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How has the historical and political development of Greece affected its literature? Explain comprehensively. Images for some references.

A. Political and Historical Contexts in Greek Mythology
a. Classical Athens in the fifth century B.C. – just prior to the time of
Plato was a thriving democratic city-state with a popułation estimated
at about 300 thousand. However, this democracy differed
considerably from ours: not only was it a direct, rather than a
representative, democracy, but it was highly exclusive. Only the adult
male citizens, numbering about 40-45 thousand, were eligible to
participate in the decision-making process. The rest of the
community, composed of women, resident aliens, and a vast number
of slaves, formed a permanently excluded majority. Even most free
men, whether working on the land or in the cities, were poor and had
little hope of economic betterment. This circumstance, widespread in
the Greek world, was responsible in part not only for class conflict but
for a perennial struggle between different forms of government. The
philosophies and literary theories of both Plato and Aristotle were
integrally shaped by awareness of these political struggles.
b. By this stage of her history, Athens was not only a democracy but an
imperial power, head of the so-called Delian League of more than a
hundred city-states, from whom she exacted tribute. Her rise to such
predominance had been relatively recent and swift, though
democracy itself had taken some centuries to evolve, displacing
earlier systems such as oligarchy or tyranny and monarchy where
power had resided in the hands of a small elite or one man.
c. By 500 B.C. the tyrants had been overthrown in all the major Greek
cities. The ideals of social equality and democratic structure were
furthered in Athens by leaders and lawgivers such as Solon, who made
the law-courts democratic; Cleisthenes, who organized the political
structure into ten tribes, each represented by 50 members in the
Council of the Areopagus; and Pericles, who instituted pay for people
to serve as state officials, so that such service might not be a privilege
of the wealthy.
d. In his funeral oration, Pericles defined democracy as a system in
which power lies in the hands of the whole people, everyone is equal
before the law, and public responsibility is determined not by class
but by actual ability.
e. What propelled Athens into prominence was largely her leading role
in repelling two invasions of Greece by Persia.

Transcribed Image Text:i. In the first of these, the Athenians, without Spartan aid, defeated the Persian forces led by King Darius at Marathon in 490 B.C. ii. The second invasion was halted by Athens_ powerful navy at Salamis in 480 B.C. and on land at Plataea in 479 B.C. f. Despite the fact that the land battle was won with the help of Sparta, it was Athens who assumed the leadership of the Greek allies, organizing them into a confederation, the Delian League, with the aim of liberating the Greek cities of Asia Minor (now Turkey) from Persian rule. g. These post-war years were the years of Athens' power, prosperity and cultural centrality: Pericles dominated Athenian politics; the Parthenon and Propylaea were built; the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides were staged; the city was host to professional teachers of philosophy such as Protagoras, and schools of rhetoric, which taught young men of the nobility the art of public speaking and debate. h. The city was alive with free political discussion and intellectual inquiry. Pericles called Athens "the school of Hellas". i. In all of these historical circumstances, there were at least three developments that profoundly influenced the nature of literature and criticism, as well as of philosophy and rhetoric. The first was the evolution of the polis or city-state. i. The Greeks differentiated between themselves and the non- Greeks known as "barbarians" primarily by this political structure, the polis, which alone in their view could allow man to achieve his full potential as a human being. When Aristotle defined man as a "political animal". ii. ii. As later thinkers such as Hegel, Marx and Durkheim reiterated, man's very being is social and public in its essential orientation, and his own fulfilment lies in advancing, not sacrificing, the public interest. These assumptions are common to the otherwise iv. differing literary theories of Plato and Aristotle, who are both obliged to consider literature as a public or state concern. The Greeks believe that religion and culture were as much public concerns as economics or politics..the great occasions for religious ceremonial, for music, drama, poetry and athletics, were the public festivals, local or Pan-Hellenic. v.Even the internal structure of drama was influenced by the ideal of the polis: the chorus (whether comprised of a group of dancers and singers, or a single speaking character) was the representative of the community or polis. Poetry had a primary role in education: children were taught letters for the purpose of memorizing poetry and ultimately of performing and interpreting it. vi. j. The second political development pertinent to literature and criticism lay in the fact that Athens' predominance in the Greek world did not go unchallenged. The other major power in the Greek world was Sparta, who counterbalanced Athens' leadership of the Delian League with her own system of defensive alliances known as the Peloponnesian League. i. The struggle between these two superpowers was not only military but ideological: Athens everywhere attempted to foster her own style of democracy, whereas Sparta everywhere encouraged its own brand of oligarchy. This struggle convulsed the entire Greek world and eventually led to the Peloponnesian which lasted 27 years, beginning in 431 B.C. and ending with the utter defeat of Athens in 404 B.C. ii. The first 24 years of Plato's life were lived during this war, and the issues raised by the conflict affected many areas of his thought, including his literary theory. Even before Athens' defeat, she had witnessed a brief coup at the hands of the oligarchical party in 411-410 B.C. (the regime of the four hundred). ii. It was during this repressive period that Socrates was tried and executed in 399 B.C. on a charge of impiety. The Spartans imposed another oligarchy in 404 B.C., the so-called "regime of the thirty" which included two of Plato's relatives, Critias and Charmides, who were also friends of Socrates. In 403, however, democracy was restored after a civil iv. struggle. The struggle was effectively between two ways of life, between the "open-minded social and cultural atmosphere of Athenian democracy", and the "rigidly controlled, militaristic oligarchy of Sparta". It was this struggle which underlay the opposition between Plato's anti-democratic and somewhat authoritarian philosophical vision and the more fluid, skeptical and relativistic visions expressed by poetry, sophistic and rhetoric. It is in this struggle, as we shall see, that Western philosophy as we know it was born.

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