96-457: The kobalos (pl. kobaloi ) ( Ancient Greek : κόβαλος, plural: κόβαλοι) was a sprite from Greek mythology , a mischievous creature fond of tricking and frightening mortals. The kobaloi were companions of Dionysus and could shapeshift as Dionysus in the guise of Choroimanes-Aiolomorphos. According to one myth, they robbed Herakles while he slept. He captured them in revenge but took pity on them when he found them amusing. In one version of
192-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
288-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
384-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
480-596: A major focal point for the development of Christian thought . The Musaeum , or Shrine to the Muses, which included the library and school, was founded by Ptolemy I . The institution was from the beginning intended as a great international school and library. The library, eventually containing more than a half million volumes, was mostly in Greek. It was intended to serve as a repository for every work of classical Greek literature that could be found. The genre of bucolic poetry
576-948: A philosophical treatise, the Diatribai , based on the teachings of his mentor Epictetus . Best known of the late Greek historians to modern readers is Plutarch of Chaeronea , who died about AD 119. His Parallel Lives of great Greek and Roman leaders has been read by every generation since the work was first published. His other surviving work is the Moralia , a collection of essays on ethical, religious, political, physical, and literary topics. During later times, so-called " commonplace books ," usually describing historical anecdotes, became quite popular. Surviving examples of this popular genre include works such as Aulus Gellius 's Attic Nights , Athenaeus of Naucratis 's Deipnosophistae , and Claudius Aelianus 's De Natura Animalium and Varia Historia . The physician Galen lived during
672-498: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
768-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
864-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
960-513: A voluminous collection of biographies of nearly every Greek philosopher who ever lived. Unfortunately, Diogenes Laërtius often fails to cite his sources and many modern historians consider his testimony unreliable. Nonetheless, in spite of this, he remains the only available source on the lives of many early Greek philosophers. His book is not entirely without merit; it does preserve a tremendous wealth of information that otherwise would not have been preserved. His biography of Epicurus , for instance,
1056-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
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#17327975348331152-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
1248-448: Is a systematic account of creation and of the gods. The writings of Homer and Hesiod were held in extremely high regard throughout antiquity and were viewed by many ancient authors as the foundational texts behind ancient Greek religion ; Homer told the story of a heroic past, which Hesiod bracketed with a creation narrative and an account of the practical realities of contemporary daily life. Lyric poetry received its name from
1344-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
1440-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
1536-493: Is certain that their roots reach far back before his time (see Homeric Question ). The Iliad is a narrative of a single episode spanning over the course of a ten-day-period from near the end of the ten years of the Trojan War. It centers on the person of Achilles , who embodied the Greek heroic ideal. The Odyssey is an account of the adventures of Odysseus , one of the warriors at Troy . After ten years fighting
1632-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
1728-455: Is known for certain about the life of the philosopher Pythagoras of Samos and no writings by him have survived to the present day, but an impressive corpus of poetic writings written by his pupil Empedocles of Acragas has survived, making Empedocles one of the most widely attested Pre-Socratic philosophers . A large number of fragments written by the philosophers Heraclitus of Ephesus and Democritus of Abdera have also survived. Of all
1824-516: Is known mainly from later summaries. He is credited with being the first person to measure the Earth's circumference. Much that was written by the mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes has been preserved. Euclid is known for his Elements , much of which was drawn from his predecessor Eudoxus of Cnidus . The Elements is a treatise on geometry, and it has exerted a continuing influence on mathematics. From Archimedes several treatises have come down to
1920-493: Is merely a fictional representation intended to expound Plato's own opinions who has very little to do with the historical figure of the same name. The debate over the extent to which Plato's portrayal of Socrates represents the actual Socrates's ideas is known as the Socratic problem . Plato expressed his ideas through dialogues, that is, written works purporting to describe conversations between different individuals. Some of
2016-556: Is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
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#17327975348332112-493: Is related to two other Greek sprites: the kabeiroi (pygmies with large phalluses) and the kerkopes . The kobalos and kabeiroi came to be equated. Nineteenth Century classicists proposed that other European sprites may derive from belief in kobaloi . This includes spirits such as the Northern English boggart , Scottish bogle , French goblin , Medieval gobelinus, German kobold , and English Puck . Likewise,
