on Crete, which was quite unlike the cult of Zeus on mainland Greece, for the Cretans believed that their Zeus died and was reborn with the seasons. The dance of the Curetes marked his rebirth. In the ancient world, the Greeks and Roman saw a connection between the dance of the Curetes and the 56

Various nations hail her [Cybele] with time-honored ceremony as our Lady of Ida. To bear her company they appoint a Phrygian retinue, because they claim that crops were first created within the bounds of Phrygia and spread thence throughout the whole earth. They give her eunuchs as attendant priests, to signify that those who have defied their mother’s will and shown ingratitude to their father must be counted unworthy to bring forth living children into the sunlit world. A thunder of drums attends her, tight-stretched and pounded by palms, and a clash of hollow cymbals; hoarse-throated horns bray their deep warning, and the pierced flute thrills every heart with Phrygian strains. Weapons are carried before her, symbolic of rabid frenzy, to chasten the thankless and profane hearts of the rabble with dread of her divinity. So, when first she is escorted into some great city and mutely enriches mortals with wordless benediction, hay strew her path all along the route with a lavish largesse if copper and silver and shadow the Mother and her retinue with a snow of roses. Next an armed band, whom the Greeks call Phrygian Curetes, joust together and join in rhythmic dances, merry with blood and nodding their heads to set their terrifying crests aflutter. They call to mind those Curetes of Dicte, who once upon a time in Crete, as the story goes, drowned the wailing of the infant Jove by dancing with swift feet, an armed band of boys around a boy, and rhythmically clashing bronze on bronze, lest Saturn should seize and crush him in his jaws and deal his mother’s heart a wound that would not heal. SOURCE :

Lucretius, “Movements and Shapes of Atoms,” in On the Nature of the Universe. Trans. Ronald Latham (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1951): 78–79.

frenzied dance performed by the Corybantes, the priests of the Great Mother, Cybele, the ancient goddess of Phrygia in western Asia Minor, and there may be this much connection: both rituals went back to an ancient fertility religion. The dance of the Curetes, however, was not a dance of priests like the dance of the Corybantes, but of warriors, though neither dance seems to have had much in common with the pyrrhic dance. SOURCES

E. K. Borthwick, “Trojan Leap and Pyrrhic Dance,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 87 (1967): 18–23. —, “P. Oxy. 2738: Athena and the Pyrrhic Dance,” Hermes 98 (1970): 318–331. —, “Two Notes on Athena as Protectress,” Hermes 97 (1969): 385–391.

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Paul Cartledge, The Spartans (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2003). Nigel Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue, Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1995): 67–69. D. G. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens (Leiden, Netherlands: Mnemosyne Supplement 95, 1987). Kurt Latte, De saltationibus graecorum (Giessen, West Germany: Töpelmann, 1913): 27–63. J.P. Poursat, “Les représentations de danse armée dans la céramique attique,” Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique 91 (1967): 550–615. Noel Robertson, Festivals and Legends: The Formation of Greek Cities in the Light of Public Ritual (Phoenix Supplement 31) (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1992): 146–165. Fritz Weege, Der Tanz in der Antike (Halle/Saale, West Germany: Max Noemeyer Verlag, 1926): 38–56. E. L. Wheeler, “Hoplomachia and Greek Dances in Arms,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 23 (1982): 223–233.

W OMEN ’ S C HORUSES THREE CATEGORIES. Women’s choruses can be divided into three categories: girls before the age of puberty; unmarried girls, called variously parthenoi or korai or nymphai; and married women. The most evidence survives on the parthenoi, a Greek word that many scholars have translated as “virgins,” yet literary evidence points to this word meaning “women who have not yet given birth.” The size of the parthenoi chorus might vary, but most were composed of ten members. A parthenoi chorus was often portrayed on Greek vases; one vase, found in the marketplace of ancient Athens and dating to the beginning of the seventh century B.C.E., shows ten young women, all dressed in white, holding hands, their heads turned upwards as if they were singing and dancing. Another vase, a mixing-bowl for wine—the Greeks drank their wine mixed with water—which was made in Athens in the mid-fifth century B.C.E., shows ten young women holding hands and an eleventh woman playing a pipe. Similar choruses of young men existed between 800 and 350 B.C.E., but Greek artists preferred to portray choruses of women in most forms of art. PARTHENEIA. Partheneia were the songs and dances maidens performed in their choruses. One of the first poets of choral lyrics, Alcman, was famous for the partheneion that he wrote for Spartan girls in the second half of the seventh century B.C.E. A papyrus copy of this partheneion was found in the nineteenth century C.E., and many scholars have used this as a starting point for knowl-

edge of the parthenoi. The lyrics of the partheneion indicate that it was danced to and sung by a chorus of ten girls who were related to each other, and included a Agido (“leader of the music”) and a Hagesichora (“leader of the dance”). According to literary records, it was most often performed at sunrise in competition with another chorus. There is no clue as to what the dance was like, nor how intricate the dance steps may have been, except that the meter that he used in his poetry was generally simple. THE CARYATIS. The Caryatis was another type of dance, the origins of which are found in Caryae in Spartan territory. The goddess Artemis had a statue and a sanctuary there at which the young girls of the area (known as “caryatids”) performed a traditional dance every year in honor of the goddess. Much of the knowledge of this dance comes from a description written by Pausanias, a Greek traveler of the second century C.E. whose guidebook for Greece is the classical archaeologist’s Bible, but additional information comes from various art forms, including a statue group of three caryatids that was excavated from Delphi in the nineteenth century C.E. The dance was a spirited jig, with many whirls and pirouettes. In the statue discovered at Delphi, one caryatid is shown with a tambourine, another with castanets. Their usual dress was a light knee-length chiton (“tunic”) and on their heads they wore a kalathos—a vase-shaped basket wreathed with leaves from palms or rose bushes. The dance was so famous that the dancers were immortalized not only in art but also in architecture. The term “caryatid” is a description of a column that has been sculpted to resemble a Caryatis dancer— the most famous examples are to be found in the “Porch of the Maidens” attached to the temple known as the Erechtheion on the Athenian acropolis. Many column capitals (tops of columns) took on the description of “kalathos” because they so resembled the headdress of the Caryatis dancers. SOURCES

Claude Calame, Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Role and Social Function. Trans. Derek Collins and Janice Orion (Lanham, England: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997): 149–156. J. Pouilloux and G. Roux, “Les danseuses de Delphes et la base dite de Pankrates,” in Énigmes à Delphes (Paris: E. Boccard, 1963): 123–149.

T HE D ITHYRAMB BEGINNINGS. Among the scraps of poetry that have survived by the seventh-century B.C.E. lyric poet

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ation of the dithyramb. He also wrote that Arion coined the term dithyramb and instructed choirs in Corinth how to perform it. There were choruses of song and dance in honor of gods and heroes before Arion created dithyrambs; in Corinth’s neighbor to the west, Sicyon, there were “tragic choruses” performed every year in honor of Sicyon’s legendary king, Adrastus, and they were very ancient. Modern scholars suspect that the word dithyramb itself was not Greek, and an ancient form of the dithyramb may have predated the immigration of Greek-speaking people into Greece. Under Arion’s direction, however, the dithyramb was probably given form and structure—henceforth it would be sung by a regular choir, and it would tell a story. The dithyrambs performed before Arion were most likely an undisciplined performance of song and dance where the dancers improvised folksongs about the heroes of old. Arion added music that he composed, and choreography, and probably it was he who established the traditional size of the dithyrambic chorus at fifty dancers. Hence, Arion is most often credited by modern scholars as the inventor of the classical Greek dithyramb.

Monument erected by Lysicrates in Athens to commemorate the victory of a chorus of boys in the dithyramb contest of 334 B.C.E. for which he was choregus. PHOTOGRAPH BY HECTOR WILLIAMS. © HECTOR WILLIAMS.

Archilochus of Paros, one describes the poet’s ability to start the dithyramb (“graceful round of song”) of the lord Dionysus, when wine has loosened his mind. This is the first time that the word dithyramb appears in surviving Greek literature, though scholars are certain that Archilochus was not the first Greek to use it. The dithyramb was a song and dance in honor of Dionysus at festivals where much wine was drunk. The Greeks themselves did not know how the dithyramb developed. Several Greek states claimed it as their invention, yet it most likely developed among the Dorians who lived in the Peloponnesos south of the Isthmus of Corinth. CONTRIBUTION OF ARION. In Herodotus’s Histories (c. 425 B.C.E.) there is an account of the creation of the dithyramb. During the years 627–587 B.C.E., the city of Corinth was ruled by a tyrant called Periander, and at his court was Arion, the most distinguished musician of his day. It was he who Herodotus credits with the cre58

NEW DIRECTION. Thespis was the leader of a dithyrambic chorus in the Athenian village of Icaria, and during the early 530s B.C.E., he made an innovation in the production of the dithyramb which had far-reaching consequences. When his choir performed at the local festival in Dionysus’ honor, he took a solo part. Before Thespis, the choir sang a story from the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, and danced to the accompaniment of a piper. Thespis, however, stepped forward and assumed the role of the hero, singing antiphonally with his choir in a kind of musical dialogue, all the while gesturing with his hands to add to the drama of the tale. Then, in 534 B.C.E., the tyrant of Athens, Pisistratus, established the great festival of the City Dionysia. The villages outside the city of Athens had celebrated festivals honoring Dionysus long before this time, but now the city of Athens itself had a festival that overshadowed them. During the festival a contest was held in which dithyrambs were performed, usually with a dancing chorus responding to a soloist who also sang and danced. Thespis’s innovation made dithyrambs very popular during these festivals, but it also created an offshoot, tragic plays, which in the generation after Thespis threatened to overtake the dithyramb’s popularity. CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT. The evolution of the dithyramb continued in the late sixth century B.C.E. Around 525 B.C.E., after the death of the tyrant Pisistratus, a lyricist named Lasus came to Athens to enjoy the patronage of Pisistratus’ younger son, Hipparchus.

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Following Arion’s example, he standardized the number of choristers in the dithyrambic chorus in Athens at fifty, and they sang to the accompaniment of several pipers playing the aulos, not just one. It was thanks to Lasus that a separate contest for dithyrambs was established in Athens at the festival of the City Dionysia in 508 B.C.E. The first winner of the contest was Hypodicus of Chalcis, and while his works have been lost, his background has become important to scholars. Hypodicus was not a native of Athens but the neighboring state of Chalcis on the island of Euboea, proving that dithyrambic poets were not merely a phenomenon of mainland Greece and that these poets traveled from state to state, practicing their profession. ATHENIAN PRODUCERS. The date of the first dithyrambic contest at the festival of the City Dionysia is significant. Athens had driven out the tyrant Hippias and adopted a democratic constitution which established ten new “tribes,” political groups into which all citizens were divided according to a complicated formula that made certain that every tribe contained citizens from the three regions of Attica: the city of Athens itself, the interior of Attica where people lived in country villages, and the coastal region. At the City Dionysia festival, every tribe was expected to present two dithyrambs: one performed by boys and the other by men. The citizen who produced these dithyrambs in each tribe was a wellto-do man who was chosen as choregus (leader of the chorus), and his duty was to pay the poet who wrote the dithyramb and the music for it, the choreographer who taught the chorus their dance steps, and the musician who played the double-reed instrument called the aulos, as well as outfitting the fifty singers and dancers who performed the dithyramb. It was no light expense, but the choregus whose choir won received as a prize a tripod, which was a kettle on three legs, the equivalent of a cup given nowadays to a winning football or hockey team, and he would build a monument to display it. There was a street in Athens called the “Street of the Tripods” which once was lined with choregic monuments that displayed tripods won for dithyrambs, tragedies, or comedies, each set up by the proud choregus whose production had won the prize. The name of the street survives to the present day, but all the choregic monuments are lost, save one built by a choregus named Lysicrates in 334 B.C.E. when his chorus won the prize for the best dithyramb. THE DITHYRAMBIC DANCE. Dithyrambs were popular in Athens and soon they were staged in other festivals as well as the City Dionysia. The performance of the dithyrambs, however, seemed to be similar re-

gardless of the location. The dithyrambic choir entered the theater with a solemn march, and then sang as they moved around the orchestra, now dancing in a circle counterclockwise and then reversing and dancing clockwise. The music and the poetry were most likely more important than the dance. The performers accompanied their song with gestures that must have been something like the stylized gestures of the dances of India. Having finished their song, the dithyrambic choir moved out of the theater to a dance step, possibly a march. As the fifth century B.C.E. wore on, the dithyramb evolved towards a less austere and more emotional performance. A fragment of a dithyramb by the poet Pindar, better known for his “Victory Odes,” describes a frenzied dance, accompanied by tambourines and castanets, which belonged to the rites of the god Dionysus. The dancers toss their heads and shout, and a dancer representing Zeus shakes his thunderbolt. The type of music also changed; the dignified, simple Phrygian mode was replaced by elaborate flourishes and trills. A dithyrambist named Cinesias who lived in the later fifth century and early fourth century B.C.E. was responsible for some of these changes. What is known of him comes mostly from his critics who did not like his innovations, but scholars see that the dance of the dithyrambs under his direction became a great deal more lively. The comic poet Aristophanes, who was no admirer of Cinesias’ innovations, poked fun at Cinesias’ pyrrhic dances. In his comedy, The Clouds, Aristophanes jibes that clouds have a particular fondness for writers of dithyrambs, such as Cinesias, because their feet never touch the ground and they are always prating about clouds. Aristophanes was apparently referring to a dithyrambic dance that had a great deal of leaping and vaulting, and, on the basis of Aristophanes’ remarks, some scholars have speculated that Cinesias must have actually introduced pyrrhic dances or something similar into his dithyrambs. LATER HISTORY. The majority of information that survives on dithyrambs comes from Athens, but it is clear from fragments of evidence that dithyrambs spread to many parts of mainland Greece. They took place at Delphi, where the theater overlooking the temple of Apollo is largely intact except for the stage building, and at the festival of Apollo at Delos. At Epidaurus, the cult center of the medicine god Asclepius, dithyrambs were performed in the athletic and dramatic festival that was held there every four years. By the second century B.C.E. however, the dithyrambs had given way to more tragic and comedic performances, and few records of their performances exist.

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View of the theater in Delphi, Greece, where dithyrambs were performed.

SOURCES

Christopher G. Brown, “Dithryamb,” in Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition. Ed. Graham Speake (London, England: Fitzroy Dearborn): 499–501. Lillian B. Lawler, The Dance of the Ancient Greek Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1964): 1–21. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. 2nd ed. Rev. by T. B. L. Webster (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1962). G. A. Privitera, “Archiloco e il ditirambo letterario presimonideo,” Maia 9 (1957): 95–100. —, “Il ditirambo fino al V secolo” in Storia e civilità dei Greco. Ed. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (Milan: Bompiani, 1977–1979): 311–325.

F OLK D ANCES . DANCES OF EVERYDAY LIFE. “Anyone who cannot sing and dance in a chorus is uneducated,” stated Plato in the Laws, which is a blunt reminder that dance was part of Greek education. Dances played a large role in everyday life. They belonged to folk tradition, and they 60

PHOTOGRAPH BY HECTOR WILLIAMS. © HECTOR WILLIAMS.

often had a religious or semi-religious basis. Mourners danced at funerals. They can be seen on vase-paintings, in long rows with hands placed on top of their heads in a gesture of grief. There were also wedding dances. There was no wedding ceremony as there is in the Christian church, but after the families of the bride and groom had worked out the details of the marriage agreement, a chorus of young men and women escorted the bride and groom to the groom’s house with dance and song. There were usually two choirs—one of men and the other of women—and since the dance was performed by torchlight, it presumably took place after nightfall. Dances marked the change of seasons, particularly spring with its flowers and the return of the birds, for the Greeks did not understand the migration of birds and their reappearance each spring must have seemed almost magical. There was a folk dance called the “Flowers,” where the dancers divided into two groups, and as they performed, one group chanted, “Where are my roses? Where are my violets? Where is my lovely parsley?” and the other group replied, “Here are your roses. Here are your violets. Here is your lovely parsley.” There were also folk dances like farandoles, where men and women danced together,

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hand in hand, forming a chain. A young man led the chain, performing dance movements suitable for a virile young male, and following him was a girl performing modest dance steps proper for a decent young woman. When banquets were given, there might be dancing entertainment, and already in the fifth century B.C.E. a well-to-do man who gave a banquet might hire professional dancers. In early Greece, however, dancing was still amateur, and it was the guests themselves who danced. FOLK DANCING IN SPARTA IN HONOR OF ORTHIA. In the fifth century B.C.E., Sparta was a militaristic state which valued prowess on the battlefield above all else. Compared to contemporary Athens, it was a smaller, less advanced community. Yet two centuries earlier, it was a center of dance and music, which attracted famous musicians and choreographers such as Alcman, Terpander, and Thaletas. Folk dances, however, were no concern of these professionals, and consequently we are ill-informed about them. For one type of folk dance, where the dancers wore masks, there is only archaeological evidence. About 700 B.C.E., a primitive temple was built in Sparta by the banks of the river Eurotas and dedicated to the goddess Orthia—or to Artemis Orthia, for by the classical period, Artemis had half-assimilated Orthia, though Orthia’s ancient cult remained largely unchanged. A hundred years or so after the temple was built, it was destroyed by a flood of the river, which sealed the temple ruins under a thick layer of sand. The temple was rebuilt about 550 B.C.E. and then a second disaster, a raid by a barbarian tribe called the Heruls in 267 C.E., once again sealed in its remains below a layer of rubble. In the late third century C.E., after the sanctuary was restored, a small semi-circular theater was built to seat tourists who came to Sparta to witness Spartan youths being flogged, sometimes to death, which was part of the ritual of Orthia’s cult. The result of these vicissitudes was that the votive offerings made to Orthia, and other remains having to do with the ceremonies at the sanctuary as well, got some protection from the depredations of time, and were preserved for archaeologists to discover in the twentieth century C.E. The finds show that there were ancient folk dances by masked dancers at the shrine of Orthia—ritual dances to begin with, but then evolving into simple folk dances as time erased the reasons for the rituals. Pipes for playing dance tunes, made of animal bones, were found, inscribed with dedications to Orthia, but the most distinctive feature of the deposits was a series of masks made of terracotta. They are reproductions of masks made of wood which were actually used in dances, but wood rots in the damp

earth, and the Spartans preferred to dedicate masks made of more durable material. The dedications started at the end of the seventh century B.C.E., but the great bulk of them belong to the next century. The masks are fearsome things, which makes it likely that the dances performed in Orthia’s sanctuary were originally apotropaic— that is, they were danced to drive away the malevolent unseen powers that send plague or crop failure. The masks must have become eventually like Halloween masks, which once upon a time protected against the spirits that prowled the earth on All Hallows Eve, but lost their ritual meaning as time went on. It is uncertain how long these dances continued in honor of Orthia, as ancient literary sources yield no information about them. THE DANCE OF HIPPOCLEIDES. Before dancing became professionalized, the performance of solo folk dances was an accomplishment of the well-bred young Greek, and a man who disgraced himself on the dance floor besmirched his character. Damon of Athens, a music teacher of the fifth century B.C.E. who counted Socrates among his pupils, asserted that song and dance arose from the movements of the soul: noble dances gave proof of noble souls and ignoble souls were reflected in vulgar dances. The historian Herodotus, who published his History about 425 B.C.E., relates a story which demonstrates how dance revealed an ignoble character of a man, and also illustrates the sort of dancing entertainment one might have found in the banquet halls of leading men in archaic Greece, when wine flowed freely and guests made merry. The story focused on Cleisthenes, tyrant in the early sixth century B.C.E. of Sicyon, Corinth’s western neighbor. He desired to find a suitable husband for his daughter, Agariste, so he made a proclamation at the Olympic Games that any young man who thought himself worthy to be his son-in-law should come to Sicyon to enjoy his hospitality for a year and after he had observed all of them carefully he would choose one to be his daughter’s husband. A small battalion of suitors arrived at Sicyon, and Cleisthenes watched them closely, noting their athletic ability and general decorum. The young aristocrat Hippocleides of Athens headed his preferred list. When the time came to announce the winner, Cleisthenes first entertained all the suitors at a banquet, and after the banquet was over, the suitors competed in mousike—song, dancing, and poetry—as well as public speaking. Hippocleides excelled, surpassing all the other suitors, and he would have won Agariste except that he got drunk. When it was his turn to dance, he ordered the pipe-player to play the emmeleia, a type of dance that choreographers used for Greek tragedy; but Cleisthenes lived before the age of tragedy,

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and the emmeleia was probably not a graceful or sophisticated dance during this period. Cleisthenes was not pleased by Hippocleides, but he said nothing. Then Hippocleides had a table brought in, stood on it, and performed a few Spartan jigs followed by Athenian ones. Jigs, much like emmeleia, were considered low-class dances at the time, yet Cleisthenes still said nothing. Then Hippocleides stood on his head and gestured with his legs, in mocking of an acrobatic dance, a sign of great disrespect, for it would have normally been performed by someone much below the station of Hippocleides. At this point Cleisthenes could contain himself no longer, exclaiming, “Hippocleides! You have danced away your bride!” Hippocleides replied, “What does Hippocleides care?” which did nothing to change Cleisthenes’ estimate of his character. Much learned effort has gone into attempts to identify the dances that Hippocleides performed. The Spartan jig may have been something like the Gymnopaideia, which Spartan boys and men performed naked, in which case Hippocleides stripped to dance it. As for the Athenian dance that came next, it may have been the kordax, the dance associated with Old Comedy in Athens, with high kicks, somersaults, and twists. Hippocleides’ retort to Cleisthenes, “What does Hippocleides care?” became a proverb, meaning “So what?”, and the general verdict of Greece was that Hippocleides was a foolish young man whose drunken dance cost him a good marriage, although he was undoubtedly admired for his dedication to the dance. THE FOLK FESTIVALS HONORING VICTORIOUS ATHLETES. Greek athletes who won victories in the great athletic contests of Greece—the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, or Isthmian Games—received only wreaths to wear on their heads as prizes, but when they returned home, they could expect a great deal more. Sometimes a section of the circuit wall was temporarily demolished to allow them to enter the city without having to go through the city gates. They might receive meals at public expense in the town hall for the rest of their lives, which was a great honor. If they themselves were wellto-do or came from a prominent family, they could commission a poet to produce a victory ode. It could be a lucrative commission, particularly if the victors belonged to one of the great ruling families in Greek Sicily. The sound and spectacle of a public performance by a great poet is something that a modern reader of classical literature can capture only by relying on his imagination, for the music that accompanied it is largely lost and early Greek authors took dance for granted and only rarely mentioned it. Sometimes a note in passing by an ancient writer allows modern readers to conjure up a picture of 62

what the spectacle must have been like in these folk festivals where the citizens of the victorious athlete’s hometown gathered to celebrate his victory. Famous poets such as Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides appeared in theaters, magnificently costumed, playing a kithara, the ancestor of the guitar though it is usually translated as “lyre,” and surrounded by dancers. The opening lines of the victory ode which Pindar wrote for Hieron of Aetna in Sicily, whose chariot was victorious in the chariot-race in the Pythian Games held at Delphi, gives an example of a typical poetic opening: O lyre of gold, Apollo’s prized possession, shared by the Muses with their violet crowns, you the dancers heed as they start the revelry; your notes direct the singers when to lead the dance whenever the quivering strings give forth the first notes of the prelude.

With these words, Pindar cued the dancers to begin as he swept his hand over the strings of his kithara and produced the opening notes of his ode. For the fee that a poet charged for a victory ode—in Pindar’s case they were high—the poet not only wrote the poetry, he also choreographed the dance, trained the dancers, and wrote the music. Like all such poetry, it was written for a special occasion, to be presented before a specific audience. Pindar’s victory ode for Hiero—called his First Pythian—was performed before a large, patriotic audience in Hiero’s hometown of Aetna, and then performed again on other occasions, as long as the citizens of Aetna were willing to listen to praise of Hiero. SOURCES

J. B. Carter, “Masks and Poetry in Early Sparta,” in Early Greek Cult Practice. Eds. Robin Hägg, Nanno Marinatos, and G. C. Nordquist (Stockholm, Sweden: Svenska Institutet i Athens, 1988): 89–98. Paul Cartledge, “The Mirage of Lykourgan Sparta: Some Reflections,” in Spartan Reflections (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001): 169–184. Guy Dickens, “The Terracotta Masks,” in The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. Excavated and described by members of the British School at Athens, 1906–1910. Ed. R. M. Dawkins (London, England: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 1929): 163–186. Lillian B. Lawler, The Dance in Ancient Greece (London, England: Adam and Charles Black, 1964): 116–126. William H. Race, Pindar (Boston: Twayne, 1986). Albert Schachter, “Pindar,” in Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition. Ed. Graham Speake (London, England: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000): 1322–1323.

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D ANCE

IN THE

T HEATER

DIONYSIAN FESTIVALS. In Athens, there were three days of tragedies and satyr plays, and one day of comedy produced at the great festivals of the City Dionysia in March and the Lenaean Festival in January. In addition there were the festivals of Rural Dionysia, held in honor of Dionysus outside Athens in the towns and villages of the countryside each December. The rural festival in Piraeus, the port town of Athens, was particularly famous. The difference was, however, that whereas new plays were presented at the festivals in Athens, the Rural Dionysia festivals generally had older more familiar plays. Tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays each had its own dances. The main dance associated with tragedy was the emmeleia, a term which covered a number of dance patterns and postures. The dance of the satyr plays was the sikinnis, performed by men costumed as satyrs, with pointed ears, snub noses and the tails of goats or horses. The dance of comedy was the kordax, noted for its obscene gestures. The kordax was acceptable in the theater, but in everyday life no decent person danced it unless he was drunk. Evidence for these dances of the theater comes partly from careful study of the plays that have survived, from art and sculpture, and from references in literature, many of them scattered through writings belonging to the period of the Roman Empire, when the staple of the theater was the pantomime. TRAGEDY AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF AESCHYThe tragic poet Aeschylus was a great innovator in drama production in the first half of the fifth century B.C.E. He was one of the first playwrights to produce his own material. He was also the first playwright to use two speaking actors, and when Sophocles introduced a third actor, he followed suit. He may not have been the first to use painted scenery, but his scene painter was the first to experiment with perspective. Moreover he took great care to work out appropriate dances for the chorus in his tragedies. Other tragic poets, it seems, used professional choreographers. Aeschylus did his own choreography, and did it so well that he was remembered as the first choreographer to train his dancers in schemata—the poses, postures, and gestures appropriate to the words and music that they sang. Though seven tragedies of Aeschylus have survived and the words that his choruses sang can be studied, little about the melodies or the dances that accompanied the words is known. LUS.

THEORIES. Writing in the fourth century B.C.E., the philosopher, musical theorist, and an alumnus of Aristotle’s Lyceum Aristoxenus of Tarentum wrote that there were three important elements to choral lyric: poetry,

AESCHYLUS REINVENTS THE TRAGIC DANCE INTRODUCTION :

Athenaeus of Naucratis in Egypt, who lived at the end of the second century C.E., wrote a long, discursive work titled the Deipnosophistae or “Clever Men at Dinner.” It pretends to recreate the table talk of a banquet where twenty-four learned men discourse on all manner of subjects. Cooking is a favorite topic, but the conversation includes some discussion of dancing. In fact, Athenaeus is a major source for our knowledge of ancient dance, for his reading was vast and he could quote authors who are now only names. Here he comments on Aeschylus’ dance innovations in the production of tragedies in Athens of the early fifth century B.C.E. The mention of the Phrygians in the excerpt below refers to a tragedy of Aeschylus, now lost, which dealt with the myth of the Trojan War.

Aeschylus, too, besides inventing that magnificence and dignity of costume which the Hierophants and Torchbearers (of the Eleusinian Mysteries) emulate when they put on their vestments, also originated many dance-figures and assigned them to the members of his choruses. For Chameleon says that Aeschylus was the first to give poses to his choruses, employing no dance instructors, but working out for himself the figures of the dance, and in general taking upon himself the entire management of the piece. At any rate, it seems that he acted in his own plays. For Aristophanes, certainly (and among the comic poets one may find credible information about the tragedians) makes Aeschylus say of himself, “It was I who gave new dance designs to the choruses.” And again: “I know about his Phrygians, for I was in the audience when they came to help Priam ransom his son who was dead. They made many gestures and poses, this way and that way and the other. …” SOURCE :

Athenaeus, Deipnosophists. Vol. 1. Trans. Charles Burton Gulick (London, England: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1927): 93–95. Text modified by James Allan Evans.

song, and dancing. All three of these aspects shared a common rhythm, which meant that the meter a tragic poet used for the odes sung by the chorus should identify something about the dancing which accompanied the music and the poetry. For instance, if the poet used a marching rhythm for the entrance of the chorus into the orchestra of the theater, the chorus most likely marched in step; if he used a more lyrical measure, the

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THE IMPORTANCE OF GESTURE INTRODUCTION :

Quintilian was a famous teacher of oratory in Rome of the first century C.E. who was appointed to a salaried professorship of rhetoric by the emperor Vespasian (69–79 C.E.). After he retired, he wrote a book on oratory, the Institutio Oratoria, which covered everything an orator should know, and among the topics was the proper use of gestures. Quintilian was discussing oratory, not dancing in the theater, but nonetheless the gestures that an orator used to communicate his meaning were, for the most part, the same gestures that a dancer in the theater might use, and hence Quintilian is an important witness to the science of kheironomia. The following quotation is an excerpt from a much longer passage on useful gestures for the orator.

The following short gestures are also employed: the hand may be slightly hollowed as it is when persons are making a vow, and then moved slightly to and fro, the shoulders swaying gently in unison: this is adapted to passages where we speak with restraint and almost with timidity. Wonder is best expressed as follows: the hand turns slightly upwards and the fingers are brought in to the palm, one after the other, beginning with the little finger; the hand is then opened and turned round by a reversal of this motion. There are various methods of expressing interrogation, but as a rule, we do so by a turn of the hand, the arrangement of the fingers being indifferent. If the tip of the first finger touches the middle of the right-hand edge of the thumbnail, the other fingers being relaxed, we shall have a elegant gesture well suited to express approval, to state facts and to mark off the points we are making. There is another similar gesture with three fingers folded which the Greeks nowadays use a great deal, now with the right hand and now with the left, to round off their arguments point by point. A rather gentle movement of the hand expresses a promise or assent, a swifter movement urges action and sometimes expresses commendation. There is also the well-known gesture if rapidly opening and closing the hand to press home what we are saying, but it is a common gesture rather than an artistic one. SOURCE : Quintilian, “Delivery Gesture and Dress,” in The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian. Vol. IV. Trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1922): 297–299.

chorus danced into the theater. There were tragedies, too, where the chorus was already in the theater when the action began, and in that case, presumably the fifteen choristers filed into the orchestra and took their positions quietly before the play started. By examining the meter of the poetry, scholars can make an educated guess as to whether the choreography was lively or sedate. If a kommos (“dirge”) was sung, the chorus presumably made gestures of mourning, for the literal meaning of the word kommos is “beating,” as in “beating the breast,” which was a gesture of grief. By and large, however, the schemata, the poses of the dancers and the figures of the dance, is unknown. One aspect of dance that only survived in Greek art work was called the kheironomia— the art of gesture with the hands. Numerous vases and sculptures show dancers making common gestures such as the hand bent upwards—the hand is outstretched and the fingers are bent backwards, away from the palm. The hand itself could be held in many positions such as the palm down, palm turned towards the dancer’s body, and hand before the dancer’s face, and each position signified a different meaning. The Greeks and Romans both considered gesture a significant instrument of communication, one that orators, for instance, had to master, and hence it was also an important element of dance. Telestes, a dancer whom Aeschylus used, was so great a master of communicating with his arms and hands that he could dance the whole of Aeschylus’ tragedy, Seven Against Thebes, making the meaning clear by his gestures and dance figures. Kheironomia can still be seen in Oriental dances, such as the ritual dances of Cambodia, but overall it has fallen out of the Western dance tradition. THE CHORUS BEFORE AESCHYLUS. Aeschylus put tragic dance on a new footing by inventing new schemata (“choreography”) for the dance company, including the twists, kicks, and other poses that the dancers performed, but dance was an important part of tragedy before the fifth century B.C.E. as well. The dithyramb from which tragedy developed had choruses of fifty choristers, and presumably the tragedy with which Thespis won first prize at the City Dionysia of 534 B.C.E. had a chorus of that number. At some point the chorus was reduced to fifteen choristers; it was most likely reduced to twelve first and then later increased by three, although the reasons for this are unknown. Early poets such as Thespis, Pratinas, Cratinus, and Phrynichus were all dancing instructors as well as tragedians. By the first decades of the fifth century B.C.E. there was already a small corps of trained dancers available for theater productions—semiprofessionals, but some of them immensely talented. There were both artistic and economic reasons for re-

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ducing the size of the tragic chorus. The choregus—the citizen who paid the costs of production—must have preferred a chorus of fifteen to one of fifty because it was less expensive, and the tragic poet preferred it because fifteen well-trained dancers could perform the complicated choreography which he arranged better than amateurs, no matter how talented they were. Before Aeschylus, dance appeared relatively undisciplined. This can be seen in Aristophanes’ comedy, the Wasps, where the old man Philocleon gets drunk and performs the old dances of Thespis and Phrynichus. They are dances with leaps and whirls and high kicks. This is nothing prim and proper about them. Students of ancient dance have found this evidence troubling, for it seems to indicate that early tragedy, as it developed from the dithyramb, was accompanied by dances that were much less orderly and decorous than they were after Aeschylus’ reforms. Scholars typically have not valued the evidence from Aristophanes’ work, for he was a writer of comedies and therefore may have exaggerated the old-fashioned dances of early tragedy for comic effect. Yet there would be no point to Aristophanes’ joke if the early tragedies before Aeschylus were not remembered for their lively dances, which were perhaps amateurish but very vigorous. Due to this supposition, polished, well-choreographed dances of Greek tragedy in the classical period do not precede Aeschylus. THE DANCE OF COMEDY. Comedy and satyr plays both have their origins in the revels that were danced and sung in honor of the Dionysus, the god of wine. The word “comedy” must be connected with the Greek word komos, meaning a “band of merry-makers”—revelers who sang and jested as they danced through the streets. Where and how comedy took form as a theatrical presentation is much disputed, but in Athens it became an official part of the City Dionysia in 486 B.C.E. and it soon developed its own conventions. What is known about “Old Comedy” is based largely on nine of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes which were produced during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.). His last two plays, produced after the war was over, belong to “Middle Comedy”—a term which was coined in the Hellenistic period after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. to label the transition between “Old Comedy” and the situation comedies of the “New Comedy,” where the chorus provided interludes of dance and song between the acts, but played no role in the play itself. The size of the chorus grew smaller; at a performance in Delphi in 276 B.C.E. it was made up of just seven choristers, and a century later, a comedy performed on the island of Delos had only four.

THE STRUCTURE OF OLD COMEDY. “Old Comedy” plays had a six-part structure. First there was the prologue where the protagonist outlined the plot, usually centered around an extravagant and impractical solution to some current problem. Next came the parodos, or entry of a chorus of 24 imaginatively costumed dancers. Then came the agon, the contest or debate, where the protagonist defended his brilliant solution against objections from opponents and always won. Then came the parabasis (“digression”) where the chorus addressed the audience directly with song and dance, and vented the spleen of the comic poet against various prominent citizens. The song and dance of the parabasis contained one long sentence called the pnigos (“choker”) because it was to be uttered all in one breath, and the actors whose breath control allowed them to perform it perfectly could expect numerous applauses. A number of farcical scenes followed, separated by song and dance performed by the chorus. Finally the merry exodus, a scene of rejoicing usually leading up to a banquet or wedding, was staged. The chorus exited dancing. A good example of the use of dance in comedy can be seen in the final scene of Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae (The Women in the Assembly). Praxagora, the leader of a coup of women who promulgate a new constitution, witnesses her husband Blepyrus entering with a group of dancing girls, on his way to a banquet to celebrate the new constitution. The chorus leader orders the dancing girls to dance, and Blepyrus to lead off with a fine old Cretan-style jig, and chorus, dancing girls, and Blepyrus all exit to the beat of the music. THE KORDAX. In the parabasis of Aristophanes’ Clouds, produced in 423 B.C.E., the leader of the chorus told the audience that this was a modest play: there would be no kordax dance in it. The label kordax did not refer to all the dances in comedy, but to a particular dance, which was performed solo—at least in the sense that the dancers performed it independently, not as members of a chorus line coordinating their movements. It was a suggestive dance, like the “bumps” and “grinds” of dancers in modern-day burlesque theater. The kordax-dancer rotated his buttocks and abdomen, sometimes bending forward at the hips. The dancer might also hop, as if his feet were tied together, or leap into the air, or simply wiggle suggestively. Leaps and whirls of all kinds were part of a kordax performance, and it was performed to the music of the aulos which must have had a timbre rather like the bagpipes. Proper people did not dance the kordax. The philosopher Plato thought it should be banned from the ideal state which he described in his Laws.

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THE SATYRS’ DANCES. The dance that was characteristic of the satyr play was the sikinnis—a dance which was sometimes used in comedy as well. The originator of the satyr play was a dramatist named Pratinas of Phlius, who presented plays in Athens at the start of the fifth century B.C.E. It was a lively dance, with much horseplay, rapid movements, and expressive gestures, many of them obscene. Two satyr plays have survived, including one by Euripides that includes a sikinnis. Euripides’ Cyclops is a burlesque of the tale of Odysseus in the cave of the Cyclops that is told in the Odyssey of Homer. In Cyclops, old Silenus comes on stage, and having introduced the play, summons the chorus of satyrs. He refers to their entrance as a sikinnis and so presumably they dance on stage. The satyrs have been captured by the Cyclops, Polyphemus, and made to tend his flocks, and when they enter, dancing, they drag on sheep and goats, though whether these animals are real or imaginary is impossible to judge. However, the chorus of satyrs in Cyclops only plays a secondary role, and the text gives little hint as to what the choreography was like. The role of Odysseus, however, has several solos accompanied by interpretative dance that gave splendid scope to the actor who played the role to display his talents. SOURCES

E. K. Borthwick, “The Dances of Philocleon and the Sons of Carcinus in Aristophanes’ Wasps,” Classical Quarterly 18 (1968): 44–51. J. F. Davidson, “The Circle and the Tragic Chorus,” Greece and Rome 33 (1986): 38–46. C. W. Dearden, The Stage of Aristophanes (London, England: Athlone Press, 1976). Eleanor Dickey, “Satyr Play,” in Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition. Ed. Graham Speake (London, England: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000): 1495–1497. B. Gredley, “Dance and Greek Drama,” in Themes in Drama. Vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981): 25–29. Richard Green and Eric Handley, Images of the Greek Theatre (London, England: British Museum Press; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). H. D. F. Kitto, “The Dance in Greek Tragedy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 75 (1955): 36–41. Lillian B. Lawler, The Dance of the Ancient Greek Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1964). Diana F. Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play (Meisenheim, Germany: Hain, 1980). Oliver Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (London, England: Methuen; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 66

D IONYSIAN D ANCE ECSTATIC DANCE. Dance and song were a part of every religious festival, but in some, dance was an instrument with which the dancer could achieve a closer communion with divinity by entering into a state of rapture. The violent whirls and leaps of the dance brought the dancer into a state of ecstasy. The goddess Cybele, known as the Great Mother, whose cult center was in Phrygia in western Asia Minor, was attended by eunuch priests called Corybantes, devotees of the goddess who castrated themselves with flint knives after dancing to the accompaniment of cymbals and castanets until they attained a state of utter rapture. Among the twelve Olympian gods and goddesses of Greece, the nearest counterpart of Cybele was Demeter, who presided over the fertility of the earth, and the dances performed in her honor were generally full of lively movements. In the ancient festival of the Thesmophoria, which the women of Athens held over a period of three days, one dance that was performed was the oklasma. During the oklasma a dancer crouched down, with her knees on the earth, and then swiftly leaped up as high as she could from her crouching position, trying to reach the perfect image of the god to achieve rapture. It was the god of wine, Dionysus, who presided over the ecstatic dances that are best known. Dionysus was accompanied by a thiasos—a company that parades through the streets singing and dancing—and the thiasos of Dionysus was made up of maenads (frenzied women) and satyrs. Dionysus and his thiasos were frequent subjects for Athenian vase painters working in the black-figure and red-figure techniques. DEFINING THE MAENADS. The maenads were female devotees of Dionysus who went up into the mountains and there engaged in a frenzied, ecstatic dance in honor of the god of wine. Sometimes they caught wild animals and tore them limb from limb with their bare hands and ate the animals’ raw flesh. The myth of Dionysus relates that he was born in Thebes, the chief city in Boeotia, the region of Greece northwest of the city-state of Athens. His father was Zeus and his mother was Semele, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes, who was destroyed by Hera’s jealous hatred. Once Dionysus was fully grown, he made a campaign into India that lasted two years and then returned in triumph to introduce his new religion. For historians of religion, there is much about the Dionysiac cult that is hard to understand. Dionysus was a latecomer to Greek religion, as the myths about him seem to suggest, for he was not originally one of the Twelve Olympian Gods, and when he was added to the list, he displaced Hestia, the goddess of the hearth.

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He was worshipped in the Mycenaean period, for his name appears on the Linear B tablets found in the socalled “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos, which was destroyed in 1200 B.C.E. Apparently dance was an important part of his cult. On Keos a prehistoric temple has been found, which was erected in the fifteenth century B.C.E., and continued in use for a thousand years. In it were the remains of twenty terracotta statues, all of them women, shown with their breasts bared and their hands resting on their hips, resembling Dionysian dancers. An inscription on a votive offering found in the excavation and dating to early classical times identifies Dionysus as the lord of this sanctuary. The terracotta dancers indicate that dance was an important part of the rites practiced in reverence to Dionysus, and scholars have suggested that these dancers were also priestesses of the cult of Dionysus. MAENADS IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD. Diodorus of Sicily, a Greek historian who wrote in the mid-first century B.C.E., noted that in Boeotia and other parts of Greece, as well as in Thrace, which stretched into modern Bulgaria and Romania, sacrifices were held every second year in Dionysus’ honor to commemorate his triumphal return from India. Consequently, in many Greek cities, every other year, bands of women gathered for rites that honored Dionysus. Diodorus called these bands of women baccheia and the rites they performed orgia (“frenzied dances”). These women of the baccheia included not only unmarried girls but also respected married women. The baccheia danced to the music of the tambourine and the reed pipe known as the aulos, and as they danced they flung their heads back and raised the cry “euhoi” that sounded like “ev-hi.” Evidence from literature and from temple inscriptions show that biennial festivals of this sort took place in a number of cities, such as Delphi, Thebes—which claimed to be Dionysus’ birthplace—Rhodes, and Pergamum, as well as Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. As part of the festival, which always took place in midwinter, women would climb a nearby mountain and there, during the night, they would dance an oreibasia—a dance or procession in the mountains. The rite involved real hardship and sometimes danger. Plutarch, a writer in the second century C.E., reported that at Delphi, for instance, a group of women were cut off by a snowstorm at the top of Mt. Parnassus and a rescue party had to be sent out to bring them down the slopes. THE EVIDENCE OF EURIPIDES’ BACCHAE. The most graphic description that exists of the maenads comes from Euripides’ play, the Bacchae or the Bacchants, as the title is sometimes translated. It was written at the end of Euripides’ life, while he spent the years 408–406 B.C.E.

Roman relief of maenads or bacchantes dancing around a votive altar, from the 3rd century C.E. THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEO NAZIONALE TERME ROME/DAGLI ORTI.

in Macedon, and the play was not produced in Athens until after his death. The plot tells how Dionysus returned to his birthplace, Thebes, and there his new religion encountered resistance as it did at a number of places in Greece. Dionysus brought with him a thiasos of maenads from Phrygia in Asia Minor, who formed the chorus of the play, and they danced into the theater orchestra to the music of the aulos and the tambourine. The Dionysiac rite is taking hold of the city. Pentheus, king of Thebes, who had been away, arrives back home to find maenads dancing on Mt. Cithaeron, and in the middle of each group, a wine bowl added to the general intoxication. Pentheus’ own mother Agavé has joined the maenads. Pentheus vows to put an end to this madness. A herdsman arrives to describe the wild dance of the maenads that he and his fellow herdsmen have witnessed on the slopes of Mt. Cithaeron. Pentheus is persuaded by a stranger who is the god Dionysus in disguise to go to see the maenads himself, and when the maenads discover him, they tear him to pieces. In the final scene, Pentheus’ mother Agavé enters, frenzied and blood-stained, bearing Pentheus’ head, which she imagines is a lion’s cub. She has killed her own son in her madness, and as her mind clears, she is overcome with horror. Dionysus has brought tragedy on the royal house of Thebes.

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THE ECSTASY OF THE MAENADS INTRODUCTION :

According to Diodorus of Sicily, an historian who wrote a Universal History in Greek in the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), the god Dionysus made an expedition to India and after two years, he returned with a great deal of booty, and he was, so the story goes, the first Greek to celebrate a triumph seated on an elephant. To commemorate his return, the Greeks who lived in the region of Boeotia, where Dionysus was born, and other Greeks as well, made sacrifices to him every second year, and in some of the Greek cities, both married and unmarried women would go up into the mountainsides and act the role of maenads, women who were Dionysus’ companions. We see them in Greek art, dancing rapturous dances and carrying the thyrsos: a wand wreathed with ivy and vine-leaves and with a pine cone on top. The classic description of the madness of the maenads is found in Euripides’ Bacchae, which tells the myth of how Dionysus returned to Thebes in Boeotia where he was born and the mother of the king Pentheus and her sisters joined his throng of maenads. Pentheus, however, resisted the new cult, and when a herdsman pasturing his cattle on the mountainside brought him a report of how the maenads, including his own mother, Agavé, were dancing madly on Mt. Cithaeron, he determined to go and see them himself. They discover him and tear him apart, and in the final scene, Agavé comes on stage bearing the bloody head of her son whom she and her sisters, Autonoe and Ino, had torn apart, thinking he was a lion’s cub. The excerpt quoted below is from the speech of the messenger who reports the madness of the maenads to Pentheus.

Our herds of pasturing cattle had just begun to ascend the steep to the ridge, at the hour when the sun shoots forth his rays to warm the earth. I saw three bands of women dancers; Autonoe was leader of the first choir, your mother Agavé of the second, and Ino of the third. They all lay in the sleep of exhaustion. Some were reclining with their backs against branches of fir, others had flung themselves at random on the ground on leaves of oak. …

THE DANCE OF THE MAENADS IN HISTORICAL TIMES. Euripides’ Bacchae has haunted the study of the maenads’ dance, and the speech of the herdsman that describes it is a classic account. It appears, however, that in most places where the biennial festival of Dionysus was celebrated, the rites of the maenads were not spontaneous explosions of dancing. They cannot be compared with the outbursts of dancing madness that affected communities in Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, when people danced until they dropped. Nor was it the same as the tarantella, the 68

Then your mother rose up in the midst of the bacchants and called upon them to bestir their limbs from sleep when she heard the lowing of the horned cattle. The women then cast the heavy sleep from their eyes and sprang upright, a sight of wondrous comeliness. There were young women and old women and maids yet unmarried. First they let their hair fly loose about their shoulders and tucked up their fawnskins, those whose fastenings had become unloosed, and girt the speckled skins about them with serpents that licked their cheek. Others held gazelles in their arms, or the untamed whelps of wolves, feeding them with white milk. These were young mothers who had left their infants behind and still had their breasts swollen with milk. Then they put on ivy wreaths and crowns of oak and flowering morning glory. One took her thyrsus and struck it against a rock, and there sprang from it a liquid stream of water. Another struck her thyrsus upon the ground and the god sent up a fountain of wine for her. Those that had a desire for snowy milk scraped the earth with the tips of their fingers, and had rich store of milk. From the wands of ivy there dripped sweet streams of honey. If you had been there to see, you would have approached with prayers the god whom you now revile. … [The herdsman then told how he and his comrades tried to capture the maenads, and then found themselves in danger.] We fled and escaped a rending at the bacchants’ hands. But, with naked, unarmed, hands, the women attacked the heifers that were grazing on the grass. You could see one holding wide the legs of a well-fed calf which bellowed and bellowed. Others rent heifers apart. You could see the ribs and cloven hooves tossed here and there, and pieces smeared with gore hanging from the firs, dripping blood. SOURCE :

Euripides, The Bacchants, in Ten Plays by Euripides. Trans. Moses Hadas and John McLean (New York: Bantam Books, 1981): 296–297.

whirling dance for couples from south Italy, danced to six/eight time, which was thought to be a cure for a nervous disorder known as tarantism. Rather the orgia seem to have been carefully regulated, and they were restricted to certain groups. The women who danced in the orgia played the role of maenads briefly and then returned to their everyday existence, which for many of them must have been humdrum. The maenads’ dance in Euripides’ Bacchae, culminating in the tearing apart of a victim, is mad and primitive, and Dionysus is a ruthless god, but to judge from the number of repre-

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sentations in Greek art it was a dance that haunted the Greek imagination. SOURCES

J. Bremmer, “Greek Maenadism Reconsidered,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigrafik 55 (1984): 267–286. E. R. Dodds, “Appendix I: Maenadism,” in The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951): 270–282. Lillian B. Lawler, “The Ancient Greek Dance: The Maenads,” American Journal of Archaeology 31 (1927): 91–92. —, “The Maenads,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 6 (1927): 96–100. S. McNally, “The Maenad in Early Greek Art,” Arethusa 11 (1978): 101–135.

P ROFESSIONAL D ANCERS DEFINING PROFESSIONALS. The dividing line between the amateur and the professional dancer in ancient Greek society is not an easy one to draw. The first tragedian, Thespis, was not only a dancer but he also taught dance, and so did all the early tragic poets. Sophocles received instruction from Lamprus, a famous teacher of dance and music who was also well-known for his abstention from wine, which was unusual among the practitioners of mousike—music, dance, and poetry. Even the tragic poet Aeschylus, who did his own choreography, used the services of a dancing master. Yet even though choristers and dancing masters might be paid, they were considered non-professional. The fifty men who sang and danced the dithyrambs in Athens did not dance full-time, meaning they had other occupations that represented their primary work and so were not considered professional dancers. Dancers who entertained at banquets fell into a very different social category. Professional dancers and musicians were available for hire, and typically had a low social status. By the late sixth century B.C.E., contemporary literature tells of professional auletrides (“flutegirls”), except that their instrument was not the demure flute but a reed instrument which was the ancestor of the oboe. There were training schools for auletrides, but it was not their skill with the aulos that was their greatest attraction to audiences. They were also courtesans and prostitutes; by the fourth century B.C.E., the word auletris was almost a synonym for a cheap prostitute. Hiring dancers for entertainment at the lavish banquets given by wealthy hosts was a common occurrence in the GrecoRoman world. The Roman writer Pliny the Younger, who lived under the emperors Domitian (r. 81–96 C.E.) and Trajan (r. 98–117 C.E.), wrote to a friend, chiding

him for failing to come to a banquet that Pliny had given, and listing the delights he had missed, among them dancing girls from Cadiz in Spain. Xenophon, Socrates’ disciple, described a symposium that Socrates attended where the entertainment was provided by a troupe of dancers and musicians headed by a Syracusan dancingmaster who hired them out. Both the musicians and dancers described in the accounts of Pliny and Xenophon were most likely slaves. Among the entertainments that they offered was a sword dance performed by a female acrobat, and a mime telling the myth of Dionysus and Ariadne, danced by a girl and a handsome boy. Both of these dancers would not only perform for their dance master, but would also share his bed. The life of professional dancers was harsh and, except for a lucky few, they were at the bottom of the social scale. THE DIONYSIAC GUILDS. Sometime very early in the third century B.C.E., the actors, dancers, and musicians in Athens formed a synodos (“guild”). It may not have been the first such association, for there is some reason to think that the earliest actors’ guild was formed in Hellenistic Egypt, where it was imposed on the actors by the government. In any case, the Athenian guild was the first in mainland Greece, and it was soon followed by the Isthmian guild centered in Corinth, and by others, until there were six in all, including one for the Greek cities in southern Italy and Sicily. They engaged in an astonishing range of activities: they exchanged gifts and honors with cities and kings, they secured tax-exemptions and front row seats in the theater for their members, and organized festivals. Travel in the Hellenistic world was insecure, for the numerous poor had turned to robbery, and the roads were infested with highwaymen and the sea-lanes with pirates. Hence the guilds negotiated the right to asylia—the right of safe passage from city to city. The rights of the Athenian guild were recognized officially after 274 B.C.E. by the Amphictionic League, an inter-state organization based at Delphi which was the association closest to a “United Nations” that Hellenistic Greece knew. The Dionysiac troupes of professional artists moved from place to place, and even small towns built stone theaters. In addition to theaters, they built odeons—music halls with roofs so that a rainstorm need not interrupt a performance. Pericles built one in Athens during the fifth century B.C.E.; it was a square building with its roof supported by a forest of columns, but later odeons look like small theaters with roofs that must have been made of wood. Their interiors were too dark for productions of tragedy and comedy, but lamps could provide enough lighting for music and dance. The music hall at Pompeii in southern Italy,

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A DANCER ENTERTAINS AT A BANQUET IN ATHENS INTRODUCTION :

The Symposium by Xenophon describes a banquet attended by Socrates which took place just after the athletic festival of the Great Panathenaea of 421 B.C.E., which the wealthy Athenian Callias gave for his boyfriend and his father, to celebrate the boy’s victory in the wrestling match. Xenophon wrote his Symposium some forty years after it was held, and so it is not likely that it is a completely accurate account, though he claims to have attended the banquet himself. However, his account is of the entertainment offered by a troupe of musicians and dancers belonging to an unnamed master from Syracuse in Sicily. The performers were probably slaves, and their master probably a pornoboskos, or pimp, who hired out the performers for entertainment and sexual favors when his customers demanded it.

When the tables had been taken away and the guests had poured a libation and sung a hymn, a man from Syracuse came in to provide some merry-making. He had with him a girl skilled at playing the pipes, and a dancing girl, one of those who could perform amazing acrobatic stunts, as well as a very handsome boy who was a gifted player of the kithara and a brilliant dancer. The Syracusan master of the troupe made money showing them off. Now the girl pipe-player played a piece to the guests, and the boy played his kithara and everyone agreed that both had given a satisfactory performance

which was built just after 80 B.C.E., has the design of a small Roman theater, with a low, narrow stage, and the groove in the stage where the curtain wound down can still be seen. THE POPULARITY OF THE DIONYSIAC ARTISTS. The first century and a half after the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), the city of Rome had a large population of under-employed or unemployed, and Augustus knew how important it was to keep the mob happy. There is a story reported of Augustus which told that in 17 B.C.E., when some citizens were irritated at the strict morality laws which Augustus promulgated, he allowed the officials in charge of the festivals to spend three times the amount on them authorized by the treasury, and permitted the popular dancer Pylades to return to Rome, even though he earlier had been banished for sedition. He did chide Pylades for his noisy rivalry with the dancer Bathyllus, however, to which Pylades replied that if the people spent their time with dancers it was Augustus who gained. Pylades recognized the value 70

The conversation in the room then continues until Socrates points out that the dancing girl is ready to perform. Thereupon the girl who played the pipes began to play a tune, and a boy who attended the dancer handed her hoops up to the number of twelve. The dancer took them and as she danced, she threw them spinning round into the air, making note of just how high she had to throw them so as to catch them in regular rhythm. As Socrates watched the performance, he remarked that it showed that women were in no way inferior to men, and hence any of the banqueters who had wives should not hesitate to educate them. Socrates was asked immediately why, then, he did not practice what he preached on his own wife, Xanthippe, who was notoriously bad-tempered, and Socrates replied that horsemen practiced their skill on spirited horses, not on docile ones. Then the banqueters turned their attention back to the acrobatic dancer. Next there was a hoop brought in and set in the middle of a circle of upright swords. Then the dancer turned somersaults over these swords into the hoop and then out in the opposite direction. The onlookers were worried that she might suffer some mishap, but she carried out this performance, boldly, suffering no harm. SOURCE : Xenophon, Symposium. 2.1-11. Translated by James Allan Evans.

of dance in diverting the attention of the mob from the failings of the government. SOURCES

James N. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). Brigitte LeGuen, Les Associations de Technites dionysiaques à l’époque hellénistique. Vol. I, Corpus documentaire; Vol. 2, Synthèse (Études d’Archéologie Classique, XI–XII) (Nancy, France: Association pour la Diffusion de la Recherche sur l’Antiquité, 2001). G. M. Sifakis, “Organization of Festivals and the Dionysiac Guilds,” Classical Quarterly 15 (1965): 206–214.

D ANCE

R OME

THE INFLUENCE OF ETRURIA. The city of Rome in 364 B.C.E. was suffering from a plague. Believing the plague to be the result of the anger of the gods, the Ro-

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Wall painting from a tomb at Ruvo di Puglia, Italy, showing a funeral dance.

mans brought in Etruscan dancers in an effort to appease the gods and gain some relief from the plague’s devastation. The Etruscans danced to the music of the aulos, the precursor to the oboe, without any songs or gestures, but their graceful movements entranced the Romans, who began to imitate them. There is much about the Etruscans which is still a mystery—the riddle of their language has not yet been solved—but in the ancient world, they were known for their love of luxury, to which the paintings found in their tombs of the magnificence of their festivals and banquets can attest. In one tomb, the Tomba dei Cacciatori (Tomb of the Huntsmen), men dance in the open air, most of them nude except for a loincloth. They are shown separated from each other by trees or shrubs, dancing wildly to the music of the double-aulos. In another tomb, the Tomba delle leonesse (Tomb of the Lionesses), a naked man is shown dancing opposite a scantily-clad woman. On opposite walls of the Tomba del Triclinio (Tomb of the Dining Couch), there are two groups of five dancers each, alternating in gender. In one corner, a musician plays the double-aulos, and in the other, a man plays the lyre. Another tomb shows a man apparently dancing in armor to the music of the aulos. Like the Greeks, the Etruscans knew the pyrrhike (“war dance”) or something like it. ROMAN ATTITUDES TOWARDS DANCE. Roman character had a strong ascetic streak. The Etruscans may have introduced Romans to the dance, but it retained the reputation of a foreign import for years after. Plato may have said that a man who did not know how to dance was uneducated, but Plato was a Greek, and his Roman contemporaries would have thought the senti-

ment ridiculous. The art of the dance did eventually come to Rome along with the rest of Greek culture, but for the Romans, dancing always remained entertainment. It was never part of a Roman’s formal education. By the end of the third century B.C.E., upper-class Romans did start to send their children to dancing-masters for lessons, and in the first half of the second century B.C.E., while Greece itself was falling under Roman domination, Greek dancers, most of them probably brought to Rome as slaves and then freed, set up dancing-schools. From the Roman perspective, the creation of dancing schools gave dance a status far beyond that of mere entertainment, and its possibilities for the corruption of character led to a backlash against this art form. In the middle of the second century B.C.E., Scipio Aemilianus, a Roman aristocrat who generally admired Greek culture, moved to close the schools down, but his success was short-term at best. Yet Scipio’s view of dance persisted in Roman culture into the first century B.C.E.: it was permissible for Romans to know how to dance, but knowing how to dance expertly was a symptom of depravity. NATIVE DANCES OF ROME. Nonetheless there were dances native to early Rome. One called the bellicrepa was supposedly instituted by Rome’s founder, Romulus, and was a dance in armor performed by warriors drawn up in battle ranks. The cult of the god Mars Ultor (“Avenger”) involved dances by armed men, and on a number of surviving medals and gems, as well as one bronze statuette, there are representations of Mars dancing. There were also ancient priestly brotherhoods with

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DEATH OF A ROMAN IMPRESARIO INTRODUCTION :

Excavations which took place under St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican in the 1950s have turned up an ancient cemetery which was once on the Vatican hill before the emperor Constantine built a church there over the tomb of St. Peter. Numerous mausoleums, burial urns and inscriptions marking the graves of the dead have been found there, among them the one quoted below. Aurelius Nemesius was evidently the master of a troupe of pantomime dancers. The date of the inscription is uncertain but sometime in the third century C.E. is likely.

To Aurelius Nemesius, spouse most dear and well-deserving, who lived 53 years 9 months 11 days, who won the highest praise for his art served as master of chorus, dance and pantomime. To him his wife Aurelia Eutychiane has dedicated and erected [this stone]. SOURCE :

“The Dancing School,” detail of red-figure vase, 5th-century B.C.E., Greece. Teacher is playing the double-aulos; a kithara hangs on the wall in the background. THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEO

“Tombstone of an Impressario,” in The Empire. Vol. 2 of Roman Civilization: Selected Readings. Ed. Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990): 145.

PROVINCIALE SIGISMONDO/CASTROMEDIANO LECCE/DAGLI ORTI.

ritual dancers. The best-known are the Salians, priests of Mars Gradivus (“Marches Forth to War”) who, according to tradition, were established by Romulus’ successor as king of Rome, Numa. They wore helmets and breastplates over embroidered tunics, and they carried swords and the sacred shields of Mars. To the music of trumpets they paraded through the city of Rome, making stops at places hallowed by religion, and there performing the Salian dance. They shuffled from left to right, then from right to left, and all the while they beat the earth with their feet and made leaps into the air as they beat their shields. The Roman historian Livy mentions another ancient dance performed to propitiate Juno in 207 B.C.E., during the long and difficult Second Carthaginian War. Twenty-seven young girls made their way to the forum while singing a hymn, and there they took hold of a rope and danced with it through the streets on their way to the temple of Juno. Ancient rope dances were also found in Greece; a fragment of a Mycenaean fresco shows men wearing donkey-headed masks in procession carrying a rope. INTRODUCTION OF PANTOMIME. The historian Zosimus, who wrote in Greek in the reign of the em72

peror Theodosius II (408–450 C.E.) on the decline of Rome from the time of the first emperor Augustus (r. 27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.) to his own day, has little to say about Augustus, but he does note an important development in dance that occurred during Augustus’ reign. In those days the pantomime dance was introduced, which did not exist earlier. Pylades and Bathyllus were the first to introduce it, though there are other reasons too for the many evils that have survived up to the present day.

Zosimus was still a pagan writing at a time when the pagan religion had become a small minority in a largely Christian empire, but he reflected the old-fashioned belief that the decline of Rome was caused by moral decay, and dancing was a symptom of decay. The old Roman attitude towards dance died hard. Pliny the Younger, a writer of elegant letters in the later first century C.E., commented in one of his letters on the death of an eighty-year old woman, Ummidia Quadratilla, who owned a troupe of pantomime dancers, and enjoyed their performances more than was proper for a woman of her social station. She did not allow her grandson to see them—to that extent she remained faithful to the old

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LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA ARGUES THE VIRTUES OF THE PANTOMIME DANCE INTRODUCTION :

Lucian of Samosata in Syria who lived in the second century C.E. wrote essays and dialogues often from the viewpoint of a satirist, but his dialogue on dancing is a serious vindication of the pantomime. He imagines that a fan of pantomimes is talking with a Cynic philosopher who scoffs at them, but is eventually won over. The dialogue was probably written in Antioch in the years 162–165 C.E. when the emperor Lucius Verus, until his death in 168 the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, and an aficonado of pantomimes, was in Antioch ostensibly leading a campaign but actually enjoying the delights of the city. In this passage, Lucian compares the pantomime to contemporary productions of tragedy.

As far as tragedy is concerned, let us form our first opinion of its character from its outward appearance. What a repulsive and at the same time frightful spectacle is a man tricked out to disproportionate stature, mounted upon high clogs, wearing a mask that reaches up above his head, with a mouth that is set in a vast yawn as if he meant to swallow up the spectators! I forebear to speak

Roman view that dance corrupted the youth. Since Quadratilla was enormously wealthy, she could afford to have her pantomime troupe put on private performances for her own entertainment, but by that time Rome had permanent theaters built of stone—the first of them opened in 55 B.C.E., long after many towns in Italy had them— and it was pantomime dance rather than tragedy and comedy that filled them. ANTECEDENTS OF PANTOMIME. Before pantomime was invented, there was mime. In Greece, a mime was a short dramatic skit that could be sung and danced on stage. The banquet which Socrates attended after the Great Panathenaic festival of 421 B.C.E., which Xenophon described in his Symposium, was entertained by a mime in which two dancers performed the story of Dionysus and Ariadne. Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, helped Theseus escape the Minotaur and accompanied him on his homeward voyage as far as the island of Naxos where he deserted her, and Dionysus arrived to make her his bride. This mime seems to have had at least some of the features of the later pantomime. The subject was a tale from mythology, which was the stock-in-trade of pantomime. Mimes came to Rome in the third century B.C.E., where they became very popular, and they covered a wide range of subjects. Women

of pads for the breasts and pads for the paunch to make himself look obese so that his body will not be too slender in proportion to his height. Then, inside the costume is the actor himself shouting his lines, bending forwards and backwards, sometimes even singing the poetry, and—this is really shameful— making a song out of his misfortunes. [Lucian gives some examples of ridiculous tragic performances, and then contrasts them with pantomime.] On the other hand, there is no need for me to say that the dancer is seemly and becoming, for it is clear to everyone who is not blind. The mask itself is very attractive and suitable to the theme of the dramatic presentation. Its mouth is not wide open like the masks of tragedy and comedy, but closed, for the pantomime artist has many actors to take the speaking parts for him. In the past, to be sure, the pantomime artists did both sing and dance. But when their panting as they danced interfered with their singing, it seemed better that others should sing for them. SOURCE :

Lucian, “The Dance,” in Lucian. Vol. 5. Trans. A. M. Harmon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936): 239–243. Text modified by James Allan Evans.

regularly appeared in them as mimae (“mime actresses”) as well as men. One popular feature of the festival known as the Floralia (Flower Festival) was a mime in which mimae appeared naked. The masses loved mimes, and Roman emperors favored them. The emperor Domitian (r. 82–96 C.E.) catered to the bloodthirsty taste of the Roman public by ordering a genuine crucifixion inserted into a mime. Troupes of mime artists, some owned by impresarios who were mime performers themselves, toured the towns and cities of the empire, and played in the local theaters at festivals which well-to-do local citizens financed to advertise their public spirit. By the time of the late Roman Empire, it was hard to distinguish between mime and pantomime, and the Christian church frowned on both of them. In 22 B.C.E., however, two pantomine artists, Pylades and Bathyllus, invented the Roman pantomime, and whatever its antecedents, it was recognized as something new. DESCRIBING PANTOMIME. Pantomime created a new kind of dance performance by marrying three arts: song, music, and mime. Song and dance had been part of Roman theatrical productions ever since the first playwright, Livius Andronicus, produced plays in Rome. Livius Andronicus had lost his voice singing, and his audience allowed him to mime the songs while a boy sang

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THE PANTOMIME DANCER, PYLADES INTRODUCTION :

Macrobius, the author of the Saturnalia from which this excerpt is taken, lived at the end of the fourth century C.E., and we know little about him, except that he was not a native of Italy—he may have come from Africa. However he was deeply attached to the traditions and literature of ancient Rome at a time when they were under threat. In his Saturnalia, he imagines the leaders of Roman society of his day, many of them still pagans or at least sympathetic to paganism, gathered for the festival of the Saturnalia in December, and their conversation ranges over various antiquarian topics, such as dancing, indigestion, and drunkenness, among others. In the passage quoted below, Macrobius looks back four centuries before his own day to Pylades, the dancer who, along with Bathyllus, revolutionized the pantomime in the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.).

