Overview of Greek Literature by Genre

• Epic Poetry
• Didactic Poetry
• Lyric Poetry
• Drama: Tragedy
• Drama: Comedy
• Prose: History
• Prose: Philosophy
• Prose: Rhetoric

Epic Poetry

The word "epic" is derived from the Greek word epos meaning "word," "saying" or "speech." It distinguishes recited or spoken poetry from sung poetry (lyric) or acted poetry (drama) and from prose texts. An epic poem is generally a long narrative in dactylic hexameter (six feet of one long syllable followed by two short syllables, – u u ). Usually it is on a majestic theme and often relates the exploits of a national hero.

Some of the characteristics of oral epic poetry are as follows

1. It is formulaic, with lots of repeated phrases, lines, or sections.
2. It begins with an invocation to the Muse.
3. It begins in medias res ("in the middle of the story") and assumes that the audience will bring to the story enough background information to fill in the narrative context.
4. It depicts gods interacting with mortals for a variety of purposes.
5. It contains lengthy catalogues.
6. Its authorial voice is objective, that is to say the poet rarely speaks in his own voice.
7. Its tone is aristocratic, that is to say it describes the world of the elite members of the culture.

Well-known examples of oral epics are the Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Song of Roland; important written epics include the Aeneid, Paradise Lost, and the Divine Comedy.

Homer's Iliad was originally a performance poem, meant to be recited by a bard who traveled around Hellas and told stories of the glorious past. A poem as long as the Iliad would have taken several days to perform, and it is likely that it was performed at some civic festival or perhaps at a private feast. The fact that the Iliad describes the world of the 13th - 12th centuries BCE although Homer himself lived much later in the 8th century BCE suggests that the story was originally transmitted orally and only subsequently written down as a permanent text. The Iliad, however, is approximately 15,000 lines long. Thus the question becomes, "how could a bard – even a highly skilled and professional one – carry such a long poem in his head and recite it in performance without a text?"

Armed with this question, Milmum Parry went to the former Yugoslavia and studied the oral poets there. This field work helped him understand the mechanics of modern oral composition which he then applied to the composition of ancient Greek epic. He discovered that the poet memorized long phrases – called formulae or epithets – which could be fitted into metrically appropriate parts of the poem. "Swift-footed Achilles" is a common epithet with a distinct metrical pattern which appears in the Iliad. It appears that the fact that the piece was in meter (namely, in dactylic hexameter) actually helps the poet, for he can use memorized formulae to fill out the meter of a line. This would mean that the poet composed by half-lines, lines, or whole sections, and not word-by-word. For example, the two most common epithets in the Iliad for Hera are "Hera of the golden throne" and "Hera of the white arms." Each fits into a different metrical part of a line; therefore the poet selects the epithet to use, not on the basis of meaning or context, but on the basis of meter. He uses whichever epithet fits metrically – not necessarily sensibly – into that place in the line. When you consider that approximately one-third of the Iliad is repeated, either as short epithets or entire passages, you can see how much of the poem is recited by rote, as opposed to being composed on the spot. What repeated passages do you notice in Book 1 of the poem? What repeated epithets occur in book 1? Because we read a written text (as opposed to listening to an oral recitation), these repetitions stick out, and we have an acute awareness of them. Parry discovered, however, that in an oral context the repetitions occur so quickly and are so shopworn that they go virtually unnoticed by an audience.

With oral transmission, the story of the poem would change as each poet adapted the story and shaped it at each performance. With the re-appearance of writing in the 8th century BCE, however, the texts of these epic stories may have begun to coalesce and become permanent. Whether or not Homer was himself literate and committed his particular versions of the Trojan War saga to writing is hotly debated among scholars.