2208-444: Is sometimes thought to have been written by Euripides' son, or to have been a posthumous reproduction of a play by Euripides. Euripides pushed the limits of the tragic genre and many of the elements in his plays were more typical of comedy than tragedy. His play Alcestis , for instance, has often been categorized as a " problem play " or perhaps even as a work of tragicomedy rather than a true tragedy due to its comedic elements and
2304-522: Is traditionally attributed to Aeschylus, and Rhesus , which is traditionally attributed to Euripides, are, however, questioned. There are seven surviving tragedies attributed to Aeschylus. Three of these plays, Agamemnon , The Libation-Bearers , and The Eumenides , form a trilogy known as the Oresteia . One of these plays, Prometheus Bound , however, may actually be the work of Aeschylus's son Euphorion . Seven works of Sophocles have survived,
2400-584: Is widely considered to be one of the most important and influential philosophical thinkers of all time. The first sentence of his Metaphysics reads: "All men by nature desire to know." He has, therefore, been called the "Father of those who know." His medieval disciple Thomas Aquinas referred to him simply as "the Philosopher". Aristotle was a student at Plato's Academy , and like his teacher, he wrote dialogues, or conversations. However, none of these exist today. The body of writings that have come down to
2496-460: The Dionysiaca , the longest surviving epic poem from antiquity. He also wrote a poetic paraphrase of The Gospel of John . Nonnus probably lived sometime during the late fourth century AD or early fifth century AD. The historian Polybius was born about 200 BC. He was brought to Rome as a hostage in 168. In Rome he became a friend of the general Scipio Aemilianus. He probably accompanied
2592-452: The Attic dialect . Choral performances were a common tradition in all Greek city-states. The Athenians credited a man named Thespis with having invented drama by introducing the first actor, whose primary purpose was to interact with the leader of the chorus. Later playwrights expanded the number of actors to three, allowing for greater freedom in storytelling. In the age that followed
2688-668: The Golden Fleece from the land of Colchis . The poet Aratus wrote the hexameter poem Phaenomena , a poetic rendition of Eudoxus of Cnidus 's treatise on the stars written in the fourth century BC. During the Hellenistic period , the Old Comedy of the Classical Era was replaced by New Comedy . The most notable writer of New Comedy was the Athenian playwright Menander . None of Menander's plays have survived to
2784-508: The Greco-Persian Wars , the awakened national spirit of Athens was expressed in hundreds of tragedies based on heroic and legendary themes of the past. The tragic plays grew out of simple choral songs and dialogues performed at festivals of the god Dionysus . In the classical period, performances included three tragedies and one pastoral drama, depicting four different episodes of the same myth. Wealthy citizens were chosen to bear
2880-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
2976-680: The Ibis , which was directed against his former pupil Apollonius. He also compiled a prose treatise entitled the Pinakes , in which he catalogued all the major works held in the Library of Alexandria. The Alexandrian poet Apollonius of Rhodes is best known for his epic poem the Argonautica , which narrates the adventures of Jason and his shipmates the Argonauts on their quest to retrieve
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3072-708: The Renaissance , European authors in general, including Dante Alighieri , William Shakespeare , John Milton , and James Joyce , have all drawn heavily on classical themes and motifs. This period of Greek literature stretches from Homer until the fourth century BC and the rise of Alexander the Great . The earliest known Greek writings are Mycenaean , written in the Linear B syllabary on clay tablets. These documents contain prosaic records largely concerned with trade (lists, inventories, receipts, etc.); no real literature has been discovered. Michael Ventris and John Chadwick ,
3168-683: The Successors (especially the Ptolemies) and under Roman rule. Romans of literary or rhetorical inclination looked to Greek models, and Greek literature of all types continued to be read and produced both by native speakers of Greek and later by Roman authors as well. A notable characteristic of this period was the expansion of literary criticism as a genre, particularly as exemplified by Demetrius, Pseudo-Longinus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The New Testament , written by various authors in varying qualities of Koine Greek also hails from this period,
3264-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
3360-477: The 2nd century AD. He was a careful student of anatomy, and his works exerted a powerful influence on medicine for the next 1,400 years. Strabo , who died about AD 23, was a geographer and historian. His Historical Sketches in 47 volumes has nearly all been lost. His Geographical Sketches remains the only existing ancient book covering the whole range of people and countries known to the Greeks and Romans through
3456-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