Having once begun to talk about the stage, I must not omit to mention Pylades, a famous actor in the time of Augustus, and his pupil Hylas, who proceeded under his instruction to become his equal and his rival. On the question of the respective merits of these two actors popular opinion was divided. Hylas one day was performing a dramatic dance the closing theme of which was The Great Agamemnon, and by his gestures he represented his subject as a man of mighty stature. This was more than Pylades could stand, and from his seat in the pit he shouted, “You are making him merely tall, not great.” The populace then made Pylades perform the same dance himself, and, when he came to the point at which he had

for him. In pantomime, song was provided by a choir, not a solo performer. The piercing notes of the doubleaulos had provided the music in the past, but Pylades added more instruments. Pantomime musicians soon developed into an orchestra, with musicians playing the aulos, the panpipes, cymbals, kithara (a kind of lyre), the lyre, and the trumpet. The conductor of the choir marked out the beat with a scabellum (“iron shoe”)—a clapper with a sound-box which could be worked with the foot. While the choir sang and the orchestra played, the pantomime artist mimed the plot of the drama. He used masks, but unlike the masks used by a tragic or comic actor which had a gaping mouth to allow the actor’s voice to project, the pantomime masks had closed mouths, for the pantomimus (“pantomime actor”) did not speak. Behind him stood an assistant who might be an actor with a speaking part, but he also gave the pan74

found fault with the other’s performance, he gave the representation of a man deep in thought, on the ground that nothing became a great commander better than to take thought for all. On another occasion, when Hylas was dancing Oedipus, Pylades criticized him for moving with more assurance than a blind man could have shown, by calling out: “You are using your eyes.” Once, when Pylades had come on to dance Hercules the Madman, some of the spectators thought that he was not keeping to action suited to the stage. Whereupon he took off his mask and turned on his critics with the words: “Fools, my dancing is intended to represent a madman.” It was in this play too, the Hercules Furens, that he shot arrows at the spectators. And when, in the course of playing the same part in a command performance at a banquet given by Augustus, he bent his bow and discharged arrows, the Emperor showed no annoyance at receiving the same treatment from the actor as had the populace of Rome. He was said to have introduced a new and elegant style of dancing in place of the clumsy fashion popular in the time of our ancestors, and when asked by Augustus what contribution he had made to the art of dancing, he replied, in the words of Homer, The sound of flutes and pipes, and the voices of men.—Iliad 10.13. SOURCE :

Macrobius, The Saturnalia. Trans. Percival Vaughan Davies (New York and London, England: Columbia University Press, 1969): 183–184.

tomimus help when needed—when the pantomimus switched roles, he changed masks, and a little assistance was sometimes necessary. The favorite plots of pantomimes were taken from mythology and the audiences were familiar with them. THE GREAT PLAYERS. Two great pantomimi were associated with the invention of the new pantomime: Pylades, an ex-slave of the emperor Augustus, and Bathyllus, an ex-slave of Augustus’ minister of public relations, Maecenas, who also supported a stable of writers. They may have cooperated in the introduction of this new entertainment around 22 B.C.E. The performances of Bathyllus were more joyous and light-hearted performances than those of Pylades, and his dances were livelier. Pylades created the tragic pantomime: a spectacle with choir, full orchestra, scenery, and even a second pantomimus when the plot demanded it. Both Pylades and

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Bathyllus had enthusiastic supporters who sometimes fought pitched battles in the streets. The emperor Augustus even banished Pylades from Rome for a period but relented and allowed him to return in 17 B.C.E. at a time when the emperor’s popularity was sagging. For the Roman masses, the recall of Pylades made up for other measures that were unpopular. THE STARS. The rivalry between the stars of the pantomime was intense. Pylades quarreled not only with Bathyllus, but also with a pupil of his, Hylas, whose talent on stage challenged his master’s. Pylades became wealthy. He owned his own troupe of pantomimes and in 2 B.C.E. he financed a festival himself, though by that time he was too old to perform, and sat in the audience. The emperor Nero, who had ambitions as a pantomime dancer himself, killed a pantomimus named Paris because he thought him a rival. The names of great pantomime dancers lived on, for later dancers assumed them, hoping to inherit some of their fame. There was a Paris in Nero’s reign, another in the reign of Domitian (81–96 C.E.) and another in the reign of Lucius Verus (161–169 C.E.), co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius. Five pantomime dancers with the name of Pylades can be traced, and six with the name of Apolaustus. By the time of the fourth century C.E., women were dancing in pantomimes. They had always played in mimes, and the distinction between the two was breaking down. In the sixth century C.E. the empress Theodora (527–548) was a pantomime dancer in her youth in Constantinople, which was by then a Christian city, and respectable women could not attend the theater. Yet once Theodora became empress, she did not forget her old friends in the theater. They were welcome as her guests in the imperial palace, and she arranged good marriages for their daughters. SOURCES

Mario Bonaria, “Dinastie di Pantomimi Latini,” Maia 11 (1959): 224–242. E. J. Jory, “Associations of Actors in Rome,” Hermes 98 (1970): 224–253. —, “The Literary Evidence for the Beginnings of Imperial Pantomime,” Bulletin of the Institute for Classical Studies 28 (1981): 147–161. O. Navarre, “Pantomimus,” in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines. Vol. IV, pt. 1. Eds. Charles Daremberg and Edmund Saglio (Graz, Germany: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1962–1963): 316–318. Charlotte Rouché, Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias in the Roman and Late Roman Periods (London, England: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1993).

Louis Séchan, “Saltatio,” in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines. Vol. IV, pt 1. Eds. Charles Daremberg and Edmund Saglio (Graz, Germany: Akademische Druck und Verlaganstalt, 1962–1963): 1049–1054.

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE in Dance A RION c. 650 B.C.E.–c. 590 B.C.E. Musician Choreographer THE FAME OF ARION. Arion was a master of mousike—dancing, poetry, and music—whose major period of activity was in the last half of the seventh century B.C.E. His fame has lived on, although none of his poetry has survived. He was a native of Methymna, a city-state on the island of Lesbos off the west coast of Turkey, but he spent much of his life at Corinth, where his patron was the tyrant Periander. During Periander’s forty-year reign, Corinth was a brilliant center of art and culture, and among the artists attracted to his court was Arion. ARION AND THE DITHYRAMB. The dithyramb was a choral hymn, accompanied with dance, that was sung in honor of the god of wine Dionysus, and exactly what the music and dance were like before Arion is unknown. Arion’s contribution was to give the dithyrambic choir a fresh organization. He was responsible for setting the number of choristers at fifty, and he himself composed dithyrambs and taught choirs in Corinth to perform them. Oxen were prizes given to the winning choirs, and the sacrifice of the prize oxen was part of the festival. From Corinth, the dithyramb was brought to Athens where its development is connected with an equally shadowy figure, Lasus of Hermione who was born around 548–547 B.C.E. Aristotle claimed that Greek tragic drama developed from the dithyramb. ARION AND THE DOLPHIN. Arion was almost more famous for his adventure with a dolphin than for his contributions to dance and music. The story goes that he took a sabbatical from Periander’s court and made a tour of the Greek cities in Italy and Sicily, where he made a great deal of money. When it was time to return to Greece, he chose a Corinthian vessel for the voyage because he trusted the Corinthians more than any others.

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The sailors knew that he had a good deal of money, however, and they plotted to take it and throw Arion overboard. Arion begged them to take his money but spare his life, and when he could not persuade them, he asked to be allowed to stand on the ship’s poop and sing one last song before he died. The sailors agreed, and Arion put on his costume that he wore when he performed and sang a song, and then leaped into the sea, where a dolphin picked him up and carried him on its back to land. Once he got there, he made his way, still in his costume, to Periander’s court. Later, the sailors arrived back in Corinth and reported to Periander that Arion was still safe and sound in Italy. They got an unpleasant shock when Periander confronted them with Arion. It was said that Arion was given a helping hand by the god Apollo, who was the god of the lyre and to whom dolphins were sacred. The Greeks believed that Apollo helped musicians in distress, and saw to it that Arion’s would-be murderers were punished. After this account of Arion, there is no further reference other than a mention of his death around 590 B.C.E. SOURCES

Lillian B. Lawler, The Dance of the Ancient Greek Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1964). Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. 2nd ed. Rev. by T. B. L. Webster (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1962). Emmet Robbins, “Arion,” in Der Neue Pauly: Enzylopädie der Antike. Eds. Hubert Cancik and Helmut Scheider (Weimar/Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler, 1996): 1083–1084. Richard A. S. Seaford, “Arion,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1996): 158.

B ATHYLLUS

AND

P YLADES

Mid-first century B.C.E.–Early first century C.E.

dancers were rivals, and their fans often clashed in street riots, so much so that Augustus banished Pylades from Rome for a short period. Both men had students, and one student of Pylades, Hylas, became his master’s rival. Bathyllus was famous for his comic pantomimes, whereas Pylades specialized in serious or tragic themes taken from Greek myth. THE NEW PANTOMIME. Information about Bathyllus and Pylades is sparse, but it is clear that they introduced into Italy a new kind of dance which combined features from the dance of the Old Comedy of classical Greece known as the kordax, the more dignified dance of tragedy known as the emmeleia, and the dance of the satyr play called the sikinnis. In fact, Pylades wrote a treatise on dancing. Bathyllus’ performances were more light-hearted. One ancient author compared his dance to the hyporchema, which was a lively choral song and dance, although the similarity was with the spirit and joyousness of the hyporchema as there were no choral dances in pantomime. Bathyllus is also supposed to have introduced the Memphian dance, which involved matching every muscle in the dancer’s body to the rhythm of the music, and dealt with serious themes. One ancient source mentioned performances of tragedy by Bathyllus and comedy by Pylades, and so they may have poached on each other’s territory occasionally. The date of death for either Bathyllus or Pylades is not known, though in 2 B.C.E., Pylades produced and financed a festival, but did not give a performance himself because he was too old. Bathyllus was probably older than Pylades and so he had ceased dancing about the same time or earlier, though some dancers had very long careers on the stage. SOURCES

E. J. Jory, “The Literary Evidence for the Beginnings of Imperial Patronage,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 28 (1981): 147–161. Sir William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1 (London, England: Walton and Maberly, 1849–1858): 474.

Pantomime dancers INTRODUCTION OF THE PANTOMIME. The introduction of the pantomime into Rome is credited to two dancers, Bathyllus and Pylades. Bathyllus was a native of Alexandria in Egypt and nothing is known about his early life. Somehow he became the slave of Maecenas, the minister of public relations for the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), the nephew and heir of Julius Caesar. Maecenas freed him and became his patron. Pylades who came from Cilicia in Asia Minor, was an ex-slave of the emperor Augustus himself. The two 76

M EMPHIUS Mid-second century C.E.–Early third century C.E. Pantomime artist BACKGROUND. Memphius—also known as Apolaustus—was a famous pantomime artist in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180 C.E.), and a great favorite of Lucius Verus, who was Marcus’ co-emperor for the first seven and a half years of his reign. When

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Verus returned from a campaign against the Parthians, he brought with him actors from Syria, one of whom was a slave, Agrippus, whom Verus and Marcus Aurelius freed. Thus Agrippus acquired the name “Lucius Aurelius” from his patrons, and in addition, he had two nicknames, his stage name “Apolaustus,” and “Memphius” (“pantomime from Memphis”). Memphis in Egypt may have been where he first won fame as a pantomime artist, or it might refer to the kind of dance that he made his specialty, for there was a Memphian dance where the dancer moved every muscle in his body as he performed. The first dancer to introduce the Memphian dance to Rome was Bathyllus from Alexandria in Egypt, who belonged to the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.). As for the name “Apolaustus,” it was a favorite nickname for pantomime artists; in fact there already was an ex-slave named “Lucius Aelius Aurelius Apolaustus” who belonged to the imperial household before Memphius arrived in Rome. Presumably he also was a pantomime artist, and had the misfortune of being put to death by the emperor Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, in 189 C.E. Memphius, however, was still alive in 199 C.E. when he is mentioned in an inscription. PANTOMIME OF PYTHAGORAS. One pantomime which won Memphius fame was his exposition of the philosophy of Pythagoras in dance. Pythagoras was known for his theory of numbers, but in the second century C.E. he was best known for his doctrine of transmigration of souls. Since Memphius followed in the tradition of Bathyllus, whose performances were more light-hearted than those of Pylades, presumably Memphius’ presentation of Pythagorean wisdom was not particularly serious. CAREER AFTER LUCIUS VERUS. As long as Lucius Verus was still alive, Memphius was probably part of the entourage of actors, pantomime artists, and jugglers that belonged to his household. But Marcus Aurelius had no taste for Verus’ pastimes, and Memphius must have forged a career of his own. He had his own grex—a troupe of musicians and supporting dancers—who performed in Rome and throughout Italy where every respectable town had its own theater. He was acclaimed as the “outstanding actor of his day.” His death date is unknown but he was still performing at the end of the second century C.E. SOURCES

E. J. Jory, “The Literary Evidence for the Beginnings of Imperial Patronage,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 28 (1981): 147–161. P. R. C. Weaver, Familia Caesaris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

T HEODORA c. 500 C.E.–548 C.E. Pantomime artist Empress DAUGHTER OF A BEAR-KEEPER. The woman who would one day become empress of the Roman Empire was born as one of three daughters of the bear-keeper for the Green faction, the company which produced the chariot races and the amusements in the theaters of Constantinople. Her father died while Theodora and her sisters were still very young, and Theodora’s mother quickly married again, anticipating that her new husband would take over her former husband’s job. Her plan was thwarted, however, when the head ballet-master of the Green faction, who possessed the right to choose a new bear-keeper, was bribed into choosing another candidate. The change in fortunes left Theodora’s little family destitute, but Theodora’s mother was persistent in securing her young daughters’ futures. She dressed them as suppliants and placed them before the section of seats in the Constantinople Hippodrome that belonged to the fans of the Greens and begged for compassion. Although the Greens paid no heed, the Blue fans did take pity on the little family and gave Theodora’s stepfather the job of bear-keeper for their faction. TOOK TO THE STAGE. As soon as they were old enough, Theodora and her sisters took to the stage. Her older sister, Comito, soon became a star, and Theodora’ first role was as an attendant for Comito, carrying a little stool for her where Comito might rest briefly between dances. Theodora herself did not shine as a dancer. She did, however, make a name for herself as an interpreter of myths, and one that particularly pleased the audience was her pantomime of Leda and the Swan, which told the myth of how Leda, the mother of Helen of Troy, was raped as she took a bath by the god Zeus, who disguised himself as a swan. Like most actresses and dancers on the Roman stage, she practiced prostitution, and during this period of her life, she had an illegitimate daughter. One of her lovers, who had purchased a provincial governorship for himself, took her with him to his province in modern Libya. They soon quarreled, however, and when the governor discarded Theodora she was left to her own resources. CONVERSION. Theodora made her way to Alexandria, which was full of refugees from religious persecution. At this time, the Christian church was split by a dispute over the nature of Christ. The Catholics held that Christ had both a human and a divine nature as set forth in the Chalcedonian Creed, whereas their op-

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ponents believed that Christ’s divine nature was dominant; some argued that it even subsumed Christ’s human nature. When Justin I became emperor in 518 C.E., he initiated a persecution of the anti-Chalcedonians everywhere in the empire except Egypt, and hence the anti-Chalcedonians fled to Alexandria. Theodora came in contact with them there and was converted to their creed. She then made her way to Antioch, modern Antakya in Turkey, and there a dancer named Macedonia, belonging to the Blue faction’s troupe, befriended her. Macedonia had a second career; in addition to being a dancer, she was a secret agent for Justinian, the emperor’s nephew, and it was probably thanks to her that Theodora met Justinian. They fell in love, and even though it was illegal for an upper-class Roman to marry an actress, Justinian persuaded Emperor Justin to promulgate a law to allow the wedding to take place. Once Justin died in 527 C.E., Justinian and Theodora became emperor and empress. EMPRESS. Theodora did not forget her old friends of the theater once she became empress. Dancing girls with names like Chrysomallo and Indaro were welcome in the palace. Justinian also passed a number of laws that made it easier for actors to give up their careers if they wished and to marry upper-class citizens. In fact, Theodora found suitable husbands for the daughters of some of her old friends. She was Justinian’s partner in power, and in theological disputes she did not hesitate to intervene on behalf of the anti-Catholics. Justinian favored the Catholics but he had enormous respect for Theodora’s intelligence. The Assyrian and Coptic churches in the Near East and Egypt hold Theodora in high regard, and reject the story that she was an exactress. Yet the evidence that she had a career as a dancer on the stage before she met Justinian seems to be sound. She died of cancer in 548 C.E. SOURCES

Robert Browning, Justinian and Theodora. Rev. ed. (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1987). James Allan Evans, The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). Lynda Garland, Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium A.D. 527–1205 (London, England: Routledge, 1999).

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES in Dance Aeschylus, Suppliants (462 B.C.E.)—The tragedy, the Suppliants by Aeschylus is the best surviving example of a drama that depends on the interpretative dancing of the chorus for its impact which in this instance, could have numbered as many as fifty instead of the usual fifteen members. Apuleius, Metamorphoses (popularly known as “The Golden Ass,” c. 180 C.E.)—The “Golden Ass,” the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety, at Book 10.29–34, contains a description of a dance and pantomime production staged in Corinth. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (“The Learned Men at a Banquet,” c. 200 C.E.)—The Deipnosophistae, written in Greek by Athenaeus from Naucratis in Egypt, is an imaginary symposium where learned men discuss all manner of topics, and in both the first and fourteenth books, their topics include dancing. Athenaeus is a major source for modern knowledge of ancient dance. Homer, Iliad (c. 750 B.C.E.)—The eighteenth book of Homer’s Iliad contains an ekphrasis, or detailed description, of a scene from everyday life in Greece, in which is a word picture of young men and women dancing on a dancing floor like that which was made for Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, at Knossos in Minoan Crete. Lucian of Samosata, Peri Orcheseos (“On the Dance,” c. 165 C.E.)—Lucian, author of some eighty pieces, most of them in dialogue form, wrote a dialogue on pantomime dancing in which he imagines a fan of the pantomime winning over a Cynic philosopher who had condemned it. Xenophon, Anabasis (“The Expedition into the Interior,” c. 360 B.C.E.)—The Athenian, Xenophon, in his youth a disciple of Socrates, accompanied Prince Cyrus of Persia on his attempt to overthrow his older brother, King Artaxerxes II. The Anabasis, which describes Cyrus’ ill-fated expedition and the return home of his force of ten thousand mercenaries, contains a description of folk dancing by the various ethnic groups that made up the force. Xenophon’s Symposium is another source for ancient dance for it describes professional dancers who provided entertainment at a banquet which Socrates attended.

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chapter three

FASHION James Allan Evans

I M P O R T A N T E V E N T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 O V E R V I E W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 TOPICS Fashion in the Minoan Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Garments in Classical Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 The Toga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Textiles of the Greek and Roman World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Dressing to Impress in Greece and Rome. . . . . . . 102 The Dress of Roman Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 The Apparel of the Soldier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE Alcibiades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Constantius II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Diogenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 D O C U M E N T A R Y S O U R C E S . . . . . . . . . 115 SIDEBARS AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary sources are listed in italics

The Adoption of the Ionian Chiton (Herodotus decribes how a military defeat impacted Athenian fashion) . . . . . . . . . 89

The Importance of the Toga (Livy describes the role of the toga when transacting public business) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 The Costume of the Emperor Augustus (John the Lydian describes the various styles of dress worn by Augustus) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 The Making of Linen (Pliny explains the processing of flax to extract the linen fiber). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 The Unusual Dress of the Emperor Gaius Caligula (Suetonius describes Caligula’s singular style of fashion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Coan Silk (Aristotle describes the origin of Coan silk) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Thucydides on Athenian Fashions (Thucydides comments on changing Greek fashions) . . . . . 103 New Fashions from Persia (a play by Aristophanes reflects the influence of Persian fashion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Effeminate Dress (Gellius relates the criticism of men who wore long-sleeved tunics) . . . . . . 105 Epitaphs of a Dressmaker and a Hairdresser (epitaphs of two slaves of wealthy Roman women) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Alluring Dress in Augustan Rome (Ovid offers fashion advice for women) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

336 B.C.E. Macedonian king Alexander the Great begins his campaign which results in the conquest of the Persian Empire, opening up the Middle East to the Greeks and exposing them to Persian fashions.

IMPORTANT EVENTS in Fashion c. 1700 B.C.E. In Minoan Crete of the Neopalatial Pe–c. 1450 B.C.E. riod frescoes show women wearing short jackets which left their breasts bare and a bell-shaped skirt falling from a girdle at the waist. Men, when not shown nude, wear a kind of short double-apron covering their genitalia. c. 1200 B.C.E. The safety pin appears in Greece, which indicates that women are already wearing the peplos which is fastened at the shoulders by safety pins called peronai. c. 600 B.C.E. Towards the end of the Early Archaic Period, the Ionian chiton becomes popular in Athens, displacing the simpler Dorian chiton, or peplos, which remains the standard women’s dress in Sparta and other Dorian states. 594 B.C.E. Solon, the chief magistrate (in Greek archon) of Athens, creates a law that forbids women to wear more than three garments when attending funerals or festivals. This is an attempt to curb the overly elaborate fashions introduced into Athens along with the Ionian chiton. 490 B.C.E. Persia makes an abortive attempt to –479 B.C.E. conquer Greece, and in the aftermath of the Persian War there is a shift in favor of simpler fashion and away from elaborate fashions associated with Persia.

330 B.C.E. The last king of Persia of the Archaemenid dynasty, Darius III Codomannus, is deposed and killed, and Alexander claims to be his successor. He begins to adopt Persian dress, which provokes an antagonistic reaction among his Macedonian troops who think that he is deserting the traditions of their homeland. 323 B.C.E. Alexander the Great dies at Babylon. His generals carve kingdoms out of his conquered territory, the capitals of which become leaders in fashion (Pella in the kingdom of Macedonia; Antioch and Seleucia-on-the-Tigris of the Seleucid kingdom, and Alexandria in the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt). 205 B.C.E. Publius Scipio the Younger, a rising general in the second war between Rome and Carthage, dons Greek clothing in preference to the Roman toga, thereby setting the style for members of the Roman ruling class who were attracted to Greek fashions. 189 B.C.E. Sometime after this date a luxury fabric called “Attalic” is marketed in Rome. The “Attalic” fabric is gold-embroidered cloth produced in workshops owned by Attalus II, king of Pergamum in Asia Minor, with needlework by Phrygian embroiderers who are famous for their skill in working with gold thread.

In Athens, the peplos comes back in style.

80 B.C.E. Julius Caesar, who will become Rome’s –79 B.C.E. most famous general and politician, is noted as being the “boy with loose clothes” by the dictator Sulla because Caesar wore a tunic with fringed wristlength sleeves under his purple-striped toga and a loosely tied belt.

c. 430 B.C.E. In Athens, Persian fashions come into favor again among wealthy citizens.

13 B.C.E. In Rome, the foundation stone is laid for the “Altar of Peace” erected by the

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Roman Senate in the Campus Martius (Field of Mars). The south frieze of the altar shows the imperial family—save the emperor Augustus himself—in procession, and is an illustration of the new style of draping the Roman toga in the Augustan period. 37 C.E. The emperor Gaius Caligula introduces –41 C.E. fashions borrowed from oriental monarchies into the imperial court at Rome along with divine kingship. c. 90 C.E. A portrait is sculpted of an unknown Roman woman, now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, which shows an elaborate hairdo with the hair swept up high over her forehead in tight curls. The coiffeur is a wig which can be removed from the head and replaced with a wig of another style. 117 C.E. The Roman emperor Hadrian who –138 C.E. ruled during these years prefers Greek style, and is shown wearing a garment

that looks very similar to the Greek himation, or overcloak. 284 C.E. The emperor Diocletian institutes –305 C.E. changes to the imperial office, and among other reforms, introduces elaborate, bejeweled costume for the imperial court. 324 C.E. The emperor Constantine designs the imperial insignia as a jeweled diadem, that is a cloth band encrusted with pearls tied around the head with a knot at the back and the ends dangling down. 547 C.E. The Church of San Vitale in Ravenna (Italy) with mosaics showing Justinian (emperor 527–565 C.E.) and Theodora (empress 527–548 C.E.) is dedicated. The mosaics give a vivid portrayal of the fashion of the imperial court in the sixth century, at a time when the Byzantine court was placing more emphasis on court ceremonial.

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OVERVIEW of Fashion THE CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN. In the twenty-first century, fashions in clothing and hairstyles are temporary trends largely influenced by the media and fashion designers. Fashions can change quickly—usually with the introduction of seasonal clothing lines by designers— and make use of a variety of natural and synthetic fabrics. The presence of fashion trends, however, does not negate the reality that fashion can also be a highly individualized expression, with each person deciding on a personal level what clothes to wear. This modern concept of fashion stands in stark contrast to fashion in the world of the Greeks and Romans where there was little change in clothing trends, no fashion designers, and only a few fabrics available for use. Furthermore, clothing functioned as a societal tool to highlight the rigorous social and gender classifications of these ancient societies. One’s clothing denoted a particular status in life rather than an expression of individuality; for example, women commonly dressed according to their marital status, with young girls donning outfits which differed from the clothing of married women. Even hairstyles provided tell-tale clues as to whether a woman was married or not, and the scandalous behavior of an adulteress or prostitute earned her an outfit that branded her as surely as Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter ‘A’ in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter in nineteenthcentury America. Men were no less exempt from such blatant labels with generals, politicians, soldiers, young boys, and slaves each wearing a distinctive outfit that marked their station. FABRICS. Wool and linen were the primary fabrics from as far back as the Minoan/Mycenaean period; cotton also existed, though it did not come into common use until the Roman period. Hemp also was used for fabric in Thrace, in modern Bulgaria and north-east Greece, but in the rest of the Greco-Roman world, hemp was valued more for rope than for fabric. Greece had a silk industry of its own based on the island of Cos, which used fibers unravelled from the cocoons of a local moth, 82

the Pachypassa otus. Its output was small, however, and probably inferior to silk from China, a luxury fabric that only the wealthy could afford. Greeks and Romans valued silk so highly that they sometimes unraveled silk cloth and re-wove it with linen thread so as to stretch its use. In the sixth century C.E. the Byzantine Empire under the emperor Justinian (527–565 C.E.) acquired silkworm eggs, which were smuggled out of China, and founded its own silk industry. Greeks and Romans also made use of leather and fur. Agamemnon, legendary leader of the Greek coalition in the Trojan War, was said to wear a lion’s skin, and his brother Menelaus had a leopard’s skin, which presumably would have been an import from Egypt. The vast majority of Greeks and Romans, however, had clothing made of wool and linen. ATHLETIC APPAREL—OR THE LACK OF IT. In the heat of summer, Greek men probably wore as little as decency permitted, for unlike the civilizations of the Near East, Greek culture seems to have gloried in naked flesh. In gymnasiums, men stripped naked to exercise and wrestle (the very word gymnos means “nude” in Greek). In Sparta, a major city in Greece, the women likewise trained in the nude. Nudity had not always been in style; in early Greece, before the seventh century B.C.E., men wore loincloths, but legend has it that the style changed after a runner named Orsippos of Megara won his race at the Olympic Games after pulling off his loincloth in mid-race. Thereafter athletes competed naked at the Olympic Games and the practice spread to the rest of Greece. STANDARD APPAREL IN GREECE AND ROME. The standard types of garments, both in Greece and Rome, had one characteristic in common: they required a minimum of sewing. While the Greeks’ neighbors in Asia Minor, the Phrygians, were famous for their embroidery—particularly fine embroidery with gold thread— the Greeks themselves apparently did not emulate this specialized needlework. The Greek needle was much less refined than the modern needle; in fact, the Greek word for “needle”—raphis—is found infrequently in Greek writings, suggesting that needlework played a poor second to weaving among the domestic accomplishments of Greek women. The Greeks and Romans had buttons and ties, and they had safety pins called peronai in Greek and fibulae in Latin, and these sometimes took the form of elaborate brooches. The two common types of garment in Greece—the chiton (tunic) and the himation (cloak)—were both rectangular pieces of cloth which were draped over the body. The same was true of the Roman toga. The original meaning of the word “toga” seems to have been “coverlet,” and in early Rome it was

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simply a piece of woolen homespun cloth, worn during the day to keep the wearer warm, and taken off and used as a light blanket at night. The shape of the toga is a matter of dispute; some ancient authors called it a semicircular piece of cloth, but it was probably closer to a semi-ellipse than a true semi-circle. It was originally a humble peasant dress, but it became the standard costume of a Roman citizen, and a number of variations developed. For instance, one style which the Romans borrowed from the Etruscans, neighbors they conquered in the third century B.C.E., was the short toga, decorated with rich embroidery and dyed purple or a multi-colored combination of purple, white, and scarlet. It was worn by the members of the ancient priestly college in Rome known as the Salii, the leaping priests of Mars, who celebrated the festivals of Mars in March and October with ritual dances. The costume of a Roman priest offering sacrifice to the gods was simply a toga with a cowl that covered the head. (Sacrifices performed Romano ritu, in the Roman fashion, required the head to be covered— capite velato—whereas those performed Graeco ritu, in the Greek fashion, left the head uncovered.) Roman senators and members of municipal councils in the cities of the empire wore togas when they transacted state business, and as long as there were municipal councils in the Roman Empire, there were still occasions when men wore togas. Dress in Rome denoted status. The toga with a broad purple stripe signaled that the wearer was a senator, whereas the narrow purple stripe showed that the wearer belonged to the class below the senatorial class known as the equites. This group began as Rome’s equestrian order in the early days of the empire, from which came the Roman cavalry, but later it became simply a census group. For a married woman the proper costume was a stola—a shawl with which she could cover her head when she went outdoors, where it was improper to be seen with head uncovered. Persons inappropriately dressed would encounter the scorn of society and sometimes even legal penalties. MILITARY DRESS. Military dress was practical and evolved as fighting styles changed from one-on-one battles to structured military formations. The warrior of ancient Greece, for example, was generally a foot soldier who fought as an individual for his own glory; the horsehair crest he wore on his helmet was a challenge to his enemy. This type of warrior gave way to the hoplite, a heavily armed infantryman with helmet, breastplate, greaves (which protected the lower legs), and a triangular metal plate called a mitra to protect his groin. The hoplite fought in a battle formation, eight rows deep, and standing foot-to-foot, with their round shields on the left arms and holding their spears in their right hands.

In camp, a hoplite wore a military cloak; the cloaks worn by the Spartan hoplites were red, the color of blood. The Roman soldier was also equipped for battle with helmet, chain mail (later replaced by a breastplate), an army boot called a caliga for his feet (hence the childhood nickname of the emperor Gaius, “Caligula” or “little boot”), and a cloak called a sagum which left his arms bare. The sagum was a practical garment; it was recommended for farm laborers in inclement weather by a Roman writer on agriculture named Columella. The Roman Army had workshops for arms and armor, and sometimes these state-owned and operated factories produced clothing for the troops as well. ORNAMENTS AND COSMETICS. Although their clothing fashions changed little, the Greeks and Romans had a sense of style. The market for perfumes was lively, and hairstyles differed from place to place. Spartan hoplites wore their hair long and they groomed it carefully. Elsewhere, Greek men wore their hair short after reaching adulthood. After the time of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 B.C.E., Greek men shaved off their beards, and the fashion took hold in Rome in the third century B.C.E. Beards came back into style with the emperor Hadrian (117–135 C.E.). Lucius Verus, who was co-emperor briefly with Marcus Aurelius, was said to have used gold dust to give his beard a fashionable yellow sheen. The hairstyles of Roman women were often elaborate, and dyes were used to get the fashionable blonde color. Wigs hid bald heads or thinning hair, and a wig with hair supplied by a German woman from across the Rhine frontier was a safer way of becoming a blonde than using a strong dye which could damage the hair. CHANGES IN LATE ANTIQUITY. As the empire moved from a period of invasions, plague, and shortlived emperors in the third century C.E. into the more stable fourth century, fashions, at least in the upper classes, grew more elaborate. By the end of the fourth century, Chinese silk became all the rage among the elite. The imperial court loved jewels, particularly pearls. Clothing marked status. The long embroidered robes of noblemen and noble ladies fitted their station in life, while the middle class was satisfied with costumes only slightly simpler. Priests of the Christian Church were distinguished by their vestments, typically adaptations of Roman garments. The robes of the nobles and the vestments of the priests were a far cry from the costume of the peasant who wore a type of sagum or a cucullus—a cape with a cowl to protect the head—or the barbarians, who wore trousers. Yet the toga retained its cachet as the correct dress of a togatus, or a Roman citizen. Archaeologists have found a sculptor’s yard near Rome that was

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still producing statues in the fourth century C.E. which were impeccably clad in togas, with sockets to attach the interchangeable portrait heads. The presence of such statues does not mean there was continued widespread use of the toga in this period; the Roman rank and file had long since abandoned the toga for more practical fashions, many borrowed from the so-called barbarian world.

TOPICS in Fashion F ASHION

IN THE

M INOAN P ERIOD

EVIDENCE. The history of Greek fashion extends all the way back to the Bronze Age to the Minoan culture on the island of Crete off the Greek mainland. Evidence for the clothing worn in Minoan Crete comes mainly from the frescoes that decorated the walls of the palaces, and from Minoan statuettes found on the island. The clothes and fabrics of this time period have long since disintegrated with time, although at the site of Mochlos in northeast Crete, a find of linen has been reported from a tomb dating to the Pre-Palatial Period (3500–1900 B.C.E.). It was probably an import from Egypt, but it does show that linen was known and used on Crete before the Minoan civilization burst upon the stage of history at the start of the second millenium B.C.E. Egypt also provides evidence for Minoan fashion. At Thebes, the capital of Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty, wall paintings from five tombs of high-ranking officials dating to the early years of the dynasty show foreigners from the Aegean area bringing tribute to the pharaoh. One of these tombs, dating to the mid-fifteenth century B.C.E. within the Neopalatial or “New Palace” period on Crete (1700–1450 B.C.E.), belonged to Rekhmire, a vizier (high executive officer) of the pharaoh Thutmose III, and in it, these Aegean people are labeled “Princes of the Land of Keftiu,” that is, Crete. The artists who did these paintings of the envoys from Crete clearly made an effort to show their costumes accurately. MEN’S CLOTHING. The basic garment for men was a loincloth tucked around the waist and held in place by a belt or girdle. The styles of loincloth varied with place and time; some styles seem to have been in fashion in particular regions. The loincloth might be worn as a kilt, hanging freely from the waist, or it might be tucked in under the groin, making it into something like a pair of shorts. In fact, by sewing the flaps of the loincloth, front 84

and back, together under the groin, it evolves into a pair of shorts. This is a style found at Mycenae where a bronze dagger has been unearthed portraying a lion hunt on its blade, inlaid in gold. The scene shows men wearing shorts fastened under the groin. Above the waist, men normally wore nothing, as in Egypt. When cooler weather necessitated additional covering for warmth, there were furs and the skins of wild animals which could be worn as cloaks. KILTS AND CODPIECES. A codpiece is defined as a flap appended to the front of tight breeches worn by men in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but the term serves to describe a feature of men’s dress in Minoan Crete. In early representations it is shown as a straight, narrow flap sometimes worn with a belt alone and no loincloth under it. In the Neo-Palatial Period (1700– 1450 B.C.E.), it is commonly shown as a wide flap worn over a short, stiff kilt which was slit at the sides to expose the thighs and upturned at the back rather like a duck’s tail. After 1500 B.C.E., however, the codpiece apparently went out of fashion to be replaced by long kilts, held up by a girdle or, as time went on, with a wide belt; sometimes a large, beaded tassel replaced the codpiece. The paintings of the “Keftiu” from the tomb of Rekhmire at Egyptian Thebes provide evidence for the change in style. The paintings show Cretans (inhabitants of the island of Crete) wearing long kilts without codpieces, but recent cleanings of these paintings revealed that the costume of the Cretans had been altered not long after the pictures were originally painted. The Cretans as they were originally depicted had short stiff kilts with codpieces. Scholars presume that the Egyptians altered the paintings after they became aware that fashions in Crete had changed to bring the costumes up-to-date. WOMEN’S CLOTHING. In the Protopalatial Period (1900–1700 B.C.E.), women wore long skirts with girdles circling the waist twice and tied, with their ends hanging down in front. Bodices left the breasts bare and the costumes had collars which rose to a high peak at the back of the neck. In the early Protopalatial period women wore what look like cloaks made from a semicircular swatch of what was probably woolen cloth, though scholars have suggested it might be leather. A sash was put around the waist and knotted in front. Holes were cut for the arms, the breasts were bare and at the back of the neck was a high collar. As time went on, skirts became more elaborate. In paintings, they are often shown with flounces, and when women appear in court ceremonies, their skirts display intricate woven patterns that required skillful weaving. Minoan women, if they could afford it, clearly gave a great deal of care to

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their wardrobes. One feature of the dress of Minoan women from the Neopalatial period (1700–1450 B.C.E.) is an elaborate belt—sometimes padded, sometimes apparently made of metal—which covers the midriff where the bodice joins the skirt. There is also evidence for a patterned apron falling from the belt not only at the front but at the back as well. It looks, in fact, as if it was modeled on the loincloth worn by the men. In the last period of the Minoan civilization on Crete (after 1450 B.C.E.), and also in the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland which was heavily influenced by Minoan style, pictures show women wearing flounced floor-length skirts woven in elaborate patterns, and apparently cut so that the bottom of the skirt dips in the center, both in front and rear. It is not entirely clear if these representations accurately depict the clothing; it has been suggested that the artists who painted women wearing skirts of this sort were merely trying to show divided skirts, or alternatively that this was their way of portraying the movement of long skirts as women walked. There is no doubt, however, that Cretan women who took part in the life in the palaces wore elaborately woven costumes in bright colors—and no doubt they were expensive. Yet only a small percentage of women could have afforded court dress and it is difficult to determine what ordinary women wore since they were not typically the subjects of palace frescoes. There is, however, an ivory seal found at Knossos that shows a girl wearing a jumper hanging loosely without a belt from the shoulders to the knees. The skirt is short, but still appears to have stylish flounces. The seal is under some suspicion as a forgery, but if it is genuine it is evidence for short skirts among the ordinary women of Minoan Crete.

Minoan woman or goddess called La Parisienne: fragment of a fresco from palace at Knossos, Crete. In the Heraklion Museum, Crete. © ROGER WOOD/CORBIS.

FOOTWEAR AND CAPS. The Minoans went barefoot in religious ceremonies and probably in their private houses, but when footwear was necessary, they had boots and sandals. The Greek word for “sandal” (sandalon) is of pre-Greek origin and may go back to Minoan times, before Greek-speakers reached Crete. Boots and sandals are often shown with upturned toes. As for headgear, the common type was a wide, flat cap for men, whereas women, at least in the Proto-Palatial period (before 1700 B.C.E.), are shown with high pointed hats like Phrygian caps which had high peaks folded over so that the peak pointed frontwards. After this period, there is evidence of a great variety of headgear for women, but much of this evidence comes from paintings showing religious ceremonies. It is a matter of conjecture whether women wore similar headgear in secular settings.

necklaces, anklets, and a great variety of earrings, using gold, silver, copper, bronze, and semi-precious stones. The jewelers were remarkably skillful. They had the technical expertise to make filigree work which requires hard soldering of small gold or silver wires. They also produced enormously delicate granulated work where minute grains of gold are soldered to a gold or silver backing. They had mastered the technique of inlaying with stones or paste, and making repousse work, where a design is embossed on a thin sheet of metal by pressure from behind, thus producing the design in relief on one side of the sheet and the same design beaten up from the underside on the other. French excavators discovered one of the most remarkable examples of the Minoan jewelers’ craft at the tomb at Mallia on the northern coast of Crete and now in the Heraklion Museum. It is a pendant in the form of a bee, designed and executed with great skill.

JEWELRY. Both men and women wore a variety of jewelry that included armlets, bracelets on the wrists,

FABRICS. As in classical Greece, the staple fabric in Minoan Crete was wool. A large portion of the written

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tablets found at Knossos record flocks of sheep, and they may have been kept for their wool. Minoans also used linen; they probably first imported it from Egypt, but may have produced their own linen at a later time. Mycenaean Greece, which borrowed its style from Minoan Crete, definitely produced linen, for the written texts from Pylos in southwest Greece, dating to about 1200 B.C.E., refer to growing flax in the region. Minoans wove fabric on upright looms of the type used in later Greece, and though no loom has survived—they were made of wood and all have long since rotted away—at one Minoan house at Ayia Varvara on Crete, a stone with two rectangular holes cut into it was found in the women’s quarters; archaeologists suspect it may have held the upright posts of a loom. Primitive though these vertical looms seem to be, a look at the clothing of Minoan women shows that they could produce intricate designs. DYES. Linen is difficult to dye, and so linen garments often were left white. Wool, however, takes pigments well, and vegetable dyes were commonly used to tint it. Minoans almost certainly imported the dried leaves of the henna plant from Egypt to make red dye, and the addition of natron (sodium carbonate)—another product from Egypt—turned the henna dye yellow. Alkanet, a deep red dye made from the roots of a variety of plants, was another way to color fabrics, as was a purple dye made from the shellfish known as the murex; heaps of crushed murex shells have been found at coastal sites on eastern Crete like Palaikastro and are good evidence of purple dye manufacture there in the ProtoPalatial and Neo-Palatial Periods. PERFUMES. There is good documentary evidence for a perfume industry on Crete and on mainland Greece in the Bronze Age, prior to 1100 B.C.E. The palace at Pylos on the southwest coast of mainland Greece overlooking the Bay of Navarino, which was destroyed by fire suddenly about 1200 B.C.E., has yielded a cache of clay tablets written in “Linear B” script, which is an early form of Greek, and they give details about perfume manufacture carried on under the direction of the palace bureaucracy. “Linear B” is a label given this script by modern archaeologists to distinguish it from “Linear A” which is found on Crete and is not Greek. The Pylos tablets give the names of four perfume makers employed by the palace to make perfume. There is also evidence for perfume manufacture from Knossos on Crete and Mycenae on the mainland. Ancient peoples of this area made perfume by transferring scent to oil, most commonly olive oil. Although olive oil does not take a scent well, the boiling of aromatic leaves and heavy-scented flowers with the oil resulted in an acceptable result for 86

the upper classes in the Minoan and Mycenaean world. It is likely that both men and women made use of perfumes. SOURCES

Arthur Cotterell, The Minoan World (London, England: Michael Joseph, 1979). Reynold Alleyne Higgins, Minoan and Mycenaean Art (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1997). Sinclair Hood, The Minoans: Crete in the Bronze Age (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1971). Bernice Jones, “Revealing Minoan Fashions,” Archaeology 53 (2000): 36–41. Cynthia Wright Shelmerdine, The Perfume Industry of Mycenaean Pylos (Göteberg, Germany: Paul Äströms Föring, 1985).

G ARMENTS

C LASSICAL G REECE

PROBLEMS WITH TERMS. The terms for Greek clothing types can be confusing, all the more so because the Greeks themselves sometimes used them carelessly. The carelessness is understandable, for every piece of clothing in ancient Greece, whether for men or women, consisted of a rectangle of cloth. The difference was in the size of the cloth and how it was draped over the body. To add to the confusion, Greek styles were adopted by the Romans. Rome’s national costume was the toga, but in the third century B.C.E. Rome extended her rule to the Greek cities in what was called “Magna Graecia” (Great Greece) in southern Italy, and the more that the Romans learned of Greek culture, including fashion, the more they were fascinated by it. The Roman Publius Scipio Africanus, who was responsible for the defeat of Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C.E., was among the Roman leaders who adopted Greek fashion over the Roman toga. The confusion arises from the fact that the Romans adapted Greek fashion to their own, so it is not always easy to find exact Greek equivalents for Roman costumes. The toga, too, seems to have started its long history simply as a rectangular piece of cloth—the shape it had when it came off the loom. DORIANS VERSUS IONIANS. The Dorians were Greeks who migrated into the Peloponnesos—that is, the area of Greece south of the Isthmus of Corinth— after 1150 B.C.E. when the Mycenaean civilization was foundering, and they founded a number of states, notably Sparta in southeast Greece, and Argos to the north of it. The Dorians favored physical fitness and simplicity in their everyday life, and Dorian fashions reflected

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it. The Spartans in particular were famous for their austerity. The Dorians liked plain fashions that allowed the body free movement. The Greeks whom the Dorians displaced fled to Athens and from there, they set out for the western coastline of modern Turkey and the offshore islands, where they founded twelve cities which grew and prospered. This was Ionian Greece: twelve cities joined together in a loosely organized league, and though there were more Greek foundations on the coastline of Turkey and the islands than the twelve Ionian cities, it was Ionia that set the style. Ionian fashions reflected the affluent, comfortable, and luxurious life which the Ionians enjoyed, and though the Ionian cities lost their independence by the mid-sixth century B.C.E., they continued to thrive. The types of costume worn by both the Dorians and the Ionians were the same, but whereas the Dorians preferred simple styling and lack of embellishment, the Ionians favored more elaborate fashions and fine fabrics. In the fifth century B.C.E., however, the Ionian cities fell under the domination of Athens and they lost their preeminence as style setters. GREEK CLOTHING TERMS. The basic item of clothing was the chiton, which was a tunic. If it was short, it might be called a chitoniskos, which means a “little tunic,” and if it lacked sleeves, which was generally the case, it was called an exomis, which means a “sleeveless garment.” There were some tunics with sleeves, which Romans with a conservative mindset considered a mark of oriental luxury, though in fact, Rome’s greatest general and politician, Julius Caesar, wore one. The variety of terms becomes more confusing with the Dorian chiton which is, in fact, a peplos (a simple rectangle of cloth folded and hung from the shoulders). The epic poem Iliad, written by the Greek poet Homer, described the heroes who fought at Troy as wearing a cloak over the tunic which was called a chlaina, or sometimes a pharos; strictly speaking, they were not quite the same, for the pharos was a larger garment. In fact, Homer used the word pharos for any large piece of cloth, including a ship’s sail or a funeral shroud. The chlaina seems to have been a general term for any heavy woolen cloak worn in cold weather. In the classical period, the word usually refers to the cloak called the himation, an outer garment worn by both men and women. The Romans used the Latin word pallium for himation, and regarded it as a peculiarly Greek costume, to such a degree that comedies staged in Roman theaters that were adapted from Greek plays were called fabulae palliatae—scenarios played in Greek dress. Another popular cloak was the chlamys. It was an oblong swatch of cloth that made almost a perfect square when it was doubled. The peplos, also called

A man wearing a pallium.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE

GROUP.

the Dorian chiton, was a rectangle of cloth folded over at the top and then doubled and draped over the body, and held in place with safety pins or brooches at the shoulders. The overfold or apotygma at the top of the garment could hang down as far as the waist. It was probably the earliest Greek dress for women, and it was capable of many variations. THE CHITON. The Greek word chiton translates as tunica in Latin, from which the English word “tunic” is derived. It was a shirt worn directly over the body, sometimes as an undergarment. There is evidence of prototypes in the Minoan period, but it is in the sub-Mycenaean period (after 1200 B.C.E.), about the same time as the perone or safety pin appears in Greece, that men began wearing a short, sleeveless tunic recognizable as the chiton worn by the warriors in Homer’s Iliad. The word chiton has Eastern origins, for it is related to a Semitic word that refers to linen cloth; this evidence suggests that the earliest chitons were linen garments, though later they are often woolen. Chitons

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Man wearing a short chiton.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE

Woman wearing a long chiton.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE

GALE GROUP.

came in a great variety of styles. Young men and those regularly involved in physical activity preferred a short chiton which left the legs bare. If the skirt of the chiton was too long, the wearer pulled it up and let it hang over his belt in a fold known as a kolpos. A warrior wore a chiton as an undergarment beneath the cuirass (a piece of armor that protected his torso). A passage in Iliad illustrates the use of a chiton in a description of how the warrior goddess Athena put on her armor: first she took off her peplos, which was a woman’s dress, and pulled on a chiton as an undergarment between her cuirass and her skin. Those individuals who are not as active, such as older men, men of high rank, and professional musicians, might wear a chiton long, reaching to the ankles, and over it they would wear a cloak such as the chlaina or the pharos. Both the short and the long chiton were prevalent all over the ancient Greek world.

feet, leaving only the toes bare, began to appear. There are good early examples from Ionia, where several seated statues have been found lining the Sacred Way to the temple of Apollo at Didyma. The so-called kore-statues of young girls (in Greek: korai) found in Athens in the debris from the Persian sack of the Acropolis in 480 B.C.E. also provide models of the chitons worn by women in the Middle and Late Archaic periods. Made of fine linen, they fell in regular folds to the feet, and over them a woman would wear a shawl or a cloak like the himation or the chlaina. The evidence of the sculpture suggests that the Ionian chiton came into style in Athens about 600 B.C.E., replacing the peplos or Dorian chiton, as it was sometimes called. The historian Herodotus, writing in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., explained the replacement of the peplos in Athens as the result of a violent incident, the accuracy of which cannot be verified. According to Herodotus, in the early seventh century B.C.E. the Athenians made an attack on the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. It failed, and only one survivor of the Athenian expeditionary force re-

THE IONIAN CHITON. About 600 B.C.E., the end of what art historians call the “Early Archaic Period,” draped statues of women wearing chitons that reach the 88

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THE ADOPTION OF THE IONIAN CHITON INTRODUCTION :

Towards the end of the seventh century B.C.E. the ornate Ionian chiton came into fashion among Athenian women. Unlike the peplos or Dorian chiton, as it was sometimes called, the Ionian chiton did not need safety pins. According to Athenian tradition, the fashion changed following a gruesome incident involving the lone survivor of a disastrous Athenian military expedition against Athens’ bitter rival, Aegina. When the man returned to Athens with the bad news, the widows of the lost soldiers killed him with the weapons most readily accessible to them: the pins in their clothing. Thereafter, the fashion for Athenian women changed to a style that did not require pins. The incident was reported by the historian Herodotus writing in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E.

The Argives and Aeginetans agree in this account, and the Athenians, too, admit that only one of their men returned to Attica alive: the only point of dispute is the occasion of his escape, the Argives saying that he got away after they had destroyed the rest of the Athenian force, the Athenians claiming that the whole thing was an act of God. Even the sole survivor soon came to a bad end; for when he reached Athens with a report of the disaster, the wives of the other men who had gone with him

turned to Athens. Upon his return, the widows of the men lost at Aegina mobbed him and stabbed him with the safety pins from their Dorian chitons in grief and anger that he alone should have survived. The Athenians were so shocked by this murder that they passed a law forbidding women to wear the Dorian chitons which were fastened at the shoulders with safety pins, and instead ruled that they should wear the Ionian chiton, which was sewn and did not use the safety pins that could become lethal weapons. The Aeginetans continued to use safety pins, however, as did the Argives who had helped the Aeginetans defeat the Athenians; in fact, Herodotus claimed that they adopted safety pins with even longer shafts which were more lethal. REACTION AGAINST DORIAN DRESS. Even if the incident really happened, it was probably not a singular event that prompted the change to Ionian style for women’s clothing. The Aeginetans and the Argives were both Dorians, speaking the Dorian dialect of Greek, whereas the Athenians were Ionians and by adopting the fashions of the Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor whose cities were flourishing at this time, the women were making a

to Aegina, in grief and anger that he alone should have escaped, crowded round him and thrust the brooches, which they used for fastening their dresses, into his flesh, each one, as she struck, asking him where her husband was. So he perished, and the Athenians were more horrified at his fate than at the defeat of their troops in Aegina. The only way they could punish their women for the dreadful thing they had done was to make them adopt Ionian dress; previously Athenian women had worn Dorian dress, very similar to the fashion in Corinth; now they were made to change to linen tunics to prevent them from wearing brooches. Actually this kind of dress is not originally Ionian, but Carian, for in ancient times all the women in Greece wore the costume now known as Dorian. But the Argives and Aeginetans passed a law that in both their countries brooch-pins should be made half as long again as they used to be, and that brooches should be the principal things offered by women in the shrines of these two deities; also, nothing from Attica was to be taken to the temple, not even pottery, and thenceforward only drinking vessels made in the country should be used. From that time to the present day the women of Argos and Aegina have worn brooches with longer pins than in the past—all because of the quarrel with Athens. SOURCE :

Herodotus, Histories. Rev. ed. Trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (London: Penguin Books, 1972): 309–310.

political statement. Later, when Ionia was conquered by Persia after 546 B.C.E., the Athenians tended to look down on the Ionians because they were no longer free men and their sumptuous fashions seemed to signal a willingness to be subjects of the Persian king; in the Greek mind, anything Persian was associated with luxury and opulent living. But at the beginning of the seventh century B.C.E., Ionia was the cultural leader of Greece. Men in Athens wore Ionian chitons as well, and Thucydides, a younger contemporary of Herodotus, remarks that the older Athenians of his day still wore them. But the Persian Wars in the first quarter of the fifth century B.C.E. ushered in a taste for simpler fashions in Athens; in Dorian Greece, the Dorian chiton had never gone out of style. In the new postwar world, the elaborate Ionian chiton was considered a mark of oriental luxury and soft living. It suggested the Persian way of life. FASHIONS IN CHITONS. The peplos came into style again in Athens after the Persian Wars, but it did not displace the chiton. In fact, chiton and peplos existed side by side throughout the fifth century B.C.E., borrowing features from each other. The kandys, a chiton

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Man wearing a himation.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE

GROUP.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE

GALE GROUP.

with long sleeves worn over longer chiton became fashionable for free women during the century. Sleeves were considered exotic; the Persians wore them, and in the last quarter of the fifth century, fashionable Athenians developed a taste for styles with a touch of Persian opulence to them. Also during the same century there are examples of a short tunic reaching to the waist that is worn over the chiton. It is probably what was called the chitoniskos, or “little chiton,” and it seems to have been made from a heavier fabric than the chiton itself and is often richly decorated. Men in the classical period abandoned the Ionian chiton, as Thucydides pointed out, but it continued to be used by priests, charioteers, singers, musicians, and actors. The short, sleeveless chiton remained in style for physically active men. For ceremonial occasions, however, the himation became the costume of choice. THE HIMATION. The himation was an essential outer garment for both women and men. It was simply an oblong woolen shawl of generous dimensions. There were various ways of draping it around the body. A 90

Woman wearing a himation.

woman, for instance, might drape it under the right arm and pin or tie it at the left shoulder. In colder weather she could drape her upper body with it and draw it over the head like a cowl. Sometimes, however, she used a separate piece of cloth to cover her head, with one end falling down over the himation. A man threw his himation around his body from left to right, confining his arms; in fact, it was the mark of a gentleman not to extend an arm outside his himation. Wearing one’s himation with grace was a mark of social standing in the community and it cannot always have been an easy achievement, for the himation was generally worn without fasteners like buttons or safety pins, and the wearer must have sometimes used his hands that were hidden by his himation to hold it in place. It was far too awkward a garment for a working man, who generally wore a chiton without sleeves called an exomis. In fact, wearing a himation signaled that the wearer did not have to do physical labor. Politicians and philosophers liked it, and in portrait sculpture, it had some of the same connotations as the Roman toga, which it somewhat re-

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sembled. It showed that the wearer was not a member of the common people, and it was a fine garment to wear when delivering a lecture or a public speech. THE PEPLOS. The peplos was a woman’s costume consisting of an oblong swatch of woolen cloth. The cloth was first folded horizontally so that the top quarter was turned back, and then it was doubled by folding it from top to bottom. What resulted was a piece of cloth doubled over to form a square, with an overfold called an apotygma in Greek on the upper edge. It sheathed the body of the wearer, and was fastened at each shoulder by safety pins or buttons so that it hung free. On the right side, the peplos hung open, and one might catch glimpses of the woman’s body as she moved. Young women in the Greek city of Sparta liked this style, but women elsewhere usually wore a belt or girdle at the waist to keep the side of the peplos closed and thereby preserve the wearer’s modesty. The open side of the peplos might also be pinned together; in Homer’s Odyssey, one of the suitors trying to win the favor of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, presented her with a peplos that had twelve gold pins. Since it needed only two pins, or at best four, to fasten it at the shoulders, presumably the rest were used to pin up the open side. THE ORIGIN OF THE PEPLOS. The peplos was not a Mycenaean costume, and probably it arrived in Greece about the same time as the safety pin—that is, in the sub-Mycenaean period (after 1200 B.C.E.), after the citadels of the Mycenaean civilization had fallen and the great palaces destroyed. The Dorian newcomers may have brought the peplos with them, for they migrated into Greece in the sub-Mycenaean period, and so the name “Dorian chiton” which was sometimes applied to the peplos, may be justified. It was, however, worn in early Athens also until the end of the Early Archaic Period, about 600 B.C.E., when women switched to the Ionian chiton. With the reaction in Athens against frills and frippery after the Persian War, the peplos came back into fashion. In Sparta and the rest of Dorian Greece, the Ionian chiton never displaced the peplos. As the Greek language evolved, the word “peplos” acquired a wider meaning and applied to a variety of costumes. There was, however, one instance where the word “peplos” continued to mean a simple, old-fashioned piece of woolen cloth folded to form a woman’s dress. Every four years, at the Great Panathenaea festival in Athens, the women of the city presented the goddess Athena with a new robe that they had woven. They used it to dress the ancient wooden statue of Athena Polias—that is, Athena, Guardian of the City—the most sacred cult statue in Athens, which was kept in the temple known

Woman wearing a peplos.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE

GROUP.

as the Erechtheion. The robe was a peplos and the pattern did not change. PEPLOS TYPES. Styles change with time and the peplos was no exception. From the classical period of the fifth century B.C.E. on, we must distinguish between the peplos worn without an undergarment, known as the peplos endyma, and the peplos worn over a chiton, the peplos epiblema. The girdle in early examples of the peplos simply encircled the waist, but with the skirt above it tucked up so as to form a loose fold. The apoptygma, or overfold, which at first was short, grew in length until it reached the hips. In statues and relief sculptures of the fourth century B.C.E., the overfold is sometimes shown falling freely, but more often as time went on it was held in place by the girdle. The peplos epiblema that was worn over a chiton developed a number of variations. Sometimes the skirt came down to the ankles and only a glimpse of the chiton underneath can be seen at the bottom. Sometimes the peplos came down no further than the knees, and the chiton was shown covering the lower legs. Some

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chlamys his customary dress. The chlamys was a swatch of cloth that was more or less rectangular with three straight sides and the fourth side concave. It was worn by putting it around the shoulders, straight edge up, and fastening it at the base of the neck, so that its folds fell down as far as the knees. The chlamys might also be fastened at the rear, leaving the wearer’s back and buttocks bare. The two ends of the concave side formed points hanging down on either side, and were often compared to wings. Upon its introduction into Greece, it became the usual costume for horsemen. It appears on the Panathenaic frieze from the Parthenon in Athens, where young ephebes (youths undergoing their military training) are shown wearing it as they gallop in the wake of the procession or prepare to mount their horses. In the Greek city of Sparta, the chlamys became the costume of choice for the Spartiates, the military elite that ruled Laconia. It was not adopted by the Romans, but the Romans had a number of military cloaks which were similar, such as the paludamentum, the abolla, and the sagum. The trabea worn by the members of the equestrian order in Rome when they paraded on horseback in honor of Castor and Pollux seems to have been a similar garment. The chlamys, however, lasted into the Byzantine period. In the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna (Italy) there is a mosaic of the empress Theodora (527–548 C.E.) who is shown wearing a chlamys as part of her imperial regalia. A man wearing a chlamys and on his head, the hat known as a causia. CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

statuettes of Athena show her wearing a peplos with an overfold that has pleats of unequal length, and sometimes the peplos is shown pinned only at the right shoulder with the overfold pinned along the right arm to form a kind of short sleeve. It is hard to distinguish this kind of peplos from the Ionian himation. In fact, the Greek authors themselves used the terms for their clothes more indiscriminately as we move into the fourth century B.C.E. THE CHLAMYS. The chlamys was a garment of nonGreek people in northern Greece, the Thessalians and the Macedonians. In fact, the chlamys, along with the petasos or causia (a hat with a brim), was the national costume of Macedonia. The distinctive items of costume worn by foreigners from the north when they are depicted on Greek monuments were the chlamys, the causia, the alopekis (a fox-skin cap), and the embades (boots that came part way up the calf of the leg). A Macedonian nobleman signaled his standing by wearing a purple chlamys and causia, and Alexander the Great, the king of Macedon who conquered the Persian Empire, made the 92

SOURCES

Ephraim David, “Dress in Spartan Society,” Ancient World 19 (1989): 3–13. Evelyn B. Harrison, “The Dress of the Archaic Greek Korai,” in New Perspectives in Early Greek Art. Ed. Diana Buitron-Oliver (Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art, 1991): 217–239. Rolf Hurschmann, “Chlamys,” in Der Neue Pauly (Stuttgart/Weimar, Germany: J. B. Metzler, 1997): 1133. —, “Chiton,” in Der Neue Pauly (Stuttgart/Weimar, Germany: J. B. Metzler, 1997): 1131–1132. Marion Sichel, Costume of the Classical World (London, England: Batsford, 1980). David J. Symons, Costume of Ancient Greece (London, England: Batsford, 1987). SEE ALSO

Architecture: Greek Architecture

T HE T O G A NATIONAL COSTUME OF ROME. The toga was the national costume of the Romans. The Roman people

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were the gens togata—the “people that wear the toga.” In his epic poem, the Aeneid the Roman poet Vergil used the term with pride to refer to the populus Romanus, that is, the “Roman People.” Aliens—persons who were not Roman citizens—and Roman exiles were forbidden to wear it. It seems, however, that the law which forbade non-Romans to wear the toga was not universally enforced, for the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul were called, unofficially, Gallia togata—that is, “Gaul where the toga is worn”—which indicates that Romanized provincials sometimes wore the toga even before they received the citizenship. There was a tradition that the toga came to Rome from Etruria, the region of modern Tuscany in Italy which was inhabited by people the Romans called Etruscans and the Greeks Tyrrhenoi, who seem to have been immigrants from Asia Minor around 1000 B.C.E. Their underground tombs were decorated with wall paintings which show men wearing a short toga, though it is by no means the same as the Roman version of the same garment. The Roman toga probably began as a simple piece of woolen cloth which was worn with no undergarment and fastened in place with a safety pin, called in Latin a fibula. The name comes from the Latin verb, tegere, which means “to cover.” The toga was a coverlet, used to cover a person’s body by day and his or her bed at night. In the early period, women wore it as well as men. The Roman men even wore it to battle in the early days of Rome. THE CINCTUS GABINUS. In some rituals which were connected with warfare—such as opening the Gates of Janus, which the Romans threw open whenever they embarked on a war—they girded up their togas in what was called the cinctus Gabinus. They took the corners of their togas, threw them over the left shoulder, wound it under the right arm and around the chest, thus making their togas into garments that did not impede their movement. The origin of this curious custom was explained by the story of the ancient enmity between Rome and the town of Gabii, which dated back to the time before the last Roman king was expelled in 510 B.C.E. The Romans used the cinctus Gabinus when they fought Gabii. The 193 centuries, or battalions, of the early Roman citizen army were divided into five classes according to wealth, and only the first class could afford full body armor. A Roman in the lowest class in those faroff days tied up his toga around his waist so that his arms were free to wield a weapon, and went into battle to fight as best he could. His toga gave him little protection, but it was better than nothing. DEVELOPMENT. Gradually, the toga grew more elaborate, and its usage became more restricted. Women

The toga of the type worn in the early first century C.E.

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ATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

replaced it with the stola, a long upper garment which became the conventional dress of a married woman. Soldiers gave it up for a more convenient cloak called the sagum. Even so, right up to the end of the republican period in the first century B.C.E. and even into the imperial period that followed it, togas were sometimes issued to Roman armies in winter camp. By that time, however, the toga had lost its military role and became a costume of peacetime and a symbol of citizenship. In Rome, a citizen was expected to wear his toga in public. The emperor Augustus (ruled 27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.) forbade citizens entry to the Roman Forum or to the circus if they were without togas. Outside, Rome, however, citizens quickly adopted foreign costumes which could be put on and taken off easily; the toga as it developed became so elaborate that a Roman needed help to put it on. Even in Rome itself, Greek fashions became increasingly popular in the first century C.E., and the toga was reserved more and more for official functions. Women abandoned it early, except for women who were courtesans or were found guilty of adultery. The stola

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THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TOGA INTRODUCTION :

The toga was the national dress of the Roman citizen. In fact, Romans were sometimes called simply the “togati” (the “men who wear togas”), and when dramas about Roman citizens were produced in the theater, they were called fabulae togatae, as distinct from dramas involving Greek characters which were called fabulae palliatae. Roman senators wore togas when they transacted public business, as did the members of the municipal councils of other cities in the Roman Empire even in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. The following passage from the Roman history of Livy, who lived in the reign of the emperor Augustus, illustrates the importance of wearing the toga to conduct public business. In 458 B.C.E., the Roman republic faced possible disaster. Rome’s enemies, the Aequi, had cut off a consular army led by one of the consuls, Lucius Minucius. In this crisis, the Roman senate decided to appoint Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus as dictator; the dictatorship in Rome was a six-month appointment that was made only in an emergency when the state was under threat and a strong leader was needed. Cincinnatus had a small farm across the Tiber from Rome, and he was working on his land when a deputation from the senate came to invite him to Rome. Prior to delivering the senate’s invitation, the deputation asked Cincinnatus to put on his toga. Cincinnatus accepted the dictatorship, defeated the Aequi and, the crisis over, laid down the office after holding it for only fifteen days. Here Livy described the meeting of the deputation from the senate and Cincinnatus.

which married women wore was denied to them, for it was the mark of the respectable Roman matrona—a woman who was properly married. RITE OF PASSAGE. In many cultures, a young man’s transition from boyhood to manhood is marked by what is called a “rite of passage.” In Rome, the rite of passage involved changing from the toga of adolescence to the toga of a man. A Roman youth of free birth wore the toga praetexta, a toga with a band of purple woven along the edge of the garment. Under it, he wore a tunic which had two purple woven stripes which extended from his shoulders to the hemline, and around his neck he wore a locket called a bulla which might be made of gold, silver, bronze, or even leather. When the youth came of age, he exchanged the toga praetexta for the toga virilis, the man’s toga, which was all white, the natural color of the wool. In the early days of Rome, well down into the second century B.C.E., a youth gave up the toga praetexta at age sixteen. Later, the ceremony often took place at the end of the youth’s fifteenth year. There were exceptions: the emperor Tiberius would not allow the future 94

Now I would solicit the particular attention of those numerous people who imagine that money is everything in this world, and that rank and ability are inseparable from wealth: let them observe that Cincinnatus, the one man in whom Rome placed all her hope of survival, was at that moment working a little threeacre farm (now known as the Quinctian meadows) west of the Tiber, just opposite the spot where the shipyards are today. A mission from the city found him at work on the land—digging a ditch, maybe, or ploughing. Greetings were exchanged, and he was asked—with a prayer for God’s blessing on himself and his country— to put on his toga and hear the Senate’s instructions. This naturally surprised him, and asking if all were well, he told his wife Racilia to run to their cottage and fetch his toga. The toga was brought, and wiping the grimy sweat from his hands and face, he put it on; at once the envoys from the city saluted him, with congratulations, as Dictator, invited him to enter Rome, and informed him of the terrible danger of Minucius’ army. A state vessel was waiting for him on the river, and on the city bank he was welcomed by his three sons who had come to meet him, then by other kinsmen and friends, and finally by nearly the whole body of senators. SOURCE :

Livy, The Early History of Rome. Trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1960): 213.

emperor Caligula to assume the toga virilis until his twentieth year, and the future emperor Nero assumed it at age fourteen. The toga praetexta was also worn by important state officials, and the fact that children wore it as well was perhaps a recognition of the vulnerability and, at the same time, the importance of childhood. Children were as important to the future of the state as the men who held prestigious magistracies. The ceremony in which a young man gave up the toga praetexta usually took place during the festival of Bacchus known as the Liberalia on 16 March. The night before, the boy took off his toga praetexta and put on a white tunic to sleep in; this tunic was known as the tunica recta (the “straight tunic”), so-called because it was woven on the old-fashioned upright loom. The ceremony started the next morning with a sacrifice offered to the Lares, the household gods of the family. The boy dedicated his toga praetexta to the Lares and along with it, his bulla, the locket containing the amulet or charm which he wore around his neck as a boy to ward off evil influences and protect him in the vulnerable years of childhood. It was

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rather like a modern good luck charm except that Roman society really did believe in the “Evil Eye” and assorted malign influences so hex signs to ward them off were more significant than good luck charms are in modern times. It also marked the wearer as the child of a freeborn Roman citizen. The young man then put on his new toga. It was the toga pura, which did not mean that it was “pure,” but rather that it was not dyed, i.e. it was the natural color of the wool. This was the “toga of a man,” the so-called toga virile. It signified that he was now an adult male. His family and friends escorted him in his new toga virile to the forum where they presented him to the Roman people, the populus Romanus, who would henceforth regard him as one of their members. The young man then went to the Capitoline Hill, and in the Temple of Jupiter he offered sacrifice to the gods of the state, the divine triad Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. He was not yet of an age to begin a public career, but old enough to take an interest in public affairs and learn from his elders how to conduct the business of the state. He had crossed the divide between vulnerable youth and manhood. TOGAS FOR GIRLS. Girls also wore the toga praetexta, but they gave it up at age twelve upon reaching puberty. From then on until marriage, girls wore a palla, or mantle. A girl over twelve is shown wearing a palla on the south relief of the “Altar of Peace” in Rome which the Roman senate commissioned in 13 B.C.E.; it can still be seen reconstructed in modern Rome, on the bank of the Tiber River. Unlike the toga, it was a rectangular swatch of cloth, but on the “Altar of Peace” it is shown folded over the girl’s body in a manner so similar to a toga that it might be mistaken for one, except that its squared lower border gives it away. THE SHAPE OF THE TOGA. The toga was simply a piece of cloth that was folded and wrapped around the body. In the early days of Rome, when the cloth was a piece of woolen homespun, it probably kept the shape that it had when it came off the loom: rectangular. The evidence from ancient authors, scanty though it is, indicates that the toga was a semi-circular piece of cloth with one straight edge, and when a purple stripe was woven along the edge—a wide one (latus clavus) for senators and a narrow one (angustus clavus) for members of the equestrian class—it could have been woven only along the straight edge. There have been many modern attempts to reproduce the sort of toga of the monuments and it seems likely that it was not a piece of cloth that was a true semi-circle, but rather that it was half an ellipse with one straight edge that was broad enough to allow the purple stripes to be woven parallel to it. Conservative though

Imperial Procession (detail from the Ara Pacis Augustae), showing members of the imperial family in procession at the dedication of this altar which commemorates the pacification of Spain and Gaul by Emperor Augustus, begun 13, dedicated 9 B.C.E. © ARALDO DE LUCA/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

the Romans were, the toga styles changed over time; the toga of the late empire bore a general resemblance to the toga of the Roman republic, but it was not the same garment. Yet stone-cutters in the late empire turned out toga-clad figures for official statues of emperors and public officials which were erected across the empire. HOW THE TOGA WAS WORN. The toga of republican Rome, in its simplest form, was thrown over the left shoulder, drawn across the back and under the right arm and then thrown back again over the left shoulder so that there was an oblique fold across the chest. The right shoulder and arm were left unencumbered, but not bare, for a man would wear a tunic under his toga. There is a statue in the Archeological Museum in Florence, Italy, known as Il Arringatore (The Orator) which shows the kind of toga that might have been worn in the second century or the beginning of the first century B.C.E. The skirt does not reach the feet, and along its lower edge there is what seems to be a row of embroidery. The toga that Roman politicians Cicero or Julius Caesar might have worn in the last days of the Roman Republic,

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THE LACERNA. Since the toga gave poor protection against inclement weather, the Romans adopted a hoodless woolen outer cloak which was popular in the army: the lacerna. It was worn over the toga and was open at the side, leaving the arms free. The Romans fastened it with a brooch or buckle on the right shoulder so it could be tossed back over the shoulder. It was dark colored when it was used as a military cape, but when it was adopted as civilian dress, it was often made of bright colors and lighter cloth, particularly for upper-class men and women. In cold weather, the spectators in the amphitheater or theater who were wearing togas needed their lacernae to keep warm.

Man wearing short republican toga, c. 100 B.C.E.