The story of the Iliad is about the quarrel between Achilleus and Agamemnon and its effect on both the Greek troops at Troy and in particular on Achilleus himself. Education for a Greek male included a thorough grounding in the story of the Iliad and its influence can be traced in much of the rest of Greek literature. In many respects the poem defines the Greek ideal of heroism and served as a cultural touchstone for Greeks throughout antiquity. Its impact can not be over-emphasized.
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Suggestions for further reading:

Didactic Poetry

The two best known Greek didactic poems are Hesiod's Works and Days and his Theogony. Like Homer's epics, these poems are composed in dactylic hexameter verse and, though not as long as Homer's epics, they are lengthy poems. The function of didactic poetry is to teach the audience something.

The Works and Days is about justice and its place in contemporary life. It uses the story of the conflict between the author and his brother Perses – a story which may or may not be true – as the motivation for a much deeper examination of the issues surrounding the pursuit of a just life.

The Theogony describes the origin of the cosmos, a process which culminates in the birth of the Olympian deities and the establishment of Zeus' reign. Hesiod's goal is to demonstrate that Zeus' rule is just and that it will not come to a bad end.

Suggestions for further reading:

Lyric Poetry

Lyric poems are generally short poems meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre. They utilize a variety of meters. One scholar has called lyric poetry the "poetry of individual experience." Indeed, lyric poems are often deeply personal and colored with invective. Their subject matter covers a wide range of topics, from personal emotions to the landscape, from love to death, from war to the polis.

Suggestions for further reading:

Drama: Tragedy

Greek tragedy is performed in honor of the god Dionysos. It is a distinctly Athenian genre whose origin is problematic. Some scholars believe that it developed from the dithyramb, a choral ode sung competitively by 50 (?) men in costume to honor Dionysos. Others believe that its origin is to be found in a dromenon, a re-enactment of a mythic event within the ritual context at a sanctuary. At least one other scholar has argued that it combined the choral ode of the dithyramb with the action of a dromenon into a completely distinctive and original genre.

Many watershed events in the early history of tragedy are recorded by ancient sources. In 535 BCE, Thespis is said to have added a prologue and set speeches to a choral ode; these comprise the core constituents of a Greek tragedy and his is the first name we hear of in association with tragedy. In 511 BCE, Phrynichos' play The Taking of Miletos forever changed the subject matter of tragedy; we are told that the audience reacted so emotionally to his dramatization of this historical event that real events became taboo subjects for tragedy. From then on, only myth was deemed appropriate subject matter for tragedy.

Three great tragedians are responsible for shaping and refining the genre: Aeschylus (525 - 456 BCE), Sophokles (495 - 406 BCE) and Euripides (485 - 406 BCE). Aeschylus is credited with introducing a second actor into the drama and for exploiting the visual effect of elaborate costumes and stage props. He often made effective use of the ekkyklema, a revolving platform which was used to display to the audience events which had taken place off-stage. Consider how the ekkyklema would have been used in the Agamemnon and what effect it would have had on the audience's understanding of and reaction to the play.

Sophokles is said to have introduce a third actor which increased the potential for dramatic conflict and tension in the play and made it easier to produce more complex plots with the conventions of Greek tragedy. He is also said to have increased the number of men in the chorus from 12 to 15.

The plays of Euripides often require a fourth actor, and his complicated plots are often resolved at the end by the deus ex machina ("the god from the machine"). This term refers to an epiphany or appearance of a deity at the end of the play via a crane (the machina) so that the deity might bring the conflict to a resolution and end the play.

Greek tragedies follow a very strict structure comprising the following elements:

• prologue: a speech which sets the scene and outlines the conflict
• parodos: the choral ode sung by the chorus as it enters the theater
• episode: what we would call the scenes of the drama
• stasimon (pl. stasima): the ode/s sung by the chorus between episodes
• exodos: the choral ode sung by the chorus as it leaves the theater

Each tragedy consists of a number of alternating episodes and stasima; often the stasimon marks a change of place or time in the drama. Each stasimon, moreover, has its own distinctive meter and structure of alternating strophes and antistrophes with an epode (concluding stanza) at the end.