3552-596: The Ancient Orators , and On the Arrangement of Words . The historians Appian of Alexandria and Arrian of Nicomedia both lived in the second century AD. Appian wrote on Rome and its conquests, while Arrian is remembered for his work on the campaigns of Alexander the Great. Arrian served in the Roman army. His book therefore concentrates heavily on the military aspects of Alexander's life. Arrian also wrote
3648-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
3744-495: The City Dionysia. Even today, The Frogs still appeals to modern audiences. A commercially successful modern musical adaptation of it was performed on Broadway in 2004. The third dramatic genre was the satyr play . Although the genre was popular, only one complete example of a satyr play has survived: Cyclops by Euripides . Large portions of a second satyr play, Ichneutae by Sophocles, have been recovered from
3840-624: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Ancient Greek literature Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until
3936-851: The King and Antigone . Euripides is known for his plays which often pushed the boundaries of the tragic genre. The comedic playwright Aristophanes wrote in the genre of Old Comedy , while the later playwright Menander was an early pioneer of New Comedy . The historians Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Thucydides , who both lived during the fifth century BC, wrote accounts of events that happened shortly before and during their own lifetimes. The philosopher Plato wrote dialogues, usually centered around his teacher Socrates , dealing with various philosophical subjects, whereas his student Aristotle wrote numerous treatises, which later became highly influential. Important later writers included Apollonius of Rhodes , who wrote The Argonautica , an epic poem about
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4032-514: The Persian Cyrus expel his brother from the throne, another famous work relating to Persian history is his Cyropaedia . Xenophon also wrote three works in praise of the philosopher Socrates : The Apology of Socrates to the Jury , The Symposium , and Memorabilia . Although both Xenophon and Plato knew Socrates, their accounts are very different. Many comparisons have been made between
4128-464: The Soul , and Rhetoric . By 338 BC all of the Greek city-states except Sparta had been united by Philip II of Macedon . Philip's son Alexander the Great extended his father's conquests greatly. Athens lost its preeminent status as the leader of Greek culture, and it was replaced temporarily by Alexandria , Egypt . The city of Alexandria in northern Egypt became, from the 3rd century BC,
4224-462: The account of the military historian and the account of the poet-philosopher. Many important and influential philosophers lived during the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Among the earliest Greek philosophers were the three so-called " Milesian philosophers ": Thales of Miletus , Anaximander , and Anaximenes . Of these philosophers' writings, however, only one fragment from Anaximander preserved by Simplicius of Cilicia has survived. Very little
4320-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
4416-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
4512-552: The author of the book of Acts of the Apostles and the Byzantine Era historian Procopius of Caesarea . A third historian of ancient Greece, Xenophon of Athens , began his Hellenica where Thucydides ended his work about 411 BC and carried his history to 362 BC. Xenophon's most famous work is his book The Anabasis , a detailed, first-hand account of his participation in a Greek mercenary army that tried to help
4608-469: The beginning of Sophocles's career. Oedipus the King , the most famous of the three, was written around 429 BC at the midpoint of Sophocles's career. Oedipus at Colonus , the second of the three plays chronologically, was actually Sophocles's last play and was performed in 401 BC, after Sophocles's death. There are nineteen surviving plays attributed to Euripides . The most well-known of these plays are Medea , Hippolytus , and Bacchae . Rhesus
4704-435: The best-known of these include: The Apology of Socrates , a purported record of the speech Socrates gave at his trial; Phaedo , a description of the last conversation between Socrates and his disciples before his execution; The Symposium , a dialogue over the nature of love ; and The Republic , widely regarded as Plato's most important work, a long dialogue describing the ideal government. Aristotle of Stagira
4800-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
4896-523: The classical philosophers, however, Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle are generally considered the most important and influential. Socrates did not write any books himself and modern scholars debate whether or not Plato's portrayal of him is accurate. Some scholars contend that many of his ideas, or at least a vague approximation of them, are expressed in Plato's early socratic dialogues . Meanwhile, other scholars have argued that Plato's portrayal of Socrates
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#17327975348334992-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
5088-438: The distinctions between them were frequently blurred. Among the found papyri , the most frequently found are the works of Homer , in 1680 fragments, Demosthenes , 204 fragments, and Euripides , 170 papyri. At the beginning of Greek literature stand the two monumental works of Homer , the Iliad and the Odyssey . The figure of Homer is shrouded in mystery. Although the works as they now stand are credited to him, it
