Art Appreciation IP2

Ancient Greece According to classicist C. M. Bowra,

Ancient Greece left some of the most magnificent works of art and literary monuments ever bequeathed by one civilization to another. But it is not mostly for these that the legacy of Greece is great. It is, rather, because of the spirit they evoke, a spirit rooted in the belief that man is a free, indeed an exalted, being. For thousands of years older civilizations—Persian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian—thought of man as a despised figure who groveled before deities and despots. The Greeks picked man up and set him on his feet. (Bowra, 1965, p. 18)

Architecture and Sculpture

To the Greeks, all things must be enjoyed in moderation, but this does not mean the Greeks did not have a strong taste for beauty. Architecturally, they gave the Doric and Ionic orders, which have functions as well as elegance and are still used.

Along with developments in architecture, the Greeks perfected sculpture with an almost-obsessive desire to show human perfection. They showed the beauty of the human form in nudes and combined realism and idealism into things of beauty unlike anything the world had yet created.

Drama, Music, and Literature

The Greeks invented drama: many tragedies and comedies such as Euripides’ Medea or Aristophanes’ The Clouds are as compelling today as they were when they were written. Musical divisions of Pythagoras are still used today, and one does not need to study philosophy to realize that music can affect human emotions.

Classical Greece bore philosophers; indeed, much of Western thought is based on the ideas of Socrates, Plato and, especially, Aristotle. Poetry was also developed from Homer and Sappho.

The Ideal of Man

For the Greeks, war was the supreme test of a man, and while "[h]eadlong bravery was the least that was expected of Greek fighters…style in war was particularly admired" (Bowra, 1965, p. 22). The Greeks also admired the individual and gave equal respect to both mental and physical prowess. A complete individual would be an active athlete, a philosopher, a judge, and a poet and would pursue anything else worthy of pursuit. The Olympics exalted athletics but prizes were also given to the best musicians, dancers, and poets while festivals for Dionysus focused on drama.

Government

This remarkable culture gave the world a new king of government: democracy. They prized law and order, held a passion for freedom, and abhorred corruption. The great Athenian leader Pericles made a funeral oration for the dead in the winter of 431–430 BCE. In his stirring speech, he praised not just those who perished but the city of Athens as well. Part of this speech explains the Athenian view of democracy and is appropriate as Athens was the birthplace of this form of government.

Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not the membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. (Murphy, Katula, Hill, & Ochs, 2003, p. 242)

References

Bowra, C. M. (1965). Classical Greece. New York: Time.

Murphy, J. J., Katula, R. A., Hill, F. I., & Ochs, D. J. (2003). A synoptic history of classical rhetoric (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.