CREATED BY CE-

CILY EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

however, covered both shoulders. Under the Roman emperors, togas became elaborate with folds carefully arranged. The toga of the imperial period had two added features: an overfold of cloth called a sinus that ran diagonally across the chest, and a clump of drapery called an umbo that was a sort of decorative knot made by pulling up the folds on the left side in order to hold the drapery together. Apparel this elaborate cannot have been easy to put on or take off. The proper arrangement of the folds of the toga was a mark of elegance, and there were slaves trained to do the task, called vestiplici if they were male slaves, or vestiplicae if they were women. If a Roman magistrate was to officiate at a ceremony in imperial Rome where a toga must be worn, his slaves might have to sit up the night before to prepare the pleats and folds by squeezing them with tongs. The sinus in particular needed care, for in some portrayals of toga-clad figures it hangs loosely but elegantly across the chest and almost touches the ground. The toga which began as a practical piece of clothing ended up as an elaborate ceremonial costume. 96

TYPES OF TOGA. Togas were made of wool—a light woolen fabric for summer and a heavier one for winter wear. Unless they were dyed, they remained the natural color of the wool, which was off-white, though given the absence of good laundry facilities, many of the togas worn in Rome must have been a rather dirty grey. It was important for a citizen who presented himself as a candidate for office to have a pure-white toga, and he would use chalk to give his toga the requisite color—hence, the Latin word for “candidate” (candidatus) came from the word for “white” (candidus). The toga praetexta worn by children and by state officials had a purple border. So did the togas worn by senators and men of the equestrian order. Senators had a wide purple border (the latus clavis or “laticlave”) to mark their status, whereas men of the equestrian order, the so-called equites or “horsemen” whose minimum income requirement was less than half a senator’s, had a narrow stripe. The equites by the second century B.C.E. were men of property who stayed away from a career in politics; they included in their ranks businessmen and tax farmers—that is, private entrepreneurs who contracted with the government to collect taxes. A variety of toga with stripes known as the trabea was worn by the Flamen Dialis and the Flamen Martialis, the high priests of Jupiter and of Mars, and also by the augurs, the priestly officials who took the auspices, but it is unclear how the stripes were arranged. A toga called the trabea was also worn by men of the equestrian order who paraded on horseback in the festival of Castor and Pollux (Rome’s legendary founders) to commemorate the semimythical Battle of Lake Regillus. Their trabea, however, seems to have been a short mantle like the Greek chlamys. It was the distinctive costume of the equites, for when Roman theaters staged comedies where the characters were citizens of the equestrian order, they were known as comoediae trabeatae—comedies where the actors are costumed in trabeae. Dark-colored togas were worn as a sign of mourning. This type of toga was known as the toga

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pulla: the “dark-colored toga.” A pullum was a garment dyed dark-grey. A toga known as the toga picta, or trabea triumphalis, was decorated with patterns and must have taken great skill to weave; it was worn in the period of the Roman Republic by generals returning from a victorious campaign who were granted the right of holding a triumph. The triumphant general paraded his spoils and captives through the streets of Rome, and finally made his way along the Sacred Road (Via Sacra) through the Roman Forum to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. In the rear of the procession came the general himself in a chariot, wearing a toga picta. The general did not actually own this toga, for these togas were kept among the treasures of Jupiter, and brought out only on special occasions. Under the Roman Empire, however, triumphs were reserved for the emperor, and the first emperor, Augustus, made the toga picta his official costume. THE END OF THE TOGA. Juvenal, the Roman satirist who probably wrote in the first quarter of the second century C.E., wrote in his third satire that throughout most of Italy no man was seen in a toga until the day he died, when he was laid out in one. When shows were staged in the country theaters on holidays, everyone, magistrates included, wore a plain white tunic. Yet the toga remained the proper ceremonial garment until the fourth century C.E. as evidenced by developments from Roman sculpture. A relief sculpture of Marcus Aurelius, emperor from 161–180 C.E., which was re-used on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, shows a figure wearing a short toga which comes only to the knees; another panel of the same emperor, now in the Conservatori Museum in Rome, shows a person with a similar short toga, who is playing the reed pipe known as the aulos. It has been suggested that this short toga was the toga of the Roman common man, but the absence of such figures in art makes it difficult to come to a conclusion. Marcus Aurelius’ predecessor, Hadrian, appears in one statue wearing a toga that resembled a Greek himation. Hadrian was a lover of Greek culture, which may account for his toga in the Greek style, but the fashion did not endure for long. In the third century C.E. a new style developed with a broad fold running from under the right arm across the chest and over the left shoulder, giving the appearance of a baldric, or sash running diagonally across the chest. This was the “banded toga” and a man needed the help of a valet to put it on. It was not a costume for everyday wear. Sometimes it seems that the bands were held in place with concealed stitching. Difficult though it might be to put on, the banded toga remained popular through the fourth century as ceremonial garb. As we reach the fifth century, a toga-clad statue of a consul in the Capitoline

A man wearing a lacerna (a soldier’s cloak).

CREATED BY CECILY

EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

Museum in Rome shows the final stage of the toga’s evolution. The statue dates to about 400 C.E., and it portrays a man wearing a tunic with short sleeves over a long-sleeved tunic. Over that he wears a toga with a long sinus in front, which the magistrate had to hold up with his left arm to prevent it dragging on the ground. This was clearly a purely ceremonial costume for it did not allow the wearer to move freely. By the time the toga reached the end of its long history, it had become unfitted for physical movement. Nonetheless it was not without an offspring. It mutated into the vestment of a Roman Catholic priest which is known as a stola—not to be confused with the costume of a Roman married woman which was known by the same name. SOURCES

F. Courby, “Toga,” in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines. Ed Charles Victor Daremberg and Edmond Saglio (Paris: Hachette, 1877; reprint, Graz: Akademisch Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1962): 347–353.

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THE COSTUME OF THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS INTRODUCTION :

The author known as John the Lydian lived in the reign of the emperor Justinian (527–565 C.E.), and worked in the imperial bureaucracy in Constantinople for forty years. Three of his works survive, the best known titled De Magistratibus (On the Offices of the State), De Ostentis (On Omens), and De Mensibus (On the Months) which collected information about the ancient Roman religious calendar and the various festivals which had their dates set by the calendar. In his On the Offices of the State he describes the costumes worn by various officials, and the passage below describes the dress of the emperor Augustus. John lived five centuries after Augustus’ death, and no doubt he confused the costume of Augustus to some extent with the costumes of later emperors; the outer cloak of Augustus, for instance, was not made of silk, but silk was regularly used for the apparel of later emperors, and jewel-encrusted garments were a feature of imperial apparel in the later Roman Empire. John reports correctly that Augustus was high priest of Rome (pontifex maximus)—he became high priest in 12 B.C.E. after the death of the previous incumbent, and all his successors until the emperor Gratian (367–383 C.E.) held the office after him. The word pontifex does mean “bridge-builder”—John is correct on that score—and the reason is that when Rome was still pagan, it was believed that every river had a divine spirit of its own that would be offended if a priest failed to perform the prescribed rites when it was yoked by a bridge connecting its two banks.

In time of peace he [Augustus] used to wear the garb of a pontifex—the name stands for chief priest, connected with bridges—of purple reaching to the feet, priestly, ornamented with gold, and a cloak likewise of

C. F. Ross, “The Reconstruction of the Later Toga,” American Journal of Archaeology 15 (1911): 24–31. Shelley Stone, “The Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume,” in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 13–45. Lillian W. Wilson, The Roman Toga (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924).

T HE T EXTILES OF R OMAN W ORLD

THE

G REEK

AND

WOOL. Sheep were all-purpose animals in the Greco-Roman world. They provided sheepskins which peasants used as cloaks, wool for cloth, mutton to sup98

purple, which had pleats of gold at its extremities. He used to cover his head for the reasons which I gave in the treatise On the Months which I have written. For the wars he wore the paludamenta—these are scarlet mantles of double thickness spun from top-quality raw silk, caught up at the shoulders by a golden brooch inset with precious stones. We call this a fibula as Italians do, but people in the palace even nowadays speak of it, with a sort of special term, as a cornucopia. At festivals he would wear the limbus—this is a purple cloak which covers the body down to the feet, with a Meander pattern; on the shoulders it has a brilliant spray of tabulamenta—that is, material woven into piping—and a paragauda embroidered with the golden letter gamma [in other words a tunic with little figures like the Greek letter “gamma” embroidered on it]. From the border at the feet and the bottom end of the garment, on both sides these little figures trick out the tunic with gold to form a letter gamma. In the senate he would wear a mantle of purple (of course) and, at the edge of the border near the person who wore it, it was bedecked with squares outlined in pure gold—the court functionaries call these squares segmenta, meaning “gold embroidery on the hemline,” whereas the man on the street calls embroideries of this sort on the mantles of private individuals sementa. This mantle is called bracteolate (covered with gold plaques), gemosa (encrusted with precious stones), and lanceolate (ornamented with embroidered spear-heads). He also wore the rest of the emperor’s official regalia, concerning which I resume a detailed description to be excessive. … SOURCE : John the Lydian, De Magistratibus, in Bureaucracy in Traditional Society: Romano-Byzantine Bureaucracies Viewed from Within. Trans. by T. F. Carney (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1971): 44. Text modified by James Allan Evans.

plement the Greek diet, and milk for making cheese. In ancient Greece and Rome, wool fabric had the added advantage that, unlike linen, it was easy to dye. In addition, wool in its natural state came in a variety of colors depending on the breed of sheep. Latin had words to describe the various hues: albus meant “white,” niger “dark brown” or “black,” coracinus “deep black,” and fuscus “brown with a tinge of red.” There was also a color of wool called pullus that came from sheep in south Italy, and also from Liguria, a region in the northwest of the peninsula. Pullus was evidently brownishblack, and it was a color associated with mourning. In the Po River valley in northern Italy, a breed of sheep was developed which produced a fine white wool that could be woven into a gossamer-like fabric. If a man or woman preferred an artificial color, however, there

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THE MAKING OF LINEN INTRODUCTION :

The Natural History of Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E., is the chief source for information on how linen thread was produced from flax. In the section of his Natural History from which this excerpt is taken, Pliny discussed various fabrics made from plants, including esparto grass, and— surprisingly—asbestos, which he thought was a plant found in the deserts of Egypt. Pliny thought that the best “linen” was made from it, but in second place was the fabric made from the fine flax grown in Elis in Greece. The passage below describes the processing of flax in order to extract the linen fiber.

With us the ripeness of flax is ascertained by two indications, the swelling of the seed or its assuming a yellowish color. It is then plucked up and tied together in little bundles each about the size of a handful, hung up in the sun to dry for one day with the roots turned upward, and then for five more days with the heads of the bundles turned inward towards each other so that the seed may fall in the middle. Linseed makes a potent medicine; it is also popular in a rustic porridge with an extremely sweet taste, made in Italy north of the Po, but now for a long

were a large variety of dyes available; in Rome, legend claimed that Numa, the second king of Rome after Romulus, established the guild of dyers. The legend is not likely to be true, but certainly the guild had an ancient history. LINEN. Linen was made from the domesticated flax plant which was developed early in the Mediterranean world from the wild flax for its fiber and the oil from its seeds. Linen was used in the Bronze Age, prior to 1100 B.C.E., both in the Minoan period on Crete and the Mycenaean period on the mainland. The tablets found in the so-called “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos in Greece show that flax was cultivated in the south-west Peloponnesos before 1200 B.C.E., and in the later classical period, Elis in the north-west Peloponnesos was well known for its fine linen. In the Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great, Egypt produced linen with a high reputation, but by the Roman period, the big centers of production had moved to Syria and Palestine. In the west, the linen of the Po Valley had a good reputation, as did the linen from the coastal areas of southeast Spain. Linen was used not only for dress, but also fishermen’s nets, sails for ships, and the awnings in the theaters and

time only used in sacrifices. When the wheat harvest is over the actual stalks of the flax are plunged in water that has been left to get warm in the sun, and a weight is put on them to press them down, as flax floats very readily. The outer coat becoming looser is a sign that they are completely soaked, and they are again dried in the sun, turned head downwards as before, and afterwards when thoroughly dry they are pounded on a stone with a towhammer. The part that was nearest the skin is called oakum—it is flax of an inferior quality, and mostly more fit for lampwicks; nevertheless this too is combed with iron spikes until all the outer skin is scraped off. The pith has several grades of whiteness and softness, and the discarded skin is useful for heating ovens and furnaces. There is an art of combing out and separating flax; it is a fair amount for fifteen … [here the text is defective] … to be carded out from fifty pounds’ weight of bundles; and spinning flax is a respectable occupation even for men. Then it is polished in the thread a second time, after being soaked in water and repeatedly beaten out against a stone, and it is woven into fabric and then again beaten with clubs, as it is always better for rough treatment. SOURCE : Pliny, Natural History. Books XVII–XIX. Vol. V. Trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950): 431, 433.

amphitheaters that protected spectators from the sun; awnings were also made from cotton since it dried quickly, or a fabric that was half cotton, half linen was woven for use as canopies. COTTON. Cotton was an imported fabric. It first appeared in India, where it has turned up on archaeological sites in the Indus River valley, dating to the early second millennium B.C.E. By the Hellenistic period, from the third to first centuries B.C.E., it had spread to Upper Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, evidently following the trade route between east Africa and India. Greek and Roman authors seemed to think that cotton was grown on trees; the Roman poet Vergil in his Georgics, for instance, refers to the cotton trees of Nubia. Very likely this was not a mistake as many modern scholars believe. Cotton nowadays is grown on a bush with the botanical name Gossipium herbaceum, but there is also a cotton tree, Gossipium arboretum, and quite possibly it was the source of the cotton fiber that the Greeks and Romans knew. SILK. True silk comes from the domesticated mulberry silkworm which extrudes a silk fiber to make its cocoon. In the reign of the emperor Justinian (527–565

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the imperial court. The passage below comes from the biographer of the first Caesars, Suetonius.

THE UNUSUAL DRESS OF THE EMPEROR GAIUS CALIGULA INTRODUCTION :

Gaius Caligula, the great-grandson of the emperor Augustus, became emperor himself in 37 C.E., largely on the basis of his distinguished ancestry. In his four years as the emperor, he proved to be a terrible ruler, and was apparently mentally disturbed; he was assassinated before he could harm the empire. His general appearance was unfortunate: he was tall with a poor physique, spindling legs and a thin neck, and his body was very hairy except for his head which was almost completely bald. In place of the simplicity of dress which his two predecessors as emperors—Augustus and Tiberius— had favored, Caligula introduced elaborate styles which were considered borrowings from the orient and were associated, in Roman minds, with divine kingship. In fact, it has been argued that there was method in Caligula’s madness; he was trying to introduce absolute monarchy with all its trappings and took his cues from royal courts such as Cleopatra’s in Egypt. Three centuries later, Caligula’s dress would not have been considered particularly odd in

C.E.)

silkworm eggs were smuggled into the Roman Empire and became the foundation of the Byzantine silk industry. Prior to that development, all silk was imported. There have been finds of silk in Europe that date before Emperor Augustus, but silk was rare before the Augustan period when trade with India opened up. It was a luxury fabric; silk swatches were sometimes unraveled and the silk thread rewoven with fine linen in order to make it go twice as far and bring down the price. The emperor Caligula (37–41 C.E.) wore a silk toga, and the emperor Elagabalus (218–222 C.E.) insisted on a new silk garment every day. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek writing in Latin at the end of the fourth century C.E., remarked that the wearing of silk—once confined to the imperial court—had become widespread among upper-class Romans. In 408 C.E., when the Visigothic chieftain Alaric was holding Rome to ransom, he demanded among other items, 4,000 silk tunics for his men. The chief trade route that brought silk into Mediterranean markets shipped it from China to Indian ports where Persian merchants bought it, carried it up to the head of the Persian Gulf, and then transported it by caravan to the ports of entry into the Roman Empire on the Euphrates River. The transit trade enriched Persia, which made the Roman imperial government unhappy, and it tried to develop alternative routes. The problem was not solved until the Byzantine Empire developed its own silk industry.

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Caligula paid no attention to traditional or current fashions in his dress; ignoring male conventions and even human decencies. Often he made public appearances in a cloak covered with embroidery and encrusted with precious stones, a long-sleeved tunic and bracelets; or in silk (which men were forbidden by law to wear) or even in a woman’s robe; and came shod sometimes with slippers, sometimes with buskins, sometimes with military boots, sometimes with women’s shoes. Occasionally he affected a golden beard and carried Jupiter’s thunderbolt, Neptune’s trident, or Mercury’s serpent-twined staff in his hand. He even dressed up as Venus and, long before his expedition, wore the uniform of a triumphant general, often embellished with the breastplate which he had stolen from Alexander the Great’s tomb at Alexandria. SOURCE :

Suetonius, “Gaius Caligula,” in The Twelve Caesars. Trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1957): 175.

COAN SILK. Not all silk in the Greek world came from China. On the island of Cos—which is more famous for the great doctor Hippocrates of Cos who established a medical school there—there was a thriving silk industry which used silk from the cocoon of an indigenous moth. The chief ancient sources for information on this industry are Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, who agreed that the technique of extracting silk fiber from the cocoon of this moth was discovered by a woman named Pamphile. Both men and women wove Coan silk, which was unusual in Greece where weaving was considered women’s work. But the output of the Coan silk industry cannot have been great, for Cos is a small island, and probably its silk was inferior to Chinese silk. China supplied a demand which Cos could not fill. WEAVING. Women did the weaving in ancient Greece. The Greek historian Herodotus who visited Egypt in the mid-fifth century B.C.E. noticed that in Egypt men worked at looms, and he remarked on the difference between Egyptian and Greek custom. In Greece, the housewife was in charge of weaving cloth for the household. The Greek historian Xenophon commented on the importance of the wifely duty of weaving in his treatise on household management, Oeconomicus. In that work, he described a dialogue between his mentor, Socrates, and the wise Athenian

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Ischomachus, during which Ischomachus highlighted the importance of his young wife being the preeminent weaver in the household. Not all weaving was done in the home, however. Fine fabrics in particular required professional weaving, and specialty firms existed in classical Athens as early as the later fifth century B.C.E. There is evidence of an establishment that specialized in the chlamys (a short cloak) and another whose specialty was the chlanis, which was a cloak for the upper body like the chlaina, but made of finer fabric. In Italy, the fine white woolen cloth produced in the north, in the Po Valley, called for skillful weaving, and factories established there used highly trained slaves for the weaving. From the first century C.E. wellto-do women had more to do with their spare time than to stand at the loom working alongside their female slaves, though the empress Livia, the third and last wife of Augustus, tried to set an example of the antique womanly virtue that her husband promoted by working at the loom. In the towns and cities of the Roman Empire in the Augustan Age, however, there were already shops that sold ready-made clothes both for freemen and slaves. THE CREATION OF FABRIC. Despite evidence of ready-made clothes, the vast majority of people in ancient Greece and Rome had to make not only their own clothes, but their own yarns and fabrics as well. The process of making fabric was long and labor-intensive. After the shearing of the sheep in the spring, the women washed the wool and pulled apart the matted fibers with their fingers. Then they carded it, separating the fibers with a comb, and rubbed it until they produced a mass of tow, or combed wool, kneeling as they did so on a kind of terra-cotta kneeling pad and propping their feet on a stool called an onos, or donkey. At this point they dyed the wool unless the finished cloth was intended to be the natural color of the wool. The wool next had to be spun, but the spinning wheel had not yet been invented; the woman responsible for spinning, known as the spinster, used a distaff and spindle to twist the yarn. The spinster wound the tow on the distaff, pulled out a length of it and secured it to the spindle that she held in her left hand. A weight called a spindle whorl was tied to the bottom of the spindle. It held the length of tow taut and once the spindle was set spinning, it twisted tow into yarn. The spinster continued to feed tow from the distaff into the growing length of yarn until the spindle reached the floor. Then she wound the yarn around the spindle and the process started over again. Once she spun a full skein of thread, she took it off the spindle and placed it in the wool basket. The

COAN SILK INTRODUCTION :

Chinese silk was much prized, but it had to be imported at great expense until the reign of the emperor Justinian (527–565 C.E.) when silkworm eggs were smuggled into the Byzantine Empire, and the white mulberry tree (Morus alba)—the silkworm’s food plant—was introduced about the same time. On the island of Cos, however, there was a caterpillar whose cocoon could be unraveled to yield a silk thread. Silk from Cos was famous for its lightness and transparency, though the production must have been small. The passage below is from Aristotle’s Historia Animalium (Research Notes on Living Creatures). Pliny the Elder also describes the making of Coan silk in his Natural History, and both authors attribute the invention to a woman named Pamphile, the daughter of Plateus. It has also been suggested that Coan silk was known as far back as the Minoan period.

From one particular large grub, which has as it were horns, and in other respects differs from grubs in general, there comes, by a metamorphosis of the grub, first a caterpillar, then the cocoon, then the necydalus; and the creature passes through all these transformations within six months. A class of women unwind and reel off the cocoons of these creatures, and afterwards weave a fabric with the threads thus unwound; a Coan woman of the name of Pamphile, daughter of Plateus, being credited with the first invention of this fabric. SOURCE :

Aristotle, Historia Animalium, Book V. Vol. IV of The Works of Aristotle. Trans. D’arcy Wentworth Thompson (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1910): 551b.

strength and the texture of the thread depended on the speed of the spindle as it turned. Once the yarn had been created, it could be woven into fabric on a loom. In ancient Greece there were two types of loom. One was a small, easily transportable loom used to produce girdles and relatively narrow swatches of cloth, and the weaver could sit as she worked at it. The other was the old-fashioned large, vertical loom used to weave the swatches of cloth that would become tunics or cloaks. This was the upright loom on which was woven the Roman tunica recta which a youth wore when he came of age and put on the “toga of a man” (toga virilis). The threads of the warp hung downwards from the top of the loom and were held taut by loom-weights. The weavers sang as they worked. Homer in the Odyssey

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described the nymph Calypso, who kept Odysseus prisoner until the gods commanded her to let him return home to Ithaca, as a weaver who sang at her loom. The witch Circe from the same literary work also sang as she weaved. The drudgery of working a loom was not necessarily conducive to joyful songs, however. Weaving was hard work, and it is more than likely that the female slaves who toiled at the loom sang sad songs. PATTERNED CLOTH. In 1972, a kore—that is a statue of a woman, fully clothed—and a kouros—a nude male figure—were excavated at a cemetery near Merenda outside Athens. On the base of the kore statue was an inscription which read, “Grave of Phrasikleia. I shall forever be called kore. The gods have given me this name instead of marriage.” Phrasikleia had died before her marriage, and thus she would always be called a maiden (kore), never a married woman. More remarkable than this inscription, however, was the preserved original paint on the statue. Art historians knew that the Greeks painted their statues, but on those that have survived, the paint has disappeared or has faded almost to nothing. The paint on Phrasikleia’s chiton shows swastikas, which were considered good-luck signs at this time, and rosettes on the front of it, and four-pointed stars and various flowers on the back. The predominant colors are red, black, and yellow. Clearly this was a patterned wedding dress in bright colors for a marriage that never happened. At one time, it was thought that Greek weavers with their warp-weighted looms could not produce patterned cloth; when Greek authors mentioned decorated robes, scholars assumed this to mean that they were embroidered—decoration had been sewn on after the fabric had been woven. But Phrasikleia’s chiton proves that they were quite capable of making cloth with colorful patterns. The peplos which the women of Athens presented to Athena at every Great Panathenaea festival must have been a patterned weave of the same sort, and Athens was not the only place that regularly presented its guardian goddess with a new dress. In Elis in the northwest Peloponnesos, a peplos on which sixteen women had toiled was presented at regular intervals to Hera who was the guardian goddess of the state. Homer’s Iliad related that Helen of Troy wove a battle scene in color in her spare time. Helen was no different from other Greek housewives in this one respect: she, too, was skilled at the loom. DYE. Excavations at a Roman fort at Vindolanda, which is near Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, have recovered various fragments of textiles and fifty of them were analyzed. The analysis revealed that eight of them had been dyed, and in all cases a red dye was used that came from 102

the root of the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum). The Romans had various dyes, and madder red was one of the cheapest. Among the expensive dyes were the various shades of purple made from the murex shellfish. A cheaper, counterfeit purple could be obtained by combining madder red in the right proportions with indigo, which was imported from India. Coccinus, a brilliant scarlet made from the kermes, a scale insect, was in high demand as a luxury dye. It originated in Asia, but Spain also developed a lucrative kermes industry. Other dyes were a strong green with a blue tinge (prasinus), a fairly bright red (russeus), and dark blue (venetus). Dyes, however, were not much use without mordants to fix the colors. Ancient mordants included alum from wood ash or even human urine and natron—sodium carbonate, or washing soda, which was dug from natron pits in Egypt. To fix the color, dyers dipped the wool in the mordant before it was put in the dye vat and heated. SOURCES

John Beckwith, “Textile Fragments from Classical Antiquity,” Illustrated London News 224 (1954): 114–15. John Ferguson, “China and Rome,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II–9–2. Ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1978): 581–603. Reinhold Meyer, A History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity (Brussels, Belgium: Collection Latomus 116, 1970). Judith Lynn Sebesta, “Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Colors and Textiles of Roman Costume,” in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 65–76. Beate Wagner-Hasel, “The Graces and Colour Weaving,” in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World. Ed. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (London, England: Duckworth and the Classical Press of Wales, 2002): 17–32. Jonathan P. Wild, “Linen,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Eds. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 863.

D RESSING TO I MPRESS AND R OME

G REECE

COLOR IN GREEK AND ROMAN APPAREL. A visitor to ancient Greece or Rome would have been impressed by the bright colors of the clothing that the people wore, particularly the women. On this point, the Greek and Roman art that has survived tends to give a false picture. The marble statues were originally painted

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using wax-based paints, but it is very rare to find a statue now with traces of the original colors. The bronze statues have almost all disappeared long ago, melted down in the medieval period for their metal. The pictures on Greek vases of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., when Athenian black-figured and red-figured vases were in style, present a record of changing fashions, but the vase painter was limited by the colors of his medium. In fact, Greek and Roman garments were far more colorful than most people realize. Weavers could produce elaborately patterned cloth. The peplos that was presented every four years to the goddess Athena at the Great Panathenaea festival was a masterpiece of design. It was woven by the women of Athens in a public building in the city where space was set aside for the loom, and the style of the garment did not change, but there was room for innovation in the pattern of the cloth. THE EAST GREEKS. The Greeks always looked on the fashions of the Orient, particularly Persia, with admiration mixed with disapproval and contempt. On the one hand, the elaborate fashions associated with Persia signaled soft living and effeminacy; the Greek admiration for the well-muscled naked body was not to be found in Persia. On the other hand, Oriental fashions were enormously attractive for anyone who wanted his dress to signal his wealth and his cosmopolitan culture. East Greece—the Greek foundations in Asia Minor and Cyprus—was always an avenue for contact with the civilizations of the Orient. The collapse of the Mycenaean civilization had been followed by a period of migrations when three waves of migrants from Greece founded cities on the coastline of Asia Minor and the Dodecanese islands. The most important of these new foundations were made by Greeks speaking the Ionian dialect, and so East Greeks are often referred to as “Ionian,” though there were also Aeolian and Dorian foundations, established by Greeks whose dialects were Aeolian or Dorian. These Ionian cities were cheek-by-jowl with the Lydian Empire, and the last Lydian king, Croesus, subdued those that were on the mainland while the cities on the offshore islands were protected by their fleets. In 546 B.C.E. Croesus in turn fell victim to a new empire builder, Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire. The Ionian cities that had belonged to the Lydian Empire fell under Persian control. Persia was not content with the Greek cities on the Asia Minor coastline. Little by little it took over the cities on the offshore islands, and from Asia, it moved into Europe and by 512 B.C.E. it controlled the region to the north of the Aegean Sea. Yet Persia’s rule was relatively light. Ionian culture continued as before, and Ionian fashions, influenced by Lydia

THUCYDIDES ON ATHENIAN FASHIONS INTRODUCTION :

The Athenian historian Thucydides, who composed his History of the Peloponnesian War near the end the fifth century B.C.E., devoted a section in his introduction to the developments which had taken place in Greece in the Archaic Period (700–480 B.C.E.) and earlier, and he notes the change in fashion that had taken place in Greek clothing. He claims that the Athenians had taken the lead. It is more likely that it was the cities in Ionia that took the lead, but the surviving evidence does not allow us to contradict Thucydides with any confidence.

The Athenians were the first to give up the habit of carrying weapons and to adopt a way of living that was more relaxed and more luxurious. In fact, the elder men of the rich families who had these luxurious tastes only recently gave up wearing linen undergarments [chitons] and tying their hair behind their heads in a knot fastened with a clasp of golden grasshoppers: the same fashions spread to their kinsmen in Ionia, and lasted there among the old men for some time. It was the Spartans who first began to dress simply and in accordance with our modern taste, with the rich leading a life that was as much as possible like the life of the ordinary people. They, too, were the first to play games naked, to take off their clothes openly, and to rub themselves down with olive oil after their exercise. In ancient times, even at the Olympic Games, athletes used to wear coverings for their loins, and indeed this practice was still in existence not very many years ago. Even today, many foreigners, especially in Asia, wear these loincloths for boxing matches and wrestling bouts. Indeed, one could point to a number of other instances where the manners of the ancient Hellenic world are very similar to the manners of foreigners today. SOURCE :

Thucydides, “Introduction,” in History of the Peloponnesian War. Trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Classics, 1954): 38–39.

and then by Persia, were elaborate and ornate. Ionia became a conduit for Persian style to pass to Greece, particularly to Athens, which the Ionians regarded as their mother city. In the first two decades of the fifth century B.C.E., Persia made an attempt to conquer Greece which resulted in Persia’s defeat and her retreat from the region of the Aegean Sea. The elaborate fashions associated with the Orient went out of style in Athens which

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NEW FASHIONS FROM PERSIA INTRODUCTION :

During the last quarter of the fifth century B.C.E., Persian fashions were on the rise in Athens, though not without the usual conflict between the old and new styles that mirrored the conflict between the old traditions and the new ways. In his play The Wasps (performed in 422 B.C.E.), Aristophanes highlights both of these conflicts in an exchange between a son and his father during which the son, Anticleon, attempts to convince his father, Procleon, to trade in his plain brown juryman’s coat for the significantly fancier styles from Persia—in this case a kaunakes or a persis. The two men’s clothes (as well as their names) in this instance also reflect their political convictions; Cleon was a political leader intensely disliked by the wealthy Athenians who wore the latest fashions, but the masses supported him.

Procleon: What is it you want me to do? Anticleon: Take off that shabby old cloak and throw this gown over your shoulders. Procleon: Lot of good having sons and bringing them up, if all they can do is try and suffocate you! Anticleon: Come along, get it on, and don’t talk so much. Procleon: In the name of all the gods, what is this horrible thing? Anticleon: It’s a Persian gown: some people call it a full-waister. Procleon: I thought it must be one of those goatskin things from the country. Anticleon: You would. Now if you’d ever been to Sardis, you’d have known what it was; but it seems you don’t. Procleon: I most certainly don’t. Looks to me like one of Morychus’ fancy wrappings. Anticleon: No, these are woven in Ecbatana. Procleon: What from? Tripe? Anticleon: Really, you’re hopeless! Don’t you realize that this is an extremely expensive Persian weave—why, at least sixty pounds of wool must have gone to the making of this. SOURCE : Aristophanes, The Wasps. Trans. David Barrett (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1964): 80–81.

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opted for a more sober, austere appearance, though older, more conservative men continued to wear Ionic chitons with their many pleats and do up their hair with pins made in the shape of grasshoppers. Ionia won its independence from Persia after Xerxes’ debacle in Greece, but then it fell under the domination of Athens. Ionia had the reputation of being a place where life was soft and easy, and the scientific view of the day held that soft living made men with soft muscles who were no good on the battlefield. Hard living made hard men, and as the Greeks saw it, it was the toughness of their foot soldiers and the free men who rowed their warships that won them victory over Persia. Simple clothing and toughness went hand in hand. The fact that Ionia won its freedom from Persia only to lose it the Athenian Empire seemed to prove that Ionia, with its love for Persianstyle fripperies, was not fit to defend its liberty. The reaction against Persian fashion did not last, however. Active warfare between the Athenian Empire and Persia ended in 450 B.C.E., and peaceful contacts between Athens and Persia resumed. PERSIAN FASHION IN ATHENS. By the last quarter of the fifth century, Athenians demonstrated a fondness for Persian styles again. New items of dress appear with telltale names. The fine wool cloak called a syria must have been inspired by Syrian fashion. These cloaks may even have been imports from Syria. There was a kind of women’s shoes called persikai. One of Plato’s dialogues refers to wealthy people who wore “Persian belts”; the dialogue is fictitious, but Plato imagines it taking place before 415 B.C.E., and it is probable that some rich Athenians of that time were wearing expensive belts probably imported from Persia. Another garment of the late fifth century B.C.E. was the kaunakes, also known as the persis—a name which betrays its origin. It seems to have been a heavy cloak with little woolen tufts. Chitons with sleeves—another Persian innovation—also appear. Vase paintings depict examples of the chitoniskos cheiridotos—that is, the short patterned chiton with sleeves—worn over a long chiton. The short chiton might have fringes at the bottom, and fringes were considered Lydian, or at least, oriental. Another Persian garment which the Greeks adopted was the kandys, an outer garment with sleeves, dyed purple, and fastened at the shoulders. The wearer used his kandys to keep his arms warm, even though the sleeves were too long to be of practical use and were sewn up at the end. In the Persian court, these sleeves served to protect the king from assassination since men with their arms in the long sleeves of their kandys could not wield an assassin’s knife.

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THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SLEEVE. Sleeves were not new to ancient Greece. Musicians wore long chitons with sleeves when they performed at public festivals, but the sumptuous costumes of musicians were not everyday dress. The policemen who patrolled the streets of Athens also wore tunics with sleeves and trousers, but these public servants were actually Scythian slaves owned by the state, and they wore their native costume. Sleeves were thought to be a peculiar mark of Persian fashion, but they won acceptance, for on the sculptured frieze from the Parthenon in Athens (carved in the 430s B.C.E.) some of the young horsemen in the parade are shown wearing short chitons with sleeves. It looks as if some well-to-do young Athenians had adopted the latest Persian-style fashions. Yet when sleeves reached Rome, they were considered effeminate. A passage in Vergil’s epic, the Aeneid, demonstrates the prevailing Roman attitude towards this fashion. In the passage, a native Italian (representing the Romans) opposes a settlement of foreign Trojans in Italy by hurling insults at their leader, Aeneas; among the insults are derisive comments on their wearing of sleeves, which the Italian disparaged as unmanly. Aeneas had come from Troy, which was in Asia, and hence the Trojans were Asians and wore Persian costume. In the Aeneid, the Trojans have to abandon their Asian way of life before they win a place for themselves in Italy. It must not have been a complete abandonment, however, since Julius Caesar’s biographer, Suetonius, reported that the purplestriped senatorial tunic which Julius Caesar wore under his toga had sleeves with fringes. THE PARASOL. Parasols were known in the Myceneaean world but they drop out of the picture in the Dark Ages of Greece. They reappear on vase paintings in the later sixth century B.C.E. as part of a well-to-do woman’s costume, though they were apparently not exclusively used by women. The lyric poet Anacreon, who enjoyed the patronage of a tyrant of Samos until Persia captured the island in 522 B.C.E., used his poetry to criticize a fellow named Artemon who wore gold earrings and held an ivory sun umbrella, “as ladylike as you please!” In Athens, the parasol became a status symbol for the freeborn woman. In Athens of the fifth century B.C.E. there was a sharp distinction between the citizens and the metics, or resident aliens. After the middle of the century, when the statesman Pericles passed a law that barred everyone from citizenship whose parents were not both Athenian citizens themselves, it was impossible for a metic to become a citizen. So the Athenian citizen body became an elite group that prevented outsiders from entering. The parasol marked the division. There was a law dating perhaps to about the same time as Pericles’

EFFEMINATE DRESS INTRODUCTION :

The Latin writer Aulus Gellius was a wellto-do Roman who received the standard education in rhetoric in Rome and then went to Athens to study philosophy. It was his custom to jot down notes of things that seemed worth remembering whenever he read a book in Latin or Greek, and during a winter that he spent at a country-place outside Athens, he began to assemble them into a collection which he later published as Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights). He wrote during the reigns of the emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161 C.E.) and his successor, Marcus Aurelius (161–180 C.E.). In the excerpt below, he relates the criticism of the secondcentury B.C.E. Roman Publius Scipio Africanus regarding the effeminate dress of his countryman Sulpicius Gallus, who wore long-sleeved tunics. Long sleeves were considered Persian finery, and not proper clothing for a tough virile Roman in the second century B.C.E.

For a man to wear tunics coming below the arms and as far as the wrists, and almost to the fingers, was considered unbecoming in Rome and all Latium. Such tunics our countrymen called by the Greek name chiridotae (long-sleeved), and they thought that for women—and only women—a long and full-flowing garment was not unbecoming to harm their arms and legs from view. But Roman men at first wore the toga by itself, without tunics; later they had close, short tunics ending below the shoulders, the kind that the Greeks call exomides (sleeveless). Habituated to this older fashion, Publius Africanus, son of Paulus, a man gifted with all worthy arts and every virtue, among many other things with which he reproached Publius Sulpicius Gallus, an effeminate man, included this also, that he wore tunics which covered his whole hands. Scipio’s words are these: “For one who perfumes himself every day and dresses before a mirror, whose eyebrows are trimmed, who walks abroad with beard plucked out and thighs made smooth, who at banquets, though a young man, has reclined in a longsleeved tunic on the inner side of the couch with a lover, who is fond not only of wine but of men— does anyone doubt that he does what wantons commonly do?” SOURCE :

Aulus Gellius, The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Vol. 2 of 3 vols. Trans. John C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927): 57, 59. Text modified by James Allan Evans.

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citizenship law that required the daughters of metics to carry parasols and stools for the daughters of citizens in the Panathenaic procession. The parasol was not merely a shield from the sun; it was a status symbol. PERSIAN FASHION IN ROME. “I detest Persian frippery, boy,” wrote the poet Horace as the first line of one of his Odes. Horace claimed to like the simple life. He lived under the emperor Augustus and enjoyed the generous patronage of one of Augustus’ ministers, Maecenas, so he expressed the official view about luxury in dress and in life generally. This view of Persian fashion was not merely a matter of taste, but a cunning example of propaganda reminiscent of the Greeks’ abandonment of Persian fashion following their military conflicts with Persia. Augustus had begun his political career as the teen-aged great-nephew and adopted heir of the powerful Roman politician, Julius Caesar; following Caesar’s assassination, Augustus had to defeat Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, before he could become master of the empire. His propaganda portrayed Cleopatra as the paradigm of oriental luxury that extended to her clothes. Augustus presented himself as the champion of Roman traditions in clothes as in everything else. Yet Romans who could afford it liked rich dress. The longest fragment of a novel written by Petronius in the reign of the emperor Nero (54–68 B.C.E.) describes a banquet given by a wealthy former slave named Trimalchio who liked to show off his wealth. He made a grand entrance to the banquet chamber on a litter, wearing a bright scarlet cloak and a tasselled napkin with a broad purple stripe in imitation of the senatorial stripe around his neck that, as a freedman, he could not legally wear. He wore rings on his fingers and on his right arm was a gold armlet and another of ivory with a gleaming metal clasp. Clothes signaled a message, and the message of Trimalchio’s costume was that he had “made it.” PERSIAN COSTUME IN THE LATE EMPIRE. By the time of the late Roman Empire, the costume of the imperial court under Diocletian (284–305 C.E.) and Constantine (324–337 C.E.) borrowed heavily from Persian fashion. Constantine began to wear a diadem decorated with pearls as a symbol of his autocratic power. Costume borrowed from the Persian court signaled the emperor’s authority in late antiquity. Persia furnished a large share of the trappings of the imperial court as the Roman Empire evolved into the Byzantine Empire. SOURCES

M. C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C.: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 106

—, “The Parasol: An Oriental Status-Symbol in Late Archaic and Classical Athens,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 112 (1992): 91–105. G. M. A. Richter, “Greeks in Persia,” American Journal of Archaeology 50 (1946): 16–30.

T HE D RESS

R OMAN W OMEN

A GIRL’S DRESS. Freeborn girls, that is, girls whose parents were not slaves, wore the same costume as freeborn boys: a toga worn over a tunic. The toga was the toga praetexta with a purple border that had to be made of wool. The purple border was, at least in origin, apotropaic—that is, it protected the wearer against the Evil Eye or other unseen dangers that might attack a child. She would wear her hair carefully combed, braided and tied with a single band of wool cloth called in Latin a vitta, or in English, a “fillet.” The fillet was probably white and it signified purity. A boy would also wear a bulla or a locket, which contained an amulet— that is a charm which was worn to ward off evil spirits or miasmas that might infect him—but it seems that girls did not wear them. Few sculptures have survived of young Roman girls wearing the toga praetexta but those that have do not show bullas. However, a girl might wear a necklace of some sort which could have served the same purpose as an amulet. Once a girl reached puberty, she put off her toga praetexta and dedicated it to the goddess “Fortuna Virginalis”—Venus in her capacity as the guardian goddess of young maidens. This was the signal that she was now ready for marriage. THE COSTUME OF THE ROMAN BRIDE. On the night before her wedding day, a bride put on the tunica recta, so called because it was woven on the ancient upright loom which weavers had abandoned for regular cloth manufacture. The rite of marriage demanded that a bride weave her tunic of white wool on the upright loom, as well as her hairnet, which was dyed yellowishorange, the color of flame. On her wedding day, the fillets in her hair as well as her hairnet would signal her chastity, in Latin, her pudor. Around her tunic she put a belt made of the wool of a ewe—a female sheep. The belt was knotted in a knot that her husband would undo when they went to the marriage bed together. Then the bride put on the marriage veil that was dyed yellowishred. It would protect her from evil spirits as she made the journey from her father’s house to her husband’s, or, in ritual terms, when she left the protection of the Lares (household gods) of her own family to the Lares of her husband. Her new husband gave her fire and wa-

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EPITAPHS OF A DRESSMAKER AND A HAIRDRESSER INTRODUCTION :

Wealthy women in Rome had their own hairdressers and dressmakers who generally were slaves. Dressmakers and hairdressers were at the beck and call of mistresses who could be demanding. A mistress who found her coiffeur unsatisfactory would not hesitate to beat her slave. Many slaves who died left no trace of their existence, except for perhaps a tombstone erected by a friend or fellow slave. The epitaphs on the two tombstones that are cited below are, first, for a dressmaker named Italia and, second, for a hairdresser named Psamate. Note how young they were when they died; Italia was twenty and Psamate only nineteen.

To Italia, dressmaker of Cocceia Phyllis. She lived twenty years. Acastus, her fellow slave, paid for this tombstone because she was poor. Psamate, hairdresser of Furia, lived nineteen years. Mithrodates, the baker of Flaccus Thorius, set up this tombstone. SOURCE :

Jo-Ann Shelton, “Working Women,” in As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History. 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 303–304. Roman woman wearing a stola.

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE

GALE GROUP.

ter as she entered his house, and she placed a coin on the little altar of her husband’s Lares that would be in a niche in a wall near the entrance. If she was moving to a new district of the city, she would place another coin on the altar of the Lar of the district, the Lares compitales. THE MARRIED WOMAN. The standard dress of the Roman matrona—that is, a married woman—was the stola. It was a dress held to the shoulders by straps; it hung to the feet and resembled a modern slip, except that the skirt was fuller and fell in distinctive folds called rugae. Over her shoulders and covering her head was a cloak called a palla. Proper Roman women wore their head covered and the repercussions of neglecting this element of fashion could be severe. In the second century B.C.E. a Roman called Sulpicius Gallus who was consul in 166 B.C.E. divorced his wife because she had left the house with her head unveiled. A Roman woman’s hair also signaled her status as a married woman; her hair should be carefully dressed and bound with fillets. The

stola and the fillets that tied up her hair would remain the costume of a chaste married woman throughout her life. DISGRACED WOMEN. In the same way that clothing demonstrated the purity of the young Roman girl and the fidelity of the Roman wife, adulteresses and prostitutes also wore distinctive clothes. If a husband divorced his wife because she had an affair with another man, she would wear a plain white toga; she no longer had the right to wear a stola. The proper costume for a prostitute was also a toga. This particular way of branding impure women seems to have relaxed as time went on. Juvenal, the sour satirist of Roman life who lived in the second century C.E., claimed that a virtuous woman was hard to find in Rome of his day and yet nobody wore the toga. THE WIDOW. If a woman’s husband died, she took off her stola and replaced it with a ricinium, a word derived from the Latin verb meaning “to throw back.” The ricinium was a shawl made of a square piece of cloth

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ALLURING DRESS IN AUGUSTAN ROME INTRODUCTION :

Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria” (The Art of Love), is a witty manual on the art of seduction, published in 2 B.C.E. In the passage below, Ovid instructs women how to dress their hair, as well as how to dress stylishly within a budget. Purple dye was expensive and highly prized, but there were other, cheaper dyes that were equally effective. He ends with a purely imaginary illustration taken from myth: Briseis, whom Achilles and Agamemnon quarreled over in Homer’s Iliad, was a blonde who wore black, and the Trojan hero Hector’s wife was a brunette and wore white.

SOURCE :

Ovid, “The Art of Love III,” in The Love Poems. Trans. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990): 131–133.

which a woman folded and then threw back half of it apparently over her shoulder. Wearing it was a sign of mourning and thus it was probably dark-colored, made from wool that was naturally dark. The widow wore the ricinium for the year prescribed for mourning. She may have continued to wear it longer if she did not remarry, but this cannot be proven conclusively. THE UNMARRIED WOMAN. Roman marriages were generally arranged. Fathers found proper husbands for their daughters. Romantic love sometimes upset their plans, and it is significant that the god who caused young men and women to fall in love was Cupid, the son of Venus, who shot poisoned arrows at his victims. In other words, romantic love was a poison that caused youths and maidens to neglect their duty to their families and seek improper unions. There were probably not a large number of unmarried women in ancient Rome. In Roman law, an unmarried woman and a widow were considered the same, but it is not clear that they dressed the 108

same. Neither is it clear what the appropriate costume was for a woman who was divorced for reasons other than adultery, particularly in an era when some Roman men married and divorced for political advantage. It is understood, however, that the costumes prescribed for women belonged to the customs of early Rome known as the mos maiorum by the Romans—the way of life of our ancestors. While the Romans revered the ways of their ancestors, they did not always adhere to them religiously, so the guidelines for what women in different stations of life should wear may not have been closely followed. THE LATEST STYLE. Though fashions changed much more slowly in ancient Greece and Rome than nowadays, it was important to keep up to date. Well-todo Roman women had their own dressmakers and hairdressers, who were generally slaves; if they did not satisfy the whims of their mistresses, they could be flogged. Evidence for hairstyles comes from portrait sculpture and

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painting. In the sixth century B.C.E. in Greece, both young men and young girls had their hair done in elaborate coiffeurs, to judge from the so-called kouros and kore sculptures—that is, freestanding statues showing nude young men and clothed young women which were erected in the archaic period. The marcelling (crimping of the hair into rows of waves) and plaiting of their hair must have taken hours of primping. In the classical period hairstyles became simpler. In Rome in the Augustan period, the emperor Augustus set the style with short hair combed forward on his forehead, and his wife Livia is shown with her hair parted in the middle and marcelled. By the end of the first century tight curls piled up on top of the head was the fashion. Hair dyes turned brunettes blonde, which was the most fashionable color. Sometimes the results were disastrous; the Latin poet Ovid wrote a poem of commiseration to his girlfriend who had lost her hair as a result of using harsh hair dyes. SOURCES

George M. A. Hanfmann, Classical Sculpture (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1967). Mary G. Houston, Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine Costume. 2nd ed. (London, England: Adam and Charles Black, 1947). Laetitia La Follette, “The Costume of the Roman Bride,” in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 54–64. Judith Lynn Sebesta, “Symbolism in the Costume of Roman Women,” in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 46–53.

T HE A PPAREL

OF THE

S OLDIER

MILITARY ARMOR IN EARLY GREECE. Armor evolved over the long period of Greek and Roman history, but the requirements remained standard. Armor had to protect the soldier’s body, it had to allow him free movement of his arms and legs and it had to please the eye. Some of the earliest examples of military garb are from the late Mycenaean period; a vase called the “Warrior Vase” shows soldiers marching in column. They wear helmets and short kilts with tassels leaving their legs bare, and they carry “Figure-8” shields—shields which are pinched in at the middle so that when the soldier held it in front of him to protect his body, he could still use his arms to ward off the enemy. The warriors described in Homer’s Iliad who fought in the Trojan War wore similar armor, except that most of them were

4th-century B.C.E. bone tablets with figures of soldiers in armor carrying shield and spear from a necropolis at Columbella just south of Palestrina outside Rome. THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEO DI VILLA GIULIA ROME/DAGLI ORTI.

described as having round shields. Their armor allowed them to run in case the spears they threw at their enemies failed to hit the mark. THE HOPLITE. As the Greek Dark Ages came to an end, the warrior of the sort found in Homer’s Iliad gave way to a heavily-armed infantryman known as the hoplite. He wore a helmet, a metal corselet with metal shoulder pieces, and a triangular plate called a mitra to protect his groin. His legs below the knee were protected by greaves, which was armor shaped like the lower leg and fastened behind the calf. Under his corselet he wore a linen tunic and below his waist he had a kind of pleated leather kilt which gave his lower body some protection. He seems to have gone barefoot, for he is represented in art generally without shoes. He got his name “hoplite” from his large, round shield, called a hoplon. He fought in formation, drawn up in eight ranks, so that his shield on his left arm protected the right side of the hoplite beside him, while his own right side was protected by the

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was the battle formation which Alexander used in the two great battles where he defeated the Persian king Darius Codomannus and conquered the Persian Empire. THE ROMAN ARMY. The army that dominated the battlefields of the ancient world for the longest period was the army of Rome. In the early days of the Roman republic, it was a citizen army. A consul who set out on a campaign—Rome elected two consuls each year who served both as the principal magistrates of the state and as its commanders-in-chief—would conscript troops from the census list of those eligible to serve, who were owners of property. By the end of the second century B.C.E., Rome was in desperate need of more recruits, and a soldier named Marius, who would hold the consulship seven times during his life, opened the rank of the army to all volunteers. The next big change was made by the emperor Augustus who established a citizen army, made up of legionary soldiers who were citizens, and auxiliary troops who were not citizens and were paid somewhat less. We find their armor depicted on sculpture; Trajan’s Column in Rome is particularly useful, for it shows the campaigns of the emperor Trajan in Dacia, modern Rumania. Sometimes fragments of a soldier’s equipment are turned up by the archaeologist’s spade, or found by accident.

Roman soldier in armor of type known as “lorica segmentata” that was first introduced in the 1st century C.E. CREATED BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

hoplite on his other side. As long as the formation— known as a phalanx—remained unbroken, a hoplite army could avoid heavy casualties. It was a different matter if the phalanx broke. The hoplite was not a nimble soldier since running in full hoplite armor was not easy. Apparently when the Athenian hoplites defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.E., it was the first time that a hoplite army charged on the run. By the fourth century B.C.E., the Greeks discovered how effective the lightly-armed soldier called the “peltast” could be against hoplites, particularly in rough country which was ill-suited to hoplite tactics. The “peltast” carried a pelte, small, light shield of leather without a rim which did not impede his movements; if a hoplite had to run for his life, the best he could do was to throw away his shield and that was considered a great disgrace. Nonetheless Greek armies continued to use the phalanx. Philip II of Macedon (ruled 359–336 B.C.E.), the father of Alexander the Great, revamped it, making it larger and arming the troops with pikes about 13 feet long. This 110

MAIL ARMOR. Roman soldiers in the Republic wore chain mail shirts, and they were not phased out until the first century C.E. Mail was made by interlocking one iron ring with four others. Making a corselet of mail required a great deal of skill and patience, but once made, it needed little maintenance. The iron rings rubbing against each other kept the mail shirt clean. The small farmers who formed the backbone of Rome’s armies in the early republic probably wore mail that they inherited from their fathers or grandfathers. Shirts of mail in republican times to the first century B.C.E. reached the mid-thigh; in the early imperial period from the time of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), they came to just below the waist, but the soldier got added protection from leather strips called pteruges at the shoulders and around the hips. Chain mail left something to be desired, for though it shielded a man against the slash of a sword, it was poor protection against an arrow or the thrust of a dagger. The arrow did not need to pierce the armor to kill, for it could force the rings of the mail shirt into the wound, causing infection, and the results could be fatal. SCALE ARMOR. Scale armor was made from bronze or iron plates of various sizes which were connected in rows and then overlapped like the tiles of a roof. The

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finished product looked like fish scales—hence the name. It was cheaper to make than chain mail, and it gave better protection. Its disadvantage was that it was more difficult to put on and take off. In times of relative calm, the soldiers could rely on each other for help putting on their armor, but whenever a detachment was caught by a surprise attack, some of the troops might not succeed in putting on their armor in time to meet the onslaught of the enemy. Scale armor had been standard equipment for the Persian army long before Rome adopted it, for when Herodotus described in his Histories the army with which King Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C.E., he reported that the Persian troops wore felt hats called tiaras, patterned tunics with sleeves, and coats of mail like fish scales. This type of armor remained popular in the East both in Parthia, Rome’s enemy on the eastern frontier in the time of the emperor Augustus, and among the Sassanid Persians who took over the Parthian realm in the third century C.E. The Persians used cavalry with both riders and horses armed head-to-toe in scale armor, looking like medieval knights except that the horsemen rode without stirrups. The Romans were always quick to borrow good ideas, and adopted scale armor for themselves, both for infantry and heavy cavalry. PLATE ARMOR (LORICA SEGMENTATA). A corselet made of metal strips—called in Latin a lorica segmentata—is the type most often associated with the Roman soldier. It is the armor of choice for movie directors who film cinematic epics about ancient Rome. It was invented in the early first century C.E. and one theory is that it was introduced after a military disaster of 9 C.E. when three Roman legions were annihilated in the Teutoberg Forest in Germany. Excavations at a site identified as the scene of the disaster, however, have uncovered fragments of an early form of lorica segmentata, which shows that some of the Roman legionary troops who lost their lives in the Teutoberg Forest were, in fact, wearing a corselet of metal strips. So the invention was not the result of the disaster, though its speedy adoption may have been. The cuirass protecting the chest and diaphragm had overlapping girth straps and curved shoulder plates that provided good protection. The disadvantage was its fastenings: the soldier held the armor on his body with hook and strap fasteners that were never entirely satisfactory. Moreover the soldier’s sweat as he fought degraded the leather straps that held the metal plates in place, and the resulting damage might require expensive repairs. The initial cost of making this type of cuirass, however, was less than for chain mail or scale armor. It has been generally believed that the cuirass of metal strips attached to a leather backing became more or less standard for

The Augustus of Primaporta, marble copy of a bronze sculpture of Caesar Augustus addressing his soldiers, holding out his right hand, wearing a breastplate with mythological and historic scenes in low relief, Roman, early empire, c. 20 B.C.E. © BETTMANN/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

the Roman legionary soldier from the second quarter of the first century C.E. until the third century C.E. when it was abandoned. This theory is difficult to prove, however, on the evidence of the ancient monuments and of archaeology. The Column still standing in the center of Rome which depicts the campaigns of the emperor Trajan (98–117 C.E.) into Dacia (modern Rumania) shows legionary soldiers wearing the lorica segmentata. It seems to have been standard equipment for the regular troops, where as the auxiliary troops—non-citizens recruited from the Roman provinces—wore other types such as mail shirts. But most of the fittings for the lorica segmentata cuirasses which archaeologists have discovered are from Roman forts that were held by auxiliary troops, not by the Roman legions. Moreover, although the Column of Trajan in Rome shows the lorica segmentata as the standard armor of the legionary soldier, there is another monument commemorating Trajan’s Dacian campaign—a tropaeum or “Victory Memorial” erected at Adamklissi in Rumania—and there both the Roman

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pectoral and stomach muscles which the onlooker is to assume were underneath it. (In fact, Augustus did not have an athlete’s physique; he was not an impressive physical specimen.) Statues of torsos encased in armor plate of this sort have been found all over the empire, often headless, for the heads were sculpted separately and fitted to the base of the neck. It was a favorite type for statues of emperors. In fact, archeologists have not found a single example of an actual Roman “muscled cuirass,” though there are examples surviving from the Hellenistic period. This suggests that in the Roman period, the muscled cuirass was parade armor, more popular with sculptors than it was on the battlefield. The Roman sculptors show two types: one with a high waist which would be suitable for a horseback rider, and the other coming further down the hips with a curved extension at the bottom that would not be very suitable for a cavalryman. These cuirasses were fastened at the sides with hinges or rings that were tied together.

A man wearing a cucullus (a hooded outer garment).

CREATED

BY CECILY EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

legionaries and the auxiliaries wear scale armor. The Adamklissi monument was sculpted by artists who were close to the battlefront and knew what both the Romans and the Dacians really wore in battle. The sculptors who carved the great spiral on Trajan’s Column showing the Dacian campaign in a continuous frieze worked in Rome. They knew merely what the legionary soldier was supposed to wear—not what he did wear. THE “MUSCLED CUIRASS.” The “muscled cuirass” which encased the torso and showed the pectoral and stomach muscles underneath, was developed in the Hellenistic world, and the emperor Augustus made it a popular type for imperial sculpture. One of the most famous statues of Augustus, the Prima Porta statue, shows him in a warrior’s uniform with a muscled cuirass that sculpted the musculature of his abdomen. Augustus is portrayed with the physique of an athlete—in fact, his body has the proportions which the classical sculptor Polycleitus used for his nude figures of athletes—and his breastplate follows the contours of the well-developed 112

HELMETS. The helmet of the early Roman legionary soldier was an inverted hemispherical bowl with cheek pieces. Large numbers of these helmets were found in a region of northern Italy called Montefortino, and so nowadays it is called the Montefortino helmet. A cheaper alternative to the Montefortino was the Coolus type which had a neck guard to protect the back of the neck. Both types were borrowed from the Celts, with whom the Romans fought many battles from 387 B.C.E. when a horde of Celts sacked Rome, down to the end of the second century B.C.E. The Romans romanized them by adding crests, which at first were made of feathers fitted to a knob on the crown of the helmet, but by the end of the first century B.C.E. they were made of horsehair, either red or black. In the Civil War period of the first century B.C.E. new types of helmets appeared made of iron rather than bronze, with distinctive cheek guards, embossed eyebrows and ribbing at the rear of the helmet. The crest was no longer fixed to a knob but to a crest holder on top of the helmet. Crests were ornamental, and may have been worn into battle in the early imperial period, but the troops shown on Trajan’s Column did not wear crests. The helmet continued to develop to give the wearer increased protection until by the third century C.E., the head was almost completely encased. KEEPING WARM. Roman armies operated in varied climates, from the chilly wet weather at Hadrian’s Wall in Britain to the Euphrates River in modern Iraq. Keeping cool in hot weather was a genuine problem. Troops clad in mail armor operating on the eastern frontier were known as clibanarii, a word which comes from clibanus, meaning “oven.” In other words, in hot weather, mail-

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clad troops baked. In colder climates, however, the soldier had a variety of cloaks to keep him warm. The sleeveless cloak of variable length called the paenula was made of heavy wool cloth, leather, or sometimes fur. It varied in length, and sometimes had a hood. It survives as the chasuble, a sleeveless vestment worn by priests who are saying Mass. Another item of clothing that was taken over as a vestment of the church was the dalmatica, so called because it was woven from the wool of sheep from Dalmatia (the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea). It was a long tunic with long, wide sleeves which came into fashion in the second century C.E. The cucullus was a close-fitting cape with a peaked hood which extended to the waist. It gave protection against rain and cold. If it were open in front, it would have to be held together by a fastener of some sort, but if it was closed in front—as some of them were—it would have to be put on over the head, like a poncho. The lacerna was a cloak first worn by the troops which became popular among civilians because it was a practical overgarment for the toga. The sagum was a short military cloak of rough wool which Rome borrowed from the Gauls, and it became so popular with the soldiers that “putting on the sagum” was an idiom for going to war. It was probably no more than a rectangle of heavy cloth draped over the shoulders and tied under the chin. The paludamentum was a military cloak for the general. It was woven from purple wool, and though the size could vary, nine feet long and five feet wide is a good estimate of its size. When it is shown in sculpture, it is held at the right shoulder by a round brooch and then is thrown back so that the general’s—or emperor’s—muscled cuirass can be shown. It was a garment for parades, not for campaigning in the field. KEEPING THE LEGS WARM. The opinion shared by both Greeks and Romans was that trousers were barbarian dress. The Gauls wore them. They were called bracae in Latin, a word related to the English word “breeches.” Vergil in his Aeneid called them “the barbarian coverings of the legs.” In the days of the Roman republic, the province of Transalpine Gaul—that is, Gaul beyond the Alps—had the unofficial name of “Gallia bracata”: Gaul where the people wear trousers. On the other hand, Cisalpine Gaul—Gaul south of the Alps, that is, the Po Valley of Italy which had been colonized by Gauls in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.—was “Gallia togata”: the Gaul where togas were worn. If Roman soldiers disparaged trousers as barbaric, they did deign to wear stockings. At Vindolanda, one of the forts along Hadrian’s Wall in the United Kingdom, a cache of Roman writing tablets contained a letter from a Ro-

man soldier thanking a friend or relative for the gift of a pair of socks and underpants. Socks, often brightly colored, were also worn by civilians. The emperor Augustus himself, who was not robust, liked warm stockings. In the fourth century C.E. paintings and mosaics show a new type of leg covering, which seems to be a strip of cloth wrapped around the lower legs like the puttees worn by soldiers in the First World War. Presumably the soldier also wore socks in his military boots. The Roman prejudice against trousers was not universal; the soldiers recruited from non-citizen provincials who served in the Roman forces for 25 years and received citizenship when they were discharged did apparently wear trousers. SOURCES

Norma Goldman, “Reconstructing Roman Clothing,” in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 213–237. Mary G. Houston, Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine Costume and Decoration. 2nd ed. (London, England: Adam and Charles Black, 1947). A. H. Snodgrass, Early Greek Armour and Weapons (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964). —, Arms and Armour of the Greeks (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1967). Graham Sumner, Roman Army: Wars of the Empire (London, England: Brassey’s, 1997). George R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1969).

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE in Fashion A LCIBIADES c. 450 B.C.E.–404 B.C.E. Politician CREATING THE RIGHT IMPRESSION. Public figures in Greece often dressed to create an impression, and none more so than Alcibiades, the Athenian general who assumed the leadership of the extreme democrats in Athens in 420 B.C.E. and contributed as much as anyone to the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War which ended in 404 B.C.E. with the surrender of Athens to Sparta and her allies. Alcibiades intended for his fashions and his

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private life to attract notice as a member of the “smart set” in Athens, a group typically condemned by conservative Athenians as having no respect for principles or tradition. Plutarch (c. 46–later than 120 C.E.), in a short biography of Alcibiades, compared his shrewdness as a statesman with the profligacy of his private life. But with all these words and deeds, and with all this sagacity and eloquence, he mingled exorbitant luxury and wantonness, in his eating and drinking and dissolute living; wore long purple robes like a woman which dragged after him as he went through the market-place; caused the planks of his trireme to be cut away, so that he might lie more softly, his bed not being placed on the boards but upon girths.

Alcibiades took great care of his appearance; he refused to learn to play the aulos—the reed woodwind often mistakenly called a “flute”—because a person playing it had to screw up his face so much that it looked ugly. Alcibiades considered the lyre to be a far more becoming instrument, particularly since one could still talk and sing while playing the lyre. Alcibiades promoted the ill-fated Athenian expedition against Sicily (415–413 B.C.E.) which ended in complete disaster. Alcibiades himself was recalled from Sicily in 415 B.C.E. to face a charge of sacrilege; not daring to face an Athenian court, he deserted to Sparta. Once there, he adopted the austere Spartan way of life, abandoning his expensive mantle of Milesian wool. He took cold baths and exercised regularly, naked, like the Spartans. Then when he wore out his welcome at Sparta, he transferred his services to Persia, and adopted Persian dress and the Persian way of life. Finally he answered a call from the sailors of the Athenian fleet to lead them and he became an Athenian general once again until his fleet suffered a defeat by Sparta. He was not personally responsible for the defeat, but nonetheless he lost his command and did not dare return to Athens. Athens surrendered in 404 B.C.E., and after the surrender, Alcibiades was assassinated at the instigation of Sparta out of the belief that Athens would never acquiesce in her defeat as long as Alcibiades was alive. SOURCES

Edmund Bloedow, Alcibiades Reexamined (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner, 1971). Walter M. Ellis, Alcibiades (London, England: Routledge, 1989). Donald Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987). —, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981). 114

C ONSTANTIUS II 317 C.E.–361 C.E. Roman emperor DRESSING FOR THE IMPERIAL OFFICE. Roman emperors, from the first emperor Augustus (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.) onwards, had always sought to maintain the dignity and prestige of their office with their dress and their deportment, but from the end of the third century C.E. their efforts to set themselves apart from ordinary citizens became more pronounced. One of the most striking descriptions of this period of an emperor on public display concerns Constantius II, who inherited the empire along with his two brothers, Constantine II and Constans, after the death of his father, Constantine I, in 337 C.E. Upon the deaths of his brothers in 340 and 350, respectively, he became ruler of the whole empire. In 357 C.E. Constantius II visited Rome for the first time, and his ceremonial entrance into the city is described vividly by the last great classical historian to write in Latin, Ammianus Marcellinus. The emperor rode, seated in a golden coach studded with precious stones. Before him were attendants with banners in the shape of dragons billowing in the wind, tied to the tips of golden, jewel-studded lances. On both sides of his coach were soldiers with shields, plumed helmets, and gleaming breastplates, and along with them in the parade were corps of cavalrymen wearing armor made of thin plates of steel that covered their bodies. Constantius II stared straight ahead, not acknowledging the cheers, though when he passed under a gateway he stooped slightly as if he were too tall to fit under it, thought he was, in fact, a rather short man. He did not spit or blow his nose; instead he remained motionless, even when his coach jolted over a bump in the road. He attempted to appear superhuman. REFLECTS CHANGE IN STATUS. While the Roman Empire was still pagan, Roman emperors had been considered divine, and loyal subjects sacrificed to them. But after Constantine I, all the Roman emperors save one were Christian, and their relationship to the divine world had to change. The emperors became the deputies on earth of God in Heaven, and as such, they had to adopt a style and deportment that fitted this new Christian concept of the imperial office. The “advent” or ceremonial entrance of Constantius II into Rome in 357 C.E. is a vivid illustration of this new fashion in practice. SOURCES

Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire. Trans. Walter Hamilton (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1986): 100–101.

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H. P. L’Orange, The Roman Empire: Art Forms and Civic Life (New York, Rizzoli, 1985).

emperors frequently earned them banishment from Rome. SOURCES

D IOGENES c. 400 B.C.E.–c. 325 B.C.E. Philosopher FASHION FOR A PHILOSOPHER. Philosophers did not always dress according to convention. Empedocles (c. 493–c. 433 B.C.E.)—best known for defining the four elements of earth, air, fire and water—wore sandals with soles of bronze. Socrates went barefoot in all weather. But the philosopher who made a cult of shunning all luxury was Diogenes of Sinope, who founded the Cynic school of philosophy (though some credited its foundation to a disciple of Socrates named Antisthenes, whom Diogenes considered his teacher). Diogenes was exiled from Sinope on the south shore of the Black Sea, some said because either he or his father was the city’s mint master and minted coins that were adulterated with base metal. He came to Athens and soon made a reputation as a man who rejected all conventions. He maintained that a person would attain happiness by satisfying his needs in the simplest possible way. INSULTED THOSE IN FINERY. There were various stories told about his rude remarks to persons dressed in finery whom he met. A young man who was splendidly attired asked him some questions, and Diogenes said he would not answer until he discovered if his questioner was a man or a woman. He told a man who gave himself airs because he was wearing a lion’s skin not to disgrace the garb of nature. When he saw a youth dressing himself with care so as to look neat and handsome, he told him that if he was beautifying himself to impress men, he was to be pitied, and if for women, he was immoral. His rudeness earned him the nickname “dog” (in Greek, kyon), from which comes the word “cynic”; hence his followers were called “Cynics.” NOT A FORMAL SCHOOL. The Cynics were never organized into a formal school of philosophy, but like the “hippies” of the 1960s and the 1970s in America, every Cynic chose his own philosophy. The common thread amongst Cynics was a love of the simple life and disdain for fine clothes and all possessions. Although the Cynic sect faded out in the second and first centuries B.C.E., it revived in the first century C.E., and Rome was full of Cynic beggar philosophers whose shabby clothes proclaimed their calling. Like Diogenes, they exercised the right of free speech, and their open criticism of the

Donald R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism from Diogenes to the Sixth Century A.D. (London, England: Bristol Classical Press, 1998). Mark Edwards, “Cynics,” in Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition. Ed. Graham Speake (Chicago, Ill.: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000): 426–427.

