Week 07— Art in Archaic Greece (I)

Readings: Dunstan, chapter 7.

Literature

• Epic Poetry (Homer)
• Beginning of Greek literature: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
• Homer may have lived on an island off the coast of Asia Minor between 800 and 700 BC.
• Blind: a traditional attribute of a prophet?
• The roots of his works reach far back before his time.
• Product of an oral tradition.
• Collective inheritance of many singer-poets (Aeds).
• Regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat: improvised oral-formulaic poems.
• Typical of epic poetry in an exclusively oral culture.

The Iliad

• Iliad and Odyssey’s perspectives on certain issues differ radically.
• The Iliad: the famous story about the Trojan War.
• It centers on the person of Achilles (Greek heroic ideal).
• The wrath of Achilles, deprived of his slave woman by Agamemnon.
• Withdrawal from the fighting, Greeks almost defeated, death of Patroclus, Achilles’ revenge upon Hector.
• Idea of moral choice: to live a long, unremarkable life or to die young and gloriously.
• Human condition compared to the life of the immortal gods.

The gods in the Iliad

• Seeming lack of morals and general lack of gravity: Homer's gods display the same values as do his heroes:
• Plurality of gods, disagreeing with each other, illustrates:
  • a world filled with contradictory forces.
  • a competitive society, dominated by its warrior aristocracies.
• The gods are the ultimate heroes.

The human condition and Fate

• The gods’ freedom from death or pain contrast to the lives of the mortal characters.
• For the heroes the consequences of battle are much more dire.
• Also, forces are at work that the mortals cannot perceive (will of Zeus).
• There is an order to events, and the heroes, through their freely chosen actions, participate in that order without being aware of it.
• No sense of the good being rewarded: mortal life is harsh.
• But humanity is capable of a real dignity and nobility.

The Odyssey – a different kind of hero

• The story of Odysseus, sailing back home to his wife and family.
• Cursed by Poseidon after Polyphemus’ blinding.
• During this ten-year voyage, he loses all of his comrades and ships and makes his way home to Ithaca disguised as a beggar.
• Odysseus defined by his intelligence; he does not have the heroic stature of Achilles.
• Achilles argues for bravery, while Odysseus advocates prudence;
• Either glorified as the seeker of truth (as in Homer), or damned as the treacherous deceiver.
• The Odyssey reflects the idea of heavenly justice: people bring suffering on themselves.

Hesiod, his work and his time

• The other great poet of the preclassical period.
• First written Theogony in the ancient Greece (middle or end of 8^th century).
• Inspired poet (Muses), but also a peasant.
• His other poem, Works and Days: about the fields’ works and the necessity for men to work hard to earn their bread.
• Literal language (artificial).
• Hesiod inherited many old traditions of Epics, tales and myths.
• But his work is beautiful and coherent.
• Many tales related by Hesiod may come from ancient Near-Eastern traditions.

Analysis of the Theogony

Originality of Hesiod

• The time of Hesiod corresponds to the apparition of the Greek alphabet.
• Important commercial links with the East, especially the Phoenicians.
• Hesiod’s work may have many sources and many influences.
• First global and organized vision of the Greek myths (creation of the world, settling of the universal order).
• Didactic poem explaining the Universe.

Lyric Poetry

• Accompanied by the lyre.
• The first: Archilochus of Paros (c. 700 BC), known by fragments..
• The two major poets: Sappho and Pindar.

Sappho (610-570?)

• She wrote in Aeolic dialect.
• Her phrasing is concise, direct, and picturesque.
• Ability to stand aloof and judge critically her own ecstasies and grief.
• Suspicious legends about Sappho abound.
• She lived most of her life in her hometown of Mytilene on Lesbos.
• Born into an aristocratic family.
• Her themes, invariably personal, primarily concerned with her thiasos (the female community under her leadership).

The Sapphic thiasos

• Goal: education of young women (marriage).
• Patronized and inspired by Aphrodite.
• Sappho's poetry includes elements of Aphrodite's rituals.
• Grace and elegance for seduction and love.
• Singing, dancing, and poetry.
• Homoeroticism played a role (initiation and education).
• Sappho and her followers considered to have had homosexual inclinations (Lesbos).
• Normal in the seventh century context (eg. Alcaeus & Pindar).

Her lost works

• Nine volumes of poetry (only a small proportion survives).
• Papyrus fragments & citations in other ancient writers.
• A single complete poem: Hymn to Aphrodite.
• Her work was copied less and less, during Roman times (Aolic dialect was becoming difficult).
• Still, the greatest poets and thinkers of ancient Rome continued to emulate her.

Pindar (518-438)

• Considered as the greatest choral poet of ancient Greece.
• From Thebes (but he traveled often).
• Aristocratic family, with branches at Sparta and other Greek cities.
• His poetry conveys the values of the aristocratic class.

His works

• He is best remembered for his victory odes (epinikia).
• Composed in honor of various patrons' triumphs at sports festivals.
• Sense of joyous occasion, sublime religious piety, sadness over human transience.

Epinikia

• Forty-five odes survive whole.
• Four categories: Olympians, Pythians, Nemeans, and Isthmians.
• The four major sports festivals.
• International athletes: rich, usually nobles.
• Composed for a fee paid by the victor.
• Performed by a chorus at the athlete's home city.
• Themes: home region, superiority of the upper class, precariousness of human happiness, comparisons with mythical heroes.
• Victory: proof of divine favor.

His life

• We know little of Pindar's life.
• He studied poetry at Athens.
• Contacts in aristocratic circles (including the Alcmaeonid clan).
• His world shaken with Persian Wars: Thebes’ aristocrats fell into deep disgrace (collaboration with Persians).
• Crisis of divided loyalties.
• It took him years to reestablish himself.
• Visit to Sicily (476-474)
• Welcome at the courts of Theron of Acragas and Hieron I of Syracuse.
• Pindar's reputation spread all over the Greek world.
• His memory revered for centuries.
• Alexander the Great spared his house when he destroyed Thebes.

Greek pottery

• After the Geometric period:  the “orientalizing” phase.
• Late 8^th and early 7^th centuries: Expansion of Greek trading activities.
• Growing Eastern influence on Greek pottery painters.
• First apparent in Corinth (700 BC).
• Oriental motifs, curvilinear patterns.
• New subjects: sphinx, siren, griffin, gorgon, chimera, lion.
• Silhouette technique, figures painted in black glaze and incised with thin lines.

Black-figure pottery

• Athenian painters adopted this style around 630 BC, but they emphasized human figures.
• Superior quality of clay, pigment, and decoration.
• From 600 BC on, Athens is the dominant centre for Greek pottery.
• Narrative scenes composed of black figures on a light inset background panel.
• Complicated three-stage process of firing.

Red-figure pottery

• Invented at Athens about 530 BC.
• Reddish figures appear light against the black background.
• Details of the figures painted on in black (brush: subtler).
• Around 500 BC: use  of three-quarter frontal poses and overlapping of one figure on another.
• Period of zenith.
• Scenes from everyday life, heroic and mythological themes.

To be continued in week 7