Chapter One Origins And Antiquity: Myths, Legends And Epics

Chapter One Origins and Antiquity: Myths, Legends, and Epics The geographical origins of Western literature lie in areas as diverse as the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the central European forests, and the northwestern coasts, each of which produced a body of oral histories, myths, and legends, many of which were subsequently written down. They have been drawn on by writers since the emergence of a Western literature culture in ancient Greece. Stories have been used as entertainment, as origin myths (of the physical world, culture, or society), and as a way of preserving ideas and traditions. Attesting to the power of such stories as an important component of human societies, for good or ill, many of these retain a grip on the modern world,
In this masterful and wide-ranging account, Herodotus, outlines the earlier histories of both Athens (the dominant city-state within the Greek army) and Persia, deals with the earlier invasion of Greece by Xerxes’ father Darius, and includes valuable information from his own travels to distant lands such as Egypt. Earlier texts that survive from ancient Greece are either poems (as with Homer and Sappho) or, with Aeschylus, drama. The Histories is the earliest surviving work of prose of Western literature – although fragments remain of earlier prose writers of histories (or, more likely, hagiographies) of city-states, such as Hecataeus of Miletus (fl. c. 500 BC). For all his reliance on verified sources and his highly readable prose, Herodotus is not, however, a truly dispassionate observer – his sympathies lie clearly with the Greek side. The slightly later figure of Thucydides might hold a better claim to being the “father of history” in a modern sense. In his great work The History of the Peloponnesian War, an account of the conflict between Athens and Sparta that wracked ancient Greece between 431 and 404 BC, he brings a scientific approach to the presentation of his evidence and sources. Where Herodotus introduced legends, travelogs, and intimations of divine intent into his text, Thucydides is more direct and factual, declining to make moral judgments or
While legend claims that the first actor was the 6th century singer Thespis and the first writer of tragedies his pupil Phrynichus (fl. 511 BC), the earliest Greek dramatist whose work still survives is Aeschylus (525 – 456 BC). The first Greek tragedies, of which none remain, are thought to have consisted of one actor whose words and actions were commented on by a chorus that stood as a group at the back of the stage. This convention was retained by Aeschylus but, aside from his impressive skill as a dramatist, his importance lies in introducing more than one actor to the stage at the same time, thus allowing characters to directly interact with each other. Interestingly, his first surviving play, The Persians (472 BC), drew directly on his own experiences at the battle of Salamis, predating Herodotus’s writings on the same theme. Aeschylus wrote over 70 plays, of which seven still exist. These are The Suppliants, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, and the Oresteia trilogy (perhaps his greatest achievement), comprising Agamemnon, The Choephori (also known as The Libation Bearers), and The Eumenides. The narrative follows the events that befall the house of Agamemnon on his return from the Trojan War. In his absence, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra has taken as a lover Aegisthus (Agamemnon’s uncle, who was robbed of the throne by