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES in Fashion Author unknown, Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c. 100 C.E.)—The unknown author of this mariner’s handbook was familiar with trade along the sea routes from the Red Sea ports to India, and among the commodities that came to the Roman Empire from the east were Indian cotton, raw silk, silk yarn and silk cloth and “mallow cloth” or jute, a rough fiber used nowadays for gunny sacks. Herodotus, The Histories (c. 425 B.C.E.)—The main subject of The Histories is the Persian War of 480–479 B.C.E. when Persia attempted to invade Greece, but Herodotus tells why the Athenian women abandoned the Dorian peplos for the Ionian linen chiton in the last years of the sixth century B.C.E.—it was because the Athenian women used the safety-pins that fastened the peplos at the shoulders to stab a man to death. Ovid, The Art of Love (c. 1 C.E.)—Ovid’s manual in poetry of how to win the love of women contains a wealth of information about the fashions of Rome in the reign of the emperor Augustus. Phaidimos, Peplos Kore (about 530 B.C.E.)—This statue of a girl dedicated in the sanctuary of Athena on the Acropolis of Athens and discovered when the Acropolis was excavated in the late nineteenth century, shows a simple Dorian peplos of the style worn by Athenian women in the mid-sixth century B.C.E. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), Natural History (c. 79 C.E.)—This great ragbag of information was still being revised when Pliny died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. It contains a good deal of information about cloth-making and dying in Italy of the first century C.E. Plutarch, Life of Alexander the Great (after 100 C.E.)— Plutarch’s collection of biographies titled the Parallel

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Lives includes a life of Alexander the Great that relates his attraction to Asian costumes—he did not go so far as to adopt trousers, a sleeved vest or the pointed cap called the “tiara,” but he adopted other fashions from Persia, and this greatly displeased his fellow Macedonians. Sculptor Unknown, Kore from Acropolis of Athens wearing Ionian chiton and over it, a himation (c. 510 B.C.E.)—This statue of a young girl was dedicated on the Acropolis of Athens near the end of the sixth century B.C.E. and her dress illustrates the change of fashion in the two decades or so since the Peplos Kore was dedicated. This girl wears a colorful linen chiton under a draped woolen himation with an edge which shows how skillfully cloth-makers could weave patterned material. Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus), De Pallio (“On my Cloak”; 209 C.E.)—Tertullian, a doughty defender of Christianity, here writes in a light-hearted vein. He has been upbraided for abandoning his Roma toga for a pallium, a Greek cloak favored by philosophers and here he explains why.

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Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (c. 400 B.C.E.)—Thucydides’ subject was the war between the Athenian empire and the Spartan alliance (431–404 B.C.E.) but he prefaces it with a discussion of the economic and social progress of Greece in the archaic period. Among the topics which he touches upon is “Fashion”; the Athenians, he claims, were the first to adopt luxurious “Ionian” linen garments whereas the Spartans used the simpler styles which in Thucydides’ own day became the preferred fashion in Greece. Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita libri cxlii (“History of Rome from its Foundation, 142 Books”; 39 B.C.E.—17 C.E.)—A passage of Livy’s History (34.1) describes a demonstration in Rome by women for the repeal of a law passed twenty years before in the aftermath of the disastrous Roman defeat by Hannibal at Cannae which restricted expensive and luxurious fashions. The women continued to demonstrate until the law was repealed. Vegetius (Flavius Vegetius Renatus), De Re Militari (“On the Military Arts”; c. 390 C.E.)—Vegetius’ subject is the art and science of war, but one section of his first book deals with the history of arms and armor.

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chapter four

L I T E R AT U R E James Allan Evans

I M P O R T A N T E V E N T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 O V E R V I E W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 TOPICS The Age of Homeric Epic . . . . . . . . . . . . The Boeotian School of Epic . . . . . . . . . . The Age of Lyric Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poets for Hire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Herodotus, the Father of History . . . . . . . Thucydides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History after Thucydides . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Art of Public Speaking in Greece . . . . Greek Literature after Alexander the Great . Roman Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Latin Poetry Before the Augustan Age . . . . Latin Prose Writers Before the Augustan Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Golden Age of Latin Literature Under Augustus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Latin Literature of the Silver Age . . . . . . . Greek Literature of the Imperial Age . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

122 126 128 131 133 136 137 138 144 154 155 157 160

. . . . . 162 . . . . . 164 . . . . . 169 . . . . . 172

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE Aeschylus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thucydides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vergil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

175 175 176 177

D O C U M E N T A R Y S O U R C E S . . . . . . . . . 178 SIDEBARS AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary sources are listed in italics

A Love Poem of Sappho (Sappho writes of her longing for another woman). . . . . . . . . . Aristotle on Tragedy and Comedy (Aristotle discusses the six elements of tragedy) . . . . Antigone’s Speech in Defense of Conscience . . . . The Great Library at Alexandria . . . . . . . . . . Lucretius and the Atomic Theory (Lucretius asserts that nothing can be created out of nothing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vergil’s Proclamation of Rome’s Mission (Vergil writes of Rome’s mission to govern the world) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Horace on Patriotism (Horace’s poem praises commitment to the empire) . . . . . . . . . .

. . . 130 . . . 145 . . . 148 . . . 156

. . . 161

. . . 166 . . . 168

117

462 B.C.E. Aeschylus produces his play Suppliants. 458 B.C.E. Aeschylus produces his trilogy, the Oresteia, consisting of the Agamemnon, the Choephoroe, and the Eumenides, all of which have survived; a satyr play, the Proteus, is lost.

IMPORTANT EVENTS in Literature c. 725 B.C.E. Homer’s epic poems Iliad and Odyssey –c. 675 B.C.E. are written down. c. 700 B.C.E. Hesiod writes the Theogony and the Works and Days. c. 650 B.C.E. Archilochos of Paros wins a reputation for his iambic and elegiac poetry. c. 620 B.C.E. The lyric poet Alcaeus of Lesbos is born. c. 612 B.C.E. The poetess Sappho of Lesbos is born. 535 B.C.E. A dramatic competition is held in Athens for the first time. 534 B.C.E. Thespis of Icaria, the first tragedian to appear as an actor and take a solo role apart from the chorus, wins a prize for tragedy in the dramatic competition in Athens. 518 B.C.E. The lyric poet Pindar is born. c. 493 B.C.E. The Athenian tragic poet Phrynichus produces The Capture of Miletus on the fall of Miletus to the Persians in 494 B.C.E. and is fined for reminding the Athenians too clearly of the misfortunes of their friends. 472 B.C.E. Aeschylus produces his play The Persians. 468 B.C.E. Sophocles wins his first victory in the writing of tragic plays, defeating Aeschylus. 467 B.C.E. Aeschylus produces his Seven Against Thebes, the last play of a trilogy on the Oedipus legend. 118

456 B.C.E. Aeschylus dies at Gela in Sicily. 455 B.C.E. Euripides makes his first appearance in a tragic contest with a set of three tragedies and one satyr play, placing third—that is, last. c. 442 B.C.E. Sophocles produces his tragedy, the Antigone. 438 B.C.E. Euripides produces his play Alcestis which has a happy ending and is substituted for a satyr play in his tetralogy. 425 B.C.E. Aristophanes produces his play Acharnians, the earliest example of Old Comedy to survive. 405 B.C.E. Euripides dies only a few months after Sophocles. 322 B.C.E. The orator Demosthenes dies, taking poison to avoid capture by the Macedonians. 305 B.C.E. Callimachus is born. He will become a librarian at the great library at Alexandria and a poet typical of the Alexandrian school, writing for a small but well-educated group of readers. 293 B.C.E. Menander, the Athenian playwright who was the greatest master of New Comedy, dies before reaching the age of fifty. c. 270 B.C.E. Gnaeus Naevius, author of the Latin epic The War against Carthage and the inventor of the Roman historical play, is born. 240 B.C.E. The first play, a Latin adaptation of a Greek tragedy by Livius Andronicus, is produced in Rome at the Harvest Festival (ludi Romani).

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Literature

239 B.C.E. The Roman poet Quintus Ennius is born. He will write the Annals, eighteen books of epic poetry written in the dactylic hexameter borrowed from Greek epic poetry.

Octavian, who would become the emperor Augustus. At the urging of Maecenas he writes his Georgics, a didactic poem in four books on husbandry, between 37 and 29 B.C.E.

205 B.C.E. Plautus produces his play Miles Gloriosus in Rome.

30 B.C.E. Horace publishes his Epodes, adapting the iambics of Archilochus to Latin.

166 B.C.E. Terence produces his first play, the Andria (Woman of Andros).

23 B.C.E. Horace publishes the first three books of his Carmina, that is, his songs.

106 B.C.E. Rome’s greatest orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero, is born in the Italian town of Arpinum (modern Arpino). In addition to his speeches, Cicero would write dialogues on philosophy, rhetoric and religion, and a large corpus of his private letters also survives.

19 B.C.E. Vergil dies, leaving his epic poem the Aeneid unfinished. Nonetheless the Aeneid would become the national epic of the Roman Empire.

c. 84 B.C.E. The poet Catullus is born at Verona. 70 B.C.E. Cicero prosecutes the politician Verres for maladministration in Sicily. After trial, Cicero publishes his speeches against Verres under the title Verrine Orations. 63 B.C.E. Cicero is consul and delivers his four Catiline orations, exposing the conspiracy of Catiline. Vergil is born near Mantua in what was at that time the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul. 59 B.C.E. The Roman historian Livy (Titus Livius) is born. He will write a history of Rome from its foundation. 44 B.C.E. Cicero delivers fourteen speeches known –43 B.C.E. as his “Philippics” attacking Mark Antony, Julius Caesar’s adjutant who attempted to seize power after Caesar’s assassination. His criticism of Mark Antony results in his execution at the end of 43 B.C.E.

c. 13 B.C.E. Horace publishes the fourth book of his Carmina. c. 17 C.E. Columella (Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella), the writer of a treatise on husbandry, is born. 37 C.E. Flavius Josephus is born. He will write the Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish War, an account of the insurrection in Judaea which broke out in 66 B.C.E. c. 56 C.E. The historian Cornelius Tacitus is born. He will write the Annales, covering the history of the Julio-Claudian emperors from Tiberius to Nero, and the History which continued it from the Year of the Four Emperors, 68 C.E. c. 65 C.E. Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus), nephew of Pliny the Elder, is born. He will write the Letters of Pliny and a panegyric (a formal oration) in praise of the emperor Trajan. 65 C.E. The epic poet Lucan is implicated in a conspiracy against the emperor Nero and forced to commit suicide.

43 B.C.E. Ovid is born at Sulmo, modern Sulmona about 90 miles (150 kilometers) east of Rome.

c. 66 C.E. Petronius Arbiter, author of the Latin novel Satyricon, commits suicide after being accused on a trumped-up charge of treason against the emperor Nero.

c. 42 B.C.E. Vergil joins the circle of Maecenas, the wealthy public relations minister of Julius Caesar’s heir and adoptive son,

79 C.E. Pliny the Elder, author of the Natural History, dies in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

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OVERVIEW of Literature KEY DATES. A general survey of literature in the world of ancient Greece and Rome takes us from the eighth century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E., a span of nearly 1,400 years. Greek literature began with the development of the Greek alphabet in the eighth century B.C.E. that became the basis of the Latin alphabet still used by the romance languages. Greek literature then spawned Roman (Latin) literature as the Romans fell under the influence of Greek culture; the conventional date for the beginning of Latin literature is 240 B.C.E. when the Greek ex-slave Livius Andronicus translated the Greek poet Homer’s Odyssey into Latin. The unofficial end of Greco-Roman literature can be linked to the closing of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens in 529 C.E., which marks the end of Athens as a center for the teaching of Greek philosophy and the traditions of the pagan world. While this is a convenient marker for the end of the Greco-Roman literary tradition, the literary and philosophic traditions of the pre-Christian Greco-Roman world did not come to such an abrupt end. Moreover, the output of Christian literature in Greek and Latin was not affected by the closure of the Academy in Athens. THE HEROIC AGE. In the years prior to 1100 B.C.E. there was a Bronze Age civilization in Greece which scholars labelled “Mycenaean” after its most important center, Mycenae, in the Argolid region south of the Isthmus of Corinth. The Mycenaeans were descended from Greekspeaking migrants who entered Greece shortly after 2000 B.C.E., but their civilization started to flower around 1600 B.C.E. thanks to contacts with Egypt, the Near East, and, in particular, with the “Minoan” civilization on Crete. Five hundred years later, this Mycenaean civilization came to an end, overwhelmed by unknown invaders who left a trail of destruction all over the eastern Mediterranean. Yet, as this civilization receded into the misty past, it left behind the literary heritage of an heroic age. The Greeks told stories of mythical heroes such as Heracles, the superman of Greek mythology; Jason and his 120

Argonauts who sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece; and Oedipus, king of Thebes in central Greece who was fated to kill his own father and marry his mother. Greek literature began with oral bards who sang poems about the exploits of such heroes in the banquet halls of aristocrats, or at the religious festivals. The most famous of these myths was the tale of the Trojan war in which the Greeks laid siege to the city of Troy in order to reclaim the kidnapped wife of a Greek king. The epic tale of famous warriors and scheming gods told in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey may have been based on an actual event; the ruins of Troy have been found in the northwest corner of Asia Minor near the entrance to the Hellespont. The myth of Troy provided material for Greek poetry and drama throughout the great period of Greek literature. HOMER AND EPIC POETRY. The written literature of Greece begins with Homer. We have no concrete information about his identity. The legend that he was blind might be true but it cannot be proved. The two epics attributed to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey both take their subject matter from the Trojan War myths, but they differ greatly in tone and temper. The Iliad describes how the hero Achilles made the quest for glory his all-important aim, while the Odyssey relates a story of survival as the Greek hero Odysseus endures a journey of ten years before returning home from the war. The Homeric poems were not unique in their subject matter. Other poets told stories of the heroes, and some fragments of their epics still exist. But out of the great crop of heroic poetry only the Iliad and Odyssey have survived complete. At the same time, there was another school of epic which catered to a less aristocratic audience, and its great representative was Hesiod. OTHER POETIC FORMS. The epic soon had to share the limelight with other genres of poetry, such as elegiac, iambic, and personal and choral lyric. Elegiac poetry may first have been used for war poems, for its earliest masters wrote of the glory and horrors of warfare, but it became the favorite vehicle for expressions of love and pleasure thanks to an early master of elegy, Mimnermus of Colophon, the first hedonist in Western literature. The foremost master of iambic poetry was Archilochus of Paros, a lighthearted cynic who attacked the ideals of chivalry and heroism in battle. Lyric poetry dealt with personal feelings: political animosities, the pleasure of wine, and love. Alcaeus of Lesbos was a master of personal lyric, that is, songs meant to be sung at private gatherings of like-minded people; the greatest of the lyric artists, Sappho, also of Lesbos, wrote of love and marriage with an intensity which no later poet would match.

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THE CHORAL ODE. Moving from the sixth into the fifth century B.C.E., two masters of a different type of lyric arose to popularity: Simonides of Ceos and Pindar. The first pioneered the epinikion, a victory ode sung by a choir in honor of a winner in one of the great athletic contests. Simonides was also famous for the epigrams he wrote for the monuments of the Greek warriors who died in the Persian Wars (490–479 B.C.E.), and recently a long papyrus fragment of his poem on the Battle of Plataea (479 B.C.E.) has been discovered. Pindar wrote a variety of poetry, but what has survived are his victory odes for the prize winners at the great athletic games. His style was elevated, with many allusions to Greek myths familiar to his listeners. Bacchylides, the third writer of choral lyrics who deserves mention, struck a different tone. His style was straightforward and simple. He marks the end of the great age of choral lyric. DRAMA. The fifth century B.C.E. was the great age of drama, and the chief patron was Athens. There were two dramatic festivals, held in honor of Dionysus, the god of drama: the City Dionysia in March and the Lenaean festival in January. Comedies were presented on the second day of the festival, followed by three full days of tragedies—one day for each tragic poet who had been assigned a chorus by the archon, the chief magistrate of Athens. Each day three tragedies would be produced, followed by a burlesque called a satyr play, and at the end, the audience would judge which tragedian won. The costs of production were paid by wealthy citizens who were expected to defray them as their civic duty. The vast majority of these comedies and tragedies have been lost, but there is still a representative number by the playwrights whom the Greeks themselves judged the best: Aristophanes for comedy, and Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for tragedy. Tragedies continued to be written after the fifth century B.C.E. but the heyday of the genre was over, and with the conquest of Greece by Alexander the Great’s father, Philip, the classical age of literature came to an end. A century after Aristophanes, a new dramatist, Menander, produced comedies in Athens that gave a new look to the stage. Menander’s comedies took their plots from domestic life. The political lampoons and bawdy jokes of Aristophanic comedy disappeared; the “New Comedy” of Menander and his rivals belonged to a new political climate, when writers had to be more cautious about what they wrote. THE WRITERS OF HISTORY. Herodotus, whose Histories were published about 425 B.C.E., was the first Western historian who did not merely record what

events happened; he asked why they happened. His search for the reason why Persia invaded Greece led him to examine the mainsprings of Persian imperialism. Thucydides, a younger contemporary of Herodotus, chose to write on more current history: the great war between Athens and Sparta (431–404 B.C.E.), and he left his work unfinished. His history was an accurate year-by-year analysis of the war, and it is a splendid study of war psychosis. Time has been unkind to the successors of Herodotus and Thucydides, such as Theopompus and Ephorus who wrote in the fourth century B.C.E., and the historians who wrote about Alexander the Great, of whom there is only secondhand knowledge. In the second century B.C.E. Greece produced another great historian, Polybius, whose subject was the rise of Rome. THE HELLENISTIC AGE. In the Hellenistic Age, after Alexander the Great’s death, Alexander’s generals founded kingdoms which self-consciously cultivated Greek culture. In Egypt, the Ptolemaic kings built a great library at their capital, Alexandria, and made it a center of literary culture. The writers and researchers who worked there wrote for a restricted audience, for the Greeks were a minority in Egypt and the Egyptians preferred their own native culture. The leading Alexandrian poet was Callimachus, who was greatly admired though his surviving poetry seems dry to modern readers. Two other Alexandrians wrote more engaging material; Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus. Apollonius wrote an epic poem on the quest of Jason for the Golden Fleece, which reads more like a romantic novel than a heroic epic. While Theocritus wrote many kinds of poetry, his fame rests on his bucolic idylls: pastoral poetry full of yearning for the countryside and the life lived there. The power of Greek culture influenced even the mighty Rome, which conquered the flourishing Greek cities in southern Italy and Sicily in the third century B.C.E. Contrary to most trends of war in which the conquered culture is subsumed into that of the conqueror, Greek culture became preeminent in Rome after Greece’s defeat. The Latin poet Horace commented on this phenomenon in saying, “When Greece was captured, she took captive her rough conqueror.” Latin literature begins with a Greek, Livius Andronicus. He came to Rome as a slave, was freed, and became a teacher, and then an actor and stage-manager. His translation of the Odyssey from Greek into the Roman language of Latin marks the beginning of Latin literature. The Roman ruling class fully embraced Greek literature, and there was soon a cultivated circle that learned to speak Greek and engaged Greek culture. The

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Romans valued the Greek culture and language so much that the first Roman historians wrote in Greek rather than Latin. THE BEGINNINGS OF LATIN LITERATURE. The Romans did not long shun their native language, quickly developing literature in Latin. A younger contemporary of Livius Andronicus, Plautus, translated and modified plays from the Greek “New Comedy” for Roman tastes. Ennius wrote an epic on the history of Rome, adapting the Homeric meter to Latin. The hard-boiled Roman statesman, Cato the Elder, wrote the first history of Rome in Latin in the second century B.C.E., and in the next century, there was a flowering of Latin literature: Julius Caesar described his conquests in unadorned prose, Cicero was famous both for his oratory and his philosophic works that introduced Greek ideas into a Latin context, and the poetry of Catullus marked a new wave when poets broke free of the conventions of the past. The Golden Age of Latin literature came with the next generation, under the emperor Augustus, whose minister of culture, Maecenas, gathered about him a circle of poets. He had an ulterior motive besides his support of culture: Augustus wanted literature to serve the interests of his new regime. He wanted his achievements celebrated in poetry, and the poet Vergil rose to the challenge. He did not write an epic on Augustus, but instead chose for his subject the Trojan hero, Aeneas, whom Augustus claimed as his ultimate ancestor. Although another Trojan hero, Hector, overshadows Aeneas in Homer’s Iliad, Aeneas was the hero who survived the fall of Troy; long before Vergil wrote his Aeneid, the Romans had claimed him as the warrior who came to Latium and founded the royal line to which Rome’s founder, Romulus, belonged. Vergil wove Greek and Latin mythology into the fabric of his great epic, and he added a new episode: a romance between Aeneas and Dido, queen of Carthage, which ends with Aeneas deserting Dido at the command of Jupiter, who has destined him to lay the foundation of the Roman Empire. Latin literature had a second great period in the first century B.C.E., with writers such as the historian Tacitus, the biographer Suetonius, the satirist Juvenal, and the novelist Petronius producing major works. Literary production continued, but the spark of genius did not reappear until the late empire, with the soldier-historian Ammianus Marcellinus and a crop of other authors in both Latin and Greek who continued to write in the classical tradition. At the same time there was a flowering of Christian literature in both languages: hymns, ecclesiastical histories, and chronicles which bring us to the threshold of the Middle Ages. 122

in Literature T HE A GE

H OMERIC E PIC

THE EMERGENCE OF THE CITY-STATE. The word “city-state” is a translation of the Greek word polis from which we derive the word “politics.” It was the political unit that arose out of the ruins of the Mycenaean world, and had a social and economic structure closer to that of Babylon and ancient Egypt than to the later world of classical Greece. The palaces where the Mycenaean wanaktes—a word meaning something like “godkings”—had their seats were also bureaucratic centers where clerks kept records and dispatched memoranda to lower-ranking officials. Among them were the headmen of the various villages with the title pa-si-reu, a word that evolves into the classical Greek basileus, a king with a legitimate claim to the throne based on heredity and the favor of the gods. When the Mycenaean civilization was destroyed in the century of upheavals and migrations after 1200 B.C.E., the wanaktes and their palaces were swept away, and the need for writing disappeared along with them. Yet the basileis with their little domains endured, and once life in Greece became more secure again after 1000 B.C.E., these little baronies emerged as self-governing political units. It was in the halls of these little kings that bards improvised tales of the heroes that would eventually become the Iliad and the Odyssey. THE WORLD OF HOMER. Homer’s reputation as Greece’s greatest epic poet rests on two famous works attributed to him: Iliad and Odyssey, which focus on a legendary war between Greece and Troy known as the “Trojan War” and its aftermath. While these works have been studied over centuries to modern times, details of the life of Homer are sketchy at best. Greek sculptors made portraits of him that can be easily recognized by their blind eyes and beetling brow, but they are imaginative creations rather than a true representation of his appearance. Several cities claimed to be his birthplace. The two with the best claims were Chios, one of the Dodecanese islands off the Turkish coast, and Smyrna, an important Greek settlement on the west coast of Asia Minor. Both were Ionian cities founded during the “Dark Ages” of Greece by refugees who were displaced by a wave of migrants into the Peloponnesos after the collapse of the Mycenaean world. Homer’s dialect of Greek is mostly Ionic, though his Greek was not the Greek of the streets; it was “epic Greek,” the language

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used by epic poets. We do not know exactly when he lived. It is clear from the Iliad and Odyssey that the Trojan War took place long before they were written, in an age when men were mightier than in the contemporary world. Yet, since the Iliad and Odyssey were written down, it follows that Homer could write, or else dictated to someone who could. Thus we must date him after the Greeks borrowed the north Semitic alphabet from the Phoenicians and adapted it to their own use, adding vowels which the Phoenician alphabet lacked. When the adaptation occurred is much disputed, but the general consensus dates it not long after 800 B.C.E. So a Homer who knew how to write could have lived as early as the first half of the eighth century B.C.E., but hardly earlier. For the latest date, the terminus ante quem as it is called, a fragment of a vase found on the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples provides a clue. An inscription in verse on the vase fragment refers to a cup belonging to the hero Nestor which is described in the Iliad, and the vase is dated to before 700 B.C.E. Therefore, the epic must have been written before this vase was made. This date allows scholars to pinpoint the period between 725 and 675 B.C.E. as the time when the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down. PERFORMANCE OF THE EPIC POET. The poems of Homer were composed in an age when oral bards sang poems to the accompaniment of the lyre, with the epic composed like music written in half and quarter notes; a long syllable equals a half note and a short syllable a quarter note. The stress accents found in medieval and modern poetry did not exist in this poetry, which was written to be sung, but there were pitch accents; almost every word had a pitch accent where the voice went up or down. The music of the lyre—an instrument with strings which the bard plucked as he sang—provided a melodic background. As he sang, dancers might perform to the music, but both the music and dance were subordinated to the spoken word. The poems of Homer must have started out as songs that were sung by bards but at some point they were committed to writing. Schoolboys learned them and committed portions of them to memory. They were recited at religious festivals. They had an influence on the language of Greece similar to the effect that the English translation of the King James Bible of 1611 had on the English language. The Homeric poems not only mark the beginning of Greek literature; their influence is felt in all aspects of Greek culture. THE TROJAN WAR. The legend of the Trojan War probably has an historical basis, for there is archaeological evidence that around 1250 B.C.E. a fortified city

came to a violent end on the site which Greek tradition identified as Troy. So there was once a war that ended with the capture of Troy, but the story relayed in Homer’s telling of the Trojan War is an imaginative one that includes the involvement of the gods. In fact, the conflict begins with the gods when a beauty contest between the goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite takes an ugly turn. Having chosen a mortal prince from Troy named Paris to judge who was the most beautiful, each goddess attempts to bribe the young man to select her, and Paris chooses Aphrodite on the basis of her promise to give him the most beautiful woman in the world. Unfortunately, the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, is already the wife of a Spartan (Greek) king named Menelaus, so Paris’ abduction of her to Troy prompts the Greeks to muster a fleet in pursuit of her under the leadership of the high king of Greece, Agamemnon. The bloody conflict at Troy lasts ten years, and finally ends when the Greeks trick the Trojans into opening up the gates of the city to a large wooden horse concealing Greek warriors inside. These warriors then open the gates to the rest of the Greek army, allowing for the sacking of Troy. The Trojan warriors were slain and the women sold into slavery, though there were myths that some Trojans escaped; some aristocratic Roman families were to claim descent from Trojan heroes. THE NOSTOI. The return home of the Greek victors after the war spawned a number of other myths of the type known as nostoi, the Greek word for “returns home.” The most famous nostos was the tale of Odysseus, who spent ten years trying to reach his island of Ithaca, the subject of Homer’s Odyssey. The Trojan War left a powerful imprint on the Greek imagination, perhaps because—if the date of 1250 B.C.E. is more or less correct—it was the last great venture of the Greek Bronze Age before the Myceneaean civilization fell. The myths about it were worked and reworked by Greek poets and dramatists. Not only the Trojan War itself, but the nostoi provided the raw material for the earliest Greek literature of Greece, and from Greece the tales of the Trojan War passed to Rome, where the family of the Iulii, which produced Julius Caesar, claimed descent from the Trojan hero Aeneas. Thus the Trojan War would contribute to the self-definition of both the Greeks and the Romans. THE ILIAD. One of the reasons the Iliad has stood the test of time is that it is much more than a story about a war. In epic format, Homer provides keen psychological portraits of the heroes involved on both sides of the conflict. Central to the story is the figure of Achilles, the

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leader of the Myrmidons and the greatest warrior on the Greek side. He is practically invincible on the battlefield because his immersion in the River Styx as a baby prevents him from being wounded anywhere on his body except for his heel—the one part that the water had not touched. He is the paradigm of the doomed hero who knows that death awaits him if he continues to fight at Troy, yet his desire for glory in battle consumes him. His status as Greece’s best warrior sets him up for conflict with the army’s leader, Agamemnon, and when the two have a dispute over the distribution of the spoils of war, Achilles allows the affront to his ego to negate his duty in battle and he refuses to fight against the Trojans. His decision has terrible consequences for both himself personally and the Greek military cause. Without Achilles in battle, the tide of the war turns in the Trojans’ favor and several key leaders of the Greek side are wounded, including Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus. Achilles—though he will not return to battle himself—loans his armor to his friend Patroclus and allows him to lead the Myrmidons into battle, where Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero, Hector. Once Achilles learns of Patroclus’ death he returns to battle, and avenges Patroclus’ death by killing Hector. He then buries his friend with funeral rites that are splendid, almost barbaric. Although Achilles is portrayed as a merciless warrior in battle, Homer humanizes him with a display of compassion when Hector’s father, old King Priam, visits Achilles under cover of night to ransom the body of his son. Achilles is moved by pity, both for Priam and for his own father, Peleus, for his mother has warned him that if he returns to battle, his own death would soon follow Hector’s. He accepts the ransom and sends Priam safely back to Troy and the Iliad ends with Hector’s funeral. Throughout the story, Homer leaves no doubt that the Greek heroes are better warriors than the Trojans, and yet he is surprisingly sympathetic to Troy. The most sympathetic character in the story is the Trojan hero Hector. He is a great warrior but he does not love war. He fights to defend Troy, but he knows that Troy is doomed and his wife and son face a perilous future. Hector’s last farewell to them is the most moving passage in the Iliad. He is hopelessly outclassed when he meets Achilles in their final duel; yet his honor as a warrior prevents him from retreating behind the city walls. This resolve to fight in the face of certain death is part of a general theme of the glory of battle that is present throughout the epic. The characters are judged on the basis of their fighting skills and their courage, and those who continue to fight even though they know the hard fate ahead of them (such as Hector and Achilles) are given the most accolades. 124

THE ODYSSEY. The Odyssey is the story of one of the Greek heroes at Troy, Odysseus, as he attempts to sail home from the war. A series of misfortunes turns the journey into a ten-year ordeal, and a combination of good fortune and craftiness saves him from several perilous situations. A tale of wandering that takes place over many years is not easy to relate, for it can lapse into a sprawling chronological account. To avoid that, Homer uses a “flashback” technique in which Odysseus relates most of his own story as a series of episodes, each episode relating some fresh peril he endured on his journey. When the story begins, Odysseus is near the end of his travels as he tells his story to an audience of Phaeacians who have given him temporary refuge in their land on his way home. His tales of encounters with fantastic creatures and his experiences in strange lands amaze them. Among his adventures, he outwitted the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus (the Cyclops); he sailed between the two monsters Scylla and Charybdis; he subdued the witchgoddess Circe; and he was the captive lover of the nymph Calypso for seven years. Although he had started home from Troy with a fleet of twelve ships, he alone reached Ithaca, his homeland. Each new adventure resulted in the loss of crew members. In the land of the Lotus-Eaters, some ate the fruit of the lotus plant that made them forget their home, and Odysseus had to force them back on his ships. Others were eaten by the giant Cyclops while captive in his cave. The cannibal Laestrygonians destroyed all his ships save only for Odysseus’ own vessel. The witch Circe turned Odysseus’ men into pigs, and Odysseus saved them only with the help of the god Hermes. Finally Odysseus was once again caught by a storm. Zeus struck his vessel with lightning and flung his men overboard, and Odysseus alone survived, clinging to the wreckage and drifting nine days at sea until he reached Calypso’s island. Moved by his story, the Phaeacians return him to his kingdom of Ithaca where Odysseus discovers that suitors ambitious for the hand of his wife Penelope have overrun his manor house. Although Odysseus’ long absence has led many to presume he is dead, Penelope has managed to keep her suitors at bay through a clever ruse; she promises to select a husband after she has finished weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus’ father, Laertes, but every night she undoes her work of the day before. The suitors eventually discover the deception and increase pressure on her to choose one of them. It is at this point that Odysseus returns home, disguised as a beggar. Since she can no longer use the burial shroud as an excuse to put off marriage, Penelope has produced a new tryout for the suitors: she announces that she will choose as her husband whoever wins an archery contest with Odysseus’ bow. Her choice will fall

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on whoever can string the great bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes. None of the suitors can so much as string the bow, much less shoot an arrow with it, but Odysseus easily accomplishes the feat, and then slaughters all the suitors. Penelope, however, is not yet completely convinced that Odysseus is her long-lost husband, and she puts him to one final test: she, orders a servant to move her marriage bed outside the bedroom for Odysseus to sleep on. Only Odysseus and Penelope know that the order is impossible to carry out since the bed is anchored to a tree stump; so when Odysseus reveals that he knows the secret of the bed, Penelope knows him to be her husband. Odysseus has regained his kingdom. CUNNING OVER STRENGTH. While much of the Iliad focuses on the battle strength of warriors, the Odyssey exalts cunning over brute strength. Time and again, Odysseus is described as a crafty man, and he frequently escapes the dangerous passages of his journey by using his wits to overcome the superior strength of his adversaries. On more than one occasion he assumes a disguise or masks his identity to gain the upper hand, such as was the case in his confrontation with the suitors. The encounter with the Cyclops is a particularly good example of Odysseus’ use of his wits to overcome a seemingly impossible situation; Odysseus and his men are trapped in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, a oneeyed giant cannibal shepherd who was the son Poseidon, god of the sea. They face certain death since only Polyphemus can roll back the boulder blocking the entrance to the cave, which he does only to let his sheep out of the cave each morning and bring them back each night for safekeeping. Physically, Odysseus can do nothing, but he uses his wiles to get the giant drunk. When Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name, Odysseus replies that his name is “Noman.” After the giant falls into a drunken sleep, the men put out his eye with a sharpened pole; he cries for help from the other Cyclopes, but they assume that a god must have caused his misfortune when he tells them that “Noman” (“No man”) put out his eye. With Polyphemus at a disadvantage because of his blindness, Odysseus and his men make their escape from the cave by lashing themselves to the bellies of Polyphemus’ sheep as he lets them out in the morning. The blind Cyclops runs his hand over the backs of the sheep to make sure no one is riding them to freedom, but he fails to perceive the men underneath. As Odysseus is pulling away in his ship, he cannot resist shouting back to the Cyclops his true name, which allows the giant to pray to his father Poseidon for vengeance on Odysseus. Poseidon sends a storm to blow the ships off-course and

Odysseus becomes subject to a curse: that he will not return home or, if he does, he will be long delayed, alone, and find trouble in his house. TEMPTATION AND ENDURANCE. Odysseus’ inability to resist revealing his identity to the Cyclops provides an example of another dominant theme of the work: the danger of temptation. Odysseus’ pride at having outwitted the Cyclops tempts him to tell the Cyclops his name, though his men urge him to be cautious. In fact, when Odysseus found the Cyclops’ cave, his men urged him to steal some cheeses and lambs and be off back to their ships, but Odysseus is tempted by a thirst for knowledge: he wants to see who owns this cave, and waits for the Cyclops to return home. In the Land of the Lotuseaters, the temptation is to give up and forget about their goal of returning home, and Odysseus, no matter what he must endure, remains determined to return: he forces his men back onto their boats. When Odysseus sails past the reefs where the Sirens—half-women, half-bird creatures—sang their seductive songs that lured sailors to their deaths on the rocks, he saves his men from temptation by ordering them to plug their ears, while he himself, tempted by his thirst for knowledge, has himself tied to the mast, thereby allowing him to hear the Sirens’ melody and survive. Following the Cyclops incident, Odysseus obtains from Aeolus, the lord of the winds, a magic bag that imprisons all the winds save the one that will waft his ships safely home, and he forbids his men to open it. Ithaca is already in sight when the crew, suspicious that Odysseus is keeping treasure from them in the sack, disobey orders and yield to the temptation to open the sack when Odysseus falls asleep. The winds are released, and a storm blows Odysseus back to the land of Aeolus, who refuses angrily to give him another sack. On the Isle of the Sun God, Hyperion, Odysseus’ men are warned solemnly not to touch Hyperion’s cattle, but they are driven by hunger, and yield to the temptation to slaughter some of them when Odysseus is away. Hyperion, the Sun God is so angry that he threatens to cease shining in the sky if Zeus does not avenge him, and Zeus agrees to destroy Odysseus’ ship with a thunderbolt. Odysseus alone endures, never abandoning his goal of returning home. THE EPIC CYCLE. There were other epics as well which filled in the story of the Trojan War. One, titled the Cypria, described how Paris abducted the wife of Menelaus, Helen, and brought her to Troy. It seems to have been composed almost as early as the Iliad, and some Greeks attributed it wrongly to Homer. Another titled the Aethiopis told how a king of Ethiopia named Memnon came to aid Troy and was killed by Achilles,

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who in turn died from an arrow wound in his vulnerable heel. The Little Iliad and the Sack of Troy told how Troy fell, and there was a group of poems called the Nostoi (The Returns) which related the experiences of heroes other than Odysseus as they voyaged home from Troy. These poems survived into the second century C.E., for they were still being quoted by later authors, but they seem to have been lost in the upheavals of the third century C.E. There were epics as well which dealt with subjects other than Troy. One told the story of Oedipus of Thebes, who killed his father and married his mother, and there were several poems on Heracles. There were many other epics besides the Iliad and Odyssey, but those two poems were by far the most popular and were recited most often at religious festivals. One other poem, the Margites should be mentioned, too, for even as shrewd a critic as Aristotle thought that Homer wrote it. It was a mock epic, a burlesque which related the misfortunes of a stupid fellow named Margites. A surviving fragment relates his misadventures on his wedding night, and if Homer wrote it, he must have used it to give his audience some belly laughs after they had their fill of the Trojan legends. One short mock epic has survived, The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, which describes in heroic style a battle between a corps of frogs and a regiment of mice. The banqueting halls of the aristocrats in the early city-states of Greece clearly enjoyed their comic moments. SOURCES

Charles R. Beye, Ancient Epic Poetry (Ithaca, N.Y.; London, England: Cornell University Press, 1993). Mark Edwards, Homer; Poet of the Iliad (Baltimore; London, England: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Moses Finley, The World of Odysseus. 2nd rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1979). Jasper Griffin, Homer (Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 2001). G. S. Kirk, The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1962). Joachim Latacz, Homer; His Art and His World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). J. V. Luce, Homer and the Heroic Age (London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1975). M. S. Silk, Homer: The Iliad (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987). George Steiner and Robert Fagles, eds., Homer: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962). Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 126

T HE B OEOTIAN S CHOOL

E PIC

HESIOD. It is customary to speak of Homer and Hesiod in the same breath, but, in fact, the two poets lived in different worlds and produced markedly different poetry. Both belonged to eighth century B.C.E., but Hesiod reflected a different style of life. He grew up in the poor village of Ascra in Boeotia, a district of central Greece bordering on Athenian territory. The Athenians considered the Boeotians rather stupid, and, compared to Athens, Boeotia was a cultural backwater. Despite this reputation, about the same time as bards in Ionia were singing heroic lays about the Trojan War, poets in Boeotia were composing poetry on more down-to-earth subjects. There must have been a fair number of poets, but all that survives of their works are three poems attributed to Hesiod: the Theogony, the Works and Days, and a rather poor piece titled The Shield of Heracles, which few think is really Hesiod’s composition. THE THEOGONY. The Theogony, or The Generations of the Gods, is the first effort by a Greek to write a systematic theology. Hesiod begins by invoking the nine Muses who taught him the art of poetry while he was shepherding his flock on Mt. Helicon. The Muses, the daughters of Zeus who knew how to speak the truth when they wanted to, inspired him to sing of “things to come and things that were before.” “Hail, daughters of Zeus! Give me sweet song To celebrate the holy race of gods Who live forever, sons of starry Heaven And Earth, and gloomy night, and salty Sea.” Dorothea Wender, trans., Hesiod and Theognis (Penguin Classics): 26.

Hesiod began with Chaos, the formless matter which was the earliest state of the universe, out of which appeared Earth and Tartarus, Night and Erebos, which in the Theogony was a mythical being. Earth produced Ouranos (Heaven), and from the sexual union of Earth and Heaven arose the race of Titans. The Titan Kronos, with the connivance of Mother Earth, castrated Heaven and thrust him up into the sky. But Kronos feared that his children would overthrow him just as he overthrew his father, and he swallowed the infants as his wife Rhea bore them. Rhea tricked him, however, by giving him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow instead of her last-born child. When that child, who was Zeus, reached manhood, he overthrew Cronus and forced him to vomit up the children he had swallowed. Thus the generation of Zeus took control.

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THE EASTERN CONNECTION. It is difficult to discern whether Hesiod was repeating traditional wisdom about the gods in his Theogony or whether it sprang from his own fertile brain. Certainly, the Near East had creation stories before Hesiod wrote; one that Hesiod might have known at second- or third-hand was the Babylonian Creation epic, the Enuma elis of which over 900 verses survive. The story of how Cronus castrated Ouranos has a parallel among the myths of the Hittites whose empire dominated central Asia Minor until the raids and invasions which ended the Mycenaean civilization after 1200 B.C.E. destroyed it as well; the Hittites, in turn, borrowed it from a people called the Hurrians, pre-Semitic inhabitants of Syria. The Hittite tale told that Kumarbi, the equivalent of Cronus, bit off the genitals of the Sky-God Anu. Folktale motifs can travel from culture to culture with surprising ease, but they change as they travel, and by the time the Near Eastern creation myths reached Boeotia, they had taken on a different complexion. Yet the cultural influence of the Near East was felt even in Hesiod’s isolated little community. In the Works and Days, he tells the Near Eastern myth of the Ages of Man, but with a change to make it fit Greek common wisdom: the Oriental version has four ages corresponding to the four metals, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, but Hesiod adds a fifth age before the Age of Iron—the heroic age— thus creating space in the history of mankind for the heroes who, as all Greeks knew, lived before the present age. It seems unlikely that Hesiod was the first Greek to use myths from the Near East, for Greek contacts with Syria go back to Mycenaean times. Yet much of the theology in the Theogony was Hesiod’s own creation. THE WORKS AND DAYS. In Hesiod’s second poem, we hear the genuine voice of a peasant farmer. Hesiod’s father had left Aeolian Cyme, fleeing from poverty, and had come to the town of Askra near Mt. Helicon, which Hesiod characterized as “harsh in winter, comfortless in summer, not really good at any time of year.” Hesiod’s brother Perses had cheated Hesiod in the division of their father’s estate, and then had squandered his portion. He then attempted to acquire more of his brother’s share by dishonest means, bribing the corrupt aristocrats who dispensed justice in the city-states. The Works and Days is Hesiod’s advice to Perses. It tells him how to farm, when to marry, what sort of slaves to have, which days are lucky and so on. The sixth day of the month, for instance, was not a lucky time for girls to be born, but it was a good day for castrating kids and lambs, and for the birth of boys, though boys born on that day will be given to lies and flattery. Other admonitions included one always to wash one’s hands before pouring libations

to the gods, and another to wash one’s hands in a stream before crossing it. This “wisdom literature” is typical of ancient Egypt, but the advice Hesiod gives is rooted in the soil of Boeotia. He had a strong sense of justice, and he had a message for crooked judges: You lords, take notice of this punishment The deathless gods are never far way; They mark the crooked judges who grind down Their fellow-men and do not fear the gods, Three times ten thousand watchers-over-men, Immortal, roam the fertile earth for Zeus, Clothed in a mist, they visit every land And keep a watch on law-suits and on crimes, One of them is the virgin, born of Zeus, Justice, revered by all the Olympian gods. Dorothea Wender, trans., Hesiod and Theognis (Penguin Classics): 66–67.

Hesiod’s suggestion that Zeus is the enforcer of fair play differs from Homer’s amoral version of the god. CORINNA. Boeotia continued to produce poets after Hesiod, though none wrote in the epic tradition. Nearly two centuries after Hesiod, one of the greatest Greek lyric poets, Pindar, was born there, near the chief Boeotian city of Thebes. An older contemporary of Pindar, a poetess named Corinna, wrote lyrical narrative poems on Boeotian subjects for a circle of women friends. A papyrus fragment from Egypt preserves substantial remains of two of her poems. In one she describes a contest in song between Mt. Helicon, or more precisely, the god Helicon, and Mt. Cithaeron. Helicon was Hesiod’s mountain where the Muses appeared to him and taught him to sing, and Mt. Cithaeron was closer to Corinna’s polis of Tanagra. The gods judge whether Hesiod’s Helicon or Corinna’s Cithaeron has sung the better poem. The Muses told the high gods then each to deposit his ballot stone secretly in the gold gleaming urns. Together the gods rose up. Cithaeron won more of the votes. At once Hermes, with a great cry, announced him, how he had gained success he longed for, and the blessed gods with garlands crowned him, so that his heart was happy. Richmond Lattimore, Greek Lyrics (University of Chicago Press): 52.

Mt. Helicon was a sore loser. The poem may have been Corinna’s declaration of independence from the Hesiodic epic school of poetry.

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SOURCES

J. P. Barron and P. E. Easterling, “Hesiod,” in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Eds. P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981): 92–105. Robert Lamberton, Hesiod (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988). Dorothea Wender, Hesiod and Theognis (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1973).

T HE A GE

L YRIC P OETRY

THE CHANGING GREEK WORLD. In the years after 700 B.C.E. the Greek world underwent social and economic change. The poleis, or city-states, now emerged fully from the so-called “Dark Ages” which had followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. They began to send out colonies; about 770 B.C.E., the leading cities on the island of Euboea—Eretria and Chalcis—established a trading post on the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples. About twenty years later, Chalcis—her partnership with Eretria dissolved into enmity—planted a colony on the Italian mainland, at Cumae. It was the first of a host of colonies, and within the next two and a half centuries, Greek settlements—each of them a nascent city-state—appeared in Italy, Sicily, southern France, north-eastern Spain, as well as the north Aegean and the shore of the Black Sea. The eastern Mediterranean coast and Egypt were not open to colonization but even there the Greeks established a trading post at al-Mina in modern Lebanon; in Egypt, the pharaohs of the twenty-sixth dynasty allowed them to build a post at Naucratis at the mouth of the Nile. Egyptian culture came as a revelation to the Greeks; by the mid-seventh century B.C.E., Greek sculptors were carving nude male figures in poses borrowed from Egyptian sculpture. In the pottery workshops of Corinth, potters produced vases with oriental motifs taken from Asian metalwork, and their fine Protocorinthian ware found export markets all over the eastern Mediterranean as well as in Italy and Sicily. The poleis began to build freestanding temples; the earliest have an apse or semi-circular wall at the end, but by the latter part of the seventh century B.C.E., the canonical Greek temple-plan had been born. This was an age of revolution, in which the rule of the “lords,” the injustice of which Hesiod had attacked, was swept away and replaced by dictatorships, which the Greeks called “tyrannies.” It was against this background that the age of lyric poetry arose. DEFINING LYRIC POETRY. Lyric poetry is poetry sung to the lyre, but that in itself was not a new devel128

opment since epic poetry also had lyre accompaniment. The great lyric poets, beginning with Archilochus, belong to the exuberant seventh and sixth centuries when Greece moved from the “Dark Ages” to the great classical period of Greek culture. Lyric is commonly divided into three types of poetry: melic, elegiac, and iambic. Their boundaries are indistinct. “Melic” means “for song,” and can include everything from party songs to choral cantatas. Elegies were sung, too, but they are defined by their meter, the elegiac couplet. Although it uses an iambic meter, poetry that is classified as iambic relates more to its subject matter which is ludicrous, abusive, or sometimes off-color. Not all lyric poetry was sung to the music of the lyre. Mimnermus of Colophon was accompanied by a girl playing the aulos, a remote ancestor of the oboe. Choral cantatas might be accompanied by both the aulos and the lyre, of which there were several models. THE WAR POETS. Elegiac poetry is most often though to express emotions, such as love or sorrow, but there was a group of poets which used the elegiac couplet for patriotic themes. The seventh century B.C.E. was not a period of peace in the Greek world. In the so-called “Dark Ages” which followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, Greeks had migrated to the west coast of Asia Minor and the offshore islands and founded settlements there, which flourished, but were always under threat from the non-Greeks in the interior of Asia Minor. One elegiac poet who used his talent to arouse the Greeks to defend themselves was Callinus of Ephesus. Ephesus was one of the twelve cities of Ionia, founded by Greeks speaking the Ionian dialect who fled from the ruins of the Mycenaean world first to Athens, and then from Athens across the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor. Ephesus’ was in the forefront of Greek cultural development in the early to mid-seventh century. Yet it was a time of war. Anatolia, the plateau of central Asia Minor, was under attack by nomadic migrants, and the sole elegy of Callinus that has survived is an appeal for courage in the battle. How long will you lie idle? When will you young men take courage? Don’t our neighbors make you feel ashamed, so much at ease? TYRTAEUS, SPARTA’S WAR POET. A generation later in Sparta across the Aegean Sea, Tyrtaeus used elegiac poetry for a similar purpose. The Spartan state had been founded by Dorian immigrants, the last of the migrants to arrive in Greece after the collapse of the Mycenaean world. They spoke their own dialect of Greek, though Dorian is not much closer to Ionic Greek than Spanish is to Italian. The Spartan immigrants conquered the natives of the Eurotas River valley and reduced them

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to helots, serfs who worked the land and gave their overlords half their crop. Sparta prospered and its growing population of Spartiates, Sparta’s landowning class, required more estates. To procure more land, Sparta conquered her neighbor to the west, Messenia, in the early seventh century and made the Messenians her helots. But towards the end of the seventh century, the Messenians rebelled. Tyrtaeus’ poetry aroused the Spartan resolve to vanquish them. He recalled how Sparta had conquered Messenia in the first place, and reminded his listeners of the glory of battle. … our sovereign Theopompus, whom the gods did love, through whom we took Messene’s broad dancegrounds, Messene good to plough, and good to plant for fruit. To conquer her they fought full nineteen years. … For it is fine to die in the front line, a brave man fighting for his fatherland and the most painful fate’s to leave one’s town and fertile farmlands for a beggar’s life. M. L. West, trans., Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993): 23.

MIMNERMUS IN DEFENSE OF SMYRNA. The elegiac poet Mimnermus of Smyrna also wrote war poetry. Smyrna was one of the earliest Greek settlements in Asia Minor, but she was under attack by the neighboring empire of Lydia, and about 600 B.C.E. she lost the struggle and was destroyed. Mimnermus’ patriotic efforts were unavailing. ARCHILOCHUS. The Greeks themselves ranked Archilochus with Homer and Hesiod as the greatest poets of early Greece, but unfortunately little of his poetry has survived as evidence of his genius. He was the illegitimate offspring of a noble from Paros (an island in the Aegean Sea), and a slave from Thrace. He made his living as a mercenary soldier, but did not hold to the soldier’s code of honor. In one of his poems he freely admitted his cowardice in a battle with a Thracian tribe called the Saians: Some Saian sports my splendid shield: I had to leave it in a wood, but saved my skin. Well, I don’t care. I’ll get another just as good. M. L. West, trans., Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993): 14.

Archilochus was famous for the invective with which he attacked his enemies, particularly Lycambes, who had two daughters, one of whom, Neobule, was the object of Archilochus’ lust.

The lyric poet Sappho of Lesbos.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

I wish I had as sure a chance of fingering Neobule— the workman falling to his task—and pressing tum to tummy and thighs to thighs. … M. L. West, Greek Lyric Poetry, (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993): 6.

Lycambes did not fancy Archilochus as a son-in-law, and Archilochus’ verse lampooned him and his two daughters so viciously that, according to the legend, they hanged themselves. Much of his surviving poetry reflects his observations on current events: bristling attacks on his enemies, banter with friends, mournful lyrics for men lost at sea, scorn for dandies. In his description of a good soldier—“A shortish sort of chap, who’s bandy-looking round the shins,/he’s my ideal, one full of guts, and steady on his pins”—he may have been describing himself. THE CHORAL LYRIC. Choral lyric was poetry sung by choirs that danced as they sang, usually accompanied by a musician. Sparta, for all its emphasis on militarism in the seventh century B.C.E., was also a center of music and dancing. The first great composer and virtuoso on the type of lyre known as the kithara, Terpander of Lesbos, worked there, as did Alcman, who wrote choral works sung by choirs of girls. One long fragment of a choral song survives, preserved on a papyrus fragment found in Egypt. It is a parthenion, a song sung by young girls to the accompaniment of the

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A LOVE POEM OF SAPPHO INTRODUCTION :

Sappho, who lived in the city of Mytilene on Lesbos, was famous for her short lyrics, written in well-articulated stanzas. The poem below expresses Sappho’s longing for a girl who is leaving her group to get married. It is particularly famous both for its open expression of love from one woman to another, as well as its existence in both the original Greek and a Latin translation by the Roman poet Catullus.

SOURCE : Sappho of Lesbos, “Invocation to Aphrodite,” in Greek Lyrics. 2nd ed. Trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960): 39–40.

aulos—this one sung by a choir of ten. Choral lyric was also popular in the Greek cities of Sicily and southern Italy, where the first poet of note whose name we know was Stesichorus who came from Himera, not far from present-day Palermo. The most famous composer of choral lyric was Sappho of Lesbos, who is usually classified as a melic poet because her songs express personal feelings. A group of girls and unmarried women, it seems, met regularly with Sappho in a school, the “home of the disciples of the Muses,” as Sappho called it in a fragment of her poetry that has survived—it may have been her own house—where they sang and learned to play musical instruments. Sometimes they sang in public at weddings and religious ceremonies; her group of students was called a thiasos, which means something like a “religious club.” Sappho was a music teacher and choreographer, and her chorals often gave voice to her personal feelings. 130

POETRY AS THE PERSONAL VOICE. Poetry gave voice to the personal emotions—usually relating to love, politics and patriotism—of the lyric poets and their circles. For Sappho of Lesbos, it was love that was an allconsuming passion. She expressed her attachment to some of the girls she taught with an intensity that has made “lesbian” a byword for women who are homosexual lovers, although Sappho herself was married and had a daughter. Love between male youths and older, married men was accepted in Greek society, and Sappho merely represented the other side of the coin in expressing romantic attachments between women. The world of her contemporary, Alcaeus of Lesbos, was markedly different. He lived during a time of civil conflict on Lesbos, particularly in its leading polis, Mytilene, where tyrants challenged the rule of the aristocrats, and the aristocrats fought back. Alcaeus used to be best known for his political songs, his Stasiotika, as they were called from the Greek for “civil strife,” stasis. They were songs of political commitment. The aristocrats formed political societies to defend their interests, and when they had their common meals, they sang songs such as Alcaeus wrote. In the last century, however, papyri have been found in the sands of Egypt with poems that show another side of Alcaeus’ genius. He also wrote hymns to the gods, love poems, and poems on mythological themes. The individual voice of the poet can be heard in the works of Sappho and Alcaeus, but Mimnermus of Smyrna, too, whose war poems have already been noted, deserves a second mention as a poet of love. The editors at the great library at Alexandria in the Hellenistic Period made an anthology of his poetry titled the Nanno after the name of a courtesan. Mimnermus also looked on death with apprehension; dread of the ills of old age was another of his favorite themes. POETRY IN AID OF POLITICS. The age of prose had not yet arrived, and when men expressed their political views in writing, they used poetry which they could recite at public gatherings. One political poet who belonged to the polis of Megara was Theognis. Megara is squeezed between Corinth on the south and Athens on the north, and in the last decades of the seventh century B.C.E., the winds of change that were toppling aristocratic governments elsewhere affected Megara, as well. Theognis was an aristocrat who apparently lost his land and became an exile. His poetry reflects a bitter cynicism about the state of society where good people can be plunged into poverty. Some of his elegies are addressed to a friend called Cyrnus, and they are not all political: some give advice, some reflect on the faithlessness of friends, and others are love poems. However, the

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body of literature attributed to Theognis that has survived was not all written by him, and it projects a blurred image of Theognis himself. In a political poem attributed to him he says that no land on earth loves a tyrant, and in another non-political one, that he has no interest except high-class life and the culture of the intellect— so he wants to continue enjoying the lyre and dance and song. The social pressures that threatened the political power of the aristocratic landowners in Megara were felt as well in her larger neighbor, the city-state of Athens. There, too, the rival political factions recognized the danger of a tyranny if there were no reforms, and tried to forestall it. They turned to Solon, a poet, merchant, and aristocrat by pedigree if not by political inclination, and by common consent, he became sole ruler, or “archon,” of Athens for a year in 594–593 B.C.E. with a mandate to make political and economic changes. He used poetry to defend his reforms, which were an effort to find a middle ground between the extremists on the left and on the right. He was no great poet, and he was not the originator of Athenian democracy, but two centuries later Athenians—particularly those whose politics were conservative—looked back at him as the founder of an ideal constitution. THE AGE OF TYRANTS. The Age of Tyrants in archaic Greece was a transitional period between the early polis ruled by aristocrats whose power was based on the possession of land and long pedigrees, and the classical polis where government was more broadly based. Tyrants—in the modern world they would be called dictators—seized power by force and sometimes bequeathed it to their children and even grandchildren, and though the tyrannies left a bad reputation behind them, they were not all bad. Some tyrants were patrons of poetry. A tyrant of Corinth, Periander (ruled about 625–585 B.C.E.) gave profitable hospitality to a famous lyricist, Arion, but none of his work survives. Across the Aegean Sea at Samos, the tyrant Polycrates patronized Ibycus from Rhegium, modern Reggio on the toe of Italy, until he was unseated by the Persians in 522 B.C.E. The choral lyrics of Ibycus carried on the tradition of Stesichorus, but he was equally famous for his love poems. Anacreon, possibly the music teacher of Polycrates, also wrote well-crafted poetry: exquisite songs about the delights of wine and love. When Polycrates fell, Anacreon, along with Ibycus, moved to Athens, where Hipparchus, the younger brother of the tyrant Hippias, gathered about him a number of poets. Hippias was driven from Athens in 510 B.C.E., and as the Age of Tyrants came to an end so did their patronage of literature. One poet, Simonides of Ceos from the court of Hipparchus,

made the transition into the new period when professional poets would sell their services and make a living as literary entrepreneurs. He had a nephew named Bacchylides who would be equally entrepreneurial, if not the equal of his uncle in poetic inspiration. SOURCES

William Barnstone, Greek Lyric Poetry (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1967). C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry. From Alcman to Simonides. 2nd ed. (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1961). A. R. Burn, The Lyric Age of Greece (London, England: Arnold, 1960). Paul Allen Miller, Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness; The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome (London, England; New York: Routledge, 1994). David D. Mulroy, trans., Early Greek Lyric Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992). D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1955). M. L. West, trans., Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford, England; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

P OETS

FOR

H IRE

THE END OF ARCHAIC GREECE. The Persian Wars, from 490 to 479 B.C.E. marked the end of the archaic age. The Persian Empire had been slowly pushing westwards. It captured the Greek cities on the western coast of Asia Minor shortly after 546 B.C.E. In 513 B.C.E. King Darius led a Persian army across the Bosporus into Europe and captured Thrace, the region south of the Danube River. But what turned Persia’s attention to mainland Greece was the Ionian Revolt—a revolt of the Greek cities on the Asia Minor coast and the offshore islands which started in the Ionian city of Miletus in 500 and spread all along the coast and even to Cyprus. Athens sent the rebels help in the first year of the revolt and then withdrew it, but her one-year intervention was enough to rouse Persian resentment. A Persian expeditionary force landed on the plain of Marathon north of Athens in 490 B.C.E., planning to take Athens and establish a Persian bridgehead in Greece. But in a battle that gave Athens a new sense of pride and accomplishment, the Athenian citizen army defeated the Persian force. Ten years later, the Persians attacked again, this time with a great land and naval force, and once again the contribution of Athens to the alliance of Greek states that swore to resist Persia was crucial, for Athens had built a navy in the years after Marathon, and the

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decisive battle that stopped the Persian onslaught was a naval victory fought off the island of Salamis within sight of Athens. Athens emerged from the Persian War as a center of power in the Greek world, strong enough to challenge the old dominant power, Sparta. In the next half-century, she would acquire an empire, and become the cultural center of Greece. The Persian War ushered in the classical period, which is considered the time when the Greek cultural achievement reached its height, and Athens led the way. POETS OF THE PERSIAN WAR. The poets Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides all had one thing in common: their lives were bisected by the Persian Wars. This fact places them within the transitional period between the archaic and classical ages. Simonides was born early enough to enjoy the patronage of Hipparchus, who was the brother of Hippias, the tyrant of Athens. Hipparchus was assassinated in 514 B.C.E. Four years later, Hippias was driven into exile at the court of the Persian king Darius. Simonides wrote the epitaph for the 300 brave Spartans who died defending the Pass of Thermopylae against the Persians in 480 B.C.E.: “Stranger, report to the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to their commands.” All three lived on into a different post-war world. There were still tyrants in Sicily, but in Greece itself the Age of the Tyrants passed on to be replaced in their patronage by the many wealthy Greeks willing to pay money for a poem, including hymns, dirges, songs sung in the service of Dionysus called dithyrambs, and the songs for choruses of girls called partheneia. One bestselling commodity was a praise poem in honor of a victory at one of the four great athletic contests of Greece. The victor or his friends would commission a epinikion (victory ode) which originally was a simple song of welcome, but Simonides developed it into an art form. The contract probably specified the length of the poem and what should be included. It might or might not require the poet to train the chorus to perform the ode. For his services, the poet charged a fee. Simonides in particular had a reputation for being expensive. SIMONIDES. Simonides came from the little island of Ceos but he developed an international reputation as a poet, and used it to market himself. Only fragments of his work survive, but they include victory odes, chants that were called “paeans,” dirges, epigrams, and various lyric poems. His subject matter was not limited to mythology, but also included the Persian War. He wrote a poem on the naval battle at Artemisium in 480 B.C.E., a defeat for the Greeks which they followed up later in the year with a great victory off the island of Salamis. The few surviving fragments of the poem indicate that 132

it is a choral lyric. Recently a papyrus from Egypt has turned up an elegiac poem on the Battle of Plataea, where the Persian army was destroyed in 479 B.C.E. His dirges, or laments for the dead called threnoi, were also famous. Their simple pathos had no equal in Greek poetry, and more than four centuries later, the Roman poet Catullus used the phrase “sadder than the tears of Simonides” to describe his sorrow at a friend’s coldness. PINDAR. Pindar, born in 518 B.C.E. near Thebes in Boeotia, was one of the poets whose towering eminence was recognized by the Greeks in his lifetime, though he must be judged by the four books of his victory odes, plus fragments of his other poetry that have survived. He got his first commission at the age of twenty to write an ode in honor of Hippokleas of Thessaly, the winner in the boys’ double footrace at the Pythian Games. He lived on, greatly honored, until his death around 438 B.C.E. His language is brilliant, and his allusions often obscure to the modern reader, although they were less so to his contemporaries. The structure of his victory odes is precise: first comes the naming in which the victor is named along with his home city and his patron; next comes the central feature which narrates a myth that in some way reflects on the victor’s success; and then the conclusion returns to the victor and his community, which basks in his reflected glory. The ode was sung at a victory celebration for the athlete, but it is not clear how it was staged; perhaps a single choral leader sang the poem while the chorus danced behind him. Pindar was the greatest poet from Boeotia, which had already produced Hesiod and Pindar’s older contemporary, Corinna. His reputation was such that in the following century Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes spared only one house: the one which had belonged to Pindar. BACCHYLIDES. Little more than the name of Bacchylides, the nephew of Simonides of Ceos, was known until 1896, when the British Museum acquired what remained of two papyrus rolls containing poems of Bacchylides, which had been found in a grave. One roll contained victory odes, the other six dithyrambs. He competed with Pindar for commissions, apparently not without success. In 476 B.C.E., both he and Pindar wrote victory odes for Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, for a victory at Olympia in the horse race, but in 468 B.C.E. when Hiero won a victory in the chariot race at Olympia, he commissioned Bacchylides for the victory ode and passed over Pindar. Bacchylides’ surviving dithyrambs have some of the quality of ballads, for they relate episodes excerpted from Greek mythology with twists to the plot that probably come from Bacchylides’ own imagination. Their charm lies in his skill as a narrator.

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He gives the impression of a capable rather than a great poet, who practiced his craft competently, and the opinion of the ancient Greek critics that he was no equal of Pindar is not unfair. SOURCES

D. S. Carne-Ross, Pindar (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985). Greek Lyrics. 2nd rev. ed. Trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Gilbert Norwood, Pindar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945). The Odes of Pindar. Trans. C. M. Bowra (London, England: Penguin, 1969). The Odes of Pindar. Trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947). William H. Race, Pindar (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986).

H ERODOTUS , THE OF H ISTORY

F ATHER

EMERGENCE OF HISTORY. About 425 B.C.E., Herodotus published his History with the proem (introductory sentence): This is the publication of the research of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which I have produced so that what men have done might not become dim with the passage of time, and that the great and marvelous achievements, some the doing of the Greeks, others done by the Persians, might not lack renown, and in particular to show whose fault it was that they fought one another. [Italics added.]

Herodotus states his subject at the beginning: the Persian Empire’s invasion of the Greek city-states which began with the Persian takeover of the cities on the coast of Asia Minor and the offshore islands in the years following 546 B.C.E. and ending in 479 B.C.E. with the annihilation of the Persian army in the Battle of Plataea. Herodotus did not produce a mere chronicle of events as past historians had done, however. He had two purposes in mind. One was a purpose that he shared with the epic poets: to keep alive the memory of the heroic deeds and achievements of the men of old. The other was to examine the cause of the conflict, and cause could not be dissociated from blame. Who, or what was to blame for the great war between Persia and Greece? Finding the answer to that question would be the object of Herodotus’ research, for his word for “research” was historie, which after Herodotus would acquire a new sense. Historie, as it was spelled in the Ionic dialect that

Herodotus used, or historia in the Greek spoken on the streets of Athens, would become the word for “history” in the modern sense. It would be a search for causes and developments, and not merely a record of facts. BACKGROUND. Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum in Turkey, shortly before 480 B.C.E. Halicarnassus had been founded by settlers from the little Greek polis of Troezen in the Peloponnesos, and they were Dorians, speaking the Dorian dialect that they shared with Sparta. By Herodotus’ day, the Ionic dialect had taken over, and in addition, Halicarnassus had a substantial population of Carians, non-Greeks from southwest Asia Minor who had been partially assimilated into Greek culture. The ruling dynasty of Halicarnassus was Carian, and in 480 B.C.E., when King Xerxes of Persia launched his invasion of Greece, the sovereign of Halicarnassus was Queen Artemisia, and when Xerxes conscripted naval contingents from his subject cities, Artemisia led Halicarnassus’ fleet in person. Herodotus treats her with admiration in his History, but while he was still a young man, he was involved in a revolt against Artemisia’s grandson, Lygdamis, along with his uncle, Panyassis, a poet who had tried to revive the epic and succeeded well enough to be ranked with Homer by some Greek critics. Panyassis lost his life, and Herodotus fled Halicarnassus. His exile turned him into an historian. TRAVELS. Herodotus was now an alien wherever he went, for a Greek was born a citizen of a polis, and only under exceptional circumstances could he acquire a new citizenship. Eventually, when a new city called Thurii was founded in southern Italy, Herodotus was able to enroll on its citizenship list, and so ended his life as “Herodotus of Thurii,” not “Herodotus of Halicarnassus.” Probably the first sentence of his History identified him as “Herodotus of Thurii,” but later editors amended it to “Herodotus of Halicarnassus.” Regardless of the title of his origin, his History indicates that Herodotus was restless and traveled extensively. He visited Egypt at least once and interviewed Egyptian priests. He went to Babylon. He got as far north as the Ukraine where the Scythians lived and interviewed a Carian who was an agent for the Scythian king in the trade between the Greeks and the Scythians. He visited both Sparta and Athens, and some scholars believe that he became a friend of the leading Athenian politician of the time, Pericles, and tapped the traditions of Pericles’ family for information; there is no hard evidence to support this theory, however. At some point he acquired a reputation as a logios, that is, an oral performer who did not chant poetry accompanied by music but recited prose. A late source which may

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Greatest extent of Persian Empire Royal Road Ancient coastline

RUSSIA KAZAKHSTAN

All present-day countries shown in gray Aral Sea

B l ac k S e a

TURKMENISTAN

Sea

Sardis Asia Minor TURKEY

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AFGHANISTAN

Persia

ane

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IRAQ

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PAKISTAN

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Map showing greatest extent of the Persian Empire. Herodotus chronicled the expansion of the Persian Empire and its conflicts with Greece in his History. XNR PRODUCTIONS, INC. THE GALE GROUP.

be trustworthy reports that Herodotus went to Olympia while the Olympic Games were in progress, and there set up his tent and gave recitations to all who would listen. There are stories of other visits to Greek cities, too. Athens liked his performance, and paid him handsomely, but he was not allowed to talk to the young men of Thebes in Boeotia. Thebes sided with the Persians in the Persian Wars and probably disliked being reminded of their lack of patriotism, and, in fact, Herodotus treated Thebes with a marked lack of sympathy in his History. HERODOTUS’ PLAN: THE PRELIMINARIES. The History is a long, sprawling work, full of digressions. Long after Herodotus’ death, the scholars at the Alexandrian Library where the kings of Egypt supported a research institute, divided the History into nine books, named after the Nine Muses, but that is an artificial division, though a convenient one. Herodotus simply follows the course of Asian aggression upon the Greek world with the result that the subject of History becomes a study of imperialism and the resistance to oriental imperialism. The east was the home of a succession of em134

pires, culminating in the Persian Empire, whereas Greece was the home of free city-states. Herodotus began with the first Asian to subdue Greek cities and make them pay tribute: Croesus, king of Lydia. He conquered the Ionian cities on the western fringe of Asia Minor. He was in turn conquered by Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, and all the Greek cities on the east side of the Aegean Sea—whether Ionian, Dorian or Aeolian— passed to Persian control. Then Herodotus followed the course of Persian expansion as Cyrus conquered Babylon, and his successor, Cambyses, took over Egypt. As the Persian juggernaut acquired new subjects, Herodotus digressed to describe what they were like. King Darius, who succeeded Cambyses, crossed the Bosporus into Europe, and the region between the Aegean Sea and the Danube fell under Persian dominion. So far, Persian expansion was driven by imperialism, but it was the Greeks themselves, specifically Athens, and Eretria on the island of Euboea, that provoked the Persian invasion of mainland Greece. At the start of the fifth century B.C.E. Ionia rebelled against the Persian yoke, and Athens and Eretria both sent assistance to the rebels. Darius took re-

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venge in 490 B.C.E. by sending an expeditionary force across the Aegean Sea against Athens and Eretria. Eretria fell within a week, and the Persians then landed at Marathon north of Athens, intending to march on the city with their infantry and cavalry. The Athenians were outnumbered, but they adopted the daring tactic of lengthening their battle-line to match the Persian line by thinning its center and reinforcing its wings. They hoped to rout the Persian wings and then wheel in on the flanks of the Persian center, where it was vulnerable to attack. It was a desperate tactic: the Athenian center broke, but the Athenian wings swept aside the Persians facing them and closed in on the Persian flanks. After a stiff fight, the Persians fled. In spite of their fearsome reputation, they were not invincible, for the charge of the heavilyarmed infantry—the hoplites—of Athens vanquished the Persian army, cavalry and all. THE STRUGGLE FOR GREECE. Vengeance and counter-vengeance was a motive for action in history, as Herodotus saw it, but Darius died before exacting revenge on the Greeks for this defeat. The hawks in his court managed to persuade his son, Xerxes, to carry on his father’s plans for Greece, although he is counseled against rash action by his uncle, Artabanus. At decisive moments like this, Herodotus often brought on a wise adviser, who almost invariably counseled against rash action. While initially heeding his uncle’s advice, Xerxes decided to proceed with the invasion on the strength of a vision which appeared to him twice in a dream, telling him that he had to attack Greece or be brought low. Herodotus suggests in this that Persian imperialism had developed its own momentum, and no mere king could stop it without paying a heavy penalty. Xerxes conscripted a great army and navy and, crossing the Hellespont on pontoon bridges, made his way through northern Greece, while in Greece itself, under Sparta’s leadership those states willing to resist joined in an alliance and planned for defense. They attempted to hold back the Persians at the Pass of Thermopylae, where the space between Mt. Kallidromos and the sea is so narrow that in places only a single cart could get through; at the same time, a Greek naval contingent tried to hold back the Persian fleet off Artemisium at the northern tip of the island of Euboea. But a traitor betrayed the Greeks defending Thermopylae and an elderly Spartan king, Leonidas, and his royal bodyguard of 300 hoplites died fighting there so that the rest of his army could get away. The Persians advanced, burning Athens. But the Athenian general Themistocles persuaded the Greek fleet to make a stand at the island of Salamis, and there the overconfident Persian navy was so badly mauled that it with-

drew from the western Aegean Sea. Xerxes himself departed from Greece at the end of the campaigning season but he left behind a smaller but more efficient force under an able general, Mardonius, who captured Athens once again and burned it. But at Plataea in southern Boeotia, a Greek army commanded by the Spartan Pausanias, regent for Leonidas’ underage son, utterly defeated Mardonius, and at the same time—some said on the same day—a Greek fleet destroyed a Persian fleet at Mycale on the coast of Ionia. Thus Persian imperialism reached its climax and began its long recession. SEEKING A REASON. Herodotus states in his introduction that one of his aims was to show why the Greeks and Persians fought a war. Who or what was at fault? Herodotus never tells us explicitly the reason why, but he allows the reader to infer a great deal. Vengeance was a motive for historical action—one power wronged another and the power that is wronged seeks vengeance. Vengeance is a force that maintains limits and balance. If something harms the balance of nature, then something else will take vengeance and thereby restore the balance. Persia, by pushing the boundaries of its empire beyond Asia and aiming at world domination harmed the natural balance between the continents, and the two very different ways of life. But it is also clear that some force beyond the motive of vengeance pushed the Persian Empire into its ill-fated attempt to conquer Greece. Persia, under the rule of a despot, had adopted expansionism as a way of life, and when it invaded Greece, it encountered a people whose way of life embraced individual freedom. Two ways of life fought for dominance in the Persian War, as Herodotus saw it, and Greece’s victory demonstrated the importance of liberty. If we seek themes in Herodotus’ History, two stand out: that imperialism drives empires on to overexpansion, and that individual freedom makes braver soldiers than does despotic government. SOURCES

Egbert J. Bakker, Irene J. F. de Jong, and Hans van Wees, Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2002). Peter Derow and Robert Parker, eds., Herodotus and His World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2003). J. A. S. Evans, Herodotus (Boston: Twayne, 1982). Stewart Flory, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987). Charles W. Fornara, Herodotus, An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1971).