5184-527: The early Hellenistic era. The third part takes the story to the beginning of Caesar's wars in Gaul, now France. Dionysius of Halicarnassus lived late in the first century BC. His history of Rome from its origins to the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC) is written from a Roman point of view, but it is carefully researched. He also wrote a number of other treatises, including On Imitation , Commentaries on
5280-505: The expense of costuming and training the chorus as a public and religious duty. Attendance at the festival performances was regarded as an act of worship. Performances were held in the great open-air theater of Dionysus in Athens. The poets competed for the prizes offered for the best plays. All fully surviving Greek tragedies are conventionally attributed to Aeschylus , Sophocles or Euripides . The authorship of Prometheus Bound , which
5376-473: The fact that it has a happy ending. Like tragedy, comedy arose from a ritual in honor of Dionysus , but in this case the plays were full of frank obscenity, abuse, and insult. At Athens , the comedies became an official part of the festival celebration in 486 BC, and prizes were offered for the best productions. As with the tragedians, few works remain of the great comedic writers. The only complete surviving works of classical comedy are eleven plays written by
5472-535: The fact that it was originally sung by individuals or a chorus accompanied by the instrument called the lyre . Despite the name, the lyric poetry in this general meaning was divided in four genres, two of which were not accompanied by cithara , but by flute. These two latter genres were elegiac poetry and iambic poetry . Both were written in the Ionic dialect . Elegiac poems were written in elegiac couplets and iambic poems were written in iambic trimeter . The first of
5568-430: The general to Spain and North Africa in the wars against Carthage. He was with Scipio at the destruction of Carthage in 146. Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who lived in the 1st century BC, around the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus. He wrote a universal history , Bibliotheca Historica , in 40 books. Of these, the first five and the 11th through the 20th remain. The first two parts covered history through
5664-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
5760-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
5856-604: The history of Sicily and Italy to the year 264 BC, which is where Polybius begins his work. Timaeus also wrote the Olympionikai , a valuable chronological study of the Olympic Games. Ancient biography , or bios , as distinct from modern biography, was a genre of Greek (and Roman) literature interested in describing the goals, achievements, failures, and character of ancient historical persons and whether or not they should be imitated. Authors of ancient bios , such as
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#17327975348335952-496: The late first century BC or early first century AD, during the latter part of the Hellenistic Era. The discovery of several fragments of Lollianos's Phoenician Tale reveal the existence of a genre of ancient Greek picaresque novel . While the transition from city-state to empire affected philosophy a great deal, shifting the emphasis from political theory to personal ethics, Greek letters continued to flourish both under
6048-596: The lives of orators and poets (such as Philostratus 's Lives of the Sophists ), school and reference biographies that offered a short sketch of someone including their ancestry, major events and accomplishments, and death, autobiographies, commentaries and memoirs where the subject presents his own life, and historical/political biography focusing on the lives of those active in the military, among other categories. Eratosthenes of Alexandria ( c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC), wrote on astronomy and geography, but his work
6144-474: The lyric poets was probably Archilochus of Paros , 7th century BC, the most important iambic poet. Only fragments remain of his work, as is the case with most of the poets. The few remnants suggest that he was an embittered adventurer who led a very turbulent life. Many lyric poems were written in the Aeolic dialect . Lyric poems often employed highly varied poetic meters. The most famous of all lyric poets were
6240-442: The major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical , Hellenistic , and Roman periods . The lyric poets Sappho , Alcaeus , and Pindar were highly influential during the early development of the Greek poetic tradition. Aeschylus is the earliest Greek tragic playwright for whom any plays have survived complete. Sophocles is famous for his tragedies about Oedipus , particularly Oedipus
6336-428: The most acclaimed of which are the three Theban plays , which center around the story of Oedipus and his offspring. The Theban Trilogy consists of Oedipus the King , Oedipus at Colonus , and Antigone . Although the plays are often called a "trilogy," they were written many years apart. Antigone , the last of the three plays sequentially, was actually first to be written, having been composed in 441 BC, towards
6432-715: The most important works being the Gospels and the Epistles of Saint Paul . The poet Quintus of Smyrna , who probably lived during the late fourth century AD, wrote Posthomerica , an epic poem narrating the story of the fall of Troy, beginning where the Iliad left off. About the same time and in a similar Homeric style, an unknown poet composed the Blemyomachia , a now fragmentary epic about conflict between Romans and Blemmyes . The poet Nonnus of Panopolis wrote