A Greek theater is a very simple open-air structure. The audience sits / stands in the cavea (what we would call the auditorium); the chorus sings and dances in the orchestra, the roughly circular area at the bottom of the cavea where there is also an altar of Dionysos; the actors perform on a stage. In the classical period the stage was a low wooden platform; by the Roman period, it was raised quite a bit above the level of the orchestra and was made of stone. Behind the stage is the skene, the stage building which serves as the backdrop for all of the action on stage; it generally has three doors representing the facades of different buildings through which the actors may pass at the end of episodes.

Equipment & Costumes used to produce Greek tragedies:

• broneion: thunder machine (perhaps a sheet of metal with bags of stones)
• keraunoskopeion: lightening machine (lightening bolts made of carved wood)
• distegia: a platform so that actors could speak from heights
• mechane: the machine, a crane use to raise and lower actors depicting gods and so usually referred to as the deus ex machina
• theologeion: flat room of the skene used by actors playing gods and heroes
• ekkyklema: rollling platform used to reveal a scene from inside a building
• kothornos: large boots with cork soles to elevate actors
• ongkos: projection of mask above the forehead, function is unclear
• krepis: special shoe introduced by Sophocles and worn by members of the chorus

The theater at Athens was located on the south slope of the Akropolis and could accommodate 10,000 - 15,000 spectators. Whether or not women could attend the theater is uncertain.

See the description on Perseus of the theater at Athens for more information on the physical performance space of Greek tragedy. How does the physical space of the theater color or influence your interpretation of the "Bacchai" for example?

Tragedy at Athens was performed during the Greater Dionysia, a pan-Athenian ("open to all Athenians") festival that was held in March to honor Dionysos. It was a four-day festival and included parades, feasting, sacrifices, and, on three days, dramatic performances in the theater. Key was a competition among three playwrights and their choregoi (sg. choregos), the wealthy Athenians who were given the task of producing the plays of a playwright at the Dionysia. They were chosen, along with the three playwrights, the previous autumn and paid all of the expenses for producing the plays. They may also have on occasion taken a more active role in the productions.

Each playwright presented three tragedies and one satyr play on one day of the festival. Little is known about satyr plays except that the members of the chorus were dressed as satyrs. Judges were selected to award first and second prizes to the poets and their choregoi. The poet received the honor of the victory while the choregos won a large bronze tripod. It was customary for the choregos to dedicate his victory tripod to the city and place it on display somewhere near the theater. The Lysikrates monument in Athens is a good example of one of these monuments celebrating a choregic victory.

The Parian Marble is a lengthy and fairly well-preserved inscription listing the poets who were victorious in any given year at the Dionysia. Thus it provides important historical information about individual tragedians and their productions.

All actors in a tragedy were male. They wore costumes and elaborate masks. Each actor played multiple parts in each play. Figure out how the roles in the Oidipous Tyrannos would have been divided between the available actors.

Aristotle in his Poetics discusses the characteristics of Athenian tragedy. He provides valuable commentary on the history of Greek tragedy and insight into what the Greeks themselves thought constituted good tragedy.
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Suggestions for further reading:

• John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, editors, Nothing to do with Dionysos? : Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• Peter Wilson, "Powers of Horror and Laughter: The Great Age of Drama" in Oliver Taplin, editor, Literature in Greek World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 70-114.

Drama: Comedy

Comedy was performed at

Suggestions for further reading:

• Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. 2nd edition revised by John Gould and D.M. Lewis. Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1988.