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John Gould, Herodotus (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989). James S. Romm, Herodotus (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998).

T HUCYDIDES THE LONELY HISTORIAN. Thucydides occupies a lonely place in the pantheon of historians. He is regarded as one of the world’s greatest, yet he had no followers to mimic his sort of history. His plan was to write an accurate history of the Peloponnesian War, the struggle that divided the Greek world at the end of fifth century B.C.E., stretching over the years 431 to 404 B.C.E. He intended to produce a “possession for all time” which future generations might consult if they found themselves in situations resembling the Peloponnesian War. Unlike Herodotus, he did not write with a pleasant, readable style. He was austere and distant, treating the war like a doctor observing a sick patient. This was the period when the medical school on the island of Cos, founded by the great diagnostician Hippocrates, was collecting descriptions of diseases so that doctors could make correct diagnoses, and Thucydides was influenced by the approach of this medical school. Among ancient Greek critics, Herodotus had a reputation—which he did not deserve—as a teller of tall tales, whereas Thucydides had the reputation of a truthful reporter of what actually happened, which he did not entirely deserve, either. His bias can be readily seen in his admiration of the Athenian democracy under Pericles, which was not truly a democracy, for Pericles dominated politics to such a degree that the democracy was really the rule of one man. The historian’s admiration of Pericles did not extend to his successor, Cleon, the son of a leather-maker who was a favorite of the masses in the Athenian assembly. In reality, Cleon was a better administrator than Thucydides admits in his writings, but Thucydides favored Cleon’s rival, Nicias, a conservative man who feared the gods but whose incompetence nearly brought Athens to her knees. For the most part, however, Thucydides played the part of an unprejudiced reporter very well. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. The so-called Peloponnesian War, which lasted from 431 to 404 B.C.E., was fought between Athens on one side, which had built up an empire in the years following the Persian War, and Sparta, which headed an alliance of states centered in the Peloponnesos, the region of Greece south of the Isthmus of Corinth. There was a brief break after the first ten years of war, which are sometimes called the “Archi136

damian War” after the Spartan king Archidamus who commanded the Peloponnesian forces in the early years of the war. The Archidamian War ended with a peace treaty which was never accepted by some of Sparta’s allies, and during the brief period when hostilities ceased, Athens launched an expedition against Sicily with the intention of extending her imperial reach there, and her expeditionary force was completely destroyed in 413 B.C.E. In the final years of the war Persia intervened, and supplied Sparta with a subsidy with which to build a Spartan fleet, and when the war ended with the surrender of Athens, Sparta and Persia divided the Athenian Empire between them. The slogan of Sparta and her allies when the war began was “Liberation for the Greeks”—that is, liberation from the Athenian Empire— but at the war’s end, the slogan was forgotten. THE DOWNFALL OF ATHENS. Thucydides began his history with the causes of the Peloponnesian War. The underlying cause was the fear which Sparta and her allies had of Athenian imperialism, though Thucydides pinpointed three immediate causes. First, Athens became embroiled in a struggle between Corinth, a member the Spartan alliance, and Corinth’s former colony, Corcyra (Corfu, nowadays called Kerkyra), and Corinth appealed to her allies. Second, a tributary state of the Athenian Empire, Potidaea, rebelled against Athens and Corinth sent help to Potidaea. Finally, Athens placed an embargo on trade with her neighbor Megara, which was a Spartan ally. Pericles had a strategy to win the war for Athens that capitalized on her strength. Athens had a powerful fleet made up of galleys called triremes, rowed by welltrained crews of Athenian citizens. On land, however, she was no match for Sparta and her allies, and so when the Spartan-led army invaded Athenian territory, the Athenians evacuated their farms and took refuge behind their great city walls. Long walls fortified the road between Athens and her port of Piraeus so that Athens could access the sea and use her fleet to make commando raids on Peloponnesian territory. This would be a war of attrition—each side would try to wear the other down—and Pericles believed that Athens would last longer than Sparta. But an unexpected event upset his calculations. In the second year of the war, the Athenians were smitten by a plague described by Thucydides in clinical detail. Pericles himself took ill, recovered, but died shortly afterwards. The first ten years of war ended with a peace treaty in 421 B.C.E., but the result was to exchange a hot war for a cold one. Athens, ever ambitious to expand her empire, dispatched an expedition to the neutral territory of Sicily in 415 B.C.E., in the hopes of conquering its leading city, Syracuse. To Thucydides,

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who was familiar with the plots of the tragedies staged in Athenian theater, the Sicilian expedition must have seemed like a protagonist’s act of arrogance preceding his downfall in a tragic drama. The attempt to conquer Syracuse failed, and Athens lost all the ships and men she had dispatched to Sicily. The powerful prose of Thucydides’ description of the last, desperate battle in the harbor of Syracuse provokes our emotions because it is outwardly unemotional. The Athenians, having lost their best warships and troops, were in desperate straits, bankrupt, and facing revolts in their empire, but they did not give up. For reasons unknown, when Thucydides reached 411 B.C.E. in his narrative, he broke off in mid-sentence and left his history unfinished. It may have been sudden death; he was reportedly drowned at sea. All that is certain is that he clearly knew that the war ended with the defeat of Athens, and he intended to finish the story. CONTINUING THUCYDIDES. More than one author endeavored to continue Thucydides’ work. Two historians, Theopompus and Cratinus, individually took up the story where Thucydides broke off, and they continued until 394 B.C.E., ten years past the year of Athens’ defeat. Athens by 394 B.C.E. was about to rise again, and thus the tragic vision of Thucydides is given a happy ending. A scrap of papyrus discovered in 1906 at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt has some 900 lines of a continuation that was clearly written by an able historian, and many scholars attribute it to Cratinus. The lack of concrete evidence to support this supposition, however, forces the more generic authorship of “The Oxyrhynchus Historian,” or the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia. The one continuation that we do have, the Hellenica, was written by Xenophon, a onetime disciple of the philosopher Socrates. The Hellenica of Xenophon took up Greek history where Thucydides left off and continued it to 362 B.C.E. None of those who continued the work of Thucydides, as far as we know, brought their histories to a close with the Athenians’ capitulation to Sparta in 404 B.C.E. SOURCES

Charles Norris Cochrane, Thucydides and the Science of History (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1929). W. Robert Connor, Thucydides (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). J. H. Finley, Thucydides (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1942). Simon Hornblower, Thucydides (London, England: Duckworth, 1987). Jonathan Price, Thucydides and Internal War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

H ISTORY

AFTER

T HUCYDIDES

XENOPHON. The fourth century had many historians, but only a small portion of their output remains. The author with the best survival record is Xenophon, an Athenian of good family and a member of Socrates’ circle. Against Socrates’ advice he joined a corps of Greek mercenaries in the army which Cyrus, the younger brother of the Persian king, mustered in 401 B.C.E. to usurp the throne. The expedition was a disaster, but Xenophon led them safely out to the Black Sea coast, and from there they dispersed to seek other employers. Xenophon himself took service with the Spartans. Athens exiled him shortly after Socrates’ death—he would return to Athens only in 365 B.C.E.—and he lived on a estate granted him by Sparta for much of his banishment until the upheavals after Sparta’s defeat at Leuctra in 372 B.C.E. forced him to move. He wrote on subjects ranging from the Spartan constitution to training horses, but he is best known for his memoirs of Socrates (the Memorabilia); his Anabasis or “March Up Country,” which tells the story of the failed attempt of prince Cyrus, younger brother of King Artaxerxes II of Persia, to seize the Persian throne; and his Hellenica, which continues Thucydides’ history to the Battle of Mantineia in 362 B.C.E. Xenophon is an easy author to read, and among his other claims to fame is his introduction of a new literary genre: the historical novel. His “Education of Cyrus” (Cyropaedia) is a fictional account of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. It is a bad novel, full of moralizing and not much read nowadays, but it is a groundbreaking venture into historical romance. THE LOST HISTORIANS. Many historians were writing in the fourth century B.C.E. but their works have not survived. We know them because they were quoted by later writers, or were used by later writers as sources for their own histories—or in some cases, because papyrus fragments have turned up in the sands of Egypt that contain remnants of their works. One of the most prominent was Theopompus of Chios, who wrote an exceedingly long history on Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II of Macedon. It was innovative in that it focused on only one personality, whom Theopompus represented as the greatest man that Europe had produced. Another historian of high reputation was Ephorus of Kyme who produced what became the standard history of Greece: a universal history of Greece from the Dorian invasion to his own day. Some of what he wrote has survived at second hand because his history was used as a source by another universal historian who wrote in the first century B.C.E., Diodorus the Sicilian, and we still have Diodorus’ history. Diodorus based his history of the world on other authors as well as Ephorus, but Ephorus was a favorite source for him to

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Gordon S. Shrimpton, Theopompus the Historian, (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queens University Press, 1977). Frank W. Walbank, Polybius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). —, Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

G REEK C OMEDY

Imaginative engraving of Xenophon, one of the modern sources for information on the life of Socrates. THE LIBRARY

CONGRESS.

copy. Alexander the Great’s conquests produced a body of historical writings, but none of it survived except as sources for the work of other Greek and Roman historians such as Plutarch and Arrian, both of whom wrote in Greek, and Curtius Rufus in Latin—all of these date to the period of the Roman Empire. Greece in the fourth century B.C.E. also developed a taste for local chronicles; the chronicles of Athens were known as Atthides, or “Chronicles of Attica,” and two of its notable authors were Androtion and Philochorus. There is also an historian of the second century B.C.E., Polybius of Megalopolis (208–126 B.C.E.), who was exiled from Greece to Rome, where he wrote a history of Rome in forty books beginning with the first war between Rome and Carthage (265–241 B.C.E.). About a third of it survives. He is a major source for information on Rome’s war with Hannibal. A dry writer, he is nonetheless reliable, and he was a shrewd observer of the rising power of Rome. SOURCES

John K. Anderson, Xenophon (New York: Scribner, 1974). William E. Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian: The Problem of the Individual and the Society of the Polis (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1977). 138

BEGINNINGS. The early history of comedy is unclear, remarked Aristotle in his On the Art of Poetry, because no one took it seriously. The polis of Megara which was sandwiched between Corinth and Athens claimed to have invented it, as did Sicily, which produced a writer of farces, Epicharmus, who was patronized by the tyrants of Syracuse Gelon (485–478 B.C.E.) and his successor Hiero (478–467 B.C.E.). Little of his work survives, though there is enough to make us regret its loss. He wrote burlesques of myths: one play called Hebe’s Wedding was set in Olympus and parodied the marriage of Heracles to Hebe. Deified though he might be, Heracles was still portrayed much as he was in the comic theater: a muscle-bound lout who gobbled up his food, and drank until he was drunk. Another type of comedy that Epicharmus wrote dealt with contemporary life and introduced stock characters (that is, characters with trademark roles such as the clever slave, the boastful soldier, and the love-sick youth), and a third type that he wrote played with arguments between nonhuman abstractions—for instance, one seems to have hinged on a debate between women’s logic and men’s logic. The plays of Epicharmus had no chorus, unlike the comedies produced in Athens, though there was musical accompaniment. Farces were clearly popular in Sicily and “Magna Graecia,” as the Greek settlements in southern Italy were called, for the local potters used scenes from the comic theater as vase paintings. These farces look forward to the New Comedy which would displace the Old Comedy of Aristophanes on the Athenian stage more than a century later. ATHENIAN OLD COMEDY. Old Comedy was an Athenian theatrical development with topical allusions to Athenian politics, and its acceptance as an art form dates from either 488–487 or 487–486 B.C.E., when the archon—that is, the chief magistrate of Athens who gave his name to the year—was made responsible for providing a chorus for a day for five comedies to be produced at the City Dionysia festival each spring in the modern month of March. Shortly before 440 B.C.E. a day of comedies was included in the other great festival of

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Dionysus where dramas were presented, the Lenaea festival in January. We also know that in the fourth century B.C.E. comedies were produced at the Rural Dionysia, which were festivals in the country districts of Athens called “demes,” and it is likely that comedies were produced there earlier, too, given the physical evidence of theaters in some of these demes. Until the ascendance of Aristophanes there are only a few names and a handful of fragments from the comic poets of this era, including Cratinus—old, and notorious for his wine consumption, but still writing when Aristophanes began his career— and Eupolis, who was a worthy rival of Aristophanes and popular in his day, for he was often quoted. Other comic playwrights such as Crates, Pherecrates, Hermippus, Phrynichus, Teleclides, Ameipsias, Theopompus, and Plato—not to be confused with the philosopher Plato— are hardly more than names attached to titles of lost comedies. The eleven plays of Aristophanes are all that remains of Greek Old Comedy, and they owe their survival to the fact that Aristophanes became popular as assigned reading for Greek schoolboys of the second century C.E. ARISTOPHANES’ BACKGROUND. The approximate dates of Aristophanes’ lifetime—450–385 B.C.E.—place him in one of the most turbulent periods of Athenian politics. He was a boy in the Periclean Age, when the politician Pericles dominated Athens. Pericles’ authority was based on his dominance of the popular assembly, the ekklesia, where all male citizens could vote. As a wellconnected, wealthy man, Pericles was able to dominate the assembly so long as he followed popular policies, which he did. He took an imperialist approach to Athens’ neighbors, which led to the creation of an Athenian Empire profitable enough to finance a splendid building program in Athens. It also led to the Peloponnesian War with Sparta and her allies. Nine of Aristophanes’ plays were written in wartime and they belong to the period that followed the death of Pericles in the autumn of 429 B.C.E. The great man proved irreplaceable and, under the stress of war, the fissures in the body politic of Athens began to appear. THE FIRST PLAYS. Aristophanes’ first comedy was The Banqueters, produced in 427 B.C.E., which won second prize at the City Dionysia, followed the next year by The Babylonians. Although The Babylonians won first prize, it also earned him the wrath of the politician Cleon, who successfully prosecuted him for anti-Athenian propaganda. The reason for the inflammatory nature of the work is lost in history since neither of these plays survived. His next play, the Acharnians, was produced at the Lenaea festival in January, 425 B.C.E. A year later at the

Bust of the Athenian comic poet Aristophanes.

BETTMANN/CORBIS.

same festival he produced the Knights, and in 423 B.C.E. he produced the Clouds, a burlesque of Socrates which only won third prize. Aristophanes was bitterly disappointed; the Acharnians and the Knights both won first prizes, and since the number of comedies had been reduced from five to three during the Peloponnesian War as an economic measure, that meant that the Clouds took last place. Aristophanes set about rewriting it, and at least some of the surviving text is from this second edition, which was never staged. In 422 B.C.E. his play the Wasps won second prize, and the next year, when Athens and Sparta signed a peace treaty, Aristophanes staged his comedy Peace and again won second prize. FORMULA FOR OLD COMEDY. The structure of the comic play was already established by Aristophanes’ heyday. First there was a prologue during which the leading character has a bright idea which gets the plot underway. Then comes the parodos: the entry of the chorus of 24 men wearing masks and fantastic costumes. Next is the agon: a debate between one character who supports the bright idea of the prologue, and an opponent who always loses. Then follows the parabasis where the chorus comes forward and sings to the spectators directly. The parabasis gave the comic poet an opportunity to

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voice his views on the present state of affairs. Next comes the episodes where the bright idea is put into practice, sometimes with comic results, after which comes the exodus, which concludes the play on merry note: a marriage, or a banquet, or some happy occasion. This was not a hard-and-fast formula. The Acharnians has two episodes, the Knights three, and the Clouds two agons. The last two plays of Aristophanes lack a parabasis, but by the time they were produced, Old Comedy had given way to Middle Comedy, which did without the parabasis. It belonged to an age which preferred not to hear the personal views of comic poets. THE ACHARNIANS. One of Aristophanes’ first plays, The Archarnian is a play whose theme is the foolishness of war-mongering. The Acharnians of the title of this play were citizens of the deme (constitutency) of Acharnae, war hawks who made their living making charcoal. The Peloponnesian War was beginning its sixth year when this play was produced. The citizens from the countryside were suffering great hardship, for they had to evacuate their farms when the Spartan allied force invaded Attica—as it did each year when the crops were ripe—and find shelter behind the walls of Athens. Pestilence aggravated their suffering; the great plague was at its most severe in the second year of the war but it lingered on for three more years. The setting of the Acharnians is the Pnyx in Athens where the people assembled for meetings of the ekklesia. Dicaeopolis, a decent citizen, recounts his woes as he waits for the assembly to convene. When it does, Amphitheus proposes peace negotiations with Sparta but is silenced. Disgusted, Dicaeopolis recruits Amphitheus to negotiate a private truce for him with Sparta, and he returns from Sparta to offer Dicaeopolis three possibilities: a truce for five, ten, or thirty years. Dicaeopolis chooses a thirty-year peace and exits. On comes the chorus of peace-hating Acharnians, searching for the man who dared conclude a truce with Sparta. When Dicaeopolis returns, they hurl stones at him, and to save himself, he runs to the house of the tragic poet Euripides, whose works were famous for their pitiable heroes. Euripides gives Dicaeopolis a tattered costume to wear, and with his Euripidean props, Dicaeopolis delivers a clever parody of a Euripidean speech in his defense, reviewing the causes of the war and absolving Sparta. The sympathies of the chorus are divided, and the war hawks call in an ally, Lamachus, a well-known hawk. Lamachus comes on stage, magnificent in full armor, but Dicaeopolis’ arguments demolish him. Dicaeopolis proclaims the end of all war boycotts. The chorus then advances stage front and sings the parabasis directly to the audience, the subject of 140

which is the virtues of Aristophanes. Following two more episodes, Lamachus is ordered off to a battle, and the play concludes with Lamachus returning wounded from war, and Dicaeopolis returning drunk from a feast, with a courtesan on each arm. In the final scene, Dicaeopolis roisters and Lamachus groans, and the foolishness of war-mongering is made apparent to all. THE KNIGHTS. The Knights was an attack on Cleon, the chief war hawk and the darling of the Athenian common man. The year before, the Athenians had defeated Sparta on Sphacteria, an island at the north end of the Bay of Navarino, where they had marooned a Spartan force, including 120 of their elite Spartiates, and forced it to surrender. Cleon was given the credit, which, in part, he deserved, though Aristophanes thought not. In the Knights, Demos is a good old man who is easily gulled, and his new slave, a tanner from Paphlagonia, has him under his thumb to the despair of two other slaves, Demosthenes and Nicias. Each character represented a real-life person: the Paphlagonian was Cleon, thinly-disguised; the two other slaves were the Athenian generals, Demosthenes and Nicias; and the old man Demos represented the Athenian people, for whom the Greek word was demos. Demosthenes and Nicias depose the Paphlagonian by putting forward an even greater rascal than he, a sausage seller who outbids the Paphlagonian for Demos’ favor and is revealed as a statesman whose real name is Agoracritus, meaning “Choice of the Agora.” In the exodus, Agoracritus announces that he has rejuvenated Demos into a young, vigorous, and highly-sexed man. THE CLOUDS. The butt of Aristophanes’ raillery in the Clouds is Socrates, who is portrayed in the play as the proprietor of a phrontisterion, a think-tank combined with a school for Athenian youth. The plot centers on Strepsiades, an elderly Athenian, and his ne’er-do-well son, Pheidippides. Pheidippides’ passion for chariot racing has landed him deeply in debt, and Strepsiades is afraid that his son’s creditors will pursue him. To avoid the creditors, he decides to enroll his son in Socrates’ school that teaches debaters how to make weaker arguments appear the better. Pheidippides refuses to go, so Strepsiades enrolls himself. Socrates’ attempt to teach poor old Strepsiades is a nice piece of buffoonery, but the upshot is that Strepsiades is expelled for stupidity and insists that his son enroll or leave home. Pheidippides is instructed by two teachers at the think-tank, Just Cause, who teaches the old-fashioned virtues, and Unjust Cause, who teaches how to find loopholes in the laws. They quarrel about the purposes of education. Unjust Cause wins on a technicality and takes over Phei-

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dippides’ training. He makes such splendid progress that he is able to justify beating his father. Strepsiades realizes that the new learning that Socrates represents has ruined his son and burns down Socrates’ institute. THE WASPS. A citizen in Athens had the right to a trial before his fellow citizens, and in practice that meant that he was tried before a large jury of from 100 plus one jurymen to 500 plus one, who listened to the arguments of both the plaintiff and the defendant and then voted on the verdict. A juryman’s pay was small. Yet for elderly citizens, jury service was both a welcome income supplement and also entertainment. Yet because many took jury duty as entertainment, it was often seen by many as a useless system of judgement. In Wasps, a farce on the jury system, there is a clash of wills between the old man Philocleon (Cleon-lover) and his son Bdelycleon (Cleon-hater). The chorus of jurymen, who are costumed as hornets, summon Philocleon to join them at jury duty, but Bdelycleon has his father locked in the house. After an argument, Bdelycleon convinces his father that jurymen are only tools in the hands of selfseeking demagogues, and promises Philocleon that he will feed him and let him play at holding trials at home if he gives up his addiction to jury duty. Then in a parody of a court case, Philocleon tries the dog Labes for stealing cheese; Bdelycleon argues for the dog so well that Philocleon acquits it. When Philocleon realizes his error—he has never voted “Not Guilty” before—he swoons and is taken off stage. Two episodes follow: in the first, Bdelycleon, on his way to a banquet with Philocleon, instructs him how to behave like an Athenian gentleman; and in the second, Philocleon returns with a piper from the banquet, very drunk, and holding with one arm a nude girl. As Philocleon tries to make love to the girl, Bdelycleon manhandles him into his house. THE PEACE. When the Peace was produced, Cleon was dead, as was the chief Spartan war hawk, Brasidas. Both had died in the same battle, at Amphipolis in northern Greece. For Athens the battle was disastrous, but in both Athens and Sparta, parties supporting peace were left in control, and during the year 421 B.C.E., a peace treaty was signed. In the Peace, an Athenian citizen Trygaeus flies to Heaven astride a dung-beetle where he learns that the Olympian gods have moved away in disgust at the warring Greeks and have left War and Tumult in charge of their palace. War has thrown Peace into a pit and piled stones on her. Trygaeus, with the help of a chorus of Greek farmers and laborers, frees Peace, along with Harvest and Diplomacy, two women whom Trygaeus brings with him when he returns to earth. Trygaeus prepares a wedding feast where a sooth-

sayer appears, prophesying that the war cannot be stopped. In the Exodus, there appears a group that is hard hit by the peace: manufacturers of armor, trumpet makers, and the like. They try to unload surplus arms and armor on Trygaeus, but he will have none of it. He drives them off and the feast begins. THE BIRDS. The play the Birds is a good-natured spoof on the “castles in the air” that some Athenians were building as they imagined their triumph in taking over Sicily in the late fifth century B.C.E. The castles in the air would soon implode. In 415 B.C.E. Athens dispatched a great armada to Sicily, and two years later, the fleet was completely destroyed in a fruitless effort to take the city of Syracuse. When the Birds was produced, however, the Athenians still nursed hopes of winning an empire in Sicily that would make Athens the superpower in the Greek world. In the play, two Athenian adventurers, Pisthetaurus and Euelpides, convince birds to build a new city, to be called Cloudcuckooland, in the sky between Earth and Heaven. Cloudcuckooland cuts the gods off from the smoke rising from human sacrifices, and the gods are forced to seek a peace treaty with the birds. Pisthetaurus and Basileia (meaning “kingship”) are to wed, and they exit the stage, flying off to Zeus’ palace to take it over. THE LYSISTRATA. In the year 411 B.C.E., following the disastrous Sicilian expedition, many of the wealthier, more conservative Athenians lost confidence in the Athenian democracy’s conduct of the war. The Lysistrata is Aristophanes’ plea for peace. Lysistrata is an Athenian housewife who is sick of war. Women in Athens were traditionally shut out of government, but Lysistrata’s disgust with male bumbling causes her to lead a women’s revolt to seize the Athenian government and end the war. The women agree to deny their husbands sex until they make peace, while at the same time making themselves as alluring as possible in order to set their husbands’ hormones raging. They seize the Acropolis, where the Parthenon housed the state treasury. The revolution spreads to Sparta, where the women banish their husbands until peace is made. Finally in the third episode, envoys arrive from Sparta to sue for peace, and everyone calls on Lysistrata. She appears on stage bearing a statue of the goddess Reconciliation, and she makes a speech on the worth of women and the value of Panhellenism, when all the Greeks band together, rather than fight each other. The play ends with the Athenians and the Spartans feasting and dancing. THESMOPHORIAZUSAE. Thesmophoriazusae (Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria) is a spoof on Euripides,

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whose tragedies were controversial—he had the reputation of being a woman-hater because he did not idealize women in his plays. In the Thesmophoriazusae, the women of Athens have decided to put Euripides to death for his insults to the female sex. Euripides, along with his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, come to the tragic poet Agathon to ask for help. Agathon was famous in real-life for his effeminacy and for inventing plots for his plays rather than taking them from mythology. When Agathon consents to see his visitors, he appears lolling on his bed, surrounded by feminine toilet articles. He refuses to help but consents to lend Euripides some women’s clothing so Mnesilochus can wear them when he meets the women at the Thesmophorion, the temple of Demeter where the women’s religious festival known as the Thesmophoria is held. Finding them denouncing Euripides, he undertakes his defense, arguing that women are much worse than Euripides depicted them. He infuriates the women into attacking him, and then is exposed as a man by a well-known pederast, Clisthenes, who is also dressed as a woman. Then Euripides’ himself attempts to save Mnesilochus, using various dramatic devices from his own plays, and finally he succeeds in rescuing his father-in-law with a tried-and-true method: he disguises himself as a procuress—that is, a female pimp—and comes on stage with two girls. They distract the policeman who is holding Mnesilochus, allowing Euripides to release Mnesilochus. THE FROGS. In 405 B.C.E. the Peloponnesian War was nearing its end, but the radical democrats in Athens still did not want peace. The deaths of Sophocles and Euripides the year before lent a bittersweet tone to the Frogs. In the play the god Dionysus, patron of the Athenian stage, descends into the Underworld to bring back his favorite playwright, Euripides, for no tragedians still alive were as ingenious as he was. In the Underworld, there is a contest between Aeschylus, who was long dead, and Euripides, the new arrival in the Underworld. The worth of the poets is decided by bringing out a scale and putting a verse from one of the plays of each contestant into the balance and seeing which verse weighs more. Aeschylus wins in three trials, for his verses express weighty ideas whereas Euripides is an intellectual lightweight by comparison. When Dionysus decides in Aeschylus’ favor, however, Euripides reminds him that it was to bring him back that Dionysus descended into the Underworld in the first place. Dionysus replies with a famous quotation from Euripides’ tragedy the Hippolytus which struck the Athenians as the height of sophistry when it was first uttered on the stage: “My tongue has sworn. My heart remains unsworn.” The play 142

ends with a feast, and Hades, the Lord of Death, sends Aeschylus back to Athens with messages for some Athenian individuals who were still alive that he wanted to see them soon. The Frogs is the last surviving example of Old Comedy, and it is Aristophanes at his most brilliant. THE ECCLESIAZUSAE. Following the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, Old Comedy diminished in popularity. It had flourished under the freewheeling democracy of fifth-century Athens, but after the war, the political atmosphere changed even though the democracy was restored after a group of disgruntled rightwingers known as the “Thirty Tyrants” seized power and set up a short-lived oligarchic government. The Ecclesiazusae (Women in the Assembly, produced in 391 B.C.E.) and Plutus (388 B.C.E.), the last surviving play of Aristophanes, belong to Middle Comedy. Middle Comedy differs from Old Comedy in that the parabasis is omitted, the chorus is less important, and the pointed attacks on Athenian politicians are absent. The butt of Aristophanes’ satire, Ecclesiazusae, is Plato’s Republic. While it is unclear whether the Republic had been published at the time of the production of Ecclesiazusae, Plato’s lectures had been propagating his ideas, and the idea of an ideal society without private property of the sort lampooned by Aristophanes in his play was familiar to Aristophanes’ audience. In the play, the women of Athens, led by Praxagora, dress themselves in their husbands’ clothing, go early to the ekklesia—that is, the assembly which held ultimate power in the Athenian democracy—and establish a new constitution in which everything is held in common, even women. The episodes that follow are commentaries on the new order. Praxagora’s husband Blepyrus is delighted at his wife’s initiative because he looks forward to a life of laziness. Another citizen wants to share in the benefits of the new order without contributing anything. A handsome young man wants to sleep with a lovely courtesan, but the law requires him to satisfy a couple old crones first who drag him off to enjoy his sexual prowess. The play ends with a communal feast. The moral of the play is that an ideal society needs ideal citizens to make it work, and none were to be found in Athens. THE PLUTUS. One of the darker comedies of Aristophanes, Plutus reminded audiences that a certain amount of injustice may be necessary to make the economy function. In this play, a blind old man in rags comes on stage, followed by Chremylus and his slave, Cario. Chremylus has been told by the Delphic oracle to follow the first man he met after leaving the temple, and it turned out to be this blind old man. Chremylus and Cario ask the old man who he is, and reluctantly he tells them that he

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is Plutus, the god of wealth whom Zeus, jealous as ever of mankind, has struck blind. Chremylus decides to cure Plutus of his blindness, and takes Plutus into his house. Chremylus’ friend, Blepsidemus, agrees to help restore Plutus’ sight in exchange for a share of the wealth granted by Plutus. They take him to the temple of Asclepius, the god of healing, but are interrupted by a horrifying woman, the goddess Poverty. She and Chremylus debate whether Poverty or Plutus, the god of wealth, benefits mankind more. Chremylus argues that if Plutus could see, he would reward only the good, and hence eventually everyone would become good. Poverty counters that if this happened, no one would want to work. Chremylus wins the argument, and a miraculous cure restores Plutus’ sight. Then we see the results—good and bad— of giving rewards only to good and deserving persons. Not everyone is delighted with this new dispensation. A Just Man comes on stage. He is happy. An Informer enters. He is ruined. An old woman, dressed as a young girl, comes to tell Plutus that her gigolo has deserted her. Hermes arrives to report that humans are no longer making sacrifices and the gods are starving. A priest of Zeus reports that he is starving, too, and he deserts to the new god, Plutus. Then Plutus himself comes on stage, followed by the old woman that has lost her gigolo. She is assured that he will return to her. The play ends with a procession to the Acropolis to install Plutus and begin his reign. MIDDLE COMEDY. Between Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 B.C.E. and 321 B.C.E.—the probable date when Menander produced his first comedy Anger—comedy underwent an enormous change. The audience became more solidly middle-class as the poor could no longer afford to go to the theater. The emphasis of the plays switched from politics to courtesans, food, and sex. The chorus merely provided interludes of song and dance instead of being part of the action. Though we have the names of some fifty authors, and the titles of over 700 comedies, no Middle Comedy survived, except for the last two plays of Aristophanes. The titles range from The Birth of Aphrodite, evidently a burlesque of mythology—send-ups of myths were popular in Middle Comedy—to The Stolen Girl which sounds like a situation comedy. Characters from the fringes of polite society appear again and again as stock characters: the professional courtesan who sometimes has a heart of gold, the clever slave, the braggart soldier, and the sponger who survives by truckling to rich friends. These are international character types with panhellenic appeal, meaning they could belong to any Greek city, not just Athens. In fact, many of the playwrights pro-

Imaginative portrait of Menander, the foremost playwright of the New Comedy. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

ducing Middle Comedy in Athens were not Athenian citizens. THE UNEARTHING OF MENANDER. Until the beginning of the twentieth century the only known examples of New Comedy came from second-hand adaptations of Greek plays by the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence for the Roman stage. These adaptations provided some flavor of the New Comedy playwrights Menander, Diphilus, Philemon, and Apollodorus. In 1905 a papyrus-codex—that is, a papyrus document bound like a modern book—was found in Egypt at Aphroditopolis, modern Kom Esqawh. It contains large parts of Menander’s Girl from Samos, The Rape of the Locks and the Arbitration, plus fragments of two other plays. A little more than fifty years later, a papyrus containing the full text of the Dyskolos (The Man with a Bad Temper), more fragments of the Girl from Samos, and half of a play titled The Shield came to light Since then, other papyrus fragments have been discovered—one, as recently as 2003, yielding 200 lines of an unspecified play—but the Dyskolos is the only complete play to be discovered.

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THE DYSKOLOS. The Dyskolos was first produced at the Lenaea festival in Athens in 316 B.C.E. It is an early play of Menander, a lightweight situation drama without the stock characters typical of New Comedy. In the play, Knemon, a misanthropic man, marries a widow with one son, Gorgias, by a previous marriage. They have a daughter, but Knemon’s wife, unable to bear his bad temper, leaves him and he lives as a virtual hermit on his farm. Sostratus falls in love with the daughter and asks for her hand in marriage. Knemon refuses, but after he falls down a well and is rescued by Sostratus he becomes a changed man. He is reconciled with his wife and agrees to give his daughter to Sostratus to marry. In addition, he marries Gorgias to Sostratus’ sister. INFLUENCE OF NEW COMEDY. New Comedy set the style for Greek theater after Alexander the Great, from the third century B.C.E. onwards. Numerous theatrical festivals sprouted in cities everywhere, and troupes of professional actors traveled from place to place, staging their plays. From Greece, the New Comedy went to Rome where the playwrights Plautus and Terence crafted plays on the New Comedy model. While the Old Comedy plays of Aristophanes were tied to one place and one time, the New Comedy had universal appeal. SOURCES

K. J. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (London, England: B. T. Batsford, 1972). R. L. Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Hans-Joachim Newiger, “War and Peace in the Comedy of Aristophanes,” Yale Classical Studies 26 (1980): 219–237. Gilbert Norwood, Greek Comedy (London, England: Methuen, 1931; reprint, New York: Hill and Wang, 1963). F. H. Sandbach, The Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome (London, England: Chatto and Windus, 1977). Dana Ferrin Sutton, Ancient Comedy: The War of the Generations (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993). Michael J. Walton and Peter Arnott, Menander and the Making of Comedy (Westfield, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996). C. H. Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964).

G REEK T RAGEDY BEGINNINGS. The evidence for the origins of tragic drama is ambiguous. The name itself is odd, for tragoidia means the “song of the male goat,” or perhaps a “song 144

for a male goat” and attempts to explain its meaning have been ingenious but never quite successful. The Roman poet Horace, a contemporary of the emperor Augustus, thought that “tragedy” got its name because the prize for the best tragedy was a goat, but this is unlikely. One fact, however, is not disputed: tragedy was intimately connected with the cult of Dionysus, and Aristotle stated that it developed from the dithyramb, a choral song in honor of Dionysus. The great age of Greek tragedy began in Athens when the tyrant Pisistratus established the festival of the City Dionysia about 536 B.C.E. where dithyrambs were presented by amateur choristers. Pisistratus hoped to use the festival to raise the profile of Athens. After he died in 527 B.C.E., his sons Hippias— who succeeded him as tyrant—and Hipparchus—who became a quasi Minister of Culture—continued his policy until Hipparchus was assassinated and Hippias was ousted from power four years later in 510 B.C.E. At the City Dionysia of 534 B.C.E., or at least between 536 and 533, the chorus leader Thespis from the village of Icaria took a solo part in his dithyramb, thus introducing an actor who played a role in the story. Tragedy, as Aristotle pointed out, was the representation of an action worthy of attention, and once there was an actor, there could be an imitation of the action, though the chorus still sang the story line. We know almost nothing about Thespis except his father’s name, Themon, and that he had a pupil named Phrynichus who lived well into the fifth century B.C.E. By then the great age of tragedy had arrived, dominated by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. AGE OF TRAGEDY. The great age of tragedy was short. It began with Thespis, but the first surviving tragedy is Aeschylus’ Persians, performed in 472 B.C.E. It ends with the deaths of Sophocles and Euripides just before the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Other surviving plays include seven plays of Aeschylus, seven of Sophocles plus a satyr play (the Trackers), and seventeen of Euripides plus a satyr play (the Cyclops). There is also the Rhesus, the shortest Greek tragedy we have, which may be by Euripides. Other tragedians whose work is now lost include Phrynichus, Choerilus and Pratinas—all of whom wrote before Aeschylus—and the sons of Phrynichus and Pratinas who belonged to the generation of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Aeschylus’ son Euphorion also presented tragedies. TRAGEDY BEFORE AESCHYLUS. Aeschylus was the first playwright to add a second speaking actor, and Sophocles added a third. Prior to Aeschylus, when there was only one actor, the chorus must have played a very important role in unfolding the plot of the drama. One

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of the verses; song is a term whose sense is obvious to everyone.

ARISTOTLE ON TRAGEDY AND COMEDY INTRODUCTION :

The eminent Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) wrote on the subject of tragedy in his Poetics, along with a great many other subjects. In the excerpt below, he discusses the key components of tragedy.

Tragedy, then, is a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude; in language enriched by a variety of artistic devices appropriate to the several parts of the play; presented in the form of action, not narration; by means of pity and fear bringing about a purgation of such emotions. By language that is enriched I refer to language possessing rhythm, and music or song; and by artistic devices appropriate to the several parts I mean that some are produced by the medium of verse alone, and others again with the help of song. Now since the representation is carried out by men performing the actions, it follows, in the first place, that spectacle is an essential part of tragedy, and secondly that there must be song and diction, these being the medium of representation. By diction I mean here the arrangement

of Aeschylus’ tragedies, the Suppliants, conforms to this pattern. At one time, scholars believed it was produced even before the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.E., where Aeschylus fought the Persian invaders as an infantryman on the Athenian battle line, but among the great cache of papyri discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt there is a small fragment which upset the early date for the Suppliants. It now seems likely that it was produced at the City Dionysia of 462 B.C.E. The late date of Suppliants shows that Aeschylus did not feel the need to follow the newest fashions on stage. THE PERSIANS. In 480 B.C.E. the Persian Empire launched a great invasion of Greece by land and sea, led by King Xerxes himself, and it ended in utter defeat. The turning point was the Greek victory at Salamis, and the Athenians had some right to claim the victory as theirs, for though the admiral of the allied Greek fleet was a Spartan, the Athenian navy was by far the largest contingent. The Persians is an imaginary portrayal of the impact of the Persian defeat on the Persians themselves. The play is set in the Persian capital of Susa and used a chorus of Persian councilors, magnificent in their costumes. Xerxes’ mother, Atossa, reports a troubling dream

In tragedy it is action that is imitated, and this action is brought about by agents who necessarily display certain distinctive qualities both of character and of thought, according to which we also define the nature of the actions. Thought and character are, then, the two natural causes of actions, and it is on them that all men depend for success or failure. The representation of the action is the plot of the tragedy; for the ordered arrangement of the incidents is what I mean by plot. Character, on the other hand, is what enables us to define the nature of the participants, and thought comes out in what they say when they are proving a point or expressing an opinion. Necessarily, then, every tragedy has six constituents which will determine its quality. They are plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song. Of these, two represent the media in which the action is represented, one involves the manner of representation, and three are connected with the objects of the representation; beyond them nothing further is required. SOURCE :

Aristotle, “On the Art of Poetry,” in Classical Literary Criticism. Trans. T. S. Dorsch (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Classics, 1965): 38–39.

and receives comfort from the chorus. A messenger arrives with news of the defeat of the Persian fleet. His description of the naval battle at Salamis was masterful and must have made Athenian hearts swell with pride. Atossa takes offerings to the tomb of Darius, the wise old king who was Xerxes’ father, and the ghost of Darius arises. He describes how the power and wealth of the Persian Empire has blinded the foolish Xerxes, and he utters prophecies of doom. Finally Xerxes comes onstage, his royal robes in tatters, and the drama ends with a lamentation sung antiphonally by Xerxes and the Chorus. This was patriotic drama of a high order, yet it does not disparage the Persians; except for Xerxes himself, all the Persian characters are dignified and noble. Yet the theme was a familiar one: man, blinded by his pride and his greatness, suffers an unexpected overthrow. THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. The Seven Against Thebes was the last and only surviving play from a trilogy which dealt with the curse of the royal house of Thebes. The story provided Sophocles with the material for three great tragedies, the Oedipus Tyrannus, the Antigone, and the Oedipus at Colonus. According to the story, Laius, king of Thebes, is befriended in exile by

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sing a lamentation. The message of the play is highly fatalistic, suggesting that nothing can avert a fate that is destined to be.

Imaginative portrait of the tragic poet Aeschylus.

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WORLD PHOTOS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

Pelops, but falls in love with his benefactor’s son, Chrysippus, and kidnaps him; the deed brings a curse upon Laius and his family in which his son is destined to kill him. In the lost second play of this trilogy, Oedipus, Laius is indeed killed by his son, Oedipus. The curse extends to Oedipus’ own sons, Polynices and Eteocles, when they reach adulthood and agree to share the rule of Thebes between them, each reigning in alternate years. While Polynices rules for his year and resigns, Eteocles does not hold to the agreement, refusing to step down following his year of rule. To regain the throne, Polynices gathers an army led by seven heroes, one for each of the seven gates of Thebes, and lays siege to the city. It is at the start of this siege that Seven Against Thebes begins. The seven heroes in Polynices’ army each lead an attack on their assigned gate, which are, in turn, defended by six champions selected by Eteocles; he himself defends the gate assaulted by his brother Polynices. While the subject matter of the play is action-packed and violent, the Greek audiences did not see any of the battle, which raged offstage, while onstage the chorus sang of the fearful curse that hangs over the royal house of Thebes. A messenger informs the audience of the result of the conflict; the city has been saved but Eteocles and Polynices killed each other, which causes the chorus to 146

THE SUPPLIANT WOMEN. The Suppliant Women belongs to a trilogy of three tragedies which modern critics call the Danaid Trilogy for the sake of convenience. Only the first play of the trilogy, Suppliant Women survives, but we know the titles of the two plays that followed it: the Egyptians and the Danaids (the “Daughters of Danaus”). The myth on which the play is based was familiar to the Athenians: the fifty sons of Aegyptus (meaning “Egypt”) force the fifty daughters of Aegyptus’ brother Danaus (meaning “Greek”) to marry them, and the daughters flee from Egypt with their father to seek refuge in Argos, their ancestral home. At the beginning of the play, the daughters are in Argos, pleading for sanctuary (thus, they are the “suppliant women” of the title) from Pelasgos, king of Argos. At the risk of war with Egypt, Pelasgos and the Argive people agree to give them sanctuary and defy the pursuing sons of Aegyptus. The fifty daughters act as the chorus in this play, although presumably represented by twelve singers, the standard size of tragic choruses. After thwarting the Egyptians, Danaus gives his daughters some fatherly counsel: be obedient to your father’s instruction. The full weight of this advice is borne out in the last two plays of the trilogy, now lost, in which the sons of Aegyptus succeed in marrying the daughters of Danaus, and Danaus instructs his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding nights. All of them do so except for Hypermestra, the one daughter who fell in love with her Egyptian husband Lynceus; she obeys the claims of love rather than her father. A fragment of the last play of the trilogy survives: a speech of Aphrodite, goddess of love, which praises love as the generative principle of the universe. THE ORESTEIA. The Oresteia is the only complete surviving trilogy of Aeschylus, consisting of the Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and theEumenides. The trilogy is about a blood feud coming under the rule of law. A hero of the Trojan War, Agamemnon, had sacrificed his own daughter prior to leaving for the war in order to secure favorable winds for the journey. This act sparked a chain reaction of revenge killings when Agamemnon is slain by his wife, Clytaemnestra, and her lover upon his return from Troy and his son Orestes then kills the murderous couple. Orestes is morally polluted by his matricide and is pursued by the Furies until he stands trial in Athens before the ancient Council of the Areopagus. The Council had only recently been stripped of most of its power when the Oresteia was produced, but still served

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as a court for homicide cases. The Furies argue that Orestes must pay the penalty for matricide according to the law of blood feud. The gods become involved, with Athena presiding as a judge, and Apollo speaking for the defense. The jurors are evenly divided, so Athena casts the deciding vote. She rules that because the murder of a father outweighs the murder of a mother, Orestes was not in the wrong to punish his mother with death for killing his father. The decision implies the replacement of a matriarchal society by a patriarchal one, though whether or not that is the hidden meaning of this play can be endlessly debated. At any rate, the Furies are outraged, but Athena offers them a place in her city as kindly spirits, checking crime under her new dispensation. The Furies accept and become “Kindly Goddesses” under the new rule of law that replaces the law of an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” PROMETHEUS BOUND. Prometheus Bound is considered to be Aeschylus’ last play. The story re-tells the myth of Prometheus, a Titan who incurs the wrath of Zeus because he secretly gave the gift of fire to mortal men whom Zeus despised and would have replaced with a more perfect race if he had had his way. For his rebellion against Zeus, Prometheus was condemned to be eternally chained to a rock and to have his liver eaten by an eagle each day. Prometheus’ immortality as a Titan assured the unending torture of his punishment since his liver would grow anew each day, only to be eaten again by the eagle. The drama ends with an earthquake—how the “special effects” department of the day accomplished it is a matter of conjecture—and Prometheus and his rock sink below ground while the chorus flees. Prometheus remains a man of principle in the face of overwhelming power. This ending cuts off the myth, but we know that the trilogy had two more plays and ended with peace between Zeus and Prometheus. The supremacy of Zeus is recognized, but so also is the right of human race to exist and live under the rule of law, free from violence. SOPHOCLES. During his long life which stretched from about 496 to about 406 B.C.E., Sophocles wrote 123 dramas, of which seven survive along with an incomplete satyr play which was discovered on a papyrus. This abbreviated catalog of his work only hints at his development as a playwright. By all accounts, he was well born, handsome, and pious, and he took an active role in public life. He introduced the convention of a third actor in tragedy productions early in his career (previous tragedies had only two actors with a chorus), and Aeschylus soon followed his lead by including three actors in his Oresteia. Sophocles also introduced scenery of some

Imaginative portrait of Sophocles.

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sort. The recurring theme of his tragedies is the suffering of men and women—sometimes suffering they bring on themselves by flaws in their characters, or suffering that results from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. AJAX. The Ajax, which most scholars consider to be the earliest Sophoclean tragedy, centers on the legend of Ajax’s suicide. According to Homer’s Iliad, the hero Ajax was, after Achilles, the toughest warrior in the Greek army fighting at Troy. Following the death of Achilles, there is a contest to see who is the most valuable hero in the Greek army, and thus worthy to inherit his armor. Ajax loses the competition to fellow warrior Odysseus and goes mad with disappointment. In his madness, he attacks what he believes to be the Greek camp and at the start of the play is gloating over his supposed slaughter of Odysseus and two of the Greek champions, Agamemnon and Menelaus. When he recovers his sanity he realizes that instead of the Greek camp, he has attacked a flock of sheep, and he is so overcome by shame that he commits suicide. His death was dishonorable, and thus the issue arises of what sort of burial Ajax should have. His half-brother Teucer is determined to see him honorably buried, but Menelaus and Agamemnon for-

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ANTIGONE’S SPEECH IN DEFENSE OF CONSCIENCE INTRODUCTION :

In Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, there is a clash between the conscience of the individual and the demands of the state. The title character, Antigone, is on trial for burying her brother Polynices contrary to the decree of Creon, the king of Thebes, who ordered that he be left unburied because he led an invasion of Thebes. The burial rite, which could consist of as little as spreading some handfuls of earth on the corpse, allowed the dead person’s ghost to enter the House of Hades. In war, there was regularly a truce after a battle to allow each side to bury its own dead. A dead soldier’s family would be shocked and distressed if he was allowed to lie unburied. However, there was no such obligation to bury the enemy dead, and Creon regarded Polynices as an enemy. For Antigone, however, Polynices is her brother, regardless of what he has done, and her conscience demands that she bury him. In this speech, Antigone defies Creon, defending her right to obey her own conscience rather than the law of the state. From a modern perspective, Antigone’s obedience to her conscience is admirable, but in ancient Greece her actions violate the treasured Greek maxims of “Nothing in excess” and “Moderation in all things.” Both Antigone and Creon represent immoderate, inflexible viewpoints, and their immoderation leads to the destruction of Antigone; Creon’s son, Haemon, who was betrothed to Antigone; and Creon’s wife, who commits suicide. The play ends with Creon bowed down with grief.

bid it, for it was Ajax’s intention to slaughter them, even though he had not succeeded. The quarrel is settled when Odysseus successfully argues that grudges should be forgotten. There is a magnificent array of characters here: Ajax, completely absorbed in his own grievances; Menelaus and Agamemnon, both mean, small-minded men; and Odysseus, who allows his intelligence to override any rancor he might feel and realizes that statesmanship requires magnanimity. The Ajax demonstrates the worth of true statesmanship. ANTIGONE. Antigone is a dark play with a troubling message. The attack on Thebes dramatized in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes is over, and the two warring brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, are dead. Creon, the new king of Thebes, orders that Polynices remain unburied because he died as a traitor attacking his homeland. Polynices’ sister, Antigone, disobeys, however, and gives Polynices’ body formal interment—that is, she spreads earth on his corpse. She defies Creon in a magnificent speech, vindicating her 148

Creon: Did you know the order forbidding such an act? Antigone: I knew it, naturally. It was plain enough. Creon: And yet you dared to contravene it? Antigone: Yes. That order did not come from God. Justice That dwells with the gods below, knows no such law. I did not think your edicts strong enough To overrule the unwritten unalterable laws Of God and heaven, you being only a man. They are not of yesterday or to-day, but everlasting, Though where they came from, none of us can tell. Guilty of their transgression before God I cannot be, for any man on earth. I knew that I should have to die, of course, With or without your order. If it be soon, So much the better. Living in daily torment As I do, who would not be glad to die? This punishment will not be any pain. Only if I had let my mother’s son Lie there unburied, then I could not have borne it. This I can bear. Does that seem foolish to you? Or is it you that are foolish to judge me so? SOURCE : Sophocles, Antigone, in The Theban Plays. Trans. E. F. Watling (Harmondsworth, England: The Penguin Classics, 1947): 138–139.

right to place divine laws above the man-made rules of a state. Creon condemns her to be shut up alive in a vault for her disobedience, but when the seer Teiresias warns him that the city is polluted by Polynices’ unburied corpse, he reluctantly repents and goes to release Antigone. He is too late, however, as she has hanged herself. His son Haemon, who was betrothed to Antigone, kills himself, as does Creon’s queen when she discovers what has happened. Creon leaves the stage a broken man. Two stubborn persons have clashed: the one, Creon, defending a state’s right to enforce its laws, and the other, Antigone, defending the individual’s right to follow her conscience. Both follow their agendas and both suffer, though Antigone achieves a degree of martyrdom. Yet there are no clear winners in this contest of wills, and the message of the play seems to be that one person’s refusal to see another’s point of view can bring calamity on both of them. OEDIPUS TYRANNUS. In his Oedipus Tyrannus Sophocles returns to the myth of the curse that hung

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over the royal house of Thebes, but the setting is a generation before Antigone. A plague has smitten Thebes and an oracle from Delphi reveals that the cause is moral pollution: the murderer of Laius who ruled Thebes before Oedipus is still unpunished. The Athenians in the audience knew from the myth on which the play is based that the murderer is Oedipus himself, a fact of which he is ignorant because he did not realize that the man he had killed, Laius, was his father. He compounded his crime by marrying Laius’ widow, Jocasta, not knowing she was his own mother. In his ignorance, Oedipus calls on everyone to tell him what information they have about the crime and lays a curse on the killer and anyone who shelters him. He sends for the blind seer Teiresias for insight. Teiresias is at first unwilling to say what he knows, but Oedipus’ badgering makes him angry and he tells Oedipus plainly enough that he is his father’s murderer and his mother’s husband. Oedipus does not believe him. He suspects that Teiresias is a tool of Creon, his wife’s brother, who wants to depose him. Jocasta assures Oedipus that he need not fear oracles, citing as proof of their unreliability the fact that an oracle had warned Laius, her former husband, that his son would kill him. She, like Oedipus, bases her confidence on ignorance, for she believes that Laius was killed by robbers while on a journey. Jocasta’s effort to reassure him has the opposite effect, for Oedipus had been told by the same Delphic oracle that he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother, and he now suspects the truth. This is what was called peripeteia—a thrust in one direction which results in the opposite of what was expected. Then Oedipus learns that the man he had presumed to be his father, Polybus of Corinth, has died—and not by Oedipus’ hand; Oedipus is relieved, believing the oracle to be wrong. The truth is then revealed that Polybus was not actually his father, and that spurs Oedipus to discover the whole truth. His wife/mother Jocasta is actually the first to realize the awful truth and in horror, hangs herself. When Oedipus understands the horrible truth himself and sees Jocasta’s lifeless body, he gouges out his eyes to shut out the light. The Oedipus Tyrannus is the most famous Greek tragedy for two reasons. First there is its structure: the action is compressed, one scene follows logically upon the scene that comes before it, and Sophocles’ use of dramatic irony, for which he was famous, heightens the tension until we reach the final resolution. But the second reason for its fame is the multiple messages it projects. It appears to be a drama of fate; Oedipus is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother and though he takes steps to avoid his destiny, he cannot. But on the other hand it is Oedipus’ determination to investigate Laius’

death and discover the cause of the plague which leads to the revelation of the awful truth, so he is inadvertently responsible for his own downfall. Finally this is a play that has attracted psychologists. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology argued that it expressed a young male’s subconscious desire to kill his father and take over as his mother’s mate—a primitive longing that is suppressed because it is taboo in civilized society. Freud labelled this suppressed lust the “Oedipus Complex,” although this psychological angle had probably not occurred to Sophocles when he wrote the play. Central to his drama is the horror with which Greeks regarded patricide and incest. THREE LATER TRAGEDIES. The three tragedies titled the Electra, the Women of Trachis, and the Philoctetes do not build the same tension as Sophocles’ masterpiece, but they are good pieces of theater. The Electra uses the same myth as Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers but the general tenor is vastly different. Whereas Aeschylus’ version shows Orestes’ murder of his mother as a terrible crime in that he is pursued by the Furies, in the Electra, Orestes’ matricide of Clytaemnestra is just recompense for her crime of murdering Agamemnon. The title character is Orestes’ sister, and she lives a life consumed by thirst for revenge for she is devoted to her father’s memory, and lives in hope that her brother Orestes will come home and kill Clytaemnestra and her lover. But Sophocles presents no great issues as Aeschylus did in his handling of the same myth. Sophocles’ characters are ordinary people caught in an extraordinary situation. The Women of Trachis dramatizes the myth of Heracles’ death. Heracles has captured the city of Oechalia, and his servant Lichas brings the captives from Oechalia to Heracles’ home in Trachis, including Iole whose beauty is conspicuous. Heracles’ wife, Deianeira, is a good woman by the standards of the day, but when Lichas blurts out that Iole is Heracles’ new wife she believes that she is losing her husband’s love. She sends Heracles a garment anointed with a love potion, not realizing that the love potion is poisonous. Heracles puts on the garment, and it burns into his flesh. Deianeira’s son Hyllus curses her for having caused his father’s death, and Deianeira hangs herself. Heracles is brought onstage, asleep, but soon awakes in horrible pain. He learns the truth about Deianeira from Hyllus and gives orders for his funeral pyre on Mt. Oeta. The Philoctetes centers on the conflict between two characters, Neoptolemus, the young, honorable son of Achilles, and the older and craftier Odysseus. The hero Philoctetes, who possesses the bow of Heracles, had been abandoned on a desert island by the Greek army on its way to Troy because he suffered

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from an incurable ulcer, caused by a snakebite. The Greeks learn, however, that they cannot take Troy unless they possess the bow of Heracles, which Philoctetes owns. Neoptolemus and Odysseus travel to Philoctetes’ island, and Neoptolemus reluctantly agrees to go along with a trick that Odysseus proposes to get the bow from Philoctetes and then abandon him again. But once Neoptolemus gets the bow, Philoctetes’ despair moves him so greatly that he returns it over Odysseus’ protests. The play concludes with an epiphany of Heracles who commands Philoctetes to sail to Troy where Asclepius will heal him. The ending is unusual for Sophocles for it involves a deus ex machina, that is, a god—in this case, Heracles—lowered in a basket on to the stage by a rope attached to a derrick crane to set matters right. Thus the resolution of the drama does not develop from the plot, but rather is brought about by divine intervention. THE OEDIPUS AT COLONUS. The last and longest surviving play of Sophocles is about Oedipus’ death and apotheosis—that is, his acceptance among the gods. It also is a play that requires four actors; Sophocles, who introduced the innovation of using three speaking actors early in his career, expands it here to include a fourth. Oedipus—now old, blind, and destitute, and cared for in his exile by his daughter, Antigone—reaches Colonus just outside Athens, Sophocles’ own home village. He recognizes the precinct of the Venerable Goddesses there as the place where he is destined to die. His daughter Ismene arrives and tells him that his son Polynices is about to attack Thebes, and Creon wants Oedipus back, for he has been told that his presence in Thebes will save the city. Theseus, king of Athens, accepts Oedipus as an inhabitant of Athens. Creon arrives and tries to persuade Oedipus to come and live just outside the borders of Thebes and when Oedipus refuses, his attendants attempt to drag off Antigone and Ismene, only to be thwarted by Theseus. Then Polynices arrives and pleads for Oedipus’ help. Oedipus listens to what he has to say, and replies with a solemn curse. A thunderclap warns Oedipus that his time is near. He sends for Theseus again and together they go offstage. A messenger arrives to report that Oedipus has vanished. Only Theseus knows what has happened and his knowledge is the preserve of the kings of Athens. This play was probably written only shortly before Sophocles’ own death in 406 B.C.E. EURIPIDES. For Euripides, the last of the triad of great classical tragedians, what was important in drama was character. He probed the deeper feelings of his heroes and heroines. Not for him were the great questions of fate, and the nature of justice. Instead he placed the 150

persona of a hero or heroine under stress to explore how they would react. The fact that he often used heroines may have been the reason for his reputation as a womanhater among contemporaries. In his greatest play, Medea, produced in 431 B.C.E., the first year of the Peloponnesian War, he shows a woman terribly wronged by her husband getting revenge. The myth was well known: the hero Jason had sailed to Colchis on a quest for the Golden Fleece, and got it only with the help of the Colchian princess, Medea, whom he takes with him to Greece. When the play opens, Jason and Medea have settled in Corinth. Jason has become a comfortable member of Corinthian society and his foreign wife, Medea, has become an embarrassment, especially now that Jason has an opportunity to marry the king’s daughter. Jason, the complete egocentric, reasons with Medea that it is better for all concerned that he should discard her and make this advantageous marriage. Medea sees things differently. She destroys the king’s daughter and the king along with her, then kills her children and departs in a fiery chariot sent by her grandfather, the SunGod. The drama ends with supernatural intervention: the sort of conclusion that Euripides liked and for which he was criticized. THE ALCESTIS. Eighteen dramas of Euripides survive, including one satyr play, the Cyclops, and one drama, the Alcestis, produced in 438 B.C.E. and which took the place of a satyr play as the fourth drama of a tetralogy. It is not a tragedy. Instead it points forward to the New Comedy which Menander wrote a century later when Euripides was the tragedian whose dramas were revived most frequently. The story of the Alcestis is a folktale with the following pattern: a man learns that he must die at a certain time unless someone else will die in his stead. In Euripides’ play, Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, who possesses all the conventional virtues, is the man who learns his doom, and tries to find someone to assume it. His parents refuse because they want to have the last years of their lives for themselves. His wife Alcestis, however, agrees to die in his place. Admetus accepts his wife’s sacrifice, realizing after he has done so that he has been less than gallant. He is prepared to live on, however, forgetting all the virtuous resolutions he has made to salve his conscience. Alcestis is rescued from death by the hero Heracles, who wrestles with Thanatos, the god of death, to bring her back to life. The characters are brilliantly drawn, particularly Heracles, who is depicted as having a gargantuan appetite for food and drink. The later development of Heracles’ character as a roisterer owes much to Euripides. The play ends happily, though a modern reader may

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think that Admetus will have some explaining to do when he next talks to his wife. THE CRUELTY OF PASSION. The Hippolytus, produced in 428 B.C.E., shows a woman stressed by passion and a man obsessed by virtue. Phaedra, the young wife of Theseus, falls desperately in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, whose love is the outdoor life and is not interested in sex. Phaedra’s nurse offers to act as her gobetween and proposition Hippolytus. Hippolytus reacts with disgust, and Phaedra, overcome with shame, kills herself, leaving a note for Theseus that accused Hippolytus of improper advances. Furiously jealous, Theseus invokes his father Poseidon to punish his son, and Poseidon sends a sea-monster that terrifies the horses of Hippolytus’ chariot so that they bolt. Hippolytus is thrown from the chariot and mortally wounded. Theseus learns the truth of his son’s innocence, and the two are reconciled just before Hippolytus dies. Phaedra is destroyed by her longing for sexual love, whereas what destroys Hippolytus is his obsession for chastity. The Hecuba, produced three years later than the Hippolytus, shows another woman under stress, this time because of the catastrophe of defeat. Troy has fallen, Hecuba, the wife of Troy’s king, has been enslaved, and has seen her daughter Polyxena sacrificed to the ghost of Achilles. Now she learns of the murder of her last son, Polydorus, who had been entrusted to Priam’s ally, the Thracian king Polymestor, to keep safe. Once Polymestor learns of Troy’s fall, he kills Polydoros and casts his body into the sea. Calamity transforms Hecuba from a fallen queen into a bereaved mother thirsting for revenge. She makes a desperate appeal to the victor Agamemnon, and, having won his cooperation, she entices Polymestor into her tent, where she and her women kill his two sons before his eyes and blind him. The play ends with Polymestor relegated to a desert island, and the old queen departing to bury her dead. WAR PROPAGANDA. The popularity of the Athenian theater stretched beyond Athens itself, even in the midst of the bitter Peloponnesian War, which divided Greece into two warring camps, each eager to justify itself. Many of Euripides’ plays that were written during the war had a message for the two combatants, and Sparta and Delphi (a Spartan ally) tend to come off badly. It is stretching the truth to call these plays war propaganda, for Athens did not purposely mobilize her tragic poets to produce plays favorable to her aims. Nevertheless the Andromache does seem to have been inspired by some Spartan atrocity that took place in the early years of the war, and an ancient commentator in Euripides reports that it was not produced in Athens. The

Bust of the Athenian tragic poet Euripides.

ORTI/CORBIS.

question of where, then, the play was produced allows for two possibilities: one was Sparta’s neighbor Argos, where Athens wanted to stir up anti-Spartan feeling; the other was the kingdom of Epirus in northwest Greece where there was a young king who had been educated in Athens. The plot deals with the aftermath of the Trojan War. When the spoils of Troy were divided, Hector’s captive wife Andromache went to Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, also called Pyrrhus, whom the kings of Epirus claimed as their ancestor, and she goes home with him and bears him a son. When the play opens, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen, Hermione, has married Neoptolemus, and Andromache is no longer welcome in Neoptolemus’ household. Menelaus, who is presented as a typical Spartan—cruel, faithless, and a blusterer into the bargain—wants to kill Andromache and her child in cold blood while Neoptolemus is absent in Delphi. She is saved by the intervention of Neoptolemus’ aged grandfather, Peleus. Then crushing news arrives; Neoptolemus has been ambushed at Delphi and killed by a gang of armed men who acted under the orders of Orestes, another Spartan. The Delphians, whose partiality for Sparta in the Peloponnesian War was no secret, are shown as a treacherous lot in the Andromache. The Children of Heracles is even more clearly antiSpartan. The Dorians claimed to be Heraclids—that is,

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descendants of Heracles—and the Spartans were quintessentially Dorian. Heracles’ children and his mother, Alcmena, take refuge from his old enemy Eurystheus at Marathon in Athenian territory. Eurystheus is captured and the vengeful Alcmena insists that he be put to death. Before he dies, he promises the Athenians that if they give him honorable burial, he will be their friend when the ungrateful descendants of the Heraclids—that is, the Dorians—invade, a clear reference to the Peloponnesian War when the Spartans led an invading army into Attica to destroy the crops in the early years of the war. The Suppliants, which is equally anti-Spartan, ends with an oath of Adrastus of Argos never to invade Athenian territory and to hinder any enemies who did. In 420 B.C.E., Athens and Argos negotiated an alliance, and the oath of Adrastus sounds like a reference to it. However, a few years later, in 415 B.C.E., when Euripides’ Trojan Women was presented in March at the City Dionysia, on the eve of the departure of the disastrous Sicilian expedition, it is the brutality of war that weighed on Euripides. Only the year before, an Athenian force had taken the little island of Melos in the Aegean Sea and massacred the men and sold the women and children into slavery. The Trojan Women portrays the misery of the women captured when Troy fell, but Euripides takes one liberty with traditional mythology: he has Hecuba indict Helen so eloquently as a war criminal that Menelaus decides to execute her when he gets home to Sparta, even though the long war at Troy had been fought to return her to him, her rightful husband. THE HERACLES. In the Renaissance this play was called the Hercules Furens (“The Madness of Heracles”). In the play, Lycus has made himself tyrant of Thebes and is about to kill Heracles’ wife, Megara, and his children. Heracles arrives in the nick of time to save his family and kill Lycus. Then his enemy, the goddess Hera, inflicts Heracles with madness, and he kills his wife and children. When the fit of madness leaves him, he falls asleep, only to awaken to the news of what he has done. But Theseus, whom Heracles had rescued from Hades, comforts his friend and offers him asylum in Athens. There is no reliable date for this play, but 414 B.C.E., when the Athenians still had high hopes of their Sicilian expedition, is a good possibility. HAPPY ENDINGS. Euripides did not always end his plays in tragedy. Iphigeneia in Tauris, the Ion, and Helen all have happy endings. The first exploits the myth of Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigeneia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed to the gods so that they would grant favorable winds for the Greek fleet to sail from Aulis against Troy. An alternative version of the myth 152

had the goddess Artemis rescuing Iphigeneia at the last moment and carrying her to Tauris to be her priestess there. While in Tauris, she recognizes her brother, Orestes, and his friend, who are captives of the Taurians. She plots to save them from the Taurians, and does so with the goddess Athena’s aid. The second nontragedy, the Ion, has a plot of the sort we find in the New Comedy in which a child conceived by rape is exposed to die only to be saved and reunited years later with the parents. In this play, Ion is the child of a rape perpetrated by the god Apollo on the wronged heroine, Creusa, the daughter of King Erechtheus of Athens. Fearing the wrath of her parents, Creusa secretly exposes Ion to the elements and leaves him to die, but Apollo takes the infant to his temple at Delphi, where he becomes a pious temple servant knowing little of the wicked outside world. When the play begins, Creusa and her husband Xuthus arrive at Delphi to consult the oracle regarding their inability to conceive a child, and their arrival at the temple in which Ion serves threatens to expose the truth about Ion’s parentage. The oracle—to save Apollo’s reputation—tries to foist Ion off on Xuthus, and Creusa, fearful for her own future with an unwanted stepson in her house (not realizing he is her actual son), tries to kill Ion. The plot is discovered and Ion and the Delphians are about the stone Creusa to death, when the aged priestess of Apollo who has reared Ion arrives with the cradle and clothes that he wore when she first received him, and Creusa recognizes them as belonging to her abandoned son. Everything is resolved with some help from Athena, who explains that she has come in Apollo’s place because Apollo is too ashamed to own up to the rape of Creusa. Apollo is portrayed as an ordinary politician who has been caught in a sex scandal and tries what in modern times would be termed a “coverup.” The message is that organized religion can claim no special privileges when it comes to moral standards. The Helen exploits an alternative myth about Helen of Troy that was invented by the Sicilian poet Stesichorus. Paris did not take Helen to Troy. Instead his ship was driven by contrary winds to Egypt where Helen remained and only an ectoplasmic facsimile of Helen went to Troy. On the way back home from the war at Troy, Menelaus is wrecked on the shores of Egypt and is amazed to find Helen living there. The facsimile that he took from Troy simply evaporates. This fantastic drama ends with Menelaus and Helen escaping from Egypt, where the king had the unpleasant custom of killing all Greeks who reached his shore. There is nothing tragic about the Helen. The myth that it relates is simply a nice story with comic elements.