6528-684: The myth, Herakles gave them to the Lydian queen Omphale as a gift. The kobaloi were thought to live in Euboea or near Thermopylae . Parents used tales of the kobaloi to frighten children into behaving. Greek myths depict the kobaloi as "impudent, thieving, droll, idle, mischievous, gnome - dwarfs ", and as "funny, little tricksy elves " of a phallic nature. The term also means "impudent knave, arrant rogue" in ancient Greek, and such individuals were thought to invoke kobaloi spirits. Depictions of kobaloi are common in ancient Greek art. The kobalos
6624-487: The names of many European spirits may derive from the word kobalos . The word entered Latin as cobalus , then possibly French as gobelin . From this, the English goblin and Welsh coblyn may derive. Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It
6720-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
6816-571: The one that has received the most lasting recognition is The Frogs , which simultaneously satirizes and immortalizes the two giants of Athenian tragedy: Aeschylus and Euripides. When it was performed for the first time at the Lenaia Festival in 405 BC, just one year after the death of Euripides, the Athenians awarded it first prize. It was the only Greek play that was ever given an encore performance, which took place two months later at
6912-580: The original decipherers of Linear B, state that literature almost certainly existed in Mycenaean Greece , but it was either not written down or, if it was, it was on parchment or wooden tablets, which did not survive the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces in the twelfth century BC . Greek literature was divided into well-defined literary genres, each one having a compulsory formal structure, about both dialect and metrics. The first division
7008-585: The outstanding center of Greek culture. It also soon attracted a large Jewish population, making it the largest center for Jewish scholarship in the ancient world. The Septuagint , a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was reputed to have been initiated in Alexandria. Philo , a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, operated out of Alexandria at the turn of the Common Era . In addition, it later became
7104-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
7200-580: The playwright Aristophanes . These are a treasure trove of comic presentation. He poked fun at everyone and every institution. In The Birds , he ridicules Athenian democracy . In The Clouds , he attacks the philosopher Socrates . In Lysistrata , he denounces war. Aristophanes has been praised highly for his dramatic skill and artistry. John Lemprière 's Bibliotheca Classica describes him as, quite simply, "the greatest comic dramatist in world literature: by his side Molière seems dull and Shakespeare clownish." Of all Aristophanes's plays, however,
7296-544: The present day in their complete form, but one play, The Bad-Tempered Man , has survived to the present day in a near-complete form. Most of another play entitled The Girl from Samos and large portions of another five have also survived. The historian Timaeus was born in Sicily but spent most of his life in Athens . His History , though lost, is significant because of its influence on Polybius . In 38 books it covered
7392-521: The present probably represents lectures that he delivered at his own school in Athens, the Lyceum . Even from these books, the enormous range of his interests is evident: He explored matters other than those that are today considered philosophical; the extant treatises cover logic, the physical and biological sciences, ethics, politics, and constitutional government. Among Aristotle's most notable works are Politics , Nicomachean Ethics , Poetics , On
7488-460: The present. Among them are Measurement of the Circle , in which he worked out the value of pi; The Method of Mechanical Theorems , on his work in mechanics; The Sand Reckoner ; and On Floating Bodies . A manuscript of his works is currently being studied. Very little has survived of prose fiction from the Hellenistic Era. The Milesiaka by Aristides of Miletos was probably written during
7584-444: The second century BC. The Milesiaka itself has not survived to the present day in its complete form, but various references to it have survived. The book established a whole new genre of so-called " Milesian tales ," of which The Golden Ass by the later Roman writer Apuleius is a prime example. The ancient Greek novels Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton and Metiochus and Parthenope were probably both written during
7680-625: The site of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri . Two notable historians who lived during the Classical Era were Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Thucydides . Herodotus is commonly called "The Father of History." His book The Histories is among the oldest works of prose literature in existence. Thucydides's book History of the Peloponnesian War greatly influenced later writers and historians, including
7776-404: The so-called " Nine Lyric Poets ". Of all the lyric poets, Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was by far the most widely revered. In antiquity, her poems were regarded with the same degree of respect as the poems of Homer. Only one of her poems, " Ode to Aphrodite ", has survived to the present day in its original, completed form. In addition to Sappho, her contemporary Alcaeus of Lesbos
7872-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