Prose: History

In many respects, for the Greeks, history writing began with the epic poems of Homer, for they recorded a kind of history of the very distant past. In the fifth century, however, in a more formal sense, Herodotus and Thucydides created a new kind of literary genre by writing history of more recent events and by writing in prose. Both wrote a similar kind of history, one which narrated the events of recent human past, that is to say events which were still within the living memory of the authors and their sources or which were otherwise verifiable. Both wrote about a monumental political event of their lifetimes: for Herodotus, it was the Persian War (ca. 490 - 479 BCE); for Thucydides, it was the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431 - 404 BCE). Both claimed to be writing for posterity and to be preserving the memory and fame of the events and those who participated in those events. Both said that they were interested in accuracy, and, though their methodologies differ, both acknowledged how difficult it was to determine the truth of the events they narrated. Both were also exiles, a fact which may have shaped their histories by removing both authors from the context of daily politics. For Herodotus, exile led to a more global perspective; for Thucydides it gave him direct access to anti-Athenian perspectives.

But each historian approaches his narrative from a different context of composition and from a different authorial stance. Herodotus is still attached to the oral tradition and performance, while Thucydides is composing a written text meant to be read and re-read by his readers. Herodotus, it has been suggested, is on the cusp between oral tradition and the written text; Thucydides is firmly within the written tradition.

Greek prose (like poetry) developed in Ionia, the area of the ancient Greek world which corresponds roughly to the western coast of modern Turkey, and was the preferred medium for writing about history. Early history, however, was not exclusively a prose genre, for in the archaic period there is some evidence that poetry (specifically elegy) was used for extended narratives on the foundations and mythic traditions of cities and that these narratives were performed at civic festivals. With Herodotus (ca. 485/4 - 425 BCE), however, poetry is abandoned as the genre of choice and prose is adopted as the most common medium for history; indeed Cicero calls Herodotus the "father of history."

Prose history can actually be broken down into six distinct genres: 1. genealogy or mythography, 2. geography, 3. ethnography, 4. horography or local history, 5. chronography, and 6. traditional history. Genealogy studies the family relationships of the heroes of myth, reconciles variants in those myths, and organizes the information chronologically; it was the earliest form of literary prose written by the Greeks. Geographical and ethnographical writing describes foreign places, peoples, and their customs, correlating ways of life with the physical environment. Horography (which takes its name from horos, the Greek word for "year") records, year-by-year, the events that took place in a city from the time of its foundation, including all kinds of antiquarian, religious, and political information. Chronography puts those events in chronological order via time-reckoning systems (such as victors of the stade race at Olympia) that can calibrate the events in one part of the Greek world with those in another part. And history, as Aristotle defined it (Rhet. 1.1360A35), records men's words and actions in the past, both the near past and the far past. All five types of historical writing were in existence by the end of the fifth century BCE. The writers of these genres were known as either physiologoi ("writers on nature") who wrote geographies etc. or as logographoi / logopoioi ("writers of stories, accounts") who wrote genealogies, ethnographies, horographies, and chronographies.

Herodotus' great achievement is the Histories which is preserved in toto. He says that his purpose in composing the Histories was to memorialize the "great and marvelous deeds" of both the Hellenes and the barbarians least they be forgotten (1.1). The term historiê from which, obviously, we get the English word "history" means simply "inquiry" or "research." Herodotus' History is enlivened by the inclusion of a wealth of interesting social and cultural information and is characterized by its digressions and its chronological waywardness. Many scholars have criticized him for his naive acceptance of his sources and for his use of myth and oral tradition. For them, Thucydides – the other great Greek historian of the fifth century BCE – is a more scientific historian, one whose objectivity and accuracy is clear. The truth lies somewhere between these two extreme positions.

Thucydides (ca. 460/457 - 400 BCE) decided to write his History of the Peloponnesian War because he believed "that it would be a great war, and more worthy of retelling than any previous events, judging from the fact that both sides were at their peak of their power in all preparations" (1.1). He records the events of the war in strict chronological order by summers and winters down to the 21st year of the war (411 BCE) when his account stops abruptly in mid-sentence. He was actually present at some of the events he describes, and he made a practice of interviewing those who were present at the other events, leading many earlier modern scholars to praise his research methodology and objectivity, but recent scholarship has suggested that his representation of events is not without bias.

