Essay On Ancient Literature Greek History Essay

A million and billon years ago, a lot of different cultures existed all over the world. As we know ancient Greek is the one of areas that has been influencing to not only western culture but also all throughout world up to these days through the Rome and the middle ages. I think Greek culture have affected the advancement in human civilization for a long time enormously. What they make such as politics, economics, society, culture became a part of various cultures and history, and therefore if we read the literature of the ancient period we would be possible to get the knowledge that will open future brightly by figuring out what they had been done to keep their culture. In order to understand the ancient Greek culture we need to comprehend the contemporary tendency of Greek society. What they wrote about, the incident that happened, the people who was alive, the heritage which they left behind will be the most important evidence to figure out what Greek culture is. The main characters of Greek culture could be the respect to human and the pursuit of rational mind. Greek people were respect human in many fields such as politics, religion, study, arts and achieved the traits of culture by seeking to the beauty of human and knowledge at most. Unlike the other countries, Greece was developing to the democratic state with freedom such as polis, which is the city state of Greece, can be a good example of demonstrating the democracy. In addition, the slavery and economic system was arranged well, so the Greek did not need to work hard to get money as much as they can and could concentrate on the politic, study, arts. These environments gave help to the development of Greek culture throughout the every field.

Among the Greek who thought the rational mind was important, the philosophy was developed by lots of prominent philosophers. For example, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were most important philosophers who gave direct or indirect influence not only to the ancient philosophy but also to the improvement of modern philosophy. Herodotus, who wrote the book about the Persia war in detail, was called the father of history. With the development of the natural science, so many remarkable scholars appeared such as the father of medicine Hippocrates, Pythagoras in mathematics, first atom scholar Democritus etc.

The ancient Greek’s politics development was based on the development of the polis, which is the city state of Greece. Even though the polis is different and various the systems of politics tended to have the specific development by stages. Especially Athena simplified the development of state to four stages. Greece had democratic which means the dominance by the people. At that time all the adult male had an opportunity to participate to the politics system and most of the city state chose the democratic politic finally; among of them Athena was typical.

Ancient Greek had various religions and gods. Among lots of gods, the most important gods were Zeus and also twelve gods. According to the myth about twelve gods, everybody lived above the Mount Olympus by governing the world. The gods of Greece had not only all different characters and missions but also the feeling such as happiness, sadness, pleasure, anger etc. This kind of Greece religion had a big effect on the literature and art. The representative piece of Greece literature is the Iliad and the Odyssey which is epic poems written by Homer. Since after the Persia war the play was popular in Greece, Lysistrata, the comedy play written by Aristophanes, is the one of the popular play in ancient Greece. In the Lysistrata, when all the men of the Greek went out on the battlefield for the Peloponnesian war, the women was guarding the house and waiting them during life time. Lysistrata built a ploy to incite men to drop out of the war and sign a peace treaty for women in frustration as she felt. Women tried to withhold sex in order to finish the war in Athena. Even though women sometimes did not put up with withholding sex, lysistrata, who is a women leading the withholding sex, persuaded women to overcome the desire to sex. The play gave humor by applying satire of the sex of male and female to the situation, but it shows not only the satire of the sexual intercourse but also the thought of male about female in that period. In the middle of play men mentioned that it was fun for women to build a poly to finish the war with withholding sex. Militancy of the men was depicted comically. I think Lysistrata is showing relatively stark and fills with lewd wit, but also comical situation as well as metabolism scintillating satire and wit of this work can be characterized.

A style of architecture in Greek was mostly the temple for gods and it shows the beauty of equilibrium and harmony. There were the different order of temple such Doric style, Ionic style, and Corinth style and Temple of Parthenon can be the representative structure in ancient Greek. The piece of the beauty of the human body appeared mainly the Greek sculptures and the representative sculptures by Phidias of Athens statue and Zeus statue and Hermes statue of Praxiteles etc.

In the fourth century BC, the empire was conquered by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who conquered Persia, Greece, and Egypt. Eastern culture of the Orient and the Western Greek culture were mixed together, so it built the new culture, is called Hellenism. The Hellenistic culture with Christianity became two sources of western culture. Even though the Greek culture was declined by so many neither reasons that can be sophists stressing intellectual integrity, individualism, no single truths, practical moral, political chaos, Greek culture is still influencing the modern western culture and also eastern culture. Before we get the Greek culture’s characters we should be able to recognize the advantages that helped the development of Greek and the disadvantages that made the Greek decline.