7968-570: The third century BC. The Aetia was lost during the Middle Ages, but, over the course of the twentieth century, much of it was recovered due to new discoveries of ancient papyri. Scholars initially denigrated it as "second-rate", showing great learning, but lacking true "art". Over the course of the century, scholarly appraisal of it greatly improved, with many scholars now seeing it in a much more positive light. Callimachus also wrote short poems for special occasions and at least one short epic,
8064-459: The time of Augustus . Pausanias , who lived in the 2nd century AD, was also a geographer. His Description of Greece is a travel guide describing the geography and mythic history of Greece during the second century. The book takes the form of a tour of Greece, starting in Athens and ending in Naupactus . The scientist of the Roman period who had the greatest influence on later generations
8160-663: The time of the Byzantine Empire . The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period , are the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey , set in an idealized archaic past today identified as having some relation to the Mycenaean era . These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod , the Theogony and Works and Days , constituted
8256-623: The universe endured until Copernicus , Galileo , Kepler , and other early modern astronomers replaced it with heliocentrism . Epictetus ( c. 55 AD – 135 AD) was associated with the moral philosophy of the Stoics . His teachings were collected by his pupil Arrian in the Discourses and the Encheiridion (Manual of Study). Diogenes Laërtius , who lived in the third century AD, wrote Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers ,
8352-475: The voyage of the Argonauts ; Archimedes , who wrote groundbreaking mathematical treatises; and Plutarch , who wrote mainly biographies and essays. The second-century AD writer Lucian of Samosata was a Greek, who wrote primarily works of satire . Ancient Greek literature has had a profound impact on later Greek literature and also western literature at large. In particular, many ancient Roman authors drew inspiration from their Greek predecessors. Ever since
8448-445: The war, he spends another ten years sailing back home to his wife and family. Penelope was considered the ideal female; Homer depicted her as the ideal female based on her commitment, modesty, purity, and respect during her marriage to Odysseus. During his ten-year voyage, he loses all of his comrades and ships and makes his way home to Ithaca disguised as a beggar. Both of these works were based on ancient legends. The Homeric dialect
8544-465: The works of Nepos and Plutarch 's Parallel Lives imitated many of the same sources and techniques of the contemporary historiographies of ancient Greece, notably including the works of Herodotus and Thucydides . There were various forms of ancient biographies, including philosophical biographies that brought out the moral character of their subject (such as Diogenes Laertius 's Lives of Eminent Philosophers ), literary biographies which discussed
8640-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
8736-419: Was a native of Boeotia in central Greece , and is thought to have lived and worked around 700 BC. Hesiod's two extant poems are Works and Days and the Theogony . Works and Days is a faithful depiction of the poverty-stricken country life he knew so well, and it sets forth principles and rules for farmers. It vividly describes the ages of mankind, beginning with a long-past Golden Age . The Theogony
8832-452: Was also notable for monodic lyric poetry. The poetry written by Alcman was considered beautiful, even though he wrote exclusively in the Doric dialect , which was normally considered unpleasant to hear. The later poet Pindar of Thebes was renowned for his choral lyric poetry. All surviving works of Greek drama were composed by playwrights from Athens and are written exclusively in
8928-404: Was an archaic language based on Ionic dialect mixed with some element of Aeolic dialect and Attic dialect , the latter due to the Athenian edition of the 6th century BC. The epic verse was the hexameter . The other great poet of the preclassical period was Hesiod . Unlike Homer, Hesiod refers to himself in his poetry. Nonetheless, nothing is known about him from any external source. He
9024-523: Was between prose and poetry. Within poetry there were three super-genres: epic, lyric and drama. The common European terminology about literary genres is directly derived from the ancient Greek terminology. Lyric and drama were further divided into more genres: lyric in four ( elegiac , iambic , monodic lyric and choral lyric ); drama in three ( tragedy , comedy and pastoral drama ). Prose literature can largely be said to begin with Herodotus . Over time, several genres of prose literature developed, but
9120-516: Was first developed by the poet Theocritus . The Roman Virgil later wrote his Eclogues in this genre. Callimachus , a scholar at the Library of Alexandria , composed the Aetia ("Causes"), a long poem written in four volumes of elegiac couplets describing the legendary origins of obscure customs, festivals, and names, which he probably wrote in several stages over the course of many years in
9216-475: Was undoubtedly the astronomer Ptolemy . He lived during the 2nd century AD, though little is known of his life. His masterpiece, originally entitled The Mathematical Collection , has come to the present under the title Almagest , as it was translated by Arab astronomers with that title. It was Ptolemy who devised a detailed description of an Earth-centered universe , a notion that dominated astronomical thinking for more than 1,300 years. The Ptolemaic view of
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