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FOUR MELODRAMAS. With the Electra, produced about 413 B.C.E., and the Orestes (408 B.C.E.) Euripides turned to the familiar theme of vengeance for Agamemnon’s murder. In the Electra, neither Electra nor Orestes are quite sane. Euripides’ addition to the legend is Electra’s marriage to a decent farmer; her mother Clytaemnestra has given her to a man of low standing to prevent her bearing children of a status high enough to embarrass the royal house of Mycenae. Despite her marriage, Electra remains a virgin. Electra and her brother Orestes plot the assassination of Clytaemnestra for killing their father, Agamemnon, and carry out the deed ruthlessly. Their mood then changes to hysterical remorse. But Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Clytaemnestra and now divine beings themselves, appear and sort things out: Orestes is to go to Athens, his friend Pylades is to marry Electra, and as for the matricide, it can be blamed on Apollo. In the Orestes we have an array of unpleasant characters: Orestes, who is mad; Electra, whose only redeeming quality is her devotion to her brother; Menelaus; Helen; her daughter Hermione; old Tyndareus, who is Helen’s father; and faithful Pylades. Electra and Orestes are condemned to death for killing Clytaemnestra but are granted the privilege of committing suicide instead. Thereupon they plot to kill Helen, who mysteriously disappears, and so they seize Hermione as a hostage to force Menelaus to intervene. Menelaus finds Orestes with a knife at Hermione’s throat while Electra and Pylades set fire to the palace. Apollo intervenes and explains that everything has happened for the best. The Phoenician Women is a long play about the sons of Oedipus who died fighting each other at Thebes. Jocasta—who is still alive in spite of her suicide at the end of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus—tries to stop the duel between Polynices and Eteocles but reaches them too late and kills herself over their corpses. Iphigeneia at Aulis was a play that Euripides never finished but someone supplied the missing parts and it was produced after his death. It tells the story of Iphigeneia’s sacrifice and the text stops with a messenger arriving to report it. The characterization is splendid. Agamemnon is irresolute, and terribly distressed at the thought of sacrificing Iphigeneia to get favorable winds to sail to Troy, but his army is mad for battle. For Menelaus, what is important is getting on with the war. Clytaemnestra has brought Iphigeneia to Aulis because Agamemnon sent her a deceitful message that he wanted to marry her to Achilles. Achilles comes out of the plot as an honorable warrior. Angry at having his name misused, he is prepared to defend Iphigeneia. But then Iphigeneia herself volunteers to die as her patriotic duty, and Achilles departs, promising to defend her if she changes her mind.

THE BACCHAE. Either in 408 B.C.E. or early the following year, Euripides left Athens for the court of King Archelaus of Macedon and it was there that he produced the Bacchae, his last drama, and it is generally acknowledged as a masterpiece. The story comes from a legend of Thebes telling how Pentheus, the grandson of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, resisted the coming of the god Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) and suffered for it. Dionysus himself explains the situation in the prologue to the play: he has returned to the city where he was born and his mother’s sisters, including Pentheus’ mother Agave, hesitated at first, but then were overcome by Bacchic frenzy and are now on Mt. Cithaeron, where he is on his way to join them. Then two old men, Cadmus and Teiresias, come on stage. They too are going to join Dionysus’ votaries, and Pentheus fails to stop them. Then a servant arrives with a mysterious prisoner who is never identified, but when Pentheus shuts him up in the palace stables, the palaces collapses as if hit by an earthquake and the stranger emerges and faces Pentheus’ threats with serene confidence. A messenger arrives with a report of the astonishing revelry of the women on the mountain, and the stranger persuades Pentheus to disguise himself and go and witness it. Soon after Pentheus leaves the stage, the news arrives that the women have caught him and torn him to pieces. Then Agave arrives, still under the spell of her frenzy and carrying what she thinks is a lion’s head. It is actually the head of Pentheus. Cadmus brings her to her senses and she breaks into lamentations that Dionysus cuts short by reappearing and justifying his vengeance on unbelievers; much of his speech has been lost. The play has raised many questions. Did Euripides attack the religion of Dionysus or defend it? Who was the mysterious stranger whom Pentheus tried to imprison? One thing at least is certain: Euripides, whose attitude toward conventional religion was often marked with cynicism, here acknowledges its terrifying power. Pentheus’ mother, Agave, who loses herself in the wild ecstasy of the Dionysiac cult becomes a tragic figure—a mother who has killed a son she loves. Dionysus himself does not hesitate to be ruthless if ruthlessness helps the spread of his religion. The message seems to be that mass religion is a force to be reckoned with. SOURCES

J. A. S. Evans, “A Reading of Sophocles’ Ajax,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 33 (1991): 69–85. John Ferguson, A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972). H. D. F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study (London, England: Methuen, 1939).

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B. M. W. Knox, Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957). Richmond Lattimore, Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964). A. Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983). Gilbert Norwood, Greek Tragedy. 4th ed. (London, England: Methuen, 1948). Jacqueline de Romilly, La Tragédie Grecque (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973). Brian Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy (London, England; New York: Longman, 1979).

T HE A RT OF P UBLIC S PEAKING IN G REECE BEGINNINGS. Greece admired a good public speaker who could put forward his point of view effectively in an assembly of men, or conduct a case in the law courts. Tradition has it that public speaking as an art was cultivated first in Syracuse in Sicily in the years before the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. Syracuse had been ruled by tyrants and a great deal of litigation followed their overthrow, necessitating the oratorical skills of numerous people in court. The art reportedly first came as an import from Sicily into Athens in 527 B.C.E. While he was in Athens on a diplomatic visit, the rhetorical skills of Gorgias of Sicily captivated the Athenians. Gorgias went on to become a famous Sophist—that is, a teacher who taught the skills necessary for public speaking—and he was known for the high tuition fees he charged. Athenians were willing to pay the fees, however, because public speaking was a valuable skill in Athens, not only for a politician addressing the assembly, but in the courts as well, for neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants in trials could hire lawyers to speak for them. The best they could do was to hire a speechwriter, or a “logographer,” as they were called. Speechwriting thus became a profitable profession—one that was particularly attractive for orators such as Lysias who were resident aliens in Athens and therefore could not themselves speak in the courts or the assembly. The pioneer speechwriter was the Sophist Antiphon, (c. 480–411 B.C.E.). Antiphon first gave advice to citizens who were entangled in litigation, but about 430 B.C.E. he began to write speeches for others to memorize and deliver. He spoke only once for himself. He was tried for treason in 411 B.C.E. and wrote out a speech in his own defense. His speech failed—Antiphon was executed—but he set a trend. After him orators would write down and publish speeches they delivered themselves in the courts or, more rarely, in the assem154

bly. Oratory was in full flower by the time Aristotle wrote a treatise on rhetoric, which he divided into three types: forensic, for the courts; deliberative, for delivering in the assembly; and epideictic, for a special occasion such as a funeral. THE TEN ORATORS. In the great age of oratory from about 420 to 320 B.C.E., Athens saw or heard many orators and logographers, but only ten of these were selected for study by ancient scholars. Sometimes speeches by unknown orators have been preserved because it was thought—wrongly—that they were written by one of the Ten. Of the sixty speeches ascribed to the great orator Demosthenes, only about half of them are genuine. The Ten Orators were Antiphon and Andocides, whose careers belonged to the fifth century B.C.E.; Demosthenes and his rival Aeschines; Dinarchus and Lysias, both of them resident aliens in Athens; Isaeus whose forte seems to have been probate law for all eleven of his surviving speeches deal with inheritance; Lycurgus, better known as an Athenian statesman, who is represented by only one speech; Hyperides, who like Demosthenes opposed Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great for which the Macedonians sentenced both him and Demosthenes to death in 322 B.C.E.; and Isocrates, who might have been unhappy to find himself included among the Ten Orators, for he considered himself a philosopher and an educator rather than a public speaker. Two of these stand out, both for their ability and reputation, and the number of their speeches that have survived. ISOCRATES. The end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 B.C.E. was followed by political turmoil and Isocrates was apparently on the wrong side since he lost the family estate. Isocrates first tried logography as a way to make a living, but then turned to teaching, first on the island of Chios, and then, from not long before 387 B.C.E. until his death in 338 B.C.E. at the age of 98 in Athens, where students flocked to his school from all over the Greek world. His alumni included two important historians of the fourth century B.C.E., Ephorus and Theopompus. Greece in Isocrates’ day was divided into warring camps; not only did the old powers of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes vie for hegemony, but there were new rising powers such as Thessaly and Macedon. Isocrates was not a public orator. His orations are really political pamphlets, but they reveal a consistent political aim. Isocrates advocated an alliance, or perhaps a federation of the states which would turn Greek energies from fighting each other within Greece to combating the Persian Empire, which had recovered control of the Greek cities in Asia Minor at the end of the Peloponnesian War. In his Panegyricus, dating to 380 B.C.E., he

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advocated an alliance headed by the old enemies, Sparta and Athens, which would liberate the Asian Greek cities. In 346 B.C.E. Isocrates, now aged ninety, addressed an open letter to Philip of Macedon urging him to head a pan-Hellenic alliance which would attack Persia. In 339 B.C.E., he published his last long work, the Panathenaicus, an elaborate eulogy of Athens. Though he never mentions Philip by name, it seems clear that he still saw Philip as the champion of Greece. The following year, Philip defeated Athens and Thebes on the battlefield of Chaeronea, and Isocrates’ last work is an epistle to Philip written after the battle, still urging a campaign against Persia. DEMOSTHENES. Demosthenes is notable for two reasons. First, as an Athenian statesman he passionately opposed the imperialist ambitions of Philip II of Macedon, whose son, Alexander the Great, would continue his father’s policies and transform the world of Greece with the conquest of Persia. For that reason, some historians have hailed Demosthenes as the courageous defender of Athenian freedom and democracy, while others have condemned him as a dead-end politician mired in the past. Second, he brought the art of oratory to new heights—a conclusion few would dispute. His masterpiece was his speech On the Crown in defense of Ctesiphon, one of his supporters who was charged with illegally proposing to honor Demosthenes. The combined armies of Athens and Thebes had been defeated in 338 B.C.E. at the Battle of Chaeronea, and it was the anti-Macedonian policies which Demosthenes urged upon the Athenians that led to the disaster. Yet two years after the defeat, Ctesiphon, one of Demosthenes’ supporters put forward a motion in the assembly that Demosthenes be awarded a golden crown for his services at the upcoming festival of Dionysus. The time and place for the award violated the law, and Demosthenes’ rival and bitter enemy Aeschines charged Ctesiphon for the proposal, as a way to attack his real enemy, Demosthenes. The case did not come to trial until 330 B.C.E. Demosthenes rose to address the jury after the jury had been listening all forenoon to Aeschines’ argument that this extraordinary honor which Ctesiphon had proposed for Demosthenes could not be justified by a great service he had done the state, for the anti-Macedonian policy which he had promoted had ended in disaster. In a brilliant piece of sophistry, Demosthenes disregarded the legal questions and focused on slandering his accuser. He regaled the jury with a malicious caricature of Aeschines’ parents, who were very ordinary folk, and finally he attacked Aeschines himself, suggesting that it was Aeschines who was really responsible for the disaster at

the Battle of Chaeronea, which was a perversion of the truth. He ended with a prayer to the gods to keep the state safe. The speech is a brilliant example of making the worse argument appear the better. Demosthenes died following an anti-Macedonian uprising in Greece in 323 B.C.E. The tough old Macedonian general Antipater crushed the revolt in Athens, and Demosthenes tried to escape retribution by fleeing to the island of Calauria. He sought asylum in a temple, but he took poison when it was clear that Antipater’s men intended to drag him from his sanctuary. SOURCES

Charles D. Adams, Demosthenes and His Influence (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1963). G. L. Cawkwell, “The Crowning of Demosthenes,” Classical Quarterly 19 (1969): 163–180. Isocrates. Vols. I-II. Trans. David C. Mirhady and Yun Lee Too (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000). David C. Mirhady, “Demosthenes as Advocate: The Private Speeches,” in Demosthenes, Statesman and Orator. Ed. Ian Worthington (London, England; New York: Routledge, 2000): 181–204. Raphael Sealey, Demosthenes and His Time: A Study in Defeat (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

G REEK L ITERATURE AFTER A LEXANDER THE G REAT A CHANGED WORLD. When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 B.C.E. he left the Greek world irrevocably changed. The centers of Greek culture moved away from the old city-states of Greece to the capitals of the new Hellenistic kingdoms that were centers of wealth and power. Athens held its own in the field of culture, but it was an exception. Egypt emerged as a magnet for the Greeks. On Alexander’s death, one of his shrewder generals, Ptolemy, secured Egypt as his province and established himself at Alexandria. Alexander’s young son was killed in 310 B.C.E., and in 305 B.C.E., after there was no longer any pretense of unity in the empire Alexander had conquered, Ptolemy declared himself king. Ptolemy wanted to make Alexandria a hub of Greek culture, for the Greeks lived side-by-side with native Egyptians who had an ancient culture of their own, and there was remarkably little cross-fertilization. At some point before he died, Ptolemy started the Great Library of Alexandria, and his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled 285–247 B.C.E., continued the work. The kingdom of Pergamum, which was founded in Asia Minor in 263 B.C.E., also established a library, and Alexandria did not

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THE Great Library at Alexandria The library at Alexandria, the capital of the kingdom founded by Ptolemy in Egypt, was a legendary institution in ancient times. Estimates of the size of its collection varied wildly—between 70,000 and 700,000 books—but any number within that range is impressive in a time when all books had to be copied by hand. Though it was not the first public library nor the only one, it was for about two centuries the most influential literary and scientific center in the Hellenistic Age. Ptolemy I first founded the Museum (Mouseion) of Alexandria in 280 B.C.E. The English word “museum” is not an accurate translation of the Greek mouseion, which means a “home for the Muses” who were worshipped in the Museum of Alexandria. The Museum was part of the royal palace, and it was a gathering place for scholars, literary figures, scientists, and artists, with a common dining room and apparently living quarters. Attached to the Museum was the Great Library or Palace Library, which may also have been founded by Ptolemy I, but his son Ptolemy II can take credit for expanding the collection. Literary texts of the classical authors were edited there, and standard texts produced; one author who benefited from this scholarly work was Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey were

look kindly on this rival; the Ptolemies cut off Pergamum’s supplies of papyrus but Pergamum developed parchment as a substitute. Alexandria never surrendered its supremacy to the Pergamene library, which was neglected after Rome acquired Pergamum in 133 B.C.E., and terminated when Mark Antony gave its collection to Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, for the Alexandrian library in the period 40–33 B.C.E. The dynastic capitals of Antioch in Syria and Pella in Macedon also boasted substantial libraries. THE ALEXANDRIANS. Alexandria took the lead in literary development. It fostered a hothouse culture with no roots in the native Egyptian way of life. The literature produced there was not intended for the masses, for the masses did not speak Greek. There was some attempt at crossover between Greek and Egyptian traditions; an Egyptian priest, Manetho, in the reign of Ptolemy I wrote a history of Egypt in Greek, using Egyptian records, but it was not widely read. Alexandrian poetry was written for an elite Greek-speaking public, and it was meant to be read, not performed. Much learning was prized, and didactic poetry—that is, poetry written to instruct—was in vogue. One poet, Aratus of Soloi, 156

edited by the Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus of Samos, whose text is the one that has survived to modern times. The question of what happened to the Library is a controversial one. Julius Caesar, who spent the winter of 48–47 B.C.E. in Alexandria with the young princess Cleopatra, got involved in the power struggle between her and her brother, and in the process books in the harbor region of the city were burned. Some scholars date the end of the Library to this time. But once Cleopatra became queen of Egypt, she continued to collect books; her lover Mark Antony gave her the collection from the old royal library of Pergamum which once was the second largest library in the Mediterranean world. Certainly the palace library continued to survive long into Roman times, and there is no reliable evidence for the date of its destruction. The emperors Caracalla (198–217 C.E.), Aurelian (270–275 C.E.) and Diocletian (284–305 C.E.) all did significant damage in Alexandria and some lay the blame on one or other of them for the library’s downfall. A late legend says that the Arabs burned the collection when they captured Alexandria in 642 C.E. However, what destroyed the library was probably neglect. Papyrus scrolls grew old and brittle. In late antiquity, worn-out scrolls should have been replaced by codices—volumes bound like modern books—but there was no money to defray the costs. The greatest enemy of the collection in the old Palace Library was probably the natural decaying process.

enjoyed tremendous acclaim for writing a book on astronomy in verse. His information is all second-hand, for he was not an astronomer himself, and his work has little appeal for a modern reader. Another didactic poet of the same sort was Nicander of Colophon, who wrote a poetic work on venomous reptiles and insects, and another on poisons and their antidotes. Poets liked learned and obscure references. A good example is Lycophron, who belonged to the Pleias, a group of seven poets named after the Pleides constellation. Although none of the tragic dramas written by the Pleias survived, one poem by Lycophron, the Alexandra, did. It purports to be a long prophecy of Priam of Troy’s daughter Alexandra, better known as Cassandra, who was fated to foresee the future and be disbelieved when she foretold it. Lycophron’s Greek is peppered with words that are found nowhere else in surviving Greek literature. GREEK POETIC INFLUENCE. Alexandria produced three poets who influenced Latin literature: Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, and Theocritus. Callimachus was a librarian at the Alexandrian library and wrote a catalogue of books for it. He wrote a variety of poetry, in-

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cluding six surviving hymns written in iambics in imitation of Hipponax of Colophon, who lived in the midsixth century B.C.E. He also wrote a poem titled the “Aitiai” (Origins), which sets forth the origins of a series of local customs, and a short narrative poem titled the “Hekale” which modern scholars have called an “epyllion” or “little epic”; the word is not found in antiquity. Callimachus believed that the long narrative poem was dead. There was no place for long epic poems anymore in the Hellenistic world. Apollonius was the second chief librarian at Alexandria, after Zenodotus, who was the first; if that information is accurate, it must have exacerbated his rivalry with Callimachus who seems to have been passed over for promotion in favor of a man who was about five years younger. Apollonius set out to prove Callimachus’ stricture on epic poetry wrong, and wrote an epic in four books, the Argonautica, on the quest of Jason and the Argonauts for the Golden Fleece. It is not entirely successful. Jason is less than heroic. Medea, the princess of Colchis who helps Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, is the prototype of the romantic heroine who meets challenges that daunt men. She was to have many descendants in literature, including Dido in Vergil’s Aeneid, and Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Theocritus has two claims to fame as a poet. First, he revived the mime as a poetic form. These were short dramatic dialogues on subjects taken from everyday life. The genre originated in Syracuse, which was Theocritus’ hometown. Second, he was the inventor of pastoral poetry that purports to be poetry of the countryside—songs sung by shepherds as they watched their flocks. He wrote first in Syracuse, but he got little encouragement or patronage from the tyrant of Syracuse, Hiero II, and he moved to the island of Cos and then to Alexandria, which proved more profitable. His Idylls were short mimes that gave a snapshot of contemporary life. They are sometimes shepherds or herdsmen who converse or dispute—hence the name “pastoral” from the Latin word pastor for “shepherd”—or a girl who tries to recall her lover with a love charm, or two housewives of Alexandria who visit the royal palace that has been opened to the public for the festival of Adonis. He was to have a host of imitators both in ancient and modern times. GREEK LITERATURE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Greek authors continued to write after the Roman Empire conquered the eastern Mediterranean, though the Hellenistic kings who had patronized them no longer existed. The historian and geographer Strabo, of partly Asian descent, born about 63 B.C.E., wrote a work called Historical Sketches which is lost, and Geography which has survived. It describes the known world starting in

the west with Gaul and Britain, moving eastwards until it reaches the Orient and India, and concluding with Africa. In historical writing, the Hellenistic age produced one historian of first rank, Polybius of Megalopolis, who was taken to Rome as a hostage in 167 B.C.E. He used his enforced stay to study Rome’s language, customs, and history. He wrote a Universal History in forty books on the period 220–144 B.C.E. The first five books have survived complete, dealing with the Second Carthaginian War, when Rome encountered a general of genius, Hannibal. Of the remainder of Polybius’ history we have only fragments. In the next century, another Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, came to Rome about 30 B.C.E., taught rhetoric there some 22 years, and wrote a history of Rome called the Roman Antiquities. As might be expected, his history is rhetorical and not a great deal of use as a reliable source for Rome’s past. In the reign of the emperor Augustus, another Greek, Diodorus of Sicily, attempted a universal history, beginning with the Trojan War and bringing his world history to 59 B.C.E. The writer who enjoyed the greatest fame in the modern world is Plutarch of Chaeronaea, born about 46 C.E. and living on until 120 C.E. He wrote a large number of essays collected under the general title, the Moralia, but his claim to fame is his Parallel Lives, which placed biographies of famous Greeks side-by-side with that of famous Romans. Plutarch had many admirers in the modern period. Among writers who have mined him for raw material was William Shakespeare, who used him for Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. SOURCES

Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library (London, England: Hutchinson Radius, 1989). Andrew Erskine, “Culture and Power in Hellenistic Egypt: The Museum and Library of Alexandria,” Greece and Rome 42 (1995): 38–48. John Ferguson, Callimachus (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980). C. B. R. Pelling, Plutarch and History: Eighteen Studies (London, England: Duckworth, 2002). Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet; Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and the Historical Tradition (London, England; New York: Routledge, 1992).

R OMAN T HEATER BEGINNINGS. The Roman historian Livy, writing of the years 364–363 B.C.E., related that there was plague

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in Rome. Since neither human remedies nor prayers to the gods abated the plague, the Romans introduced musical shows in the hopes of entertaining them. Etruscan dancers were brought in who danced to a piper’s tune. Rome already had a comic tradition; at the harvest home festival or other occasions such as weddings “Fescennine songs” were sung: rough abusive verses chanted antiphonally in improvised repartee. On occasion they were composed in the native Latin meter known as “Saturnian”; the Saturnian line consisted of a group of seven syllables, followed by a group of six syllables with a break between them. No one thought crude jokes to be incompatible with solemn ceremonies; even a victorious general celebrating a triumph might hear his soldiers chant Fescennine verses as his procession made its way through the streets of Rome to the temple of Jupiter. One example chanted by Julius Caesar’s soldiers chanted about their revered leader as he proceeded through the streets is translated as “City dwellers, lock up your wives / we’re bringing in the bald lecher.” Livy reports that the young Romans who saw the Etruscan dancers in the plague year began to imitate them and add improvised, bawdy repartee like Fescennine verses known as satura, or “medleys.” There was much suggestive joking and mockery, but no plot worth mention. Fescennine verses were not the only influence, however. The Samnites in Campania between Rome and Naples, who spoke an Italic dialect called Oscan and hence are often known as Oscans, had a taste for slapstick farce with stock characters. When these were introduced into Rome they were called Atellanae after a town in Campania called Atella with which the Romans connected them. Like Punch and Judy shows, the characters were fixed by tradition. There was a clown named Maccus, a simple fellow named Pappus, a fat boy named Bucco, and the hunchback Dossenus. With their buffoonery and their exaggerated masks, they enjoyed a mass appeal that Latin adaptations of Greek plays never had. GREEK INFLUENCE. The actual staging of dramatic productions in Rome of the sort popular in Greece began with Livius Andronicus, whose translation of Homer’s Odyssey into Latin marks the beginning of Latin literature. He began to produce plays with plots. He produced a play translated from the Greek at the Roman Harvest Festival called the Ludi Romani in 240 B.C.E. which was a milestone in Roman theater for it seems to have been the first time a play was staged in Rome. He wrote more tragedy than comedy, and though he was no great literary figure, he was a pioneer as Rome’s first playwright. Naevius, who came after him, was more at home with comedy than tragedy—not that he wrote original 158

plays, for all his comedies were taken from the Greek New Comedy. He did invent a new type of play which was not borrowed from Greece: the historical drama, or, in Latin, the fabula praetexta. The name came from the toga with a purple border called the toga praetexta worn by Roman magistrates, because the dramas dealt with figures of the Roman past. After Naevius, historical drama had a very modest success. Some plays dealt with the early history of Rome—Ennius wrote a Rape of the Sabine Women—and others with the victories of generals who were still alive or only recently dead. Ennius had a nephew, Pacuvius, born in 220 B.C.E., who arrived in Rome as a young man and made a name for himself both as a poet and a painter. His forte was tragedy on Greek subjects—fabulae cothurnatae, so-called from the special elevated boots called cothurni which tragic actors wore. We know the titles of thirty tragedies that he wrote, but none survive. The same fate awaited the plays of a more significant tragedian, Accius, who overlapped Pacuvius in 130 B.C.E. when each of them produced a drama: Pacuvius was eighty years old and at the end of his career, and Accius, aged thirty, was making his debut. With Accius, the popularity of the fabula cothurnata reached its height, and in later years, Romans looked back on the second half of the second century B.C.E. as the Golden Age of Tragedy. Only fragments of the plays survive, however. ROMAN COMEDY. Roman comedy fared better. We have 27 comedies, more or less complete, all adaptations from Greek New Comedy. They are fabulae palliatae, that is, dramas with Greek characters who were costumed in a type of Greek cloak (pallium) much favored by Greek philosophers. Twenty-one of these comedies are by “Titus Maccius Plautus,” about whom there is little reliable information. He supposedly came to Rome from Umbria where he was born, worked for a while in the theater business, tried his hand at trade, lost his money, and had to work at a mill where he used his spare time to write plays. He died in 184 B.C.E. The remaining eight are by Publius Terentius Afer, who was born in Carthage and brought as a boy slave to Rome by a senator who was so taken with the lad that he gave him a good education and freed him. Before he was 25, he produced six plays. He then left Rome for Greece, never to return. Various reports were told about his death, but they agree that he was carrying a large number of new plays in his baggage—translations from the Greek—that were lost with him. PLAUTUS. It is impossible to judge how much Plautus adapted his Greek originals for Roman taste, but his plays ostensibly have Greek settings such as Athens or

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Epidamnus. While they could be any city, much of the slapstick must come from the Atellanae, the popular Atellan farces. Plautus used the stock characters of the New Comedy but he put his own mark on them. His courtesans are not always sweet and alluring; in the Truculentus a ruthless courtesan brings her lovers to ruin. One favorite character type that Plautus developed brilliantly was the clever slave. He also reintroduced song into comedy. There had been songs in Old Comedy but they had fallen by the wayside. Plautus found that the Roman audience liked musical comedy and inserted songs more and more as time went on. The Boastful Soldier, which was an early play, has no songs; the Brothers Menaechmus, which is later, has five. His dialogue is racy but not dirty, for the Romans were still puritanical, and as the plots of Plautus’ comedies unfolded onstage, many Romans must have reflected that such things happened in Greece but never in Rome, and found satisfaction in the sense of moral superiority. THE BRAGGART SOLDIER. The “Braggart Soldier” of the title is a stock character, the mercenary soldier who is all bombast and self-advertisement. In this case, the soldier of the title has the mouth-filling name of Pyrgopolynices. A young Athenian, Pleusicles, is madly in love with a courtesan Philocomasium, but while he is away from Athens on official business, the soldier abducts her to Ephesus. Pleusicles’ clever slave, Palaestrio, sets off to tell his master what happened, but he is captured by pirates. Coincidentally, they present him to Pyrgopolynices. Palaestrio gets a letter to Pleusicles summoning him to Ephesus. Pleusicles arrives and lodges at a friend of his father’s, who lives next door to the soldier. The clever slave Palaestrio arranges an elaborate hoax to make the soldier believe the wife of a wealthy old gentleman has fallen desperately in love with him. The wife is actually a courtesan who plays the role that Palestrio has assigned her, and the old man is the friend of Pleusicles’ father. The soldier readily gives up Philocomasium for his new love, but he is caught red-handed attempting adultery, given a sound beating, and threatened with castration. The old man relents when Pyrgopolynices swears never to seek revenge for the beating he received. THE BROTHERS MENAECHMUS. The Brothers Menaechmus is a comedy of mistaken identities; it was adapted and elaborated by Shakespeare in his Comedy of Errors. Identical twins were born to a Sicilian merchant from Syracuse. One twin, Menaechmus, was kidnapped and his father died of grief. Thereupon the grandfather of the remaining twin renamed him Menaechmus to commemorate his lost brother. Thus we have Menaech-

mus I and Menaechmus II, identical siblings. Menaechmus I, the boy who had been kidnapped, was taken to Epidamnus by his abductor, who, it turned out, had no son, and so he adopted Menaechmus I and made him heir to his enormous fortune. When the play opens, Menaechmus II has come to Epidamnus in search of his twin; this is the sixth year he has been searching. Menaechmus I is having an affair with a courtesan, Erotium. Erotium mistakes Menaechmus II for Menaechmus I, and Menaechmus II goes along with the error; he has lunch with Erotium and enjoys her favors. The deception results in all manner of confusion so that when Menaechmus I returns to the stage he encounters a jealous wife, an irritated mistress, and a father-in-law who thinks he’s insane. He escapes being dragged off to a doctor, a fate worse than death, by the intervention of Menaechmus II’s slave. Finally the two Menaechmuses meet and sort things out. The drama comes with an assortment of stock characters: a parasite, an alluring courtesan, and a silly doctor. It is Plautus’ only comedy of errors, and when Shakespeare adapted it, he doubled the scope for mistaken identities by having not one set of identical twins but two. TERENCE. All six plays that Terence wrote have survived, which is a remarkable tribute to his staying power through the Middle Ages. His comedies did not have the popular appeal that Plautus’ plays did, for they lacked his “comic power” as one ancient critic said. They were, however, well-constructed, polished dramas written in the sort of Latin that one could hold up to schoolboys as a model. His first play, the Woman of Andros (Andria) produced in 166 B.C.E., was based on two of Menander’s plays, and uses stock characters with originality: there is the typical lovesick young man, but he wants to marry a young woman of good family, not a courtesan. The strict fathers are presented with sympathy, and the clever slave is more than a mere trickster. The plot is as follows: Simo has betrothed his son Pamphilus to Philumena, daughter of Chremes. But Pamphilus loves Glycerium, an orphan, whereas his friend Charinus wants to marry Philumena. The two fathers negotiate; the clever slave Davus orchestrates the action and everything is resolved when Glycerium turns out to be Chremes’ daughter and also to have borne a child to Pamphilus. Pamphilus marries Glycerium and Charinus marries Philumena. The year after the Woman of Andros, Terence produced his Mother-in-Law but it failed at its first production. Then came the Self-Punisher and the Eunuch and in the same year as the Eunuch, the Phormio. His last play was the Adelphi (The Brothers) which many critics consider his best. In that play, there are two sets

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of brothers. One set is elderly with contrasting characters: Micio who lives in Athens and is easy-going, and Demea, a farmer outside Athens who is frugal. Micio has no son of his own and adopts one of Demea’s two sons. Thus we have a second set of brothers: one brought up virtuously by his father and the other indulgently by his adoptive father who is also his uncle. The plot centers about the attempt of Micio’s adoptive son to kidnap a harp-playing girl for his virtuous brother. The plot is resolved when Demea is converted to a more indulgent attitude, his son keeps his harpist, and Micio’s adoptive son gets married. THEATER AFTER TERENCE. The accidents of survival make it appear that dramatic genius dried up after Terence. In fact, theater continued to be popular. While Terence was writing comedies that were purely Greek in everything except the language, other playwrights were putting Roman characters on stage. These were called fabulae togatae, that is, dramas in togas, in contrast to the fabulae palliatae where the characters wore Greek fashions. Their success was modest. Crowds were more attracted to mime and Atellan farce. SOURCES

W. Geoffrey Arnott, Menander, Plautus and Terence, (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1975). W. Beare, The Roman Stage. A Short History of Latin Drama in the Time of the Republic. 3rd ed. (London, England: Methuen, 1964). George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952). Bruno Gentili, Theatrical Performances in the Ancient World: Hellenistic and Early Roman Theatre (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1979). David Konstan, Roman Comedy (Ithaca, N.Y.; London, England: Cornell University Press, 1983). Plautus, Four Comedies: The Braggart Soldier, The Brothers Menaechmus, The Haunted House, The Pot of Gold. Trans. Erich Segal (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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LATIN EPIC POETRY. The Latin epic begins in 240 with Livius Andronicus, a Greek from Tarentum, modern Taranto on the south coast of Italy, which had been founded as the Greek colony of Taras and fell into Roman hands after Rome’s war with Pyrrhus. Andronicus was brought to Rome as a slave and was acquired

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by a member of one of Rome’s great Roman families, the Livii, who freed him because he tutored his owner’s children so well. He continued to teach once he was a freedman and desired to develop a teaching model similar to that of the Greeks. Greek children learned from the Greek epic poet Homer, but Rome had nothing similar and so Andronicus translated one of Homer’s most famous works, the Odyssey, into Latin, using the only rhythm native to Rome, the Saturnian verse. He became a professional poet and playwright, writing a hymn to the gods to win their favor during Rome’s war with Hannibal. In recognition of his craft, Rome allowed him to found a guild of writers and actors with its headquarters in the temple of Minerva on the Aventime Hill. But he was best remembered for his translation of the Odyssey which was still a vital part of Roman education when the Augustan poet Horace was a boy in the mid-first century B.C.E. NAEVIUS AND ENNIUS. The next step in the development of the Latin epic was taken by Gnaeus Naevius. He fought in Rome’s first war against Carthage, which ended in 241 B.C.E., and he wrote a history of it in poetry. Like Andronicus, he used the Saturnian meter. His work is lost, but we do know that he traced the enmity of Rome and Carthage to their foundations, and brought in the story of Dido and Aeneas, as Vergil was to do later in his epic, the Aeneid. With Quintus Ennius, (239–169 B.C.E.) the Latin epic took a giant step forward. He came from a town in Calabria, and he knew Oscan, the language of the Samnites, as well as Latin and Greek, and he produced adaptations of Greek dramas for the Roman stage. His great work was his Annales, a poem on the history of Rome from the beginning. Unlike Naevius, he adapted the meter of Homer, the dactylic hexameter, to his verse. It was an important step as all later writers of Latin epic would follow his example and use hexameter verse. TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS. Lucretius (94–55 B.C.E.) stands apart as one of the finest didactic (from the Greek didaskein, “to teach”) poets who ever wrote in any language. The early Greek Presocratic (before Socrates) philosophers had written in poetry, but poetry had given way to prose as a medium for philosophy even before Plato popularized the dialogue form. Didactic poetry was revived in Alexandria, but none of the poets working in the cultural hothouse surrounding the Alexandrian Library ever reached the height that Lucretius did. He was a convert to Epicureanism, which taught that all things are made up of atoms and void and that when human beings die, their atoms dissolve and there is no afterlife. Epicureanism did not deny that the gods existed, but it

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LUCRETIUS AND THE ATOMIC THEORY INTRODUCTION :

Lucretius (c. 94–55 B.C.E.), a Roman poet, attempted to explain the atomic theory of the universe expounded by the Greek philosophers Democritus and Leucippus in his great poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). The theory argued that since all matter is made of atoms and void, death is simply a dissolution of atoms, and no one need fear it. In the following passage he begins his explanation of creation with the principle that nothing can be created out of nothing. The translation into prose gives little hint of Lucretius’ poetic genius, but it is a clear exposition of his ideas.

This dread and darkness of the mind cannot be dispelled by the sunbeams, the shining shafts of day, but only by an understanding of the outward form and inner workings of nature. In tackling this theme, our startingpoint will be this principle: Nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing. The reason why all mortals are so gripped by fear is that they see all sorts of

relegated them to a region far removed from life on earth. The advantage of Epicureanism was that it removed all fear of death, or so Lucretius believed. Lucretius deserves honorable mention among the philosophers, but he also should be recognized as a great poet, for he wrote with verve and skill, and great passion for his subject. He describes matter and void, and the shapes and movements of the atoms in void, he explains how life and sensation came to exist and plants and animals evolved more or less by chance and then reproduced, and what the gods were, for they were also atoms and void, and he ends with a powerful description of a plague epidemic which breaks off suddenly; clearly the poem is unfinished and must have been published after Lucretius' death. CATULLUS. Thanks to the fortunate discovery of a manuscript in the early fourteenth century, we have 116 poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus of varying lengths, and they reveal a poet of genius. He belonged to a new wave of poets in the first half of the first century B.C.E. who looked to writers in Alexandria for their inspiration. They followed in the footsteps of an unconventional poet named Laevius who, in the 90s B.C.E., wrote love poetry expressing personal feelings. The orator Cicero, who disdained them, called them the neoteroi (the newer writers or “the new wave”), and the name has stuck; modern critics call them the “neoterics.” Catullus is the only one whose work has survived. His poems express his pas-

things happening on the earth and in the sky with no discernible cause, and these they attribute to the will of a god. Accordingly, when we have seen that nothing can be created out of nothing, we shall then have a clearer picture of the path ahead, the problem of how things are created and occasioned without the aid of the gods. First then, if things were made out of nothing, any species could spring from any source and nothing would require seed. Men could arise from the sea and scaly fish from the earth, and birds could be hatched out of the sky. Cattle and other domestic animals and every kind of wild beast, multiplying indiscriminately, would occupy cultivated and wastelands alike. The same fruits would not grow constantly on the same trees, but they would keep changing: any tree might bear any fruit. If each species were not composed of its own generative bodies, why should each be born always of the same kind of mother? SOURCE :

Lucretius, “Matter and Space,” in On the Nature of the Universe. Trans. R. E. Latham (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Classics, 1951): 31–32.

sionate love for a woman he called Lesbia and the emotional rollercoaster he endured as his love turned bitter. Shed of her alias, Lesbia was actually Clodia, a brilliant woman who was the sister of a political firebrand in Rome, Publius Clodius, and Catullus can only have been a minor figure in the group of influential powerbrokers she gathered about her. But Catullus wrote more than love poetry. Taking his cues from Callimachus and the Alexandrians, he tried his hand at an epyllion, or short epic, and he translated one of Callimachus’ most famous poems, the Lock of Berenice. Sappho also influenced him; he translated a poem of hers imitating the Sapphic stanza. But it is his lyrics expressing his ill-fated love for Lesbia that have made him famous. SOURCES

Cyril Bailey, “Lucretius,” Proceedings of the British Academy 33 (1949): 143–160. W. R. Johnson, Lucretius and the Modern World (London, England: Duckworth, 2000). Duncan F. Kennedy, Rethinking Reality: Lucretius and the Textualization of Nature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002). Kenneth Quinn, Catullus: An Interpretation (London, England: Batsford, 1972). T. P. Wiseman, Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

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L ATIN P ROSE W RITERS B EFORE A UGUSTAN A GE

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WRITERS BEFORE CICERO. Roman historical traditions shaped the Roman people; from early times, the pontifex maximus (high priest) of Rome kept a record on a whitewashed board of the magistrates for each year and any notable events. The first true historian of Rome, Fabius Pictor, wrote in Greek rather than Latin. His history, written during the desperate war with Hannibal the Carthaginian, was intended to encourage pro-Roman sympathies in Greece. Marcius Porcius Cato (234–149 B.C.E.) was the first author and statesman who made a point of using Latin in his writing. He was a considerable orator, and in his old age he wrote a history titled the Origines on the origins not only of Rome but neighboring towns as well. All that survives of his writing is a treatise on agriculture that leaves the impression that he was a hard-boiled but pious farmer. After him, there is no prose author of note until Cicero and Julius Caesar in the middle decades of the first century B.C.E. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. The facts of Cicero’s life can be given briefly. He was born in 106 B.C.E. in the small town of Arpinum (modern Arpino). At age sixteen he was attached to a well-known barrister of the day, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, to win his entrée into the Roman legal industry. At eighteen he began his compulsory military service. He served under the father of Julius Caesar’s rival, Pompey, which he always thought gave him a special link with Pompey. For the next few years he studied rhetoric and philosophy in Rome and made his court debut in 81 B.C.E. This was the period of Sulla’s dictatorship, and Cicero made himself a marked man by successfully defending a man who had incurred the enmity of one of Sulla’s minions, Chrysogonus. Cicero thought it prudent to retire to Greece for further study following this case and only returned to Rome after Sulla’s death in 78 B.C.E. His first great triumph in court was in 70 B.C.E. when he impeached Gaius Verres for his corrupt governorship of Sicily. Verres went into voluntary exile before he was sentenced, and the Sicilian provincials who were his victims got no restitution. To win the case, Cicero had defeated the best lawyer of the day, Hortensius, and his reputation was made. He rose to be consul in 63 B.C.E. even though he was a “new man”—that is, no one in his family had been consul before—and during his year in office, he suppressed the conspiracy of Catiline and put the conspirators to death without trial, which was illegal. For that he was exiled in 58 B.C.E. and was allowed to return only after he made it clear that he would not make waves for 162

the political triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar who were manipulating politics behind the scenes at this time. When Caesar started the civil war in 49 B.C.E. by crossing the Rubicon River which marked the boundary between his province of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy, Cicero, after some hesitation, joined the senatorial group led by Pompey, who were Caesar’s enemies. After the defeat of Pompey’s army during the next year at the battle of Pharsalus, Cicero returned to Italy. He was not one of the conspirators who murdered Caesar on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 B.C.E., but there is little doubt that he approved, and in the immediate aftermath, he tried to arouse the senate to suppress Mark Antony’s efforts to take over. He thought—wrongly—that he could use Julius Caesar’s grandnephew Octavian, whom Caesar had adopted in his will, against Mark Antony, and then discard him when he was no longer necessary. Events turned out otherwise; Octavian joined Antony and another of Caesar’s officers, Lepidus, in a second triumvirate of power brokers, and when this second triumvirate drew up its list of enemies to be proscribed in November, 43 B.C.E., Antony insisted that Cicero be included. He was killed by Antony’s troops and his head nailed to the rostra, or speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum where Cicero had often spoken. CICERO’S LETTERS. The sheer bulk of Cicero’s works is impressive. He bequeathed to posterity private letters, public speeches—some delivered in the law courts, others in the senate or before a public assembly— treatises on rhetoric, and dialogues on philosophy that had an enormous influence even though he was not, by any means, an original philosopher. His letters were written to his friends and family members, including his younger brother Quintus and his close friend and confidante, Titus Pomponius Atticus, a wealthy businessman and financier who stayed out of politics and survived the civil wars. The letters reveal the private Cicero, who differed from his public persona. Lawyers at this time in ancient Rome did not charge their clients fees, for the pretence was maintained that lawyers were above such considerations. They did, however, expect gifts and legacies from their clients, and Cicero’s income was such that he could maintain a large number of country villas, although his lifestyle was not particularly extravagant for men of his class by the standards of the day. Cicero’s letters give a rare glimpse of the private life of a Roman statesman as the Roman republic slid into civil war. CICERO’S SPEECHES. Of Cicero’s orations delivered in the Roman senate or public forums, his most famous are his four speeches against Catiline and his Philippics,

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speeches attacking Mark Antony, of which the first was delivered in the senate on 2 September, 44 B.C.E. and the second—his most famous—actually published as a pamphlet though it was in the form of a speech. The Catilinarian orations were delivered in the year of Cicero’s consulship, 63 B.C.E. How serious a threat Catiline was to constitutional government is a matter for dispute—certainly Cicero exaggerated. Cicero’s speeches delivered in the law courts throw a lurid light on Roman public life. His Verrine Orations against the corrupt governor of Sicily, Verres, who was tried in 70 B.C.E., were published after the case; they had not actually been delivered in court, for Verres went into voluntary exile first. Another great speech on behalf of a thuggish gang leader, Milo, in 52 B.C.E. was not delivered in court either. Cicero lost the case, but made up for it by publishing the version he would have given, but failed to do so because he was unnerved by Pompey’s soldiers ringing the court. Other speeches give splendid vignettes of Roman life. One, “In Defense of Cluentius,” is a murder case in an Italian town. Another, “In Defense of Caelius” throws a sidelight on Catullus’ love affair with Lesbia, for Caelius was an ex-lover of Clodia, who seems to have been the Lesbia of Catullus in real-life. Caelius had had an affair with Clodia, and when he abandoned her, she charged him with an attempt to poison her. Cicero’s defense of Caelius gives him a chance to dwell on the demi-monde of Rome, and Clodia’s private life in particular. RHETORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TREATISES. Cicero was an eclectic philosopher who wrote philosophic dialogues during a period of his life when the alliance of the power brokers Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, known as the First Triumvirate, sidelined him from politics. Of his works on rhetoric, his Brutus is interesting for its discussion of the development of oratory in Greece and Rome, which leads up to a description of his own development. Cicero followed it with his Orator, which makes the case that the true orator must be a master of all styles: the simple, the somewhat florid, and the grand. Cicero is a major source for modern knowledge of oratory in the Roman republic. OTHER NOTABLE WRITERS OF PROSE. Gaius Julius Caesar is better known as a world conqueror, but he was also an author. His claim to fame in the latter arena is his Commentaries on the Gallic War and Civil War. His Latin style is unlike any other writer’s, except for his imitators. He was writing a “commentary,” not a “history” of his conquest of Gaul and the civil war that followed it; a “commentary” purported to be a first draft which would later be fitted out with literary adornments. Cae-

Cicero, profile portrait, engraving.

PUBLIC DOMAIN.

sar was writing for propaganda purposes, but he reads like a good war correspondent. His bias is apparent but not blatantly so. One of his officers, Aulus Hirtius, added an eighth book to the Gallic War and continued Caesar’s Civil War with a work in a style that copies Caesar’s, the Alexandrine War. It is the source for the affair between the young Cleopatra of Egypt and Julius Caesar. Another supporter of Caesar with a more eloquent style was Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) who wrote a History, now lost, monographs on the Conspiracy of Catiline in 63 B.C.E., and the war with Jugurtha in north Africa at the end of the second century B.C.E. which was won by Marius, Caesar’s uncle by marriage. In the second of these, Marius comes off very well. In his monograph on Catiline’s Conspiracy, Cicero’s role pales beside those of Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger. Cicero is portrayed as a decent but lightweight politician, but Cato represents the severe righteousness of an extreme right-wing statesman while Caesar has the makings of a beneficent ruler. Finally, there was an extraordinarily productive writer, Marcus Terentius Varro, of whose many works only one survives complete: a dialogue on buying and running a farm. Another writer worthy of mention is Cornelius Nepos, whose Book about Excellent Leaders of Foreign

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Peoples—22 of them, all Greeks except for two Carthaginians and one Persian—was written in straightforward but rather dull Latin prose. SOURCES

Samuel W. Crompton, Julius Caesar (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003). Anthony Everitt, Cicero: A Turbulent Life (London, England: John Murray, 2001). Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait. Rev. ed. (Ithaca: N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983). David Stockton, Cicero: A Political Biography (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1971). Sir Ronald Syme, Sallust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Kathryn Welch and Anton Powell, ed., Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments (London, England: Duckworth, 1998).

T HE G OLDEN A GE OF L ATIN L ITERATURE U NDER A UGUSTUS NEW CLIMATE OF OPINION. The civil war—which started when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River in 49 B.C.E. and ended when Caesar’s heir, Octavian, defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.E.—ended the era of literature of the late republic and started the Augustan Age. The poet Horace fought as a staff officer (tribune) in the army of Brutus and Cassius, but he was no diehard defender of the Roman republic. He returned to Italy after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C.E., and made his peace with the new regime. The poet Tibullus personally had no taste for war, as he tells us in two poems which celebrate the victories of his patron Messala, and Propertius preferred to write about the love of his life whom he called Cynthia—her real name was Hostia and she was a beautiful courtesan—but since he belonged to the circle of writers who were supported by Augustus’ unofficial minister of propaganda, Maecenas, he was called upon to eulogize Augustus’ exploits and excused himself as gracefully as he could. Vergil, the greatest of the Augustan writers, had no hankering for the old Roman republic, having seen first-hand how it misruled the provinces, for he was born in one. Ovid was born the year after Julius Caesar was murdered and never knew the free-wheeling days of the republic when writers could write what they pleased, but he learned that an author under the principate—as Augustus’ regime was called— failed at his peril to respect certain limits to his freedom. When Ovid was about fifty years old, Augustus exiled 164

him to Tomis on the Black Sea in modern Rumania. Augustus’ successor, Tiberius, did not recall him and he died there. The reasons for his exile are obscure, but one of them may have been a playful poem he wrote titled The Art of Love which is a witty poetic instruction manual on how to seduce women. VERGIL’S ECLOGUES. A group of minor poems have survived which have been considered Vergil’s early works, and one of them, the Culex (The Gnat) is an epyllion worthy of Vergil. The poem describes how a shepherd is wakened from a nap by a mosquito, which he kills only to discover that a venomous snake is about to strike him; the mosquito had sacrificed its life to warn him in time. Some scholars accept the Culex as Vergilian, but the earliest works that are certainly written by him are his Bucolics (Poems of the Countryside), otherwise known as his Eclogues (Select Poems). There are ten of them, and two—the first and the ninth—have been thought to be autobiographic, for they deal with the land confiscations after the Battle of Philippi, when Octavian expropriated land in the region of Cremona and Mantua to settle demobilized soldiers. Vergil’s family estate was expropriated and the first Eclogue tells how a freedman, Tityrus, had his little farm restored to him. There are problems with this interpretation, and it is more probable that Vergil’s intent in both his first and ninth Eclogues was to make known the disruption and injustice caused by the land expropriations. The fourth poem, the so-called “Messianic” Eclogue hails the expected birth of a child who will usher in a new age. The identity of this child has been much disputed, and later Christian commentators interpreted the poem as a prophecy of Christ’s birth. It could be a child expected by Octavian; when Eclogue Four was written in 40 B.C.E. he was still married to his second wife Scribonia by whom he had his only child, a daughter Julia. But if so, the child whose birth Vergil foretold was never born. In the Eclogues, the influence of Theocritus is clear, but it was Vergil who invented Arcadia— not the Arcadia in central Greece but an imaginary Arcadia where shepherds and cowherds sang and loved and lived a life far removed from the turmoil of the city. In the literary tradition of Europe, it was Vergil, not Theocritus, who invented pastoral poetry. THE GEORGICS. The Georgics (On Land Cultivation) is a didactic poem written at the behest of Maecenas who gathered about him a cluster of writers and tried to harness their talents for the benefit of Octavian. Restoring agriculture in Italy after civil war was a vital concern, and though the Georgics is the most polished verse that Vergil ever produced, it is propaganda. It also brought didactic poetry to a new height. The subject of

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the first book is the crops and the signs for good and bad weather. The second discusses vineyards and olive orchards, the third stockbreeding, the last beekeeping. Vergil worked on the poem for seven years and somehow manages to make plain passages about plowing, planting, and beekeeping interesting. ROME’S NATIONAL EPIC. Augustus wanted a heroic poem, an epic that could be compared without apology to the Greek poet Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey overshadowed the works of Roman poets. Of the prominent Roman poets of the day, only Vergil answered the call, producing the Aeneid. It has been justly admired from its own time to the present day. Even while it was being written, the poet Propertius wrote that “something greater than the Iliad is being created”—a favorable review even before the publication date. It soon became the national epic of Rome, the Latin answer to Homer. It tells the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who escaped from the sack of Troy and arrived in Italy, bringing with him his household gods and winning a space in Latium for himself and his descendants. The Romans were familiar with the myth. Aeneas’ son Ascanius founded Alba Longa, the royal houses of which spawned Romulus, founder of Rome. Old Roman families called themselves “Trojan-born,” which was the equivalent of claiming ancestors that came over on the Mayflower. Julius Caesar’s family, the Iulii, made the claim, and the emperor Augustus was Caesar’s great-nephew and his adoptive son. Julian tradition told that Aeneas had a son, Iulus, who was the first ascendant of the family. Vergil identifies Iulus with Ascanius by claiming that Iulus was Ascanius’ other name. Thus Augustus was a descendant of Aeneas, and the story of Aeneas shed a glow of legitimacy over the emperor and his dynasty. Aeneas’ struggle to establish his Trojans in Latium paralleled Augustus’ struggle to bring peace and prosperity to the empire after the generation of civil war that destroyed the old Roman republic. THE AENEID. For the first half of the Aeneid, Vergil took Homer’s Odyssey as his model and the Iliad for the second half, purposely inviting comparisons. For instance, the character of Aeneas is a warrior from the Trojan War who must endure a long and troubled journey following the end of the war, much like the character of Odysseus from the Odyssey. Unlike Odysseus, however, Aeneas is actually fleeing his home, having fought on the side of the Trojans. With a ship full of survivors, including his son and his father, he flees Troy for Italy, where it is his destiny to found Rome. The reality of his destiny does not procure for him an easy passage, however; a tempest tosses Aeneas’ little fleet up on the shores

Mosaic c. 3rd century C.E., “Vergil writing the Aeneid, inspired by two muses,” in the Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. Clio, the muse of storytelling, holding a manuscript, is on Vergil’s left, and Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, holding a mask, is on the right. © ROGER WOOD/CORBIS.

of Carthage, which has just been founded by queen Dido. Dido welcomes Aeneas and his Trojans and gives them a royal banquet, which parallels Odysseus’ landing on the shore of Phaeacia and his welcome by the Phaeacian king and queen. As with the banquet scene in the Odyssey, Vergil related what had happened previous to the Trojans’ landing at Carthage as a “flashback” sequence in which Aeneas relates to the Carthaginians the fall of Troy, including the famous story of how the Greeks finally penetrated the city walls. The Greeks had built a large wooden horse, left it outside the city gates, and then pretended to depart for home. The Trojans were told by a Greek pretending to be an escaped slave that the horse was a gift from the gods and if they took it within the city walls, their city would never be taken. Tricked by his story, the Trojans did indeed take the horse into their city, not knowing that contained in its hollow belly was a group of Greek soldiers waiting for nightfall to open the gates for the Greek forces outside. That night the Greek forces came out of hiding and sacked the city. So famous is this tale that the “Trojan Horse” has become an enduring symbol for trickery and duplicity. The Trojans fought with the courage of despair, but when resistance proved futile, Aeneas followed the orders of the gods to leave. The story of how he hoisted his crippled father Anchises on to his shoulder and escaped from Troy was already famous in Rome.

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VERGIL’S PROCLAMATION OF ROME’S MISSION INTRODUCTION :

Literature in ancient Rome often served the purpose of the state as propaganda. In 30 B.C.E, the Roman poet Vergil began his epic work The Aeneid in response to the emperor Augustus’ call for a poem to glorify his regime that could be compared without embarrassment with the works of the Greek poet Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Using those texts as models, Vergil related the story of the founding of Rome, using the Trojan hero Aeneas as its legendary founder. Although still unfinished at the time of Vergil’s death in 19 B.C.E, the work became Rome’s national epic, glorifying the Roman Empire’s establishment by the “blood, sweat and tears” of Rome’s ancestors. In Book 6 of The Aeneid, Vergil relates the story of the descent of Aeneas into the Underworld where he meets the ghost of his father Anchises who shows him the souls of Romans yet to be born. As Anchises concludes this pageant of Rome’s history, he proclaims the unique mission of the Roman Empire in the following lines.

Others, I do not doubt it, will beat bronze into figures that breathe more softly. Others will draw living likenesses out of marble. Others will plead cases better or describe with their rod the courses of the stars across the sky and predict their risings. Your task, Roman, and do not forget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world with your empire. These will be your arts—and to impose a settled pattern upon peace, to pardon the defeated and war down the proud. SOURCE : Vergil, The Aeneid. Book 6. Trans. David West (London: Penguin Classics, 1990): 159.

Aeneas got away safely with his father, his little son Ascanius, and his household gods, but his wife Creusa was lost. Aeneas returned to Troy to seek her, but her ghost told him to be on his way—a new home awaited him in Italy. Like Odysseus, Aeneas endured hardship and loss during his journey by sea; he lost his father in Sicily, and a storm blew them onto the shore of Carthage in Africa. As with Odysseus and the Phaeacians, Dido and her people are moved by the sad tale of Aeneas and the Trojans, and the two peoples appear prepared to settle down together. Dido and Aeneas begin an affair, but the gods perceive the romance as a threat to Aeneas’ destiny and order him to leave Carthage for Italy; the plot develop166

ment closely resembles the gods’ ordering of the nymph Calypso to release her lover, Odysseus, so he can return home. Neither of these powerful female characters wanted to let go of their lovers, and Dido stages a dramatic suicide at Aeneas’ departure by building a funeral pyre for herself out of Aeneas’ discarded possessions and killing herself in its fires. Dido’s death is evidence of a Roman belief that romantic love was a poison which disrupted betrothals and family alliances; in Rome, marriage was a business deal worked out by the parents of the bride and groom, and among well-born Romans it involved property. Love induced irrational behavior and led to unsuitable marriages. Aeneas’ rejection of his lover is also evidence of the Roman emphasis on duty over emotional ties; Aeneas is devoted to duty—the usual epithet that Vergil applies to him is pius which means more than its English derivative “pious.” It means god-fearing, dutiful, and even compassionate. DESTINY IN ITALY. While Aeneas did not lose nearly as many fellow travelers as Odysseus, he is forced to leave behind the women of his party in Sicily after the travelweary women set fire to the ships in an attempt to prevent their leaving the island. Thus the Trojan settlers in Italy will be men only, which means that they will have to find Italian women for their mates. Aeneas is aware that their settlement in Italy will necessitate another war similar to the Trojan War, but he sees it as his destiny to be on the winning side this time when he visits the Underworld and sees the ghosts of the future builders of Rome. The last six books describe the fight in Italy between the native Rutulians and the immigrant Trojans, and Vergil switches his narrative model to the Iliad. Aeneas arrives at the future site of Rome, and there meets King Latinus who has been told by an oracle to marry his daughter Lavinia to someone who is not a native of the country. Although the king is amenable to Lavinia’s marriage to Aeneas, the queen, Amata, is not; she favors the prince of the Rutulians, Turnus, and the rivalry between Turnus and Aeneas sparks a war between the two peoples. After much bloodshed, the war is decided by hand-to-hand combat between the two suitors in which Aeneas kills Turnus. ASSESSMENT OF A GREAT POEM. Vergil’s Aeneid became the national epic of the Roman Empire. The poet drew from various literary influences for his creation, particularly Homer. Vergil also drew upon the Argonautica of the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes. Vergil’s Dido owes something to Apollonius’ Medea. Vergil was conversant with Alexandrian poetry; his Eclogues draw their inspiration from Theocritus and the Aeneid also draws inspiration from Alexandria even

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though its model was Homer. Finally there was Ennius, Rome’s first epic poet to use the dactylic hexameter from whom Vergil borrowed heavily for his knowledge of primitive Italy. The Aeneid no doubt celebrates the Roman Empire, Augustus’ contribution to it, and the courage and self-sacrificing toil of Rome’s founders. Yet he also pities the people trampled underfoot by Rome’s growth to power. Turnus and Dido both engage our sympathies, whereas Aeneas can be remarkably brutal, and his epithet pius (dutiful) is a trifle chilling. In the end, it is clear that the Trojans will be assimilated. Aeneas has brought his gods from Troy and plans them to be the gods of Rome, but the god Jupiter makes it clear that he will decide what gods the Romans will worship. Aeneas, who is an Asian immigrant, will start the historical process that results in the Roman Empire, but he will lose his native culture, and his descendants will be purely Italian.

ager,’ for Maecenas had given him a farm in Sabine country not far from Rome. Horace advised his manager to be content with what he had. The emperor Augustus, who liked Horace and wrote him frequently, urged him to write more in praise of the imperial house, and in response he added a fourth book to his Odes and also produced a long hymn for the Secular Games of 17 B.C.E. The Games were not “secular” in the modern sense, for the word comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning “century,” so “Centennial Celebrations” might be a better way of describing the festivities of that year. The hymn is called the Carmen Saeculare and it is not Horace at his best. Horace wrote another long poem which is famous: the third book of his Epistles which is taken up entirely with his Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry). It is a nice example of didactic poetry but its content is not original, for Horace followed a treatise written by a Hellenistic author, Neoptolemus of Parion.

HORACE. Quintus Horatius Flaccus was the son of an ex-slave who saw to it that his son received a good education in Rome and then managed to send him to Athens. These were the heady days after Julius Caesar’s assassination, and Horace was caught up in the enthusiasm among the Romans studying in Athens for the republican cause and joined the army raised by Marcus Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar. The defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi understandably quenched his enthusiasm, so he returned to Italy, got a low-paying clerical post in the government, and began writing. Some of his Epodes, belong to this period. They got their name from their meter which the Greek lyric poet Archilochus had invented, for almost all of them have a long line followed by a shorter one, for which the technical name was an epoide (after-song). Sometime before the Battle of Actium he was introduced to Octavian’s minister in charge of molding public opinion, Maecenas, and his poverty-stricken days came to an end. It was Maecenas who suggested that he put together a collection of his Epodes. About 35 B.C.E. he brought out a collection of satires, or as he titled them, sermones which can be translated not inaccurately as “chitchat.” He was also experimenting with something new: an attempt to use the meters of the Lesbian poets Alcaeus and Sappho. Although the poet Catullus had tried his hand at the Sapphic stanza, Horace could claim to be original because his subject matter was his own. The first three books of his Odes—or as he called them, his carmina (songs)— took seven years to compose, and they were published about 23 B.C.E. He followed them up with his Epistles, so called because they purport to be versified letters to various recipients. He addressed one to his farm man-

PROPERTIUS, TIBULLUS, AND SULPICIA. Propertius, Tibullus, and Sulpicia all wrote love poems addressed to specific individuals whom they claim as objects of their devotion. Propertius addressed his poems to Cynthia and Tibullus to Delia. Sulpicia was a woman and the lover whom she addressed is a man, but otherwise she follows the conventions of this genre of poetry. Propertius belonged to Maecenas’ circle, but Tibullus had another patron, Messalla. Both wrote in elegiac couplets that had been used for centuries in Greek literature and brought into Latin in the Augustan age. The pioneer of the genre was a friend of Vergil, Gaius Cornelius Gallus, who wrote four books of elegies to a mime actress whom he calls Lycoris; in real life, her name was Cytheris and she had a number of lovers, including Mark Antony. Gallus became prefect of Egypt, where he proved too independent for Augustus’ regime; the Roman senate tried and condemned him, and he committed suicide. His political disgrace eclipsed his poetry. Tibullus left two books of elegies. In the first he addresses Delia, and in the second, a woman he called Nemesis. In Messalla’s circle there was also a poetess, Sulpicia, probably Messalla’s niece, who wrote six short poems addressed to a man whom she calls Cerinthus. They are little gems of frank passion. A more productive poet than either of these was Sextus Propertius, whose love was a woman he calls Cynthia. Maecenas noticed his little book of 22 elegies titled Cynthia and took him into his circle. Like the other poets in Maecenas’ stable, Propertius was urged to help popularize the principate (the constitutional settlement of Augustus), but his heart was really with love poetry. Propertius is the most interesting of these writers of love elegies if we take the vicissitudes of his love-affair at face

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HORACE ON PATRIOTISM INTRODUCTION :

Horace (65–8 B.C.E.) owed the comfortable life that he led to his patron, Maecenas, whose gifts to him included a small estate outside Rome—his “Sabine Farm” made famous by his poetry. But Maecenas was a friend and close advisor of the emperor Augustus, and in return for his generosity Maecenas—and Augustus, too—expected Horace to support the aims of the empire, one of which was to rekindle patriotism and morality among the Romans. This excerpt is from one of Horace’s Odes written to please his patron. Some phrases from it are famous, such as dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“Sweet and fitting it is to die for your fatherland” or, as the translation printed below expresses it, “The glorious and the decent way of dying is for one’s country”), which has been inscribed on countless cenotaphs for the war dead. Equally famous is the metaphor that concludes the poem, that Vengeance or Punishment, though she be lame, seldom gives up her pursuit of a man.

SOURCE : Horace, Odes. Book III. Trans. James Michie (New York: Modern Library, 2002): 119, 121.

value. But we must not be too quick to infer autobiographical details from their poetry, for they were writing within well-defined conventions. Sincerity was not considered a virtue in Latin poetry, and when a poet claims to be dying of love, he may be expressing only a conventional emotion that was demanded by his art form. Sulpicia’s poetry differs only in one way: usually women were the object of male desire in elegiac love poetry, but Sulpicia presents herself as a woman who desires a partner as much as any man does. OVID. Ovid was truly a man of letters. Sophisticated and technically brilliant, he wrote poetry effortlessly. Although not wealthy, he was sufficiently well-to-do to dispense with a patron and he remained outside the circles of Maecenas and Messalla. He began as an elegiac poet of love. His collection known as the Amores (Love Affairs) follows the examples of Tibullus and Propertius, for they tell of romantic encounters, but whereas the loves of those two writers probably existed, Ovid’s lover, Corinna, probably did not exist outside literature. While 168

he was writing the Amores he was working on a more ambitious work, the Heroides (Heroines), letters in verse by women of mythology addressed to their husbands or lovers. Among others, he imagines Dido writing to Aeneas, Ariadne writing Theseus from Naxos where he had abandoned her, and Medea writing Jason after she has learned of his plans to jilt her and marry the king of Corinth’s daughter. Ovid then turned to didactic poetry, but his subject was not a respectable one like agriculture. Ovid wrote the Art of Love in three books, the first two instructing men in the art of seduction and the third showing women who planned to be courtesans how to make the most profit from their husbands. He followed this up with a fourth book, the Remedium Amoris, on how to fall out of love. Ovid’s greatest work is undoubtedly his Metamorphoses (Changes of Shape). No one believed in the ancient legends anymore, but they were still subject matter for literature, and Ovid decided to string them together on the common theme of changes of shape. He retells myths that told how heroes and heroines changed their shapes, like Actaeon who was

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changed into a stag, or Alkyone who was changed into the halcyon bird. The resulting epic is a tapestry of myth, told with wit and all the tricks that an author versed in rhetoric could muster. Then came his exile. Augustus relegated him to Tomis, modern Costanza in Rumania, for reasons unknown. He burned his Metamorphoses, but fortunately copies were already in circulation and so it survived, though unfinished. Exile did not break Ovid, though he never saw his beloved Rome again. He wrote five books of Tristia (Poems of Sorrow)—the first book was complete before he reached Tomis. He continued these with his Letters from Pontus; “Pontus” was the name for the Black Sea. He wrote Ibis, an attack on an imaginary figure which was probably written as a psychological release, and a poem on the fish in the Black Sea. The major work of his exile was the Fasti, a versified Roman calendar of religious festivals. Ovid finished the first six months of the year and may have hoped that his interest in Roman religion would soften Augustus’ heart. If that was his intent, he must have been disappointed in the result. Ovid died in exile.

Jasper Griffin, Vergil (Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 2001). W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). W. R. Johnson, “The Figure of Laertes,” in Vergil at 2000; Commemorative Essays on the Poet and His Influence. Ed. John D. Bernard (New York: AMS Press, 1986), 85–105. Sara Mack, Ovid (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988). Alexander G. McKay, Vergil’s Italy (New York: Graphic Society, 1970). Niall Rudd, ed., Horace 2000: Essays for the Millenium (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1993). David R. Slavitt, Vergil (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991). —, trans., Propertius in Love: The Eclogues (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). J. P. Sullivan, Propertius: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

LIVY. The Augustan age had one prose writer of distinction, Titus Livius, known in English by the name Livy, who wrote a history of Rome from its foundation to his own day in 142 books. He was the type of historian who wrote to edify his readers, and the characters of his history were either heroes or villains. The most wholesome outcome of knowing history, he told his readers, was to have examples of every type of conduct so that a person could choose models to imitate with foreknowledge of what the results of their choices would be. He was not a careful researcher, but he had historians to consult who have been lost long ago, and that gives his work real value for the historian of the Roman republic. His history extends to the Roman triumph over the last king of Macedon, Perseus, in 167 B.C.E. His style is smooth and his characterization vivid, but his panorama of the Roman past is not an example of historical accuracy.

L ATIN L ITERATURE S ILVER A GE

SOURCES

William S. Anderson, The Art of the Aeneid (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969). David Armstrong, Horace (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989). D. Thomas Benediktson, Propertius: A Modernist Poet of Antiquity (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989). Harold Bloom, ed., Vergil (New York: Chelsea House, 1986). Francis Cairns, Tibullus: A Hellenistic Poet at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). T. A. Dorey, ed., Livy (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971).