Whereas Herodotus includes information about women, customs, families, religion, and cultural modes, Thucydides writes exclusively about men and their activities within the polis and the sphere of war. Herodotus' methodology, on the one hand, is transparent, for he is careful to record his sources and how he came to hold a certain opinion while Thucydides, on the other hand, presents only the end-product of his research, only his authoritative conclusions about events. This is not to say, however, that Thucydides' tone is cold and detached. Indeed, Plutarch says that "Thucydides . . . all but makes the reader an actual spectator and listener at the marvelous and dreadful events he describes." For the ancient reader, than, his history was an intellectual, emotional and shareable experience. His was truly a written account, a text as opposed to an oral performance, which encouraged readers continually to re-evaluate it as they read.
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Suggestions for further reading:

• M. Finley, "Myth, Memory and History," The Use and Abuse of History (New York, Viking Press: 1975) 11-33.
• A. Momigliano, "Greek Historiography," History and Theory 17 (1978) 1-28.
• C. W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

Prose: Philosophy

Paradoxically, it is the age of the philosopher Socrates (470-399 BCE), who wrote nothing at all, that structures the early history of Greek philosophical prose.

Before Socrates a number of writers from the east and west of the Greek world attempted to present the results of their speculations in written form. A number of them were situated in Ionia, whose position on the threshold of the older civilizations of the Near East allowed access to a number of rich cultures. Since Aristotle (384-322 BCE) emphasizes their attempts to isolate an original or basic substance (arche) out of which all things come and into which all return, they are often referred to as arche-philosophers. Among them Thales of Miletus, predicted the eclipse of 585 BCE, a practice already current in the Near East, and is said to have identified water is the basic principle of matter. Heraclitus of Ephesus (active around 500 BCE) asserted the primacy of change as a barrier to true knowledge ("everything flows") and saw fire, in various degrees of refinement, as the basic substance. Anaxagorus (about 500-428 BCE) suggested a less material arche, the power of "mind" to organize things in the best way.

Philosophy also flourished in the western, Italian areas of the Greek world. Particularly important is Parmenides of Elea, who is known to have visited Athens around 450 BCE and whose philosophical poem divided experience between the "Way of Truth" and the "Way of Appearance" (doxa) and denied the possibility of movement. His work was continued by his younger colleague, Zeno of Elea, roughly contemporary with Socrates. Both Parmenides and Zeno, with their interest in metaphysics and the illusory nature of reality are commonly referred to as "Eleatics", a reference to the city with whom they are associated.

These early philosophers, with whom Plato (428-348 BCE) often engages, are more important for the history of philosophy than for the history of prose. Later commentators attributed writings to each, often a "book", and often with the catch-all title peri phuseos, "On Nature". Only fragments survive and so the existence of highly-developed philosophical arguments in prose is certainly open to doubt. Heraclitus' efforts, for example, apparently did not exceed the length of the epigram, a factor that doubtless accounts for the obscurity of his writings. Thus, although the tradition of pre-Socratic philosophy begins to preserve philosophical reflection by means of writing, its state of development during the period is rudimentary. Nor could it have been clear to a contemporary what its most appropriate literary form would eventually be. Parmenides, whose fragments are the most substantial, wrote in dactylic hexameter verse and does not appear to have composed in prose at all.

The eventual association of philosophy with prose must be seen in the context of rhetoric and the developments that accompanied it. By the end of the fifth century the age of tyrants was over, at least in Athens, replaced by a democratic regime in which all male citizens theoretically had a voice. Thus, the art of persuasive public speaking became important for someone wishing to be reckoned as a prominent citizen. Public speaking ability did not oust traditional advantages like wealth and social prominence, of course-indeed many practitioners of the new skills were from the elite. Nevertheless, the egalitarianism of recent political developments, coupled with rhetoric's emphasis on technique over wealth and family, clearly opened the arena of political life to new, non-aristocratic players. The demand for rhetorical instruction was met by teachers, known as sophists (literally "practitioners of wisdom"), who demonstrated their techniques and gave courses of lectures, inculcating the principles of persuasive speech, sometimes pretentiously billed as "teaching excellence" (arête). In any case, the direct association of prose with the persuasive communication of ideas took place in the domain of rhetoric and deliberative speech-making and not in the work of the earliest Greek philosophers.