OF THE

WRITERS BEFORE THE DEATH OF NERO. The name “Silver Age Latin” as applied to the literature that follows the “Golden Age” under Augustus reflects the judgement of generations of scholars. Writers of the Silver Age valued rhetorical skill and literary ornaments, and produced a style that was quite unlike ordinary human speech. Contemporary writers in Greek moved in the other direction; they were Atticists, that is, they revived the style and even the dialect of the best classical authors of Greece. Their example did not rub off on their Latin counterparts. Still, the sheer bulk of their writing is impressive. One poet, Marcus Manilius, wrote a didactic poem in five books on astrology. Calpurnius Siculus wrote pastoral poetry that was heavily dependent on Vergil’s Eclogues. An ex-soldier, Velleius Paterculus, who served under the future emperor Tiberius, wrote a history of Rome in two books, and when he comes to his own period, he is a good historical source. Valerius Maximus collected nine books of sayings and anecdotes under the title Notable Doings and Sayings, and Phaedrus versified Aesop’s fable. SENECA. Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s family came from Roman Spain, and his father was a rhetorician known as Seneca the Elder to distinguish him from his son. The reputation of the elder Seneca stems from a collection written in his old age of anecdotes about rhetoricians he had known. The younger Seneca is known for his philosophic treatises—he was a Stoic who failed to practice

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what he preached—four prose works—one of which is a funny but cruel essay on the distaste with which the gods received the dead emperor Claudius when he entered their company after being decreed divine by the Roman senate—and nine tragedies. The tragedies were based on Greek originals except for the Thyestes, which told how the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, Atreus, fed Thyestes his own children. The work allowed Seneca to give free rein to his love for blood and gore. He reworked Euripides’ Medea and made Medea into a bloodthirsty witch. His Phaedra reworks Euripides’ Hippolytus and gives Phaedra nymphomanic tendencies and makes Hippolytus a woman-hater. It is generally agreed that these plays were intended for public readings before select audiences, not for production in large theaters for the masses, whose taste was for interpretative dancing and mimes. Seneca’s plays appealed only to the educated elite who were familiar with the Golden Age of tragedy in Athens of the fifth century B.C.E. COLUMELLA. Lucius Junius Columella, like Seneca, came from Spain, but his interests were very different. After a career in the Roman army, he acquired an estate in Latium outside Rome, and devoted himself to agriculture. His De Re Rustica (On Husbandry) is a treatise on scientific farming. It gives a picture of the countryside of central Italy in his own day, with its growing number of country houses for wealthy Romans, and its absentee landowners. His cure for the decline of farming in Italy was hard work, personal supervision, and mastery of the science of agriculture. GAIUS PETRONIUS. The novel as a literary form was becoming popular in Greece in the early imperial period, and Petronius chose to use it for what he called the Saturae—the “Mixed Bag” of writing. It is now known as the Satyricon. It is picaresque novel (relating to the adventures of rovers) but instead of the hero and heroine of the Greek novels who have a series of wild adventures as they roved from place to place, Petronius has a rascal named Encolpius and a cheeky boy named Giton. Only fragments remain, but one sizeable portion, describing a banquet given by a wealthy ex-slave named Trimalchio, is a masterpiece. The banquet was an orgy of feeding, and Trimalchio takes vulgarity to astonishing heights. Petronius was a favorite of the emperor Nero and invented revels for that pleasure-loving emperor until court intrigue destroyed him and he committed suicide with elegance and irony, as befitted a man of his talents. MARCUS ANNAEUS LUCANUS. The fame of Lucan, who was Seneca the Younger’s nephew, rests on one work: his epic poem on the civil war between Caesar and the senatorial party led by Pompey. Its name, the 170

Pharsalia, comes from the decisive battle fought in Greece at Pharsalus, modern Farsala in Thessaly, where Pompey’s army was defeated. Lucan’s style is somewhat artificial but he is a smooth versifier. His sympathies were with Pompey and the republican form of government that Pompey defended. All of this fitted the popularized Stoic philosopher of the day that looked back with nostalgia at the republic which died in the civil war. Lucan died young. He was implicated in a plot against Nero, and died by bleeding to death, reciting some of his own verses on death by bleeding as he breathed his last. PERSIUS. Little is known about Aulus Persius Flaccus, except that he left a collection of six satires and died young. The first was on the decay of literary taste, the second on the vanity of riches, the third on idleness, the fourth on self-knowledge, the fifth on true liberty, and the sixth on how to use wealth properly. His poetry is crammed with allusions to contemporary life. His fourth satire, for instance, urges a popular statesman named Alcibiades to examine his soul and pay no attention to public adulation. There was an Alcibiades who was an Athenian politician of the fifth century B.C.E., but perhaps the “Alcibiades” whom Persius has in mind is the emperor Nero. Persius’ style is not easy to read. He is not for the beginning Latin student. But his small output reveals an interesting talent. THE SILVER AGE AFTER THE EMPEROR NERO. Whatever the emperor Nero’s faults may have been, he was an aesthete who was sensitive to culture, and his death in 68 C.E. did not improve the lot of the literary artist. The Flavian dynasty—the emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian who replaced the Julio-Claudian clan to which the emperors from Augustus to Nero belonged— was from Sabine peasant stock. The Flavians were sensitive about their lack of background, and Domitian in particular was a menacing presence who inspired fear. With Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius (who died in 180 B.C.E.) there was greater freedom, but there was a comfortable mediocrity about the age, and it was not until the fourth century C.E. that there was a renewed outburst of literary talent. Still, the period did not lack for writers. Silius Italicus was one such figure; his primary position was as an informer under Nero, passing on information about potential enemies of the regime, although he later cleaned up his reputation by earning praise for his administration of the province of Asia. He wrote an epic titled the Punica on Rome’s wars with Carthage, which were called the “Punic Wars” after the Latin word for Carthaginian: Poenus. The meters are correct but as poetry it is second-rate. He likes to put his learning on display, and the result is more tire-

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some than impressive. Papinius Statius who wrote under Domitian whom he was careful to flatter, left five books of Silvae—miscellaneous poems on various subjects—and two epics, the second unfinished. The first epic was Thebaid and covered the legends of Thebes: how Oedipus killed his father, how his sons fought over the throne and killed each other, and how Creon succeeded to the throne. The poem reflects the taste of the day for romanticism through the inclusion of slaughter, exaggerated passions, and high-flown sentiment. The second epic, the Achilleis retells the myth of how Achilles’ mother Thetis tried to save her son from being conscripted to fight in the Trojan War by dressing him as a woman and hiding him among girls at the court of the king of Scyrus. Statius wrote 1127 lines on this subject, but he died before he could write more. Valerius Flaccus wrote an epic on the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, taking as his model the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. Quintilian, the son and grandson of rhetoricians, is known for his Education of an Orator. His perfect orator was Cicero, and he concluded that all developments since Cicero’s day had brought oratory downhill. Martial was a master of the epigram: the short poem that ends with a sharp, stinging quip. He took his subjects from contemporary life, throwing an interesting sidelight on it. Suetonius, secretary to the emperor Hadrian, wrote biographies in straightforward Latin, and one collection has survived entire: his Lives of the Twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian. A little later than Suetonius, another author wrote the only novel in either Greek or Latin worthy of comparison with Petronius’ Satyricon: Apuleius, whose tale, Metamorphosis, better known as The Golden Ass, tells how the hero Lucius dabbled in magic and managed to transform himself into a donkey. We have another work of Apuleius, too, for he married a wealthy widow and her relatives brought him to trial on a charge of winning her affections by magic. Apuleius’ Apology is the speech he gave in his own defense before a court in Sabratha, in modern Libya. Of all the authors belonging to these somewhat tarnished last years of the Silver Age, there are three that should detain us: Juvenal, Pliny the Younger, and the historian Tacitus, for they were firstrate practitioners of their genre of literature. JUVENAL. Juvenal was a bitter man. Life in Rome had not treated him well, to judge from his poetry, and after the emperor Domitian died and the pall of fear lifted, Juvenal wrote satires—sixteen of them—attacking the wickedness of contemporary life. He disliked women, all immigrants from the east—especially Jews, with Greeks a close second—avarice, the miserly rich, and the horrors of living in the shoddily built apartment houses

of Rome. He attacked scoundrels by name, though he only picked on already-dead scoundrels to avoid retribution. He is the source of the aphorism that the Roman mob cared only about bread and circuses. He accepted the dictum of the Stoic philosophers that all transgressions were equal and hence he indicted the emperor Nero both for murdering his mother and for writing bad poetry as if they were sins of equal magnitude. He was himself a good poet who wrote vigorous hexameter lines. PLINY THE YOUNGER. The reputation of Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus—the full name of Pliny the Younger—might have been overwhelmed by that of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, an encyclopedia writer who died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E., except that the only surviving work of the elder Pliny is his Natural History, which is a mine of information but not casual reading. Pliny the Younger is known for his collection of pleasant letters written, ostensibly, to various contemporaries, including the historian Tacitus to whom he addressed an eyewitness account of the eruption of Vesuvius. The last book of his collected letters is correspondence between him and the emperor Trajan, for Trajan sent Pliny to the province of Bithynia in Asia Minor about 110 C.E. to correct maladministration there. Among the matters for consultation with Trajan was a cell of Christians whom he found. Pliny wanted to know the legal status of Christianity and Trajan replied that it was outlawed, though he warned against any witch hunt. For historians of Christianity, this is an important morsel of evidence; it defines the attitude of the Roman state towards Christianity in the second century C.E. TACITUS. Cornelius Tacitus wrote five works: a dialogue on orators, evidently his first; a biography of his father-in-law, Agricola; an essay on Germany, the Germania; and his two greatest works, his Histories and his Annals. The first is a discussion of orators of the past, giving top marks to Cicero. Agricola governed Roman Britain under Domitian and hence Tacitus’ biography adds significantly to knowledge about Britain in the years after its conquest under the emperor Claudius. The Histories begin with the turbulence after Nero’s death when there were four emperors in the year 68 C.E., and it breaks off two years later. The rest is lost. The Annals also survives in mutilated condition; Tacitus begins with the emperor Tiberius, but the reign of Caligula is lost. Even so, Tacitus’ account of Claudius and Nero is splendid. Tacitus knew firsthand the misery of Rome under the tyrant Domitian and when he describes these early emperors, he sees them as forerunners of Domitian. His powers of description were superb, and he is the last great Latin historian until the fourth century C.E. when

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Ammianus Marcellinus takes Tacitus as his model and produces a history which compares well with any other in Latin, though Ammianus was a Greek and presumably Latin was his second language. SOURCES

Frederick Abel, Lucan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976). Philip B. Corbett, Petronius (New York: Twayne, 1970). M. D. Grant, “Plautus and Seneca. Acting in Nero’s Rome,” Greece and Rome 46 (1999): 27–53. G. O. Hutchinson, Latin Literature from Seneca to Juvenal (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1993). Ronald Mellor, Tacitus (London, England: Routledge, 1993). Anna Lydia Motto, Seneca (New York: Twayne, 1973). Victoria Rimell, Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

G REEK L ITERATURE I MPERIAL A GE

OF THE

CHANGED CONDITIONS. When Queen Cleopatra of Egypt committed suicide in 30 B.C.E., the last independent Hellenistic monarchy disappeared and all the eastern Mediterranean was under Roman rule. In place of the Hellenistic kings there were Roman governors whose language of administration was Latin. Yet Roman rule was light. On the local level, cities governed the people. Every Roman province contained a number of cities, some of them very old, some dating back to a foundation by a Hellenistic king or even Alexander the Great himself. Alexandria in Egypt was not the only city that Alexander founded; the Middle East was dotted with cities with the name “Alexandria” which claimed Alexander as founder. The Roman governor made his headquarters in the most important city in his province, and he was chiefly interested in law and order, and seeing to it that taxes were paid; but within limits, the cities were left to govern themselves. The governors cultivated the local elites and kept the loyalty of the well-to-do property owners, who were glad of the protection of an empire that safeguarded their economic interests, but at the same time they looked back with pride at the Golden Age of Greece and its great literary achievements. The literature of Greece under the Roman Empire reflected this vision: pride in the past, and support for the Roman Empire, or at least acquiescence to it. Rome would not tolerate anything that smacked of sedition. CLASSICISM. The taste of the new imperial age ushered in by the emperor Augustus was classical. That is, 172

it looked back to the classical period of Greece (480–330 B.C.E.) for its models. The taste is reflected both in the visual arts of the Roman Empire and the literary taste. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek teacher of rhetoric who settled in Rome about 30 B.C.E., expressed the same view in the various treatises on literary style which he produced; his On Ancient Orators defends the Athenian or “Attic” style of oratory exemplified by Demosthenes and rejects the ornate “Asiatic” style which replaced the Attic style in the Hellenistic period. We find the same taste for the past in the essays of two important essayists of the period, Plutarch and Lucian. PLUTARCH. Plutarch (c. 40–c. 120 C.E.) is best known for his Parallel Lives: paired biographical essays of Greeks and Romans where Plutarch puts the life of a famous Greek side-by-side with a Roman whose career was in some ways similar, and follows each pair with a comparison. As well as his Parallel Lives we have a great collection of essays grouped under the title Moralia— “Moral Essays” where the adjective “moral” means “based on general observation of people.” Their subjects range far and wide: religion, music, philosophy, superstition (which Plutarch hated), love, and divine justice. He was typical of Greeks who were happy to cooperate with their Roman rulers, but were still proud Greeks. Lucian, (c. 117–after 180 C.E.), born in Samosata, now the village of Samsat in Syria, tried a legal career before turning to lecturing, travelling widely over the empire giving public lectures. When he was about forty, he settled in Athens and wrote satirical essays which laughed at the lives and beliefs of conventional Greeks and Romans. Then, as old age began to close in on him, he accepted a job on the staff of the governor of Egypt, thereby joining the “Establishment” that had been the butt of his humor. His favorite literary forms were dialogues and epistles; the first was borrowed from the theater and also from the dialogues of Plato, and the epistle pretended to be a letter addressed to someone: thus his essay on a charlatan, Alexander of Abonoteichos, takes the form of a letter addressed to one Celsus. Alexander invented a religion centered on a god named Glycon who was incarnate in a large, tame snake that was fitted with an artificial head with a speaking tube so that the snake could give prophecies and answer questions, rather like the Wizard of Oz. Lucian ends his epistle with the hope that it may help the general reader by shattering his illusions and confirming any sensible ideas he might have. LUCIAN. Lucian was educated under a system heavily influenced by a literary movement known as the “Second Sophistic.” It taught that an author should model his content and style on the best Greek authors of the

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past, and the most obvious way to do this was to use many quotations and allusions to these authors. It also placed great value on rhetorical exercises, and the chief “Sophists” of the movement were orators who gave declamations, often before large audiences that thronged to hear them perform in theaters or music halls (called “odeons”) or other public buildings. The movement got its designation “Second Sophistic” from its memorialist, Philostratus, who belonged to a literary family on the island of Lemnos. Philostratus gave the literary renaissance that he chronicled in his Lives of the Sophists the name “Second Sophistic.” Philostratus’ “Sophists” were polished, cultivated orators who were to be distinguished from the sophists of the classical period in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. They were men like Dio of Prusa, nicknamed Chrysostomos (“Golden-Mouthed”) who lived about 40–110 C.E., Aelius Aristides (117–189 B.C.E.), and Maximus of Tyre (c. 125–185 C.E.). Their repertory of speeches celebrated both the power and the beneficence of Rome, and at the same time the glorious past of Greece. Nowadays their sociological content is more interesting than their literary excellence. Aelius Aristides, for instance, wrote a panegyric in praise of Rome that shared its power with the ruling classes among the subject peoples that it ruled by granting them Roman citizenship as a reward for cooperation. Aristides gives us a window into the psychology of Greece under Roman rule. THE NOVEL. Writing romantic novels did not begin with the “Second Sophistic” but this was the period of its great development. In fact, Dio of Prusa included a novella in one of his orations. The other novels we have are Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton, An Ephesian Tale by Xenophon, Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius, Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, and the Aethiopica of Heliodorus. The authors are only names to us. The plots are full of voyages and adventures with pirates, shipwrecks, and premature burials, and the characters live in a world where everything is governed by chance, but apart from that, they show considerable variation. Chariton’s romance, which could date as early as the first century B.C.E. is a historical novel; Chariton places it after the Athenian expedition to Sicily (415–434 B.C.E.) which took place in the Peloponnesian War and ended in disaster at Syracuse. His heroine Callirhoe is the daughter of Hermocrates, the Syracusan leader of the resistance against Athens. Daphnis and Chloe is the story of a shepherd, Daphnis, and his love, Chloe, who, like characters in a Greek New Comedy, turn out to be children of well-to-do parents. There are religious overtones to these novels. Xenophon’s Ephesian Tale celebrates the cult of Artemis of Ephesus and Heliodorus celebrates the

cult of the Sun-God, known in Rome as Sol Invictus. In this respect they resemble Apuleius’ Latin novel known as The Golden Ass which is a better novel than any of them. It need not surprise us that some of the Christian apocryphal gospels as well as stories of Christian saints borrow features from the novel. THE ACCEPTANCE OF ROMAN RULE. The underlying theme of the historians who wrote in Greek was acceptance of Roman rule, and recognition of the benefits that it brought to its subjects. The same Dionysius of Halicarnassus who wrote On Ancient Orators also wrote a history of early Rome titled Roman Antiquities which covered the period from Rome’s beginnings to where Polybius began his history with Rome’s first war with Carthage (265–241 B.C.E.). His aim was to celebrate Rome’s empire and also to prove a special relationship between Greece and Rome by proving that Rome’s origin was Greek. Flavius Josephus (37–100 C.E.), a Jew who took part in the rebellion of Judaea against Rome that broke out in 66 C.E. but went over to the Roman side in 67 C.E., wrote the history of the revolt in his Jewish War, a work in seven books written in the tradition of the great classical historians Herodotus and Thucydides. His aims in writing, he tells the reader, were to remind the victors in the war of the valor of the men they conquered, and also to console the Jews who were vanquished and urge them to reflect on their failed revolt. Josephus wrote one other major work, his Antiquities of the Jews on Jewish history, as well as a tract titled Against Apion which is a reply to an anti-Semitic tract written by someone called Apion who is otherwise unknown. Josephus accepted Roman rule, but he remained proud of his Jewish heritage. The Egyptian Appian, who was born at the end of the first century C.E. emphasized the benefits of Roman rule in his Roman history. He was not an original researcher—he was a civil servant dabbling in history—but his organization was an effort at a new approach. He wrote a history of Rome’s conquests, people by people and region by region. He did not completely abandon the annalistic technique whereby the historian presents the pageant of the past year by year, but he made an effort to deal with Rome’s wars of conquest as separate military operations. ARRIAN. Arrian, or Flavius Arrianus, to give him his full name, was a governor of Cappadocia in Asia Minor under the emperor Hadrian (117–138 C.E.) where he defeated an invasion by an Iranian tribe known as the Alans in 134 C.E. He was a disciple of the philosopher Epictetus, and like Xenophon with Socrates, he preserved his teachings. His major work that survives is his Anabasis which borrows its title from Xenophon’s Anaba-

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sis (“The March Up Country”), but Arrian’s “March” is the story of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire (334–323 B.C.E.). He based his history on the memoir written by Ptolemy, Alexander’s general who became king of Egypt and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty that ended with the suicide of Cleopatra in 30 B.C.E., supplementing Ptolemy when necessary with the memoir of Aristobulus who had been a Greek technician with Alexander’s army. Arrian’s account is a sober narrative, and a valuable source for the military campaign of Alexander, for the historians contemporary with him have survived only in fragments. CASSIUS DIO. Cassius Dio deserves special notice, for he is an important source for Roman history. He was born in Iznik in modern Turkey, ancient Nicaea, the son of a consul, in 163 or 164 C.E., and he himself would become a consul and a provincial governor under the emperor Septimius Severus (193–211 C.E.). He started to write in the reign of Caracalla (211–217 C.E.), one of the most odious emperors of Rome. His history, starting with Rome’s beginning and continuing to 229 B.C.E. was a tremendous work that took ten years to prepare and twelve to write. Part of it has survived, and for the missing portions, we have digests written by later writers in the Byzantine period. For the reign of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), the account of Cassius Dio is the fullest that we have. THE CHRISTIAN WRITERS. Although still in its infancy in the first century C.E., Christianity began to produce its own literature almost as soon as its founder, Jesus, was crucified in 33 C.E. The earliest writings were letters exchanged between the disciples of Jesus and converts that were later compiled as the New Testament of the Bible. As the persecution of the Christian church intensified, other writings commemorated martyrdoms. One of the earliest examples is a group of seven letters composed by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch who, in his old age, was taken to Rome to be put to death sometime in the reign of the emperor Trajan (98–117 C.E.). Guarded by ten Roman soldiers, whom he describes in one letter as “ten leopards,” he travelled across modern Turkey to Smyrna (modern Izmir), where he composed letters to the Christian communities nearby, and from there he proceeded to the Hellespont where he embarked on a ship for Rome. The custodian of Ignatius’ letters was the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, who was burned to death at the age of 86 in the arena at Smyrna in 156 C.E.; the story of his martyrdom survives in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions. Apologies, that is, defenses of the Christian faith appear in the second century C.E.; one of the first, notable for its conciliatory tone, was by Justin 174

the Martyr, who was born in Shechem (modern Nablus in Israel). His apologies are lucid explanations of Christianity for the non-Christian; his First Apology, written about 150 C.E. is addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius, and his Dialogue with Trypho reports a discussion with a Jewish rabbi which ends on a note of mutual tolerance and respect. By the third century C.E. Christian theology was borrowing from the Greek philosophers. The most brilliant theologian of the period was Origen (185–254 C.E.), who learned philosophy in Alexandria where a fellow pupil was Plotinus, the founder of NeoPlatonism, the mystical interpretation of Plato which was to be the last great school of pagan philosophy. After teaching for a period in Alexandria, Origen moved to Caesarea in Palestine where he produced, among other works, the first critical edition of the Old Testament. During the brief but violent persecution of the Christians under the emperor Decius (249–251 C.E.), Origen was tortured, and never recovered from the ordeal. Later Christian churchmen decided that Origen had married Greek philosophy a little too closely with Christianity, and judged him heretical. The same fate befell the greatest of the Latin theologians, Tertullian, who was born in Carthage in North Africa about 155 C.E., converted to Christianity about age forty, and then abandoned Catholicism for the heresy of Montanism, which was founded by a Christian in Phrygia (in western Turkey) who claimed to have a new revelation vouchsafed him by the Holy Spirit. Tertullian wrote over thirty treatises on all aspects of life, from women’s fashions to sports in the arena. But the great age of Latin theology came in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., after the empire became Christian, with men such as St. Augustine and St. Jerome. SOURCES

G. Bowersock, ed., Approaches to the Second Sophistic (Philadelphia, Pa.: American Philological Association, 1974). H. Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1966). Thomas Haegg, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1983). C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986). —, Plutarch and Rome (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1971). George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972). B. E. Perry, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). D. A. Russell, Plutarch (London, England: Duckworth, 1973).

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SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE in Literature A ESCHYLUS c. 525 B.C.E.–c. 456 B.C.E. Poet EARLY YEARS. The tragic poet Aeschylus was born in Eleusis—now a suburb of Athens—in 525 or 524 B.C.E. and died at Gela in Sicily 68 years later. The dates of his life place him squarely in the formative period of the golden age of Greek classical culture. When he was born, Athens was ruled by a tyrant named Hippias, but following Hippias’ exile in 510 B.C.E., Athens opted for a constitutional government in which political power was vested in a popular assembly where all citizens could vote. Aeschylus’ formative period therefore coincided with Athens’ development as a democracy. Aeschylus presented his first tragedies in the seventieth Olympiad— that is, the period between the seventieth and seventy-first Olympic Games, which puts the date between 499 and 496 B.C.E. In 490 B.C.E. Aeschylus fought at Marathon where the Athenians defeated a Persian expeditionary force that landed there, and he lost a brother in the battle. Ten years later, Aeschylus was in the thick of the naval battle off the island of Salamis where the allied Greeks defeated the Persian fleet. These experiences with the Persians in battle inspired his production of The Persians in 472 B.C.E. as the second of a trilogy of tragedies; the first was titled Phineus and the third Glaucus Potnieus. There was no apparent connection between the three dramas, and the satyr play which was the last play in Aeschylus’ production—Prometheus the Firebearer—must have been a burlesque of the myth that told how Prometheus gave fire to mankind. The Persians differed from the other plays by Aeschylus produced on the same day because its subject was taken from contemporary history, and it was a patriotic tribute to the courage of Athens. AESCHYLUS AND SICILY. A few years after Salamis, Aeschylus left Athens for Sicily, where the tyrant of Syracuse, Hiero, had founded a new city, Aetna, and wanted Aeschylus to celebrate the foundation with a drama. Aeschylus’ play, The Women of Aetna, does not seem to have been a regular tragedy so much as a pageant honoring the new city; a couple surviving scraps of papyrus provide an inkling of what it was like. Aeschylus was

back in Athens again in 468 B.C.E. when he took part in the tragic contest and was defeated by a new tragic poet, Sophocles, who made his debut this year. The following year Aeschylus won with a trilogy on the tragic figure of Oedipus, who was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. One of these tragedies survives: the Seven Against Thebes, which chronicles the conflict between Oedipus’ sons. In 458 B.C.E. he produced his masterpiece, the Oresteia, the only complete trilogy to survive, consisting of three tragedies: the Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers, and the Furies. Shortly afterwards, he left Athens again for Sicily for reasons unknown. He may have been out of sympathy with some of the political developments in Athens. In any case, he died at Gela in Sicily around 456 B.C.E. According to legend, Aeschylus died when an eagle flying overhead mistook his bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on him to break the shell. The story is not quite credible but it supplies a piquant ending for a great tragedian. The epitaph on his monument at Gela which, according to tradition, he wrote himself, mentioned with pride that he fought in the battle of Marathon against the Persians, but omits any reference to his success as tragic poet. SOURCES

D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus: The Earlier Plays and Related Studies (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1996). Michael Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). John Herington, Aeschylus (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986). Shirley Darcus Sullivan, Aeschylus’ Use of Psychological Terminology: Traditional and New (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997).

CATO 234 B.C.E.–149 B.C.E. Historian POLITICS. Cato was the author of the first surviving Latin prose work, and the first Roman historian to write a history of Rome in Latin. He was born at Tusculum near modern Frascati in the hills around Rome in 234 B.C.E., and spent his early years on a small farm in the country where he worked in the fields alongside the farm laborers. At seventeen, he joined the Roman army and served in the long war against the Carthaginian Hannibal which Rome did not win until 202 B.C.E. He settled in Rome about 208 B.C.E. and began his political career four years later, reaching the coveted post of consul in 195

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B.C.E.

He remained in many ways a small-town Italian, loyal to his native customs and shocked at the “philhellenism”—passion and imitation of everything Greek— that infected the circle centered around Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal, and his brother Lucius Scipio. The Scipionic circle admired Greek culture and wanted to introduce it into Rome. In Cato’s eyes, the Greek way of life meant abandoning the frugality, selfdiscipline, and honesty that made up the Roman ideal. In 187 B.C.E. Cato managed to destroy Scipio Africanus’ political career and won election as censor in 184 B.C.E. He continued to dominate Roman politics until his death three years before the final destruction of Carthage, which Cato advocated strenuously in his last years. CATO’S WRITINGS. What survives of Cato’s writing is an essay On Agriculture which sets forth precepts for good farming. Cato was a man who feared the gods, but he was hard-fisted and unsentimental. For instance, he advised getting rid of old slaves who could no longer do their share of work. This is the oldest surviving Latin prose. Cato also wrote a history of Rome, the Origines, which he began writing about 172 B.C.E. It dealt not only with the early history of Rome but also with the origins of neighboring Italian towns—hence its title “Origins.” Earlier Romans wrote histories of Rome, beginning with Fabius Pictor who wrote his history in Greek for Greek readers, but Cato was the first to write in Latin. He was also famous in his day as an orator. There is some irony to the fact that it was Cato who brought the epic poet Ennius to Rome where he became a prime mover in introducing Greek culture, and in fact, Cato in his old age, did start to study Greek himself. SOURCES

A. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1978). Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, England: Duckworth, 1985).

T HUCYDIDES c. 460 B.C.E.–c. 400 B.C.E. Historian ONE OF GREECE’S GREATEST HISTORIANS. Thucydides, who wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War between the two power blocs led by Athens and by Sparta (431–404 B.C.E.), is considered by most scholars to be the greatest historian that Greece produced, though some would give first place to his earlier contemporary, Herodotus. Yet we are not well-infomed about his life. 176

What we know about him comes from the sparse autobiographical scraps he includes in his History and a brief, unreliable Life written by someone called Marcellinus. From these sources we can infer a birthdate and date of his death, which was probably sudden and unexpected, for his History breaks off in mid-sentence in the winter of 411 B.C.E. He belonged to the upper crust in Athens, and his family had an interest in a mine in Thrace which brought him a regular income. When plague smote Athens in 430 B.C.E. he took ill, but recovered and used the experience to write a clinical description of the disease. In 424 B.C.E., he was elected one of the ten generals whom the Athenians chose each year, and thanks in part to his failure of leadership, the strategic city of Amphipolis in northern Greece fell to Sparta. He was exiled from Athens for his nonsuccess, and remained in exile until the war between Athens and Sparta ended. Though his exile removed him from Athens, it gave him a better opportunity to collect information from the rest of Greece. His standards for source evaluation were high—if he did not witness an event himself, he sought reliable eyewitnesses. He lived to see the end of the war, but he left his work unfinished, and parts of it unrevised. The circumstances of his death are unknown. He was, however, buried in the family vault of the Athenian statesman Cimon who was Pericles’ conservative rival at the start of Pericles’ career. Despite his familial association with the anti-Periclean camp, he became a supporter of Pericles in his mature years because he admired his ability to hold the radical elements of the Athenian democracy in check. WROTE ON THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. Thucydides states in the introduction to his History that he realized at the start of the Peloponnesian War that it would be the greatest war that Greece had ever known, surpassing the Trojan War and the war against Persia. Both the adversaries were at the height of their power, and before the war ended, it involved both Sicily and Persia. Yet the war was to prove that unexpected events could upset the best plans. The plague that smote Athens in 430 B.C.E. sapped her strength. The great Athenian leader, Pericles, took ill, and though he survived the immediate onset of the plague, he died of its aftereffects in 429 B.C.E. Thucydides recognized his death as a turning point in Athens’ fortunes, for none of the politicians who followed him enjoyed the broad measure of support that he did. In fact, there is a subtle anti-democratic bias in Thucydides’ History; he clearly doubted the ability of a government to conduct war wisely when an assembly of all the citizens made the decisions, as was the case in Athens. Yet he admired the indomitable spirit of Athens.

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After the Athenians suffered a disastrous loss of their entire expeditionary force in Sicily in 413 B.C.E. in their campaign to conquer Syracuse (modern Siracosa), they still fought on, and might still have won if Persia had not supplied Sparta with the funds to build a fleet. Thucydides clearly intended to finish the story, but his History ends abruptly in 411 B.C.E. Various reasons have been suggested to explain why the History is incomplete, but the most likely one is that he died suddenly. Someone took the unfinished work and published it after Thucydides’ death. It is a profound study of war and the effect of the stress of war upon civil society. There are also overtones of tragedy to it. Like a protagonist (chief player) in a Greek tragedy, the Athenian democracy entered the war, overconfident, and was brought low by a number of ill-considered moves. Yet the workings of fate also lurked behind the defeat of Athens. Not even the best-laid plans could have foreseen the plague and the death of Pericles. SOURCES

W. R. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). Simon Hornblower, Thucydides (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). Clifford Orwin, The Humanity of Thucydides (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). Dennis Proctor, The Experience of Thucydides (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1980). A. G. Woodhead, Thucydides and the Nature of Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).

V ERGIL 70 B.C.E.–19 B.C.E. Poet THE MAKING OF THE POET. Vergil was born in 70 at Andes, probably modern Pietole, in the valley of the River Po in northern Italy. Vergil was born a provincial, for at the time of his birth, the Po Valley was still the province of Cisalpine Gaul (that is, Gaul south of the Alps) which included the whole region as far south as the Rubicon River. Roman citizenship was extended to Vergil’s native region only in 49 B.C.E. Seven years later, Cisalpine Gaul was incorporated into Italy. His father was a small landowner who made money by beekeeping, and was able to send his son to Cremona, then to Milan and finally Rome to learn rhetoric and train as a lawyer, but he appeared only once in court and decided that it was not for him. Instead he went to Naples B.C.E.

and joined a school of philosophy run by the Epicurean, Siro. He may already have been writing poetry, for there is a group of poems—fourteen of them short and five longer works—attributed to him from this time period, but modern students of Vergil doubt that he was the author. THE ECLOGUES AND THE GEORGICS. In 42 B.C.E., disaster struck Vergil’s family. Troops were demobilized after Caesar’s assassins were defeated at the Battle of Philippi and in order to find land for settling them, farms in the Po Valley were confiscated, among them the landholdings of Vergil’s family. They may have been restored, however, since the first of Vergil’s pastoral poems known as the Eclogues, a conversation between the shepherds Meliboeus and Tityrus—speaking, perhaps for Vergil himself—refers to a restoration. Vergil’s didactic poem on the art of husbandry, the Georgics—the title comes from the Greek word for farming—was written between 36 and 29 B.C.E. in honor of Vergil’s patron and friend, Maecenas, but it loses no opportunity to praise the emperor Augustus. Vergil, who had been born a provincial, felt no nostalgia for the old Roman republic which had misgoverned the Roman provinces and he appreciated the achievement of Augustus who sought to establish law, order, and good government in Italy and the empire. THE AENEID. Augustus wanted an epic in praise of himself, and Vergil undertook the task. He chose the Trojan hero Aeneas as his subject, for the Julian family to which Augustus belonged claimed Aeneas as its forebear. Vergil spent the last ten years of his life writing the Aeneid. In 19 B.C.E. he set out for Greece, intending to spend three years traveling in Greece and Asia and completing the Aeneid, and to immerse himself in philosophy for the remainder of his life. But in Athens he met the emperor Augustus and was persuaded to return to Italy with him. He fell ill on the journey and was brought back to Italy only to die in Brundisium (modern Brundisi), the favorite harbor for ships crossing the Adriatic Sea from Greece. Vergil had asked his literary executors Varius and Tucca to burn his unfinished Aeneid but Augustus ordered them to ignore this instruction and instead to publish the poem in its unfinished state. In places, the poem shows some lack of finish, but time has vindicated Augustus’ command. The Aeneid became the national epic of the Roman Empire. The character of Aeneas, a Trojan warrior who fought against the Greeks in the legendary Trojan War, escapes from Troy after it is sacked; he endures many hardships in a journey which eventually takes him to pre-Roman Italy, where he lays the foundation for the future greatness of Rome. The

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fact that Vergil highlights Aeneas’ “foreignness” in the work is curious; he began writing the Aeneid only a year after the Battle of Actium, portrayed in Augustus’ propaganda as a victory of Italian values over the effete east, represented by Cleopatra. Yet Aeneas is an Asian himself, and the epic ends with his pitiless slaying of Turnus, the leader of the Italian resistance to his invasion. Yet the final settlement, which is approved by Jupiter, ordains that the Asian Trojans will be assimilated. They will give up their language and adopt Latin, and even the gods of Rome will bear Jupiter’s mark of approval. They will not be Trojan gods. Aeneas and his Trojan followers do not found a new Troy in Italy. Instead they set an example of assimilation to the idea of Rome for the various nationalities that will later make up the Roman citizen body. SOURCES

John D. Bernard, ed., Vergil at 2000; Commemorative Essays on the Poet and His Influence (New York: AMS Press, 1986). W. A. Camps, An Introduction to Vergil’s “Aeneid” (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1969). K. W. Gransden, Vergil’s Iliad; An Essay on Epic Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). M. C. J. Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965). —, Vergil’s Pastoral Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES in Literature Aeschylus, Oresteia (525–456 B.C.E.)—The Oresteia is made up of three tragic plays: the Agamemnon, the Choephoroe and the Eumenides. It is the only complete trilogy of Greek tragedies to survive from antiquity, and its theme is vengeance and counter-vengeance concerning a blood feud within the family of Agamemnon. Alcaeus of Lesbos (c. 620–after 580 B.C.E.)—Alcaeus was a lyric poet who wrote songs generally for solo performance: drinking-songs, hymns to the gods, love lyrics, and poems on contemporary politics. Only fragments of his works survive. Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica (c. 260–247 B.C.E.)— This work is an epic poem on the story of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece, written in a period when long epics were out of style. 178

Aristophanes, The Clouds (423 B.C.E.)—Written in the “Old Comedy” style of playwriting, The Clouds avoids the political themes of other Athenian plays and instead satirizes Socrates and the education that he offered the Athenian youth. Cornelius Tacitus, Histories (after 96 C.E., Annals (after 115 C.E.)—The Histories and the Annals together, when complete, covered the history of the first century C.E. from the perspective of a Roman who thought that liberty had perished along with the republic which Julius Caesar overthrew. Demosthenes, On the Crown (330 B.C.E.)—This speech was delivered in a court of law as Demosthenes’ defense of his anti-Macedonian political policies of the previous 25 years. Written down and published, it is considered to be the masterpiece of the greatest Athenian orator of the fourth century B.C.E. Euripides, Medea (431 B.C.E.)—This tragic play is famous for its psychological insight in its portrayal of a woman who has suffered wrong. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, The Histories (c. 425 B.C.E.)— This work of history, covering the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece in 480–479 B.C.E., earned Herodotus the title “Father of History.” Hesiod, Works and Days (c. 700 B.C.E.)—Hesiod’s Works and Days gives insight into the life of a small farmer in early Greece. Homer, the Iliad (c. 700 B.C.E.)—This epic centering on an incident in the Trojan War represents the culmination of the epic oral tradition in Greece. Also attributed to Homer was the Odyssey, the tale of how the hero Odysseus returned home after the Trojan War. Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon (c. 60–65 B.C.E.)—An elegant voluptuary at the emperor Nero’s court, Petronius wrote a long novel which is unique in Latin literature—nothing like it exists in Greek literature—which recounts the adventures of three young rascals in southern Italy. Fragments survive, including a long description of a feast given by a rich freedman, Trimalchio. Pindar, Epinician Odes (“Victory Odes”) (518–438 B.C.E.)— These lyric poems, written to commemorate athletic victories at the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean or Isthmian Games, are the only ones to have survived complete from the many Pindar wrote. Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneid (30–19 B.C.E.)—Generally considered Rome’s greatest poet, Vergil’s masterpiece is the Aeneid, which tells the story of how the Trojan

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hero Aeneas escaped from Troy, landed in Italy, and founded the royal line that would eventually produce Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Quintus Ennius, The Annals (c. 170 B.C.E.)—Playwright, satirist and epic poet, Ennius introduced the Greek meter used by Homer, the dactylic hexameter into Latin in his epic, Annals which told the history of Rome in verse up to 171 B.C.E., the year before his death. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Epodes (41–31 B.C.E.)— Sappho was the head of a thiasos (sisterhood) which honored Aphrodite and the nine Muses. One complete poem and fragments of others now survive of the seven books of her collected poems. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (c. 429–425 B.C.E.)—This tragic play was considered by Aristotle to be a model Greek tragedy.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (c. 400 B.C.E.)—This clinical account of the war between the Athenian Empire and the Spartan coalition (431–404 B.C.E.) broke off in mid-sentence in the year 411, probably interrupted by Thucydides’ death. Titus Livius, History of Rome from its Foundation (c. 28 B.C.E.–17 C.E.)—Livy’s History, composed in 142 books, is a monumental work covering the rise of Rome from its foundation to 9 B.C.E. when the emperor Augustus’ stepson, Drusus, died. Only thirty-five books have survived. Titus Lucretius Carus, The Nature of Things (65–55 B.C.E.)—This unfinished epic poem expounded the theory that the universe is made up of atoms and void, and therefore men and women do not need to fear death, for it is only a dissolution of the atoms that make up the human body and soul.

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chapter five

MUSIC Nancy Sultan

I M P O R T A N T E V E N T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 O V E R V I E W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 TOPICS Musical Instruments . . . . Music in Greek Life . . . . Music Education. . . . . . . Music in Roman Life . . . Women in Ancient Music Music Theory. . . . . . . . .

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189 198 210 212 216 219

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE Aristoxenus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pindar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Claudius Ptolemy . . . . . . . . . . Pythagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sappho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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228 229 230 230 231

D O C U M E N T A R Y S O U R C E S . . . . . . . . . 231 SIDEBARS AND PRIMARY DOCUMENTS Primary sources are listed in italics

A Pipers’ Strike in Ancient Rome (Livy describes the inventive solution to a tibicine pipers’ strike) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Odysseus Praises Song (in The Odyssey, Odysseus praises the songs of Demodokos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

The Invention of the Lyre (Hermes creates the lyre from a tortoise shell) . . . . . . . . . Saved for the Sake of Euripides’ Hymns (Plutarch recalls how Athenian prisoners were saved by Euripides’ songs) . . . . . . . Orestes (Euripides’ text is one of the earliest examples of ancient Greek music) . . . . . . Plato on Musical Innovation (Plato describes the music that is beneficial to moral education) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Grave Stele of Seikilos (tombstone’s text includes patterns of composition described by later theorists) . . . . . . . . . . Domitian and the Festival for Capitoline Jupiter (Suetonius discusses a festival of music founded by Domitian) . . . . . . . . . Just One of the Girls (Plutarch describes Clodius’ plan to dress like a female lyre player) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helen’s Ritual Lament (Euripides portrays the musical power of the ritual lament) . . Criticizing the Harmonikoi (Aristoxenus argues that music must be judged empirically, by the senses) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aristotle on Music (Aristotle discusses the influence of music on the soul) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alypian Notation Tables (examples of Greek musical notation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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c. 676 B.C.E. Music schools are established in Sparta –c. 673 B.C.E. by Terpander of Lesbos and Thaletas of Gortyn.

IMPORTANT EVENTS in Music c. 2800 B.C.E. During the Aegean Bronze Age, musi–c. 1100 B.C.E. cians and musical instruments are depicted in frescoes, on vases and seal stones, and in sculpture. Fragments of lyres, pipes, percussion instruments, and triton horns survive from this period. c. 2200 B.C.E. Figurines from the Cycladic Islands depict Bronze-Age Aegean musicians holding the frame harp, the aulos (reed pipe), and the syrinx (pan-pipe). c. 1490 B.C.E. A Bronze-Age painted sarcophagus from Ayia Triada, Crete, illustrates musicians playing the phorminx (lyre) and aulos during a ritual sacrifice. c. 1100 B.C.E. A miniature bronze votive kithara (lyre) from the Sanctuary of Apollo at Amyklai (near Sparta) is the earliest representation of the type that would become popular in the classical period (480–323 B.C.E.). c. 800 B.C.E. During the Early Archaic Period, the –c. 700 B.C.E. Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns, and the poet Hesiod describe musicians, instruments, and musical contexts. Phemios and Demodokos, two of Homer’s aoidoi (professional bards), perform at the palaces of Odysseus and the Phaiakians in the Odyssey. c. 750 B.C.E. Greeks colonize southern Italy and east–c. 550 B.C.E. ern Sicily; musicians, poets, and composers bring Greek musical culture to Syracuse and other cities in Magna Graecia. 182

The virtuoso composer and kitharode Terpander wins the musical competition at the first Karneia festival of Apollo and four successive victories at the Pythian Games. c. 654 B.C.E. Lyric poet Alcman lives in Sparta and –c. 611 B.C.E. composes his Partheneia (“Maiden’s Dance”). The island of Lesbos becomes a second music center. c. 628 B.C.E. Arion of Lesbos teaches the Corinthian –c. 625 B.C.E. choirs to perform the dithyramb (male choral dance), which he invented. The tragic chorus is said to have developed from his type of dithyramb. c. 612 B.C.E. The most famous female poet, Sappho, is born on Lesbos. At her hometown of Mytilene she composes lyrical songs, usually monodies and choral dances, and is the leader of a circle of girls and young women; the barbitos (a lowpitched lyre) and other instruments accompany the music. c. 632 B.C.E. The composer Stesichorus (born Teisias) –c. 556 B.C.E. sets up the first tragic chorus and is known for his use of the Harmateios nomos (“Chariot melody”) and the Nomos of Athena in the Phrygian mode, which tells the story of the birth of Athena in full armor from the head of Zeus. c. 625 B.C.E. The dithyramb (male choral dance) is –c. 585 B.C.E. invented by kitharode Arion of Lesbos during the time of the tyrant Periander at Corinth. c. 600 B.C.E. Tyrants reform festivals, and attract –c. 500 B.C.E. talented musicians to their cities: at Corinth, Periander supports Arion, who creates the dithyramb; at Sicyon, Cleisthenes ends performances of rhapsodes and paves the way for classical tragedy; and Pisistratus institutes the festival of the City Dionysia in Athens,

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a central feature of which are dithyrambic, tragic, and comic contests. Thespis produces the first tragedy in Athens by adding a speaker to interact with the chorus. Under Hipparchus, Pisistratus’ son, the poets Anacreon, Lasus of Hermione, and Simonides flourish. Hipparchus develops the rhapsodes’ competition at the Great Panathenaea into an organized serial performance of the entire Iliad and Odyssey. 586 B.C.E. New contests for aulodes and auletes are added at the Pythian Games. The aulode Echembrotus of Arcadia wins a bronze tripod cauldron. The aulete (piper) Sakadas of Argos wins a prize at the music contest at the Pythian Games. He will win prizes at the next two Games, and become known for his Pythikos nomos (“Pythian Composition”) in which he interprets the defeat of the serpent Pytho by Apollo at Delphi. Argos becomes a center of musical excellence. 574 B.C.E. Pythocritus of Sicyon wins six Pythian –554 B.C.E. victories on the aulos. c. 560 B.C.E. The philosopher, mathematician, and scientist Pythagoras is born. He later founds a school at Croton where he and his followers study acoustical and musical phenomena. 566 B.C.E. The Panathenaea festival at Athens is reorganized on a grander scale and includes music competitions for rhapsodes, kitharodes, aulodes, and auletes. 558 B.C.E. Unaccompanied kithara-playing is added to the Pythian music competition. Agelaus of Tegea is the first victor. c. 520 B.C.E. The east-Greek poet Anacreon’s pres–c. 460 B.C.E. ence in Athens prompts a series of vasepaintings that depict Ionian influence

in Athenian music. In one image a singer holds a barbitos (an Ionian-style lyre) with Anacreon’s name on it. 518 B.C.E. The poet Pindar, the most celebrated of all lyric poets of ancient Greece, is born near Thebes in Boeotia (d. 438). He is most famous for his epinikian odes composed for victors at the four athletic games: Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian, and Olympic. c. 508 B.C.E. Lasus introduces the dithyrambic competition in Athens. c. 500 B.C.E. Democratic Athens is the center of all –c. 400 B.C.E. intellectual and cultural activity in Greece. In this city, tragedians Aeschylus, Phrynichus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Agathon produce their dramas in the theater of Dionysus during the City Dionysia; comic playwright Aristophanes lampoons Athenian politics and culture; and poets Lasus, Simonides, Bacchylides, Pindar, Melanippides, Timotheus, Philoxenus, and Cinesias compose dithyrambs for Athenian choruses and so-called “New Music.” 478 B.C.E. Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, –467 B.C.E. makes his city a haven for artists, poets, and musicians from all over Greece. His hospitality toward Pindar is so appreciated that the poet composes a eulogy for him. c. 475 B.C.E. The first concert hall in the Western world—the Odeion—is commissioned by the Athenian statesman Themistocles for musical contests held during the Great Panathenaea. It stands in the Athenian marketplace. 474 B.C.E. Hieron defeats the Etruscans at Cumae and begins his rule at Syracuse, during which time he entertains Aeschylus, Pindar, and other Greek artists and musicians. c. 470 B.C.E. The Etruscans build the so-called “Tomb of the Leopards” and “Tomb of the Triclinium” in Tarquinia, northern Italy, and paint the walls with a

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funerary banquet scene featuring men and women dancing to the music of the aulos (reed pipe) and a six-stringed chelys (tortoise-shell) lyre. c. 450 B.C.E. Several different forms of harp begin to appear in Athenian vase-paintings, although it was a familiar instrument to Anacreon before this time. c. 435 B.C.E. The noted dithyrambist Philoxenus of Cythera is born. His most famous work will be the Cyclops (also called Polyphemus and Galatea). 443 B.C.E. Damon, one of the greatest intellects of –c. 430 B.C.E. his time, publishes an essay in which he argues that musical modes and rhythms are intimately connected with ethical qualities, and the state should concern itself with the regulation of music and music education. His ideas influence Plato’s and Aristotle’s attitudes regarding the ethos of music in their discussion of music education. c. 427 B.C.E. The philosopher Plato is born. He will discuss the character and role of music in many of his works, most notably in the Timaeus, Republic, and Laws. c. 420 B.C.E. The musician Timotheus of Miletus beats his teacher, the eminent Phrynis, in a music competition. Several hundred lines of his kitharodic composition Persians survive, along with an epilogue containing prayers to Apollo and a manifesto praising his own talent and originality. 416 B.C.E. The tragedian and composer Agathon wins first place in the dramatic contest at the Lenaea in Athens. He is later satirized by Aristophanes in his Thesmophoriazousae but treated with much affection in Plato’s Symposium. 410 B.C.E. The witty kitharist Stratonicus of Athens –360 B.C.E. is active, along with a host of other virtuoso performers whose showmanship captivates audiences, including Chrysogonus, hired to pipe the rowing stroke for the naval general Alcibiades’ crew; 184

the aulete Pronomus of Thebes, shown on a vase (in the Museo Nazionale in Naples) playing before a crowd of actors, wearing an ornate robe and a garland on his head; and Antigeneidas, another aulete from Thebes, described by the writer Apuleius as a “honey-sweet melodizer of every word and a practiced player of every mode” (Flor. 4). 402 B.C.E. Kitharodes, the most popular with the crowds, win the largest prizes at major competitions; the list of prizes includes: a gold crown weighing 85 drachmas, a crown worth 1,000 silver drachmas, and 500 drachmas in cash; other kitharode prizes are worth 700, 600, 400, and 300 drachmas, respectively. There are two prizes for aulodes (300 and 100 drachmas) and three for kitharists. c. 400 B.C.E. Alexander the Great’s five-day wedding –c. 300 B.C.E. celebration in Susa features entertainment by a rhapsode, three psilokitharists, two kitharodes, two aulodes, five auletes (who played the Terpandrean Pythikos nomos) and then accompanied choruses, three tragic and three comic actors, and a harpist. 392 B.C.E. Aristophanes produces his last surviv–388 B.C.E. ing comedies Ecclesiazusae (Women in the Assembly) and Plutus (Wealth), in which the part of the chorus has been much reduced and is no longer written by the playwright; instead of choral lyrics, the word “KHOROU” (“interlude by chorus”) appears. Solo song and piping continue as central musical elements in the play. 343 B.C.E. Aristotle discusses the character and purpose of music in his Politics and Problems. The music theorist Aristoxenus becomes one of his prize pupils. c. 333 B.C.E. Aristoxenus is a pupil of Aristotle in Athens and writes many books and essays, the most influential of which are the Harmonika stoikheia (Harmonic Elements) and Rhythmika stoikheia (Rhythmic Elements).

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319 B.C.E. The boy’s chorus of the Cecropid tribe wins the dithyramb contest at the Great Dionysia in Athens with a rendition of Timotheus’ composition Elpenor. 316 B.C.E. Dyskolos (Grouch), the one complete surviving play of comic writer Menander, is produced; it features four choral interludes indicated by the word “KHOROU” between the five acts. At line 879 a stage direction “the aulosplayer plays” and a change in rhythm indicates additional musical content. 311 B.C.E. Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus deprives the Etruscan artists’ guild (collegium) the right to dine at the public expense in the Temple of Jupiter after performing at the religious festivals; they protest by marching out of Rome to Tibur (eighteen miles away), and eventually win back their free dinners. c. 300 B.C.E. New dramatic and musical competi–c. 200 B.C.E. tions are added to the Nemean and Isthmian Games. Kitharode Nicocles of Tarentum records his victories at the Pythian and Isthmian Games, Great Panathenaea, the Lenaea (in a dithyramb), the Hecatomboia, the Helieia, and royal festivals in Macedonia and Alexandria. Artists come together in several cities in Greece, Alexandria, and Sicily to form professional organizations known as technitai Dionysou (Artists of Dionysus), which formed guilds (koina, or later synodoi). They provide musicians, composers, conductors, and teachers for religious festivals and secular events. 290 B.C.E. The technitai (“artists guild”) forms in –280 Athens to produce shows in various cities. The rival Isthmian-Nemean guild is established in the north-east Peloponnese; both establish relations with Delphi. c. 270 B.C.E. Ktesibios of Alexandria invents the pneumatic pump and the water-organ (Greek hydraulis).

235 B.C.E. A major artists’ guild appears in Teos, which serves Ionia and the Hellespont. 211 B.C.E. The Isthmian-Nemean guild is invited to participate in several festivals, including the festival of the Muses at Thespiae, at Thebes, on the island of Delos, and around the Peloponnese. 205 B.C.E. Kitharode Pylades of Megalopolis performs Timotheus’ Persians at the Nemean Games. c. 200 B.C.E. New music is performed alongside re–c. 100 B.C.E. vivals of old standards and selections from fifth-century tragic poets, especially Euripides. c. 194 B.C.E. Satyrus of Samos, a famous aulete, wins the prize, and gives an encore performance selected from Euripides’ tragedy Bacchae. 191 B.C.E. Plautus produces his comedy Pseudolus (The Cheat), which, like many of his other plays, integrates polymetric cantica (solo songs) accompanied by different types of tibiae (reed pipe) and instrumental pipe music into the plot, along with musical interludes between scenes. 170 B.C.E. Menecles, an envoy from Teos, per–150 B.C.E. forms works of Timotheus and Polyidus at Knossos and Priansos, Crete. 163 B.C.E. Terence produces his comedy Heautontimoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor), the structure of which depends completely on musical accompaniment by a tibicen (reed player). 127 B.C.E. Members of the Athenian guild partic–97 B.C.E. ipate in the Pythaid religious pilgrimage from Athens to Delphi. The group consists of epic and dramatic poets, rhapsodes, actors, instrumentalists, singers, and, in 127, a large choir to sing the paean to Apollo; the notated music of the paeans composed for this occasion by kitharist Limenius and singer Athenaeus is inscribed on the wall of the Treasury of the Athenians.

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118 B.C.E. The Delphians honor two musicians from Arcadia who trained boys’ choruses to perform bits from the “old poets.” 90 B.C.E. A Cretan organist named Antipatros awes his audience at Delphi; he is awarded prizes at the Pythian Games and earns civic honors for himself and his descendants. c. 27 B.C.E. The Roman architect Vitruvius dies. In Book Five of his work De architectura he discusses acoustics in relation to the design of the theater auditorium, and translates the works of Greek music theorist Aristoxenus into Latin, explaining the system of harmonia (tetrachord system) to his Roman readers. 26 B.C.E. Vergil composes his epic for Augustus, –19 B.C.E. the Aeneid, in which he describes a type of Phrygian aulos and other musical instruments and contexts. 22 B.C.E. Pilas of Cilicia introduces pantomime in Rome, which consists of re-creations in performance by solo dancers of scenes from myth and history; musical accompaniment is provided by a chorus and orchestra of pipes, lyres, and percussion instruments. 17 B.C.E. The Latin poet Horace’s Carmen Saeculare is performed by a choir of 27 girls and 27 boys; commissioned by the emperor Augustus for Rome’s Centennial Games, it is the only known poem of Horace’s to have been set to music. 54 C.E. Nero, a seventeen-year old art enthusiast who sings, acts, and plays the kithara and the organ, becomes emperor of Rome. 79 C.E. Vesuvius erupts and buries Pompeii and Herculaneum, preserving a number of frescoes with musical scenes. c. 100 C.E. The Roman orator Quintilian dies. In his work Institutio oratoria, he discusses

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music as part of his instructions on how to properly train an orator. 117 C.E. Hadrian becomes emperor of Rome after the death of Trajan. A very cultured man who was heavily influenced by Greek ideals, he employed a Cretan kitharode named Mesomedes to compose hymns; several fragments with musical notation survive in medieval manuscripts. c. 127 C.E. Astronomer and mathematician Claudius –148 C.E. Ptolemy is writing in Alexandria. Among his many books is the Harmonika, a systematic treatment of the mathematical theory of harmony. c. 200 C.E. Gladiators fight to the accompaniment –c. 300 C.E. of an organist, trumpeters, and hornblowers. The organ also is used in religious festivals. c. 250 C.E. Two important music theorists are –c. 350 C.E. publishing their works: Aristides Quintilianus, De musica (Greek title peri mousikes); and Gaudentius, Harmonica introductio (Greek Harmonike eisagoge). c. 300 C.E. Alypius, a younger contemporary of Aristides Quintilianus, compiles his Introductio musica, which contains the most complete record of the notational symbols. 384 C.E. The emperor Carinus organizes a concert in Rome with a hundred trumpet players, a hundred horn players, and two hundred tibicens (reed-pipe players). 387 C.E. Augustine, Latin philosopher and dis–389 C.E. tinguished church father, writes De musica, in which he discusses meter and versification. Ten years later he ponders the ethics of music in church in his autobiographical Confessions (397–400), asking whether the worshipper should be moved by the singing, or the song itself.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 B.C.E.–476 C.E.)

OVERVIEW of Music THE ROOT OF WESTERN MUSIC. The modern word “music,” and indeed most of the terms and concepts associated with music—melody, harmony, symphony, orchestra, chorus, ode, hymn, paean, and rhythm, for example—are Greek. Western music is rooted in the Greek concept of mousike techne, “the craft of the Muses.” The term mousike referred to poetry and dance as well as music, thus all three are linked in Greek culture. Although the Greeks themselves were influenced by Near Eastern, Anatolian, and Egyptian musical traditions, it is the poets, philosophers, and theorists of Greece whose musical writings had the most profound influence on later cultures; the Romans followed the lead of the Greeks, as did the early Christians. VITAL PART OF ANCIENT LIFE. Art and archaeological evidence, literature, theoretical writings, and a few surviving fragments of musical compositions all demonstrate that music was a vital part of public, private, sacred, and secular life in ancient Greece and Rome. Choral dance and song, theatrical and solo performance, and musical competitions filled the calendar year. Ordinary men and women sang as they performed their everyday chores of weaving, making wine, or harvesting grain; professional bards and virtuosos performed for a living to small groups at parties as well as to large audiences at festivals. Music was, however, not solely for entertainment. Because of its connection with the gods, especially the Muses— goddesses who, according to the Archaic Greek poets Homer and Hesiod, legitimize and validate the truth of myths—music itself was considered divine; it played a central role in Greek and Roman religion, which can best be described as polytheistic, employing a combination of myth (sacred storytelling) and ceremonial rituals. Music was an integral part of all important ceremonial rites of passage in Greek and Roman culture: birth, coming of age, wedding, death, and funeral. EARLY DEVELOPMENT. Music was already very much a part of social and religious life in prehistoric

Greece. As early as the third millennium B.C.E., musicians playing instruments such as the harp, the aulos (double-reed pipe), and the syrinx (a type of flute) are depicted in art, most notably marble and ivory figurines found in graves. By the second millennium, the so-called Mycenaean Period, many of the instruments that were popular later in Greek and Roman history—the phorminx (lyre), sistrum (rattle), and triton (trumpet)— had already made their appearance. Singers and musical instruments again appear in the two most important poems of the eighth century B.C.E., Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. These heroic epics provided the musical link between the Mycenean and the Archaic period of Greece, for the professional bards described in the poems still sung to the accompaniment of the phorminx. A century later, the lyric poets Terpander and Archilochus sung Homeric poetry to a more elaborate lyre—the kithara— and other solo performers—the rhapsodoi—recited the poems at festivals without any musical accompaniment at all. MUSIC EDUCATION. Music education came to be considered by the Greek and Roman writers as essential for civilized people as mathematics and athletics. The earliest music schools are said to have been established in the town of Sparta in southern Greece sometime between the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. by the musicians Terpander of Lesbos, Thaletas of Gortyn, and Sacadas of Argos. Terpander, perhaps the most famous kitharode (kithara-player), organized and won the first major music competition in Sparta; he is one of the earliest known musical masters, credited also with adding strings to the kithara, composing, and perfecting composition and performance techniques for a variety of instruments. He is also said to have invented the categories of nomoi (tunes, melodies, laws, customs) used by poets to classify types of songs in a singer’s repertory and to refer to specific melodic compositions, either for a particular instrument (kitharodic), a composer (the Terpandrean), or even a deity. The word nomos was originally used to refer to unique melodies or types of tunes attached to a particular region or village; each nomos thus maintained unique characteristics. CENTERS FOR MUSIC. Between the seventh to the sixth centuries B.C.E., the island of Lesbos, near the coast of ancient Asia Minor (now Turkey), became another center of music and poetry in Greece. The poets from Lesbos, most notably Alcaeus and Sappho, were influenced by melodic forms from Lydia and Phrygia in the East, and their musical compositions had an Eastern flavor. Together with the dithyramb, a ritual choral dance in honor of Dionysus, solo virtuoso playing and

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accompaniment to song or recitation was occurring with ever-increasing popularity. By the fifth century B.C.E., the democratic city of Athens was the most powerful polis (city-state) in Greece, and had become the center of Greek intellectual and cultural life. During the classical period (480–323 B.C.E.) in Greek history, competitions formed a part of the Olympian, Nemean, Pythian (at Delphi), and Isthmian (near Corinth) festivals, and poets, including the renowned poet Pindar, composed epinikia for the victors—elaborate lyric poems of praise—to be sung by a chorus with musical accompaniment. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides produced their dramas, or tragoidia (tragedies), in the amphitheater of Dionysus at the foot of the Acropolis as part of the City Festival of Dionysus. Music, especially choral dance and song, played a central role in the tradition of Greek theater, which included not only tragedy, but also comedy and “satyr plays” (satire); indeed the words for “tragedy” and “comedy”—tragoidos and komoidos—both contain the word for “song,” oidos. INNOVATIONS. New types of musical genres and innovations continued to emerge in the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. Especially popular were performances by solo virtuosos—rhapsodoi and tragodoi—who sang or recited Homeric epic, lyric, or dramatic poetry, often to the musical accompaniment of a band. Perhaps the most important contribution to music in the late third century was the invention of the hydraulis (water-organ) by the engineer Ktesibios. Originally designed as a mechanical water pump, the hydraulis became a popular musical instrument in Rome and later in the Christian church. The modern pipe organ derives from this early mechanical hydraulic machine. ROMAN MUSIC. The Romans, ever practical, were not very original when it came to music. Aside from some indigenous Etruscan ritual songs and musical instruments, the Romans generally looked to the Greeks for instruction and inspiration. It is safe to say that once Greece becomes part of the Roman Empire in the third century B.C.E., it becomes difficult to distinguish Greek from Roman musical expression. Roman musical instruments, such as the popular tibia (a version of the Greek aulos), the fistula (pan-pipe), and even the true flute, were variations on Greek instrument types. The Greek kithara remained the most popular instrument in Rome, and was enlarged in size. As in Greece, military music played a central role in Roman life. A wide variety of wind instruments blared in marching bands: kerata (cow horns), salpinges (ivory or bronze trumpets), cornu (circular horn), and tuba (brass tuba). Although the Romans adopted, and then adapted, Greek forms of 188

epic, lyric, tragedy, and comedy, very little is known about the role that music played in their versions. The comedies of Plautus and Terence in the second century B.C.E. featured a spoken, rather than sung version of the Greek chorus, and included the canticum, a scene enacted in sing-song manner to the accompaniment of the tibia. Mime and pantomime were invented and added to the repertoire in the Roman Period, around the first century B.C.E., and the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius improved the acoustics in theaters with his theory of sound waves. MUSIC AND PHILOSOPHY. In Greek and Roman religion, the myths of heroes and gods not only featured music and musical competitions, but also explained the origin of certain melodies, rhythms, and instruments. The Greeks and Romans believed that music had an effect on moral behavior, and writings from the time period demonstrate a concern that certain types of music might lead young people down the wrong path. The gods Apollo and Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) represented complementary aspects of the human psyche, and thus were especially important in the philosophy of music education. Early Greek philosophers and theorists—especially Damon, Plato, and Aristotle—carefully examined the aesthetic, ethical, and moral qualities of different types of melodies and rhythms. The mathematician Pythagoras (c. 560–470 B.C.E.), who also studied melodies and rhythms, is said to have invented what is now called “acoustic theory” in teaching that the same numerical laws that governed the universe also governed music and, by extension, the soul. MUSIC COMPOSITION. There are countless references to music, musicians, and musical forms in Greek and Roman literature and art. Between 23 and 51 actual notated musical compositions survive, depending on the definition of “composition.” They exist on papyri, on stone, and in manuscripts. Many are fragmentary, and most date from the relatively late periods between the third century B.C.E. and the fourth century C.E. The texts include hymns and paeans to divinities, lines of poetry and drama, and choral song. It is difficult, but not impossible, to read these compositions. Sometime in the fifth century B.C.E., the Greeks developed the science of acoustic theory, the tetrachord scale system, and musical terminology, which served as the foundations for the composition, performance, and the study of music in later periods. Although very little of what modern scholars would call “music theory” proper has survived, a few theoretical works assist in interpreting the surviving fragments. These theoretical treatises and handbooks span a period of about 800 years, from the earliest—Aristox-

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enus (c. 375–320 B.C.E.)—to the latest—Alypius (c. 450 C.E.). These works explain and describe musical systems, genres of melody, tunings, tonoi (scales), and rhythm, and discuss various philosophical problems in music, such as ethics, and the proper use of music in education. The application of these in composition and performance may be unclear, but the surviving ancient theoretical corpus (especially the Aristoxenian tradition) does a remarkable job of constructing discrete categories for dissecting the phenomena of music, categories still used to some extent in modern musical analysis.

provide a reliable, if imperfect, understanding of music in Greek and Roman life. Musicologists have used the tables of Alypius and other theorists to transcribe surviving compositions into Western notation; ethnographers and acoustic scientists have reconstructed instruments based on surviving artifacts, descriptions in literature, and images in art; and recordings have been made of surviving compositions using these instruments, all in an attempt to recreate the sound of Greek and Roman music.

MUSICAL NOTATION. Ancient Greek and Roman music was composed and transmitted aurally, without the need for writing, but a standard alphabetic form of musical notation was in limited use by the mid-third century B.C.E. In the surviving musical examples, these notation symbols are placed over the words of the song, probably to indicate the melody, but sometimes they are interspersed between passages of text, to indicate a passage for instruments. There are also a few notated passages without any text. Most of the modern knowledge about notation is found in the tables of Alypius, a music theorist of the late fourth or fifth century C.E. who wrote down the names of all the notes and notation symbols for the two-octave scale, or “Greater Perfect System” in fifteen tonoi (“keys”). Notation was clearly used by professionals only. Music was primarily an oral tradition even into the latest periods, passed on from grandparent to child, master to pupil. In the same way that Gregorian Chant was derived from an oral tradition, and remained primarily that through the medieval period, Greek and Roman music thrived for centuries without the aid of written notation or theory.

TOPICS

CONNECTION TO POETRY. Ancient Greek music was primarily monophonic—melody without harmony or counterpoint. By the seventh century B.C.E., composers such as Archilochus were employing heterophony (instrumental or singer embellishment), modulation, mixed rhythms, and combining text with music. It is probable that music was improvised, not thoroughly composed. The Greeks used the word melos for a simple “song,” either vocal or instrumental, while the Romans used carmina; in its “perfect form,” the teleion melos, ancient Greek and Roman music was always associated with poetry and dancing. The melody and rhythm of the music was intimately connected with the rhythm of the poetic meter. UNDERSTANDING MUSIC FROM SURVIVING EVITaken together, the theoretical writings, literary and artistic representation, and archaeological evidence

DENCE.

in Music M USICAL I NSTRUMENTS THE VOICE. The human voice was the first and the most central of musical instruments in Greek and Roman life. Ordinary people sang while they plowed fields, harvested grain, worked wool, made wine, and tended children. There were drinking songs, hymns to the gods and heroes, laments, and wedding songs. Victors at the athletic games were awarded a song of praise; paeans rallied troops for battle. Singers competed for prizes in solo and choral song. One of the earliest depictions of singing is found on a Bronze-Age black steatite vase from Crete, dating to the second millennium B.C.E.: a group of three singers, heads thrown back and mouths open in song, march together with a group of harvesters; a sistrum (shaker) player keeps the beat. The first surviving reference to singing in literature comes from the Odyssey where the goddess Circe sang in a sweet voice as she worked at her loom. Singers were commonly portrayed on Greek vase-paintings from the sixth century B.C.E.; some paintings represent the sound emitting from the mouth in the form of little “o’s.” Epic lyric poetry was sung or recited, often to the accompaniment of musical instruments, and the few examples of surviving written music show that the poetry that would be sung was important enough to be written down even if the piece was for a solo instrument. Language itself glorified the voice as an important instrument as well. In his work De Anima, the philosopher Aristotle distinguished phone (“voice”) from psophos (“sound”) by noting that only animals with souls have a true voice. The Greek adjective ligys, or ligyros, was most often applied to the voice when it was tuneful, clean, and pure, like a nightingale. STRINGS. Chordophones (stringed instruments) were the most basic and arguably the most important of

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Drawing of a figure playing the lyre.

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THE GALE GROUP.

the musical instruments in ancient Greece. They included four types of lyre, a variety of harps, psalteria (zithers), and, after the fourth century B.C.E., a lute-like instrument called the pandouros. The Romans preferred the wind instruments, but the lyre appeared in Etruscan art and continued to be popular with soloists throughout the Roman period. Ancient scholars and lexicographers, such as Pollux and Athenaeus (second century C.E.), listed and discussed the different types of lyres and harps, providing important information about their construction, tuning, and usage. In music education, Plato, Aristotle, and the later music theorists advocated the use of simple, traditional tunes on the lyre. THE LYRE. Musicians used the lyre to accompany the singing of sacred hymns, as well as epic and lyric poetry, and it became the preferred instrument of solo virtuoso performers. People of all ages played the lyre for their own personal pleasure, in musical contests, at ritual ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, and at parties and festivals. In Greek myth the lyre was asso190

ciated with the Muses, Hermes, Apollo, Dionysus, and Orpheus. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the god Hermes fashioned the first lyre from the shell of a chelys (tortoise). Archaeology shows that the earliest lyres appeared in ancient Palestine and Sumeria in the third millennium B.C.E., and most likely entered Greece through trade with the Mycenaeans during the Bronze Age. Earliest depictions of the Greek lyre in action come from Mycenaean Greek settlements of the second millennium, where archaeologists have found painted frescoes and sculptures depicting lyre players and women’s circle dances. Lyre-players appear on Mycenaean engraved rings and seals. The Greek word for “lyre”—lura—refers to the family of chordophones with strings of equal length. There are four main types of lyre: the chelys, barbitos, phorminx, and kithara, each having its own particular shape, size, tuning, and social function. Basic construction consisted of a soundbox (tortoise shell or wood), to which arms and a crossbar were attached; gut strings were attached by a knot to the chordotonon (a small board on the bottom of the sound-box), passed over the bridge, and were attached to the crossbar at the top of the instrument. The number of strings varied from five to nine, with seven being the norm from the Archaic Period onward. The player could stand, sit, or walk while strumming or plucking the strings with a bone plectrum (pick). A lyrestrap helped the musician to hold the instrument in place against the chest. TYPES OF LYRES. The chelys and the barbitos were small and lightweight; their bowl-shaped soundboxes did not amplify sound with much volume. They were played by amateur musicians, used for music lessons, and were preferred by the lyric poets such as Sappho for smaller, indoor group performances. Although the ancients attribute the invention of the barbitos to the Greek musician and poet Terpander, it is not a Greek word and most likely came to Greece from Asia Minor. The most accomplished musicians desired bigger woodensoundbox lyres: the phorminx and the kithara. There are numerous literary and artistic references to these being more professional instruments. In Homer’s Odyssey, two aoidoi (professional bards) named Demodokos and Phemios perform songs of the epic cycle to the accompaniment of the phorminx before an audience eager to applaud “that song which is the latest to circulate among men.” In the Iliad, the Achaean fighter Achilles sat in his tent singing “the glory of heroes” as he strummed a beautiful phorminx “made by an artist, with a silver bridge and a clear lovely tone” (9.185–188). Vase paintings often showed the phorminx with a decorative eye

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Drawing of a figure playing the kithara.

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Drawing of a figure playing the barbitos.

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EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

on the soundbox, a feature that always distinguished it from its close relative, the kithara. In the classical period (480–323 B.C.E.), the phorminx came to be associated primarily with the cult worship of Dionysus, and the kithara was increasingly the preferred instrument for competition and virtuoso performance; it could be paired with the aulos (double-reed pipe) in ensemble playing. Its large wooden soundbox gave the kithara a powerful sound that made it suitable for playing outdoors, for example, during the Panathenaia (national festival of Athena) in Athens; two kitharodes (kitharaplayers), dressed in fancy costumes, are depicted marching in the Panathenaic procession on the frieze of the Parthenon temple.

theus claimed to have invented “eleven-stroke meters and rhythms”; this may mean that he added strings in order to embellish the melody of a song with intricate rhythmic ornamentation. Fame had its downside, however; great kitharodes were sometimes lampooned in Athenian comedies. Two famous kitharodes in Greek myth are Orpheus and Thamyris, both from Thrace. Orpheus was said to have charmed even the rocks with his playing, and Thamyris boasted that he played better than the Muses. Both died violently, but were compensated with cult worship after death. Orpheus gained the gift of prophecy, while a special type of kithara was named after Thamyris.

KITHARODES. The names of several famous Greek kitharodes are known. Terpander was one of the earliest and best-known composers and performers on the instrument in the Archaic Period, while Philoxenus of Kythera and Timotheus of Miletus were the most famous in the classical period (480–323 B.C.E.). Timo-

THE HARP. The harp, an instrument that was used by the Sumerians and the Egyptians in the fourth millennium B.C.E., first appeared in the Greek world during the Bronze Age about a thousand years later; a number of marble figurines from tombs in the Cycladic Islands represent the triangular harp in the arms of seated male musicians; no strings are indicated in the

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Detail of a red-figure Apulian vase from southern Italy, showing Apollo playing the kithara. THE ART ARCHIVE/BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS PARIS/DAGLI ORTI.

statues, but a contemporary seal impression shows four. Later versions had twenty to forty strings, and were thus called “many-stringed” instruments. Harps varied in size, and appear in three basic shapes: arched, triangular, and C-shaped. Among the many names for the instrument are: pektis, trigonon, psalterion, magadis, and sambyke. The harp falls into the category of a psalter because it was normally played with the fingers of both hands without the aid of a plectrum (pick). The frame was of wood, and a soundbox was located at the base. Strings of unequal length were stretched from the base to the top of the harp, following the curve of the frame, and tuning pegs were either located on the base or at the top, depending on the type of harp. The BronzeAge Greek harper figurines were all male, but by the fifth century B.C.E. harps—especially the trigonon, sambyke, pektis, and magadis—were most often described as women’s instruments; they were shown in vase-paintings as being played exclusively by women, generally in the context of a wedding or a symposium (men’s drinking party) together in ensemble with the aulos and the chelys. Since it was associated primarily with the feminine, and especially sensual or erotic entertainment, Plato did not consider the harp to be 192

Drawing of a figure playing the lute.

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an appropriate instrument for educational purposes. Professional women harpists—known as psaltriai or sambykai—scandalized conservative Romans when they first played there. THE LUTE. There was limited use for the lute in Greece and Rome, although the instrument was known in Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium B.C.E., and in Egypt soon thereafter. The name pandouros (“lute”) may derive from the Sumerian pan-tur (“little bow”). In both Egypt and the Mediterranean, the lute was another instrument primarily played by women. It is not known in Greece before the Alexandrian Period of the mid-fourth century B.C.E., when the pandouros appears in the arms of a group of female terracotta figurines. The instrument is also held by one of the Muses in a well-known pedestal relief sculpture on a temple to the goddess Leto built in the same century. The fourthcentury comic poet Anaxilas alludes to a lute in his play The Lyre-Maker. It is possible that the instrument, which resembles a small guitar or a banjo, came into Greece

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Greek Cycladic marble figure of a harpist from 2500 B.C.E.

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ART ARCHIVE/NATIONAL ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEUM ATHENS/DAGLI ORTI.

Drawing of a figure playing the harp.

during Alexander the Great’s military campaigns in Persia. Constructed of wood, the pandouros consisted of a pear or triangular-shaped soundbox from which projected a fretted neck of varying length. A cord around the shoulders served as a lute-strap. Gut strings were stretched from the bottom of the soundbox to the tuning pegs on the head. The players could either sit or stand, and strummed with their right hand while fretting with their left. The number of strings varied from one to four. The theorist Pollux included the pandouros with the trichordos (“three-stringed”) lyres, and it is likely that this very simple chordophone was also used by the Pythagoreans for acoustic research. WINDS. The wind instruments—reeds, pipes, horns, and flutes—were important in ancient Greek and Roman music from the earliest periods, especially the double-reed instrument known as the aulos. In fact, the aulos appears more often in vase paintings and fresco art than any other instrument, despite the opinion of Plato and Aristotle that the instrument was not appropriate for education. Wind instruments were used in a variety of contexts: salpinges (“brass trumpets”) and kerata

CREATED BY CECILY EVANS.

THE GALE GROUP.

(“horns”) accompanied military processions as well as public spectacle. The Roman cavalry thundered to the sound of the lituus (“trumpet”); brass ensembles featured the cornu (“horn”) and the bucina (“tuba”). Triton-shells were used as trumpets (or, perhaps, megaphones) by ordinary people and children; they were often imitated in stone or faience. The aulos was used to accompany small and large groups of singers during religious festivals, banquets, and parties, and could be played while dancing. The aulos was essential during the ecstatic cult worship of the gods Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) and Cybele; it is often shown being played by satyrs and silenes (oversexed woodland creatures associated with the ecstatic cult of Dionysus), and Aristotle commented that the aulos could arouse wild and dangerous passion. Pan-pipes (Greek syringes, Roman fistula) were played by shepherds and herdsmen. Along with iconographical and literary evidence, a good number of actual wind instruments have been recovered by archaeologists, so that scholars have a good idea of how many of them were manufactured, tuned, and played.

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THE AULOS. The aulos was not a flute, but a single- or double-reed instrument, comparable to the oboe. Thinner than an oboe and often much longer, the aulos was usually played in pairs, one held in each hand. It commonly consisted of five parts: the glotta (mouthpiece), in which a reed of varying materials was housed; a three-part resonator consisting of two bulb- or ovalshaped resonators called the holmos and the hupholmion; the bombyx (main resonator), constructed in sections; and the trupemata (finger-holes). The pipe could be made of reed, ivory, bone, wood, or metal, and could be straight or have a curved bell. In vase-paintings from the sixth century B.C.E., the instrument was frequently shown strapped to the musician’s face with a phorbeia (“halter”). The aulos (plural, auloi) was carried in a sybene (“bag”), and the reeds in a glottokomeion (“reedcarrier”), when not in use. In the classical period (480–323 B.C.E.) the aulos normally had five fingerholes, with one located on the bottom of the pipe for the thumb. In later Greek and Roman auloi, the holes could be covered by rotatable bands. The theorist Aristoxenus listed five sizes of auloi from highest to lowest in pitch: parthenikoi (“for girls,” soprano), paidikoi (“for boys,” treble), kitharisterioi (“for lyre-players,” tenor), teleioi (“complete,” baritone), and hyperteleioi (“more complete,” bass). ORIGINS OF THE AULOS. The writer Pollux noted a number of so-called “ethnic species” of auloi coming from Phrygia, Libya, Egypt, Thebes, and Scythia, each with its own peculiarities. The Greeks desired to claim the aulos as their own instrument and not a foreign import, thus some myths credit Athena with creating the aulos, or its music, while other stories say that a virtuoso player named Pronomos of Thebes (late fifth century B.C.E.) invented the two-pipe arrangement. In fact, the aulos was played in pairs in Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Egypt from the third–second millenia B.C.E. and is attested in early Bronze-Age Aegean art. The earliest example of an aulete (aulos-player) in Greece is a marble figurine from the Cycladic island of Keros (c. 2200 B.C.E.). Myth and history are intertwined regarding the invention of the aulos. Two Greek myths, often re-told well into the fifth century B.C.E., credit the Phrygian satyr Marsyas or the goddess Athena with inventing the instrument. Pollux places the origin of the aulos in Phrygia, noting that there was a Phrygian type of aulos, the elymos aulos, used in the celebration of the Phyrgian goddess Cybele. Plutarch (first century C.E.) related a famous and often illustrated Greek myth of the Phrygian satyr Marsyas, whose father Hyagnis was said to have invented both the aulos and the first tune for it: “The Great 194

Mother’s aulos tune” (a reference to the goddess Cybele). Hyagnis taught the tune to his impish son, who in turn taught a certain real-life musician named Olympos. Pindar (fifth century B.C.E.) claimed in his twelfth Pythian ode that Athena created the pamphonon melos (“allsounding song”) of the aulos “in order to imitate the shrieking cry of the Gorgon.” In his De cohibenda ira, Plutarch gives another account of the story in which Marsyas, watching Athena play the aulos, ridiculed the way her cheeks puffed out when she blew notes; the goddess, mortified, threw the instrument away. Marsyas then invented the phorbeia (“cheek-halter”) to control the movement of the mouth and cheek. In yet another version, Athena, displeased with the aulos, passed the instrument on to Apollo. THE AULOS IN PERFORMANCE. Numerous artistic and literary references show the aulos being used. On the famous painted Bronze-Age sarcophagus from Ayia Triada from Crete (c. 1490 B.C.E.), a male aulete plays during the occasion of an animal sacrifice; a phorminx player performs on the opposite side. Auloi are again paired with the phorminx in the Odyssey on Achilles’ shield, accompanying dancing at a wedding. The aulos was often played in ensemble with lyres and harps. It accompanied the dithyramb (choral dance) and most other types of choral and lyric performance. Deemed appropriate for both happy and sad occasions, the aulos was played at funerals. Auloi were the instruments that accompanied dancing and singing during the Eastern ecstatic worship of Dionysus, Cybele, and Orpheus. Prostitute women auletes entertained men at drinking-parties, and the instrument is often depicted in erotic scenes on vase-paintings. THE SOUND OF THE AULOS. There were three basic modal systems, or scales, associated with the aulos: Dorian, Lydian, and Phyrgian, but several dozen types were categorized by pitch range. Accomplished auletes could play an impressive array of scales and pitches by employing techniques such as half-holing, cross-fingering, and over-blowing; by playing two auloi at once, the aulete could combine scales. Different tones and timbres were also accomplished by adjusting the tonguing of the reed and embouchure (lip position) on the mouthpiece. Different writers described the sound of the aulos as screeching, buzzing, sweet-breathed, pure-toned, wailing, enticing, orgiastic, and lamenting. Plato and Aristotle considered complex melodies employing more than one mode or scale to be disruptive to the soul; Plato banned the aulos from his ideal city in the Republic because it was a “pan-harmonic” instrument. THE ROMAN TIBIA. The Roman tibia (plural tibiae) was a pipe of reed or bone, equivalent to the Greek au-

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los. The Roman writer Varro said the same thing about the tibia as the Greek philosophers did about the aulos: its tones were complex, and could have an ecstatic affect on the soul. As in Greece, the reed pipe was played during the worship of deities such as Cybele, Bacchus (Greek Dionysus), and Isis, all of whom are connected with fertility, fecundity, and rebirth. The tibia was also used to accompany different kinds of solo theatrical performance, such as mime, pantomime, and farce, often in ensemble with lyres and percussion. Solo tibicen (“tibia-players”) would introduce tragedies, and according to Cicero, the audience could often identify a drama by the first few notes. The tibia is ubiquitous in Roman mosaics and paintings depicting scenes from Roman comedy. Tibicen would play instrumental pieces or accompany songs between the acts. The tibia was indespensible in the comedies of Terence and Plautus as the accompaniment to certain polymetric scenes of dialogue called cantica; the playwrights would direct the tibia to play, or to be silent, depending on the desired effect in the scene, and the tibicen would engage sometimes in the action. Stage directions in the comedies of Terence indicate which type of tibia were required: tibiae pares (“pipes of equal length”), tibiae impares (“pipes of unequal length,” probably an octave difference), and tibiae sarranae (“Phoenician tibiae”). The tibia musician who composed for Terence may have also served as musical director. THE FLUTE AND PAN-PIPE. The aulos has often been translated as “flute,” but this is incorrect. The true flute has no reed, and is played by blowing transversely across the blow-hole while holding the instrument horizontally to the side. Most types of auloi were reed instruments played in pairs and held in front of the musician, like an oboe or bassoon. One type of aulos, however, might have been played like the modern flute: the plagiaulos (Greek) or obliqua tibia (Latin). Like the other auloi, the plagiaulos was not Greek in origin, but came from Lydia, Phrygia, or, according to Pollux and Athenaeus (late second century C.E.), Libyia. The flute is rare, and does not appear in Greece before the third century B.C.E. Two surviving plagiauloi are housed in the British Museum; both feature a small bust of a bacchante (worshipper of Bacchus) on one end. Both the plagiaulos and the syrinx (“pan-pipes”) were pastoral instruments, played by shepherds and herdsmen for simple enjoyment. There are more artistic and literary references to the syrinx then there are to the flute. While there are no surviving Bronze-Age examples of the syrinx, it is depicted in the Iliad (eighth century B.C.E.) on the shield of Achilles, in the hands of happy shepherds. The socalled “François Vase” (circa 575 B.C.E.) features a Muse

A PIPERS’ STRIKE IN ANCIENT ROME INTRODUCTION :

The tibicines were musicians in Rome who played the tibia, originally a pipe made of bone with three or four finger-holes; as time went on, it became a double-pipe reed instrument like the Greek aulos. The guild of tibicines held a festival every year on the Ides of June (15 June) when they wore masks and fancy dress—sometimes women’s clothing. The festival commemorated a strike of the tibicines in 311 B.C.E., which is described in the following passage of Livy. The story shows how important a role that the guild of pipe-players had in Roman sacrificial rites.

I should have omitted an episode of the same year as being scarcely worth mentioning did it not seem to concern religious duties. The pipe-players (tibicines) were angry at having been forbidden by the last censors to hold their feast in the temple of Jupiter, according to ancient custom, and marched off to Tibur in a body, with the result that there was no one in the city to play the pipes at sacrifices. The Senate was seized with pious misgivings about the incident, and sent delegates to Tibur to request the citizens to do their best to return the men to Rome. The Tiburtines courteously promised to do so and first summoned the pipers to their senate-house and urged them to return to Rome. Then, when they found that persuasion achieved nothing, they dealt with the men by a ruse nicely in tune with their nature. On a public holiday various citizens invited parties of pipers to their homes on the pretext of celebrating the feast with music, and sent them to sleep by plying them with wine, for which men of their kind are generally greedy. In that condition they dumped them, heavily asleep, in cart and carried them off to Rome. The carts were left in the Forum and the pipers knew nothing until daylight surprised them there, still very drunk. The people quickly gathered round them and prevailed on them to stay. They were given permission on three days a year to roam the city in fancy dress, making music and enjoying the license which is now customary, and those of them who played pipes at sacrifices had their right to hold a feast in the temple restored. SOURCE : Livy, Rome and Italy. Books VI–X of The History of Rome from its Foundation. Trans. Betty Radice (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1982): 259.

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A Greek relief sculpture of a woman playing the double aulos, on the Ludovisi throne, from about 450 B.C.E. THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEO NAZIONALE TERME ROME/DAGLI ORTI.

playing the syrinx at the mythical wedding of Peleus and Thetis, but the instrument is most widely associated with pastoral poetry of the third century B.C.E. Although Plato bans the aulos from his ideal state in The Republic, he allows herdsmen in the country to have their simple syringes. In Greek myth, the god Hermes is credited with inventing the syrinx; it is the instrument commonly associated with Hermes’ son, Pan, god of shepherds— hence the term “pan-pipe.” Later writers suggest other origins, including Pollux who associates it with the Celts and unnamed “islanders in the ocean.” The term syrinx (Latin fistula) was used to designate both a single-pipe whistle and also a group of five to seven equal-length pipes, tied together, and plugged with wax at graduated intervals to form a scale. The musician holds the instrument upright beneath the mouth and blows across the pipes as one would a bottle. Later versions include a rank of different-length pipes tied together, or pipes with holes bored into them to effect the desired pitch. THE ORGAN. The idea behind the syrinx—that scales could be created by blowing air across the opening of pipes—was expanded by Greek engineers in Egypt during the Hellenistic Period (fourth century B.C.E.). Athenaeus, writing in the late second century C.E., cred196

Drawing of a figure playing the double-aulos.

CREATED BY CE-

CILY EVANS. THE GALE GROUP.

its an Alexandrian mechanic named Ktesibios with the invention of the hydraulis (“water organ”), which used a hydraulic pump to create a continuous supply of air to ranks of pipes. The Roman architect Vitruvius (late first century B.C.E.) later described how “stops” were used to close off air from entire rows of pipes in order to alter the pitch. Hero of Alexandria, an engineer writing 100 years later, explained in detail how the hydraulic machine of Ktesibios worked in his book Pneumatika. A complex mechanical organ, the hydraulis was not commonly played, but there is an inscription from the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi that praises the hydraulist Antipatros for winning a musical competition in 90 B.C.E. THE TRUMPET. Several different types of horns were played by the Greeks and Romans. The ivory or more often bronze salpinx (“trumpet”) was primarily a battle instrument, used to send signals; it also appeared in ritual and ceremonial contexts, especially in the Roman period, where it was called a tuba and often made of brass or iron. The blast of the trumpet was used to

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from the earliest periods. In Greek myth, triton and conch shell horns were the instruments played by sea deities such as Nereids and Tritons. The keras (“cowhorn”), often baked to produce a clearer tone, was used together with the much louder salpinx to signal troops in battle. In Rome, military horns and trumpets, including the tuba, bucina (shaped like a bull-horn), and the circular cornu were featured in concerts given by large choral groups and orchestras.

Roman water organ found at Aquincum, Hungary.

COURTESY OF

THE AQUINCUMI MUZEUM.

call people to assembly and start races. Most writers claim the salpinx to be of Etruscan (Italian) origin, but the instrument is comparable to both Mesopotamian and Egyptian trumpets. It consisted of a long, thin, tube, which could be straight or curved, with a funnel or orchid-shaped bell at the end. The glotta (“mouthpiece”) was made of bone. In his De Musica, the Roman theorist Aristides Quintilianus (third–fourth century C.E.) described the salpinx as a “warlike and terrifying instrument” that the Roman army employed to move troops by playing “codes through music.” Human and divine salpinges (players of the salpinx) were frequently depicted in vase paintings; on a fifth-century B.C.E. cup by the painter Epiktetos, a saytr holds a salpinx in one hand, a shield in his right, and plays while running; a phorbeia (“halter,” also used by dancing auletes) holds the mouthpiece to his lips. HORNS. Animal and sea-shell horns were commonly used throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East

PERCUSSION. Percussion instruments included the sistrum (“rattle”), krotala (“castenets”), kumbala (“fingercymbals”), tympanon (“drum”), kymbalon (“cymbal”), and the kroupalon (Latin scabellum), a wooden or metal tap worn on a shoe used to keep time. The rhombos (“bull-roarer”) could be classified as either a percussion or a wind instrument. It consisted of a piece of wood attached to a string, which made a rumbling sound when whirled above the head. Sistra—metal or clay-and-wood rattles—were popular in Egypt and throughout the Mediterranean. They appeared in Bronze-Age art of the second millennium B.C.E., and many actual sistra survive—over twenty were found at Pompeii. Evidence shows that percussion instruments—notably large, onesided drums (rhoptra and tympana) and perhaps clappers—were used by the Parthians, ancient people of Iran and Afghanistan, to terrify the enemy in battle. In Greece and Rome, percussion instruments were rather used predominately by women to accent rhythm of dance and poetic meter in the cult worship of Dionysus, Cybele, Pan, and Aphrodite, deities associated with fertility, fecundity, and sexuality. Women devotees of Dionysus, called maenads, are frequently depicted in vase-paintings dancing while striking small hand-held tympana with their palms. In his comedy Lysistrata, the fifth-century B.C.E. playwright Aristophanes suggested that women playing the tympana during the worship of Pan and Aphrodite could create quite a ruckus. Women also played the krotala, a pair of bar-shaped wooden or metal clappers, hinged at one end, and played with each hand, like castenets; a commonly depicted duet includes a female krotala-player and a male aulete, both dancing wildly. Krotala are also depicted as being played by satyrs, over-sexed mythical creatures associated with Dionysus. Kumbala (finger-cymbals) are also associated principally with female worshippers of Dionysus. These are small, round clappers made of wood, shell, or clay, which produced a higher tone than krotala. Many examples can be found in museums. A pair of kumbala from the fifth or fourth century B.C.E. in the British Museum is inscribed with the owner’s name. The sistrum (rattle or shaker) was also a woman’s instrument. A ladder-shaped

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Greek bronze sistrum (musical instrument), 6th century B.C.E. from the Macchiabate necropolis, Francavilla Maritima, Italy.

THE ART

ARCHIVE/MUSEO DELLA SIBARITIDE SIBARI/DAGLI ORTI.

wooden version, labelled by Pollux as a psithyra, is regularly depicted hanging on the wall in a woman’s room or in a woman’s hands in Greek vase-paintings from Apulia in southern Italy. SOURCES

Giovanni Comotti, Music in Greek and Roman Culture. Trans. Rosaria V. Munson (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, originally published in Italian, 1979). John G. Landels, Music in Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Routlege, 1999). Martha Maas and Jane Snyder, Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989). Thomas J. Mathiesen, Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Martin West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). 198

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INTEGRATED INTO EVERY PART OF SOCIETY. Music was undeniably prevalent in all parts of Greek society. It was featured prominently in weddings, funerals, and other social events, during military campaigns, and most notably during festivals. Music was appropriate for all situations, whether they were family or community events. Once a musical performance had begun, it was common for neighbors, friends, and even strangers passing by to take part in some of the activities that included music. Music was also the central entertainment at symposia, private drinking parties held after dinner in the men’s area of the house. Almost all types of these musical events have been preserved, either in the artwork or literature that has survived from the era, giving clues to modern scholars about the scope of music in Greek life. EPIC POETRY. One of the earliest examples of music being performed in public was when it accompanied the performance of epic poetry. The eighth-century

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A mosaic showing dancers from a villa found in Argos, Greece, 4th–5th century C.E. The woman plays the cymbals.

THE ART

ARCHIVE/ARCHAEOLGICAL MUSEUM ARGOS/DAGLI ORTI.

B.C.E.

Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey are the earliest written examples of myths performed in poetic form; they represent a tradition reaching back at least to the second millennium B.C.E. Originally sung to the accompaniment of the phorminx (lyre), the Homeric epic was composed in stichic form, meaning that many lines were repeated in the same meter. In the case of Homeric epic, this meter was dactylic hexameter, which consisted of a combination of the dactyl (– 傼傼) and spondee (– –). The melody was simple and conservative. In antiquity the transmission of epic poetry was accomplished through oral rather than written means; the poet trained his pupil, and they traveled from city to city, singing in music competitions and at the homes of patrons, always tailoring their performance to their audience. PERFORMANCE OF EPIC POETRY. The epics themselves include many references to their own performance

style: Demodokos and Phemios, two aoidoi (professional bards), sing and play selections of epic poetry before large audiences at banquets in the royal courts of kings Odysseus and Nestor. In the Odyssey Book Two, Odysseus’ son Telemachus praises Phemios for delivering the “newest song to circulate.” Amateur musicians would also attempt a few lines of epic, as the poem illustrates: the Achaean warrior Achilles, on a break from battle, plays his phorminx and sings “the glorious deeds of fighting heroes” for his friend Patroclus in Book Nine of the Iliad. From the sixth century forward, epic poetry was performed by rhapsodes, professional bards who recited selections of Homeric poetry at music competitions during religious celebrations, such as the Epidaurus festival of Asclepius, the god of healing who appeared as a mortal doctor in the Iliad. In Athens, during the Great Panathenaea held every four years in honor of Athena,

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ODYSSEUS PRAISES SONG INTRODUCTION :

The earliest literary allusions to music are found in the Iliad and The Odyssey, the eighth century B.C.E. Archaic epic poems attributed to Homer. The subject of these poems—the Trojan War and its aftermath—refer back to a much earlier time: the Aegean Bronze Age (Mycenean Period) of the second millennium, when aoidoi (bards) entertained at the courts of ancient princes with songs of heroes, accompanied by the phorminx (a type of lyre). In this excerpt from The Odyssey Book Nine, the hero Odysseus praises as “the crown of life” the good food and songs of the bard Demodokos, provided for his pleasure by his host, Alcinous, king of Phaiaicia.

SOURCE :

Homer, The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1997): 211.

groups of rhapsodes were organized to perform the complete Iliad and Odyssey. MUSIC IN THE MILITARY. Another early use for music was its necessity on the battlefield. The aulete (piper) was an essential timekeeper for rowers on Greek warships and for soldiers on the march. Bards and musicians entertained sailors and infantrymen while on campaign, keeping their spirits up. Marching songs were played on the salpinx (“trumpet”), which was also used to signal and direct troop movement in battle. The paean was sung during battle to rally troops, as the playwright Aeschylus wrote in his tragedy The Persians: “O Children of Greece, come! Free the fatherland, free your chil200

dren, your wives, the shrines of your ancestral gods, the tombs of your ancestors! Now the struggle is for all!” The Spartans, noted for their military prowess, used several different types of marching song and rhythms which, according to Plutarch in his Instituta Laconica, made the soldiers brave and fearless of death. The seventh-century B.C.E. poet Tyrtaeus used one of the marching meters known as the embateria when he urged the Spartan troops to march on, shield and spear in hand, with no thought for their lives, sparing no one. EPINIKIAN POETRY. Athletic contests were held every four years during the Olympian, Pythian (at Delphi), Nemean, and Isthmian Funeral Games, during which music was often heard and was often used as a prize of sorts. Modern Olympic games descended from such celebratory festivals, which featured many of the same events, including boxing, running, wrestling, horse racing, and pentathlon. Athletes from all over Greece would participate, and the victor of a competition was rewarded with prizes. After the competition, a grand homecoming celebration was held for the winners, and an elaborate poem, known as the epinikion, would be composed and performed especially for the individual. The poet, who was paid handsomely, extolled the victor and his family, and contextualized his accomplishment by comparing his effort to the struggle of a mythic hero or god. The poem could be performed again on the anniversary of a victory. Epinikia were composed for choral performance and, as the poems themselves reflect, were enhanced with dance accompanied by the phorminx (lyre) or aulos (reed). The best-preserved epinikian poems of the late sixth–early fifth centuries B.C.E. are those of Pindar, from Boeotia. Four books of Pindar’s epinikia—one for each of the major Games—survive; many can be assigned to specific festivals and victors. Pindar’s first Pythian Ode was composed for a certain Hieron of Aetna, winner of the chariot race in 470 B.C.E. Pindar also wrote poems for war heroes and musicians; his twelfth Pythian Ode, written for Midas of Acragas on the occasion of back-to-back victories on the aulos, contains a reference to the invention of a “many-headed” melody for the aulos by the goddess Athena. Pindar was well respected in antiquity for his brilliant use of imagery and metaphor, lyric meter, and musicality. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a first-century B.C.E. theorist, praised Pindar’s “archaic and austere” beauty, and the range of his modal systems. PUBLIC FESTIVALS. Much like the Olympics, music was used in numerous other festivals, and many festivals had musical competitions that replaced the athletic competitions that were familiar to Olympians. The ear-

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liest evidence that music was part of public festivals in Greek life comes from the Bronze-Age settlement of Ayia Triada on the island of Crete (c. 1490 B.C.E.); a fresco and a stone sarcophagus depict musicians playing the phorminx and the aulos during a procession and a ritual sacrifice. Public festivals in honor of the gods filled the Greek calendar, and each region of Greece had its own particular ceremonial traditions; these came at yearly or longer intervals, and could last from one to seven days. Choral and solo songs, dance, and poetry were central parts of all festival events. The three main features of public religious festivals were the procession, the animal sacrifice, and the feast. The prosodion (“processional hymn”) was sung to the accompaniment of the aulos while people paraded to altars and temples; when they arrived at their destination, the prosodion was sung to the kithara (type of lyre). Larger, more important celebrations, such as the City Dionysia and the Great Panathenaea at Athens, the Pythian festival at Delphi, and the Karneia at Sparta, included dramatic, poetic, and/or musical competitions. CHORAL SONG. The festival procession generally included the dithyramb, a male choral dance with musical accompaniment, hymnoi (“hymns”), and the paean (a song of exhortation sung and shouted by men and boys in unison). Originally associated with the ecstatic worship of Dionysus, the god of “altered consciousness,” the dithyramb was passionate and tumultuous, a revelry that celebrated masculine sexual power and fecundity. The seventh-century B.C.E. poet Archilochus proclaimed that he knew how to lead the dithyramb, the beautiful song of lord Dionysus, when infused with wine. Later, the dithyramb became institutionalized, and the City Dionysia in Athens featured organized performances by close to two dozen dithyrambic choruses of fifty men and boys each; dressed in costume, often crowned with ivy, they sang and danced under the direction of the khoregos (teacher, or leader of the chorus) to the accompaniment of the aulos. The names of a number of khoregoi (dithyrambic poets) and auletes (double-reed players) were inscribed on monuments. Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides, poets of the early fifth century B.C.E., were famous composers of dithyrambic choral song; the historian Herodotus named Arion as the person who first categorized the dithyrambs in Corinth, and after the fifth century B.C.E., Timotheus of Miletus and Philoxenus were credited with adding more complex rhythms and melodies to the dithyramb through modulation and modification of the aulos. HYMNS. Often during the beginning and end of festivals, hymnoi were sung as a sign of thanks for prosper-

ity. Hymnoi (“hymns”) were songs of praise to gods. These could be brief accolades to gods during a procession or short introductions to paeans or epic poems. Hymns were composed by the lyric poets Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Pindar, and Bacchylides in the sixth–fifth centuries B.C.E., but the earliest hymns were part of an oral tradition. The Homeric Hymns—so named because they were composed in the same meter, dactylic hexameter, as the epic poems of Homer—were a literary genre performed by professional bards during a religious festival. These were long, elaborate, and detailed biographies of divinities that explained the particular god’s origin, sphere of influence in society, and sites of worship. Thirty-three are preserved. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes includes a description of how the god invented the first lyre out of a chelys (“tortoise shell”). Aphrodite’s Hymn relates how the goddess fell in love with the mortal hero Anchises, and bore his son—the Trojan prince Aeneas—whose descendents would later found Rome. One of the longest and most elaborate of the Homeric Hymns is the Hymn to Demeter, the goddess of grain and agriculture. Her hymn describes how Demeter’s daughter, Kore, came to be known as Persephone, the wife of Hades, god of the Underworld; the story in the hymn contains many symbols and cryptic references to the popular mystery cult of Demeter, which was held in a large sanctuary in the town of Eleusis, near Athens. THE PAEAN. The paean, a versatile form of song that could be sung on a variety of public and private occasions, was especially important during the festivals of the gods Apollo and Artemis, twin children of Leto. Many paeans were composed by musicians and poets to honor Apollo as the Oracle of Delphi. Two were inscribed on the wall of the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi, complete with musical notation. Dating to the second century B.C.E., the 33 preserved lines of the first paean praise the glory of Apollo with sacrifice and music of the kithara (lyre) and the lotus (a type of reed pipe), and relates the myth of how Apollo became the prophet of Delphi by slaying Python, the serpent who guarded the prophetic tripod. Paeans also served as a holy song performed by soloists or choruses during the Panathenaea, a great festival of Athena held every four years in Athens; the Hyakinthia at Sparta; and other festivals honoring the major divinities. They could also function as a prayer of deliverance or thanksgiving. GIRLS’ CHORAL SONGS. Men were not the only ones to perform at festivals. Girls received training in choral music and dance from a young age; before the seventh century B.C.E., this was the only “formal” edu-

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THE INVENTION OF THE LYRE INTRODUCTION :

The anonymous “Homeric Hymns,” devotional songs in honor of a divinity, were performed as preludes to the recitation or singing of the Homeric epics, usually as part of a contest during a religious festival. “Hymn to the God Hermes” describes the birth of this trickster god, and relates several of his many powers and accomplishments; his first feat soon after birth is to invent the lyre from a tortoise-shell (chelys); he then sings a song while striking the lyre with a plectron, improvising “such as young men do at the time of feasts when they taught and mock each other” (presumably in musical competitions). The chelys-lyre must have been introduced into Greece during the Bronze Age; it is depicted in art from the second millennium B.C.E.

SOURCE : Homer, The Homeric Hymn to Hermes, in The Homeric Hymns. Trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976): 31–32.

cation open to girls. From the fifth century onwards, vase-paintings show women teaching girls to dance or play an instrument. Many vase-paintings depict girls and young women dressed in long, modest costumes, holding hands while dancing together in a line or a circle. Choruses of girls and women performed at family occasions such as weddings, but were also a feature of public festivals. Many famous poets, including Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides, composed partheneia (“maiden’s choral dances”) for public performance. In one of the best preserved of the partheneia, composed by seventh-century B.C.E. Spartan poet Alcman, two girls are singled out as the most charming and lovely leaders of ten girls dancing to honor the Dawn Goddess. Choruses of young women joined men in singing paeans and dancing on the Acropolis all night at the beginning of the Panathenaea. At Thebes, girls danced at night during the worship of the Mother of the Gods. MUSIC COMPETITIONS. Four major Funeral Games—multi-day festivals held to commemorate a region’s ancestral king—provided opportunities for athletes as well as musicians to compete for prizes. From 202

the end of the eighth century B.C.E. musicians arrived from all over the Mediterranean to participate in festival contests. Instrumental competitions were instituted in the first quarter of the sixth century; competitors included instrumentalists on the concert lyre (kitharists) and the double-reed pipe (auletes); poets, who performed to accompaniment (kitharodes and aulodes); and the rhapsode, a professional bard who performed selections from the Iliad, the Odyssey, and other epic poetry, introduced by a hymn. Vase-paintings depict these competitors standing on a small stage before a judge. THE VICTORS. In his poem Works and Days, Hesiod, a shepherd-poet roughly contemporary with Homer (c. 700 B.C.E.), described how he won a tripod with handles, which he dedicated to the Muses, for his performance of a hymn at the Games of Amphidamas in Chalcis (654–652 B.C.E.). The names of many winners are known, some of them women: a kitharode named Polygnota of Thebes won a crown and 500 drachmas for her performance during the Pythian Games, according to a second-century B.C.E. inscription from Delphi. Two among the male victors stand out: Terpander of Lesbos

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An engraving copied from a Greek red-figure vase shows a musical competition. A standing woman tunes her lyre, and a seated woman plays the double aulos. THE ART ARCHIVE/BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS PARIS/DAGLI ORTI.

and Timotheus of Miletos. Terpander was a celebrated musician of the early Archaic Period (seventh century B.C.E.), and was maligned in a comedy by Phercrates for singing too many notes. It is said that while Terpander increased the number of strings on the kithara to seven, Timotheus added four more; an anecdote relates that Timotheus was exiled from Sparta for using too many strings on his kithara during the music competition at the Karnean Festival there. GREEK THEATER. The festival of the Great Dionysia, held in Athens in March, was the most important dramatic competition in Greece. Instituted in the mid-sixth century B.C.E. by Peisistratus, the festival lasted five days and featured three tragedies, three satyr plays, five comedies, and two dithyrambs. The Dionysia honored the god Dionysus as Eleutherios (“The Liberator”), and the plays were performed in the large, openair theater dedicated to the god at the foot of the Acropolis. Here, tragedians, of whom the most famous are Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and comic playwrights—Aristophanes is the best known—produced their spectacular and timeless productions before thou-

sands of spectators; adaptations and revivals of these plays continue to be staged today. The tragedies were serious re-enactments of well-known myths, such as the murder of Agamemnon, commander of the Achaean forces at Troy, by his deceitful wife Clytemnestra, or the downfall of the Theban hero Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. The playwright was free, within reason, to interpret these myths through plot and action, which combined spoken dialogue between two to three actors, and choral song. All the parts were played by men or boys. The earliest surviving tragedy, produced by Aeschylus in 472 B.C.E., is unique in not drawing its plot from a myth; it treats an historical event: the bloody sea battle that had occurred at Salamis only eight years before between the Greek and Persian fleets. THE CHORUS. The most important musical element of Greek tragedy and comedy was the chorus. Aristotle, in the Poetics, states that tragedy evolved from the dithyramb, the young men’s choral dance originally performed in honor of Dionysus. He adds that the tragic chorus employed melody, rhythm, and meter in combi-

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An aulos player backstage with Greek actors, from a Roman mosaic.

THE ART ARCHIVE/ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM NAPLES/DAGLI ORTI.

nations composed by the tragedian, who also choreographed and trained the chorus. Each playwright entering the competition was assigned a chorus of twelve to fifteen teenage boys, and a khoregos (“chorus-leader”). The boys were citizens of Athens, until the fourth century B.C.E., when professional singer-dancers were chosen. Aristotle explained that choral performance consisted of three basic parts: the parados (entrance song); the stasimon, sung while standing in the orchestra (literally “dancing place”); and the kommos, an antiphonal lament exchanged between the chorus and the actors. Musical accompaniment was provided by an aulete, a player of the double-reed pipe. In the classical period (480–323 B.C.E.), the chorus was assigned a character role; they played the part of elder statesmen, old men, slave-women, sailors, even supernatural beings, and shared in the action of the plot. Their function was to provide background for the story, interpret the action of the plot for the audience, and provide

a moralizing element. Like the actors, the choral members wore masks, and their musical performance was enhanced by the use of dance and gesture.

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MUSIC IN COMEDY. In the fifth century B.C.E. “Old Comedy” of Aristophanes, the chorus was 24 in number—twice the size of the tragic chorus. The group played the part of humans, but also birds, frogs, clouds, and other whimsical characters whose primary purpose was to entertain. Vase-painters illustrated the fantastic costumes of these choruses. Contemporary popular music, such as love songs, were part of the repertory, sung and danced to the accompaniment of the aulete. Several of Aristophanes’ comedies featured a parabasis, during which the chorus would step forward and address the audience directly, speaking on behalf of the playwright. A musical celebration, often comic, marked the end of many comedies. Aristophanes’ play Wasps ended

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with a type of ribald can-can danced by men, called the kordax. In his last surviving comedies, produced at the beginning of the fourth century, the role of the chorus was reduced. The poetry of the choral odes apparently were no longer written by the poet and included in the text; the word KHOROU (“Choral Song”) was simply written in near the end of the play or between acts to indicate the performance of a song that was not necessarily connected with the story of the play. Aristotle referred negatively to the use of such interludes, which he called embolima. In the “New Comedy” of the fourth century—of which only one entire play, Menander’s Dyskolos, survives—no choral odes were written; instead, the word “KHOROU” occurs between the acts. The play itself, like the tragedies and comedies before it, does refer to music and the performances of the aulete, which confirms that music was always part of Greek theater in one form or another. MUSICAL INNOVATIONS OF THE PLAYWRIGHTS. Thanks to a comedy by Aristophanes called Frogs, it is possible to know a bit about how the poetry and music of the great tragedians of the fifth century B.C.E. was perceived by other artists. In the late fifth century, when Frogs was produced, the great playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were all deceased; in the play, the god Dionysus goes to the Underworld to fetch the best of the three back to earth. A contest is arranged, during which Aeschylus and Euripides ridicule each other’s language, meter, and music. Euripides labels Aeschylus as repetitive and monotonous, while Aeschylus charges Euripides with employing the base songs of prostitutes, foreign music, laments, and dance-hall music. Aeschylus boasts that his musical style fits his lofty, heroic subject matter; Euripides brags that his realism makes the audience think. In the end of the play, Aeschylus wins the contest, but leaves his Underworld throne to Sophocles, whom Aristophanes chose not to mock (perhaps because he had only just died). In his comedy Peace, Aristophanes praised the songs of Sophocles, which contained a variety of modes and more complex rhythms than those of Aeschylus. THE “MODERN” PLAYWRIGHTS. The most innovative poets of the classical tragedians were Euripides and Agathon. The music of Euripides was so popular abroad that it was said to have saved the lives of some Athenian sailors and prisoners of war: Plutarch related that when the Athenian forces were defeated at Syracuse by the Sicilians, their captors freed anyone who could sing any songs of Euripides. Unlike their predecessors, Euripides and Agathon employed the chromatic genus of scale, which resulted in more notes and a wider range.

SAVED FOR THE SAKE OF EURIPIDES’ HYMNS INTRODUCTION :

One source for the popularity of Euripides’ plays is an anecdote related by Plutarch (second century C.E.) in his biography of the Athenian commander Nicias, who had led a fateful military expedition against the city of Syracuse, Sicily, between 415–413 B.C.E. The Athenians were defeated by the Syracusans in 413; Nicias was killed, and the Athenian prisoners were held in a stone quarry; some of them survived, Plutarch said, by entertaining their Sicilian captors with snatches of Euripides.

SOURCE :

Plutarch’s Lives. Vol. III. Trans. Bernadette Perrin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967): 307, 309.

Although other playwrights sometimes used women’s ritual laments in their choral odes, no one made better use of this genre of song than Euripides. Almost every one of his plays contains a lament, considered to be one of the most powerful and effective of the performance genres. It is telling that of all the music composed by the major playwrights, only Euripides’ survives, on two scraps of papyrus dating from the early third century B.C.E. The first comes from his play Orestes, originally

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mother’ s blood, driven mad by the Furies, divine avengers of matricide. The chorus describes the horror of the murder and its aftermath. If this piece represents the actual music composed by Euripides over 100 years prior to the date of the papyrus (still an open question), it is among the earliest authentic examples of ancient Greek music. The center lines of text only are preserved; both vocal and instrumental notation are present, as well as rhythmic and time signs that reveal an expressive dochmiac beat (傼傼傼–傼–). The notes indicate the enharmonic or chromatic Lydian scale, mixed with one diatonic. If this fragment does not represent the actual music of Euripides, it is very much in his style: ancient writers remarked on Euripides’ use of the chromatic genera of scale, his varied textual rhythms, reduplication of syllables, and repetition of words for emotional effect, all of which are present in the fragment.

ORESTES INTRODUCTION :

One of the most famous of a group of musical fragments found written on mummy papyri is the so-called Vienna G 2315, which contains seven lines of a choral ode from the tragedy Orestes by Euripides. The myth of Orestes—the Argive prince who murdered his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father, King Agamemnon, whom Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus had killed—belonged to the Homeric tradition and was retold in several tragedies. The surviving fragment captures lines 338–344 of an ode sung by the chorus in the role of Argive maidens, who have seen Orestes, covered in his

Song from Euripides’ Orestes TRANSLATION FROM THE GREEK TEXT

TEXT OF THE PAPYRUS VIENNA G2315 FROM EURIPIDES’ ORESTES

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…I grieve… I grieve…your mother’s blood which drives you raving mad/Great prosperity Is not secure among mortals/like a sail of a swift, light, ship some divine power, shaking, inundated by the terrible works of the sea in furious destructive waves…

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produced at the Great Dionysia in 408 B.C.E., and the second from Iphigenia at Aulis. Despite the fragmentary condition of the examples, it is possible to recognize Euripides’ style: the use of chromatic lines, alteration of poetic meter, and reduplication of syllables. Agathon, the youngest of the playwrights, won his first competition in 416 B.C.E. when Euripides was sixty; he is credited with introducing new dithyrambic modes and the performance choral music that was not connected to the subject of the tragedy. The music of both Agathon and Euripides was influenced by “modern” tendencies to206

ward multiple notes, complex scales, and modulation, their melodic complexity described as anatretos (“boredthrough like an ant-hill”). The choral poet Melanippides of Melos, writing at the end of the fifth century, was considered a pioneer of “modern” music in his use of many-noted anabolai, instrumental preludes to a dithyrambic performance. By the fourth century, the embolima (“interlude”) replaced the traditional choral ode in tragedy, as it did in comedy. The tragedian would no longer write his own choral odes as an integral part of the plot and action.

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Song from Euripides’ Orestes [CONTINUED] SONG FROM ORESTES IN MODERN NOTATION

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COMPETITIONS AFTER THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. Agathon was, for all points and purposes, the last of the great classical tragedians. From the fourth century forward, solo arias and “star performances” became the most popular, and the tragodos, a virtuoso performer, would sing and mime new material or selections from the great tragedies of the fifth century to instrumental accompaniment. Musical compositions were now being written down for professional use, and a few texts have survived (two of them being perhaps the fragments of Euripides mentioned above). More musical competitions were

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added to existing festivals, and the number of festivals increased, as inscriptions attest. In 279 B.C.E. a new festival called the Soteria was established at Delphi, in gratitude to Apollo “The Savior” for his divine help in defeating the Galatians, who had attacked Apollo’s sanctuary there. Royal festivals were now held in Macedonia, northern Greece, and Alexandria, in Egypt. Professional guilds, established at the beginning of the fourth century B.C.E., were now sending their musicians, poets, and actors from all over Greece to these competitions. The rise of the virtuoso singer and instrumen-

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PLATO ON MUSICAL INNOVATION INTRODUCTION :

In Plato’s Republic Book Three, Socrates argues that certain types of harmonia (system of scales) and rhythms are more appropriate than others for lyric poetry and song; too much “sweet, soft, and plaintive tunes” will corrupt the soul and make men weak. He also warns against innovations in music that are “counter to the established order”; simple melodies and tunes are best for the purposes of moral education.

merrymaking. One of the earliest descriptions of a wedding march appears as a scene on Achilles’ new shield in Iliad Book Eighteen; the bride is carried on a muledrawn wagon through the town by torchlight while young men whirl and dance to the aulos and the phorminx, and the hymenaeum (“wedding song”) rings loud. The hymenaeum was sung during the wedding proper; it was strophic, and often contained a refrain calling upon the god of marriage: “Hymen, Hymenaie!” The song wished the couple harmony, prosperity, and love. Another wedding song, the epithalamion, was performed by a group of unmarried men and women at the door of the wedding chamber. This bittersweet song signaled the transition from child to adult, virgin to married person. Some of the same themes and metaphors featured in the epithalamion—marriage as a journey, the danger of separation from parents—also appeared in funerary laments. In one of her many poignant wedding songs, Sappho of Lesbos wrote a dialogue between the bride and her virginity: Bride: Maidenhood, maidenhood, where have you gone and left me? Maidenhood: No more will I come back to you, no more will I come back.

SOURCE : Plato, The Republic. Trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1992): 87, 89.

talist was alarming to more than a few people. In the Republic and the Laws, Plato argued that the sound of complex rhythms and melodies are harmful to the soul, in the way that “new” musical styles over the years like jazz, rock, and most recently, hip-hop and rap music have been considered a threat to social harmony and stability. Plato and other writers complained that music with “too many notes” was vulgar and/or womanish. WEDDINGS. While music was often used at very large social events, it was also used for smaller, personal purposes as well. A popular subject for painters, poets, and playwrights, the wedding was a time for paeans, choral song and dance, women’s ululation, and music of the lyre and the pipe. The wedding procession of the bride to the groom’s house was an occasion for grand 208

FUNERALS. Funerary scenes depicted on vases from the ninth century B.C.E. forward indicate that large, public funerals were expected for important people, and music was an important element. For nine days mourning took place privately, in the house, but on the tenth day the public burial would occur. Whenever the body was conveyed to or from the house, the mourners followed the bier, displaying their grief by weeping, tearing their hair, scratching their faces, and rending their clothes. The most important public funeral rite was the lament, performed over the body by kinswomen and professional mourners. The two terms commonly used in literary texts for “ritual lament”—threnos and goos—both represented vocalizations that combined inarticulate cries with swaying movements and antiphonal poetic song, often described in tragedy and poetry as “un-lyred” and “un-danced” hymns, in reference to their sobriety. Vasepaintings show auletes performing at funerals, and later writers such as Josephus and Cicero refer to the hiring of up to ten professional auletes for large funerals. The goos may have been a more private, informal and extempore lament. In Homeric epic the word threnos was used for the formal laments by goddesses for dead heroes; it could also refer to the lament of professional mourners. In Athenian tragedy, the threnos was delivered during the kommos, an antiphonal song of lament between the actors and the chorus. The earliest literary lament occurs

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cluding an epitaph and an epigram with musical notation. After the little song, the owner signed his name “Seikilos, Son of Euter.” The last line, “He lives,” may indicate that Seikilos made the monument during his lifetime. Musical notation, in the diatonic Iastian tonos (scale) according to the tables of Alypius, is inscribed over the words to the epigram: one note for each syllable, with the exception of a few words that carry a short melisma of two or three notes over a syllable. The meter of the song is iambic dimeter, and rhythmical marks present above the vocal notation clarify the duration of notes. The well-balanced melody confirms patterns of composition described later by theorists Cleonides and Aristides Quintilianus.

GRAVE STELE OF SEIKILOS INTRODUCTION :

A grave stele (tombstone) dating to the second century C.E. was unearthed in Tralleis, Turkey, during the building of a railway sometime in the late 1800s. The artifact was first published by Sir William Ramsay in 1883, but the public was largely unaware of the object until it was purchased by the National Museum in Copenhagen, and made public in a 1967 lecture by J. Raasted. It is now on display in the National Museum in Copenhagen. The column is inscribed with thirteen lines of Greek text, in-

Seikilos Funeral Epitaph TEXT OF THE SEIKILOS FUNERAL EPITAPH

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I am a stone image. Seikilos put me here A mark of eternal remembrance for all time

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in Book Twenty-Four of the Iliad, when the Trojan prince Hector is mourned by three kinswomen: his mother Hecuba, wife Andromache, and sister-in-law Helen. No music or dancing is indicated, but the poetry of the laments is very powerful in using the discourse of grief to praise and to blame. So effective were laments in raising the level of emotion in the crowd that the sixthcentury B.C.E. Athenian lawgiver Solon banned women’s public performance of the threnos, and many fifthcentury B.C.E. texts indicate that the practice of women’s laments was perceived as politically threatening. Plato was adamantly opposed to women’s public laments, calling them irrational feminine expressions of grief; in the Laws, he states that the ideal lawgiver would prohibit public outcries at funeral processions. In later periods, an epigram—a simple, often plaintive or melancholy verse—might be inscribed on the tombstone. The only surviving funerary epigram with musical notation was found inscribed on the grave monument of a certain Seikilos, dating to the first century C.E. THE SYMPOSIUM. The symposion (literally a “drinking together”) was an important social gathering for Athenian aristocrats from the fifth century B.C.E. forward. The party took place in the men’s quarter of a private home; the wife and children remained upstairs. The guests, reclining on couches, ate, drank diluted wine out of large cups, conversed about silly or even serious matters, played games, and caroused. The entertainment was often provided by professional actors or singers and hetairai, high-class prostitutes who could sing, dance, and play the aulos. The guests themselves might play the lyre and sing their own renditions of well-studied lyric and elegiac poets of a century before: Alcaeus, Anacron, Stesichorus, Archilochus, and Theognis, to name but a few. Skolia (“drinking songs”) were satirical ditties, freely constructed, sung under the influence of wine by any guest who was handed a myrtle branch in turn. The skolia of the poet Anacreon were quite popular; he was considered one of the best of the Ionian (East-Greek) poets of the late sixth century. Athenaeus, in his Deipnosophistae (second–third century C.E.), listed 25 skolia and discussed their style. The symposium was a popular subject for vase-painters, who filled their scenes with fantasy mixed with reality. In his Symposium, Plato staged a philosophic dialogue during a drinking party. In an unlikely scenario, the characters decided not to drink wine to excess and to let the piper go home so that they could have a serious philosophical discussion on the “Nature of Love.” It might have been a boring night, had Socrates’ friend Alcibiades not crashed the party and brought some raucous merriment to the evening. 210

SOURCES

Thomas J. Mathiesen, Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). A. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. Rev. T. B. L. Webster. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). —, Dramatic Festivals of Athens. Rev. John Gould and D. M. Lewis. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Martin West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation. Ed. and trans. Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant. 2nd ed. (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

M USIC E DUCATION METHODS OF TRAINING. Formal music education is known in Athens from the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E. Before this, people interested in learning to sing or play an instrument could study informally under someone else, or even teach themselves. A professional bard would train a talented pupil in return for lodging, food, and clothes. Repertoire and technique were passed down orally and by rote; it is unlikely that there was any tradition of teaching pupils how to read music. The large choral groups, which performed at public festivals, did require organized training by a chorusleader (khoregos), who may also have taught participants to read the poetry. From the seventh to sixth centuries B.C.E., there were active music centers at Sparta, where Alcman composed his partheneia (girls’ choral dances), and on the island of Lesbos, where Sappho set up choruses for girls. In Sparta, part of a young boy’s military training included learning how to dance and sing paeans while wearing armor. SCHOOLS. Instruction in music and letters generally took place in the teacher’s home, but professional music schools were established in the late eighth to seventh centuries B.C.E. by Terpander and Thaletas at Sparta. After the fourth century B.C.E., professional training was offered by a Guild or Academy school, where students from all over the Greek world would study choral and instrumental composition. Girls and boys both received an education, and some girls became professional musicians. Many vase-paintings from Athens depict a typical day in school, which included music, letters, mathematics, and physical education. A famous cup, painted by Douris in the early fifth century, illustrates this in particularly fine detail: a kitharistes

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A red-figure kylix in Berlin by the Douris painter showing a music school. 5th century B.C.E.

(“lyre-teacher”) is facing his student; both hold the chelys (tortoise-shell lyre). Other lyres hang on the wall above their heads. To their right, a seated grammatistes (“grammar-teacher”) holds a scroll with verse written on it, which his pupil recites while standing stiffly at attention. A bearded paidagogos, a slave in charge of the boys, watches the lessons. On the other side of the cup, one student prepares to sing while his teacher plays the aulos (double-reed pipe); nearby, another teacher writes on a wax tablet for his pupil. THE EFFECT OF MUSIC. Greek philosophers, theorists, and even the poets themselves generally agreed that music had a profound effect on a person’s character, and for that reason the types of music taught in school should be carefully chosen. As a rule, simple traditional styles were preferred by educators—complex, foreign (not Greek), styles were not. The lyre, associated with Apollo and Orpheus, was favored over the pipe, which accompanied wild ecstatic worship of Dionysus. Homeric poetry or selections of tragic choral odes were preferable to other genres of songs. Pythagoras, a mathematician of the late sixth–early fifth centuries B.C.E., believed that sounds and rhythms, which are ordered by numbers, exemplified and corresponded to the harmony

ART RESOURCE.

of the cosmos. This is further explained through the Greek word for music theory, harmonics, which contains the Indo-European root -ar, meaning “to join, fit together, be in synchrony.” According to Pythagoras, the consonances of a fourth, fifth, and octave were models of harmony. His inquiries into the science of sound and relative numbers began what would later be known as “acoustic theory.” ETHOS. The music teacher Damon, building on the ideas of Pythagoras a generation later, taught that each musical genre had its own character, or ethos, which affects human thought and behavior. For boys, rhythms and melodic forms should be chosen for their masculine qualities; girls should learn music that taught modesty and restraint. The chromatic genera of scales were considered effeminate, while the enharmonic promoted courage and manliness. Damon’s focus on the ethical qualities of music in turn influenced those who followed, including Plato, Aristotle, and the Roman writer Varo. All of these writers exhibit a conservative desire to label, categorize, select, and even censor certain types of melodic forms. In the Laws and Republic, Plato considered only two harmoniai (modal scales) acceptable for the purposes of education: the Dorian and Phrygian. Aristotle was a bit more lenient, admitting that all types of music have

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their place, even the baser sorts. Not all philosophers adhered to the doctrine of ethos; the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of the third–second centuries B.C.E., for example, attacked the notion that music had any permanent effect on the soul. Philodemus, an Epicurean, wrote a treatise entitled On Music in which he argued that poetry had power, but music itself was simply pleasurable. Despite those who would contradict the Pythagorean notion that music was linked to cosmic harmony and therefore had the ability to influence the soul, the idea would not go away. After the first century C.E. the doctrine of ethos was adopted and adapted by Ptolemy and Aristides Quintilianus (third–fourth century C.E.), who supported earlier arguments that traditional, rational, masculine melodic forms must be used for education, but others could be used for different purposes. GUILDS. Professional guilds of artists and musicians, known as the Dionysou Technitai (Artisans of Dionysus), were created in Athens and in Teos (north-west Asia Minor, now Turkey) by the beginning of the third century B.C.E. In his Deipnosophistae, the lexicographer Athenaeus included solo instrumentalists such as kitharists and auletes, as well as poets, actors, singers, and composers as members of guilds operating under a group of officers headed by a priest of Dionysus. They provided performers, directors, and composers for any occasion, and handled payment contracts. In this way, the Dionysou Technitai was comparable to a musician’s union. Such guilds also functioned as schools offering training in singing, musical instrument instruction, and lessons in the writing of rhythm and melody. The guild schools may have kept a library of written compositions, but none have survived. SOURCES

Giovanni Comotti, Music in Greek and Roman Culture. Trans. Rosaria V. Munson (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, originally published in Italian, 1979). John G. Landels, Music in Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Routlege, 1999). Thomas J. Mathiesen, Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Martin West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

M USIC

R OMAN L IFE

PRODUCT OF MANY INFLUENCES. The surviving evidence indicates that Roman musical culture was not unique and new, but rather a product of many external 212

influences, most notably Etruscan and Greek. Long before Latin became the official language, and Rome the seat of a great empire, there were native peoples in Italy who spoke their own—as yet undeciphered—languages and, no doubt, enjoyed their own musical traditions; virtually nothing is known about them. The Greeks interacted with many of these cultures and exerted a profound influence. Imported Greek pottery, some of which dates as early as 1000 B.C.E., has been found by archaeologists in the northern regions of Etruria, Latium, and Umbria, along the Tiber River in central Italy, and in Campania in the south. During the course of the eighth century B.C.E., Greeks emigrated in large numbers to southern Italy and Sicily, where they founded permanent colonies. Greek musicians, composers, actors, and poets who had been living and working in Italy eventually found their way to Rome, where their musical ideas, traditions, and practices were accepted by most, if not all the citizens. The native Italian traditions were not completely supplanted by the Greek, but they are not well understood; only a few fragments of early Latin carmina (songs, poems) from Rome and Latium survive; these were monodic or choral, and included ritual song (e.g. Carmen Fratrum), epic-historical poetry (Carmen convivialia)—which were accompanied by the tibia (the Latin version of the Greek aulos)—triumphal songs (carmina triumphalia), and funeral laments (neniae). The Romans enjoyed musical concerts, solo performances, and theatrical productions that were, for the most part, versions of Greek or native Italian genres. With few exceptions, the Romans adopted Etruscan, Near Eastern, and Greek lyres, double-reed pipes, and percussion instruments. In fact, after Rome conquered Greece and brought the entire country into the empire in the second half of the second century B.C.E., the pervasive Hellenizing (Greek) presence provoked some heavy criticism from Latin writers and even lawmakers; Juvenal and Cicero both condemned the excessive Hellenizing of Roman culture, and Roman censors issued edicts limiting the performances of Greek virtuosi and the use of Greek instruments. THE ETRUSCAN HERITAGE. The Etruscans were a people who dominated the area of Etruria and Latium in northern Italy before Rome emerged as the central power. Archaeologists have discovered a large number of imported Greek vases in Etruscan tombs, proving that they had a thriving trade with the Greeks from at least the fifth century B.C.E., perhaps earlier. The fresco art in some of the tombs also indicates Greek influence. One grave, the so-called Tomb of the Leopards in Tarquinia, contains a fresco depicting two musicians. One plays the tibia (double-reed pipe) known in Greece as the aulos;

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the other plays a lyre that resembles the Greek chelys (tortoise-shell lyre). Even after Roman rule was firmly established, the Etruscans had much influence on Roman religious practices and the music involved. Many, if not most, of the state musicians hired to play for Roman religious and other state festivals were Etruscans who belonged to a collegium (“artist guild”) in Rome. ETRUSCAN INSTRUMENTS. The Etruscans played instruments that were comparable to Greek versions, but also others which seem to be unique to them, and they paired instruments that were not played together in Greece. In a relief on a bronze Etruscan situla (“bucket”) dating to the late sixth century B.C.E. a musician playing an unusual m-shaped harp (or lyre) is paired with a player of the fistula (“pan-pipes”); the two musicians, both wearing wide-brimmed hats, sit facing each other in a formal concert pose. In Greece, the pan-pipe (syrinx) was rather a pastoral instrument used primarily by shepherds or for outdoor revels. If an illustration on an Etruscan cinerary urn dating to the late second century B.C.E. can be trusted, the Etruscan obliqua tibia was a pipe that may have been played more like a flute than an oboe, comparable to the mysterious Greek plagiaulos. The player in the scene on the urn seems to hold the tibia horizontally out to his right like a modern flautist; the placement of his lips transversely across the mouthpiece on the top of the pipe and his cross-fingering of the holes suggests that the instrument was more like a flute than a reed. This type of pipe was shown in Roman art well past the third century C.E. Curved horns used by the Etruscans and later adopted by the Romans include the lituus, bucina, and cornu, and were more comparable to the Greek tuba, a straight trumpet, than the Greek salpinx. Both the salpinx and the tuba were referred to as “Etruscan” by Greek and Latin writers, but the Greek salpinx was almost exclusively a military instrument, whereas the Etruscans and Romans also played their trumpets and horns in concerts, sometimes in ensemble with the tibia (“pipe”) and kithara (“lyre”). GREEK INFLUENCE. The Greek influence in Italy did not begin with the Etruscans in the north, but in the south, as early as the late eighth century B.C.E., when large numbers of Dorian Greeks moving west from the Peloponnese colonized southern Italy and eastern Sicily. Many Italian and Sicilian Greeks became very wealthy in their new land, especially those living in the Sicilian city of Syracuse. Unlike Athens, which by the fifth century B.C.E. had established a democracy, the political system of Syracuse was a type of monarchy called a “tyranny.” These tyrants took power by force, but once established, they could be very generous to the Greek ar-

tisans, musicians, and poets whom they admired; the fifth-century B.C.E. Greek poet Pindar and playwright Aeschylus were among those who received lavish hospitality at the court of the tyrant Hieron in Syracuse. The largest cities in Italy and Sicily boasted open-air theaters comparable to the most majestic amphitheaters in Greece (such as Epidauros). Greek influence on Roman culture became more evident after the First Punic War, during the course of the third century B.C.E., when contact between the Roman people and the Greeks in southern Italy increased. Musical instruments that were popular in Greece—pipes, lyres, horns, rattles—were also played in Rome, albeit in different forms and combinations. The Romans imitated Greek literary and dramatic forms; they adopted and adapted Greek architecture. Wealthy Latins hired Greek teachers and doctors. Greek gods and heroes of myth received Latin names, but were worshipped in comparable ways. By the time the Roman army took Corinth in 146 B.C.E. and brought the whole country of Greece into their empire, the Roman people had already long been captured by Greek culture. ROMAN THEATER. As in Greece, dramatic dance and song in ancient Italy were central to the various rites and rituals performed to appease or praise the gods. Many early dances were improvised, and accompanied by the tibia—the most popular wind instrument for dancers in both Italy and Greece. The Latin historian Livy related that in 364 B.C.E. Etruscan ludiones (“pantomimists”) were called upon to save Rome from a plague by dancing to a special melody played by a tibicen (“piper”). The Romans adapted this Etruscan dance and added a rhythmically varied song; the new compositions were called saturae (satire). Scenes on vases from Apulia, a region on the coast of southern Italy, show that a popular form of entertainment in the Greek colonies in Italy after the mid-fourth century B.C.E. was the travelling troupe of tragic jesters called phlyakes, who performed satires and burlesque on a portable stage, with music provided by an aulete (“piper”). The Romans adopted Greek forms of epic, lyric, tragedy, and comedy, and music continued to play an important role, although very little is known about its melodies or characteristics. No musical compositions from Roman theater survive. In the third century, Roman theatrical productions favored revivals of fifth- and fourth-century B.C.E. Greek playwrights, especially Euripides, Aristophanes, and New Comedy writers Menander and Philemon; the first writer/composer with a Roman name—Livius Andronicus—was actually a Greek slave brought from Tarentum to Rome and later freed. His Latin successors included the playwrights Ennius, Plautus, Terence, and others, who flourished into the second

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century B.C.E. These Roman writers translated Greek original plays into Latin, and enjoyed a good deal of poetic license, changing names, mixing scenes, and rearranging the plots in a technique known as contaminatio; they also sometimes turned spoken dialogue from the Greek original into song. ROMAN COMEDY. The comedies of Plautus (250–184 B.C.E.) and Terence (a generation later) were among the most popular in Rome at least until the end of the first century B.C.E. Their plays, like those of their Greek predecessors Menander and Aristophanes, were full of ribald and often obscene humor. Male actors played all the parts—even the “girlfriends” in the bawdy love stories. Roman comedy featured the canticum, a scene enacted in sing-song manner to the accompaniment of the tibia which would alternate with the deverbia (recited portions). Choral song, which was so central to Greek tragedy, probably played less of a role in Roman theater; the orchestra space, used by the chorus in Greek theater as the dancing place, served as an area for reserved seating in Rome. Solo virtuosity was highly prized in Rome, and the tibicen often introduced a tragic or comic performance with an easily recognizable tune composed specifically for that show. The tibicen also interacted with the actors and the audience during a performance. Production data has survived that lists the names of actors, dates of production, and the name of the festivals, along with some information about the original music composed for the plays. Different kinds of tibia were assigned to each actor in a comedy: “equal pipes” were designated for the “Girl from Andros,” while the character of “Phormio” required “unequal pipes” (possibly an octave apart). OTHER THEATRICAL FORMS. After Terence and his generation of playwrights, comedy and tragedy became less prominent in Rome, but a new theater of Pompeii was opened in 55 B.C.E., and the old plays were performed during the Funeral Games for Julius Caesar after his assassination in 44 B.C.E. Mime and pantomime, developed from Etruscan forms, were popular in the Roman repertoire around the first century B.C.E.; the mime was a re-enactment of real or mythical stories performed using speech, dance, and movement, sometimes with the accompaniment of the tibia. Pantomimes might include choral and orchestral music using a variety of instruments: tibiae and other types of pipes, kitharae (lyres), cymbals, and a percussion instrument played with the foot called the scabella. Solo comic and tragic actors— comoedi and tragoedi—were in big demand; the comic Roscius and dramatic actor Aesopus were celebrities in Rome. Suetonius, the biographer of the first twelve Ro214

man emperors, related that the cruel and perverted emperor Nero was, ironically, an accomplished kitharode who also performed in costume, on stage, along with the professional actors. LATIN POETRY. While the verses of the famous firstcentury B.C.E. Latin poets Catullus and Horace contain many allusions to music and the musical instruments of the Greek poets, there is no evidence to suggest that Latin lyric was actually performed to the accompaniment of the lyre, as Greek lyric poetry was. Horace did compose a publicly performed poem in Sapphic meter for chorus, to be sung by two groups of 27 girls and boys. Commissioned by the emperor Augustus for the Centennial Games in 17 B.C.E., no evidence for the music survives. The Latin poet Vergil, working under the patronage of the emperor Augustus, composed the Roman national epic the Aeneid using the same meter as Homer— dactylic hexameter—and employing the themes of the Iliad and Odyssey, yet this poem was not sung, nor was it performed to the accompaniment of the lyre, as Homeric epic had been in the Archaic Period. ROMAN FEMALE POETS AND MUSICIANS. With few exceptions, there were no Latin female poets comparable to Sappho or Nossis of Greece. Male poets, such as Propertius and Ovid, mentioned the names of Roman female writers in their works, but the actual poems of only one Latin woman—Sulpicia (31 B.C.E.–14 C.E.)— survive. Six of Sulpicia’s elegies exist, totalling only forty lines. She was probably the niece of her patron, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a historian who also supported other elegiac poets, including Ovid and Tibullus. Although Sulpicia used to good effect the stylistics common during the reign of Augustus—couplets, alliteration, and assonance—she did not allude to music in her poetry, and her poems were meant to be recited, not sung. Some Roman women studi

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