The life of Socrates corresponds almost exactly to the swift growth of rhetoric as an organized body of persuasive techniques. Indeed, hostile contemporaries frequently confused Socrates' activities with those of the sophists. In Plato's Apology, Socrates disassociates himself from these efforts and complains of the portrayal in Aristophanes' comedy Clouds (423 BCE) in which a character named Socrates teaches deceptive speaking with disastrous results to others and, eventually, to himself. The dialogues of Plato repeatedly distinguish Socrates from the sophists, however. Nevertheless, they show an extraordinary interest in rhetoric and any sophist who is anybody makes an appearance, if only to be refuted by Socrates, who typically sees their teaching as superficial, focused on how to persuade rather than what to persuade.

Despite the evident difference of opinion between Socrates and the sophists, it is important to recognize that the discussions of Socrates, immortalized by the dialogues of Plato, are a part of the oral culture that the sophists both participated in and exploited. Put otherwise, Plato's decision to write in prose (a tradition of dubious value says that he wrote tragedies as a young man) represents philosophy's aligning itself with prose over the tradition of poetic composition, long practiced for epic, comedy, tragedy, oracles-even philosophy itself, as in the case of Parmenides.

Plato treats many philosophical problems in the dialogues. The most basic orientation is ethical-how to live a life well through continual self-examination. As Plato makes Socrates say in Apology, "The unexamined life is not worth living". The dialogues do not lend themselves to easy summary, however. It is characteristic of the conversation to wander and migrate to quite unexpected places, or to confess confusion (aporia) before the issues at hand. Plato is also famous for his speculations about the best way of government which are given broad expression in the Republic and in the Laws and for his harsh criticism of modern rhetorical practice, as in Phaedrus, Gorgias, and elsewhere.

Plato's dialogues use a wide variety of styles, in large part because their status as dialogues and not treatises opens them to the diverse types of speech encountered in daily conversation. Much of the language is conversational, even colloquial, though not as free as the language of Aristophanes. Some of the later dialogues dominated by a single speaker (Sophist, Statesman, Laws) tend toward a somewhat greater formality but even in these the dialogue form is maintained, an expression of, among other things, the belief expressed in the Platonic Letters that dialogue is most conducive to the appearance of true insight.

Plato's extraordinary skill as a writer should not blind us to the fact that his Socrates is a literary creation. Nor was Plato the only composer of Socratic dialogues. His contemporary Xenophon wrote them as well, some of which have survived. In addition a number of Socrates' other associates, Antisthenes, Phaedo, Aeschines, Aristippus, Eucleides, and others, produced dialogues (with or without Socrates as the chief speaker) in the early years of the fourth century.

It is said that Plato composed esoteric works separate from the dialogues that disclosed his true teaching. It is also said, with some greater authority, that Aristotle wrote dialogues. Unfortunately these works, apparently protreptic (designed to encourage the reader to further study), have not survived. The Aristotelian works that have survived could not be more different from the Platonic dialogues. Aristotle's writings are treatises, characterized by a dispassionate tone and great concision. The absence of literary polish has often encouraged the speculation that they were never destined for publication, but are essentially lecture notes, either compiled by students, or used by Aristotle himself. In addition, Aristotle's works are more practically oriented. Unlike the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle can be summarized topically, whether the topic is metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, poetic composition, the generation of animals, or logic. Aristotle's style, though less artistically pleasing than Plato's, has been extraordinarily influential due to the clarity and penetration of his thought.
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Suggestions for further reading:

• G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
• W.C.K.E Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy (six volumes). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, various dates)
• Richard Kraut, editor, The Cambridge Companion to Plato. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Prose: Rhetoric

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