ancient greek essays

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The post-Mycenaean period and Lefkandi

• The Olympic Games
• Overseas projects
• The beginnings of the polis
• The sources
• Bacchiadae and Eupatridae
• Symposia and gymnasia
• Formal relationships
• The Lelantine War
• The decline of the aristocracy
• Changes in warfare
• The early tyrannies
• The distinctiveness of Sparta
• The helot factor
• The Peloponnesian League
• The distinctiveness of Athens
• The Peisistratid tyranny
• The reforms of Cleisthenes
• Intermarriage between the great houses
• Poetry and art
• International influences
• The Ionian revolt
• Economic factors
• Political factors
• Athenian support of Ionia
• Sparta’s foreign relations
• The role of Cleomenes
• The Battle of Marathon
• The appointment of archons
• The system of ostracism
• Greek preparations for war
• Greek alliances
• Thermopylae
• The fortification of Athens
• The ambition of Pausanias
• Paying tribute to Athens
• Strains on Greek unity
• Cimon’s actions
• Athens’s moves against other Greeks
• Athens’s moves northward
• Sparta’s responses
• Legal reforms
• Political reforms
• The rejection of Cimon
• Friction between Athens and Corinth
• The subjugation of Aegina
• The scale of Athenian ambition
• Sparta’s resistance
• Peace with Persia
• Economic sources of resentment
• Political and legal sources of resentment
• The Euboean revolt
• Greek communities in Italy and Sicily
• Sparta’s role
• Continuing strife
• Mytilene and Plataea
• Speculation and unease
• Spartan calls for peace
• Cleon’s influence
• Spartan recovery
• Entanglement with Persia
• Harsh treatment of Melos
• The Sicilian disaster
• The second phase of the war, 413–404
• The effect of the Persian Wars on philosophy
• The rise of democracy
• Hippocrates and the fluidity of genres
• Greek tragedy
• The liturgy system
• Military technology
• Dionysius I of Syracuse
• The Corinthian War
• The King’s Peace
• Spartan adventures
• The Second Athenian Confederacy
• Theban expansion
• Athens and Thebes
• The rise of Macedon
• Macedonian supremacy in Greece
• Alexander and the Greeks
• Alexander in Egypt
• To the Persian Gates
• The conquest of Bactria and the Indus valley
• The final phase
• Historical writings
• Architecture and sculpture
• Social and commercial exchanges
• Organized settlements

Is ancient Greece a country?

Was ancient greece a democracy, why is ancient greece important.

• What is the ancient name of Sparta?
• What did Plato do?

ancient Greek civilization

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• Humanities LibreTexts - Ancient Greece
• PBS LearningMedia - Emergence of Cities and the Prophecies of Oracles | The Greeks
• PBS LearningMedia - Homer and the Gods - The Greeks
• National Geographic Kids - Facts about Ancient Greece for kids
• PBS LearningMedia - Ancient Math & Music
• PBS LearningMedia - The Rise of Alexander the Great
• PBS LearningMedia - The Birth of Democracy | The Greeks
• Open Library Publishing Platform - The Development of Western Thought 1 - City States and Ancient Greece
• Khan Academy - Classical Greek culture
• PBS LearningMedia - Building the Navy | The Greeks
• PBS LearningMedia - Greek Guide to Greatness: Economy | The Greeks
• PBS LearningMedia - Greek Guide to Greatness: Religion | The Greeks
• Boise State Pressbooks - Ancient Greece
• Ancient History Encyclopedia - Ancient Greece, Eurasia
• ancient Greece - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• ancient Greece - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

No, ancient Greece was a civilization. The Greeks had cultural traits, a religion , and a language in common, though they spoke many dialects. The basic political unit was the city-state . Conflict between city-states was common, but they were capable of banding together against a common enemy, as they did during the Persian Wars (492–449 BCE). Powerful city-states such as Athens and Sparta exerted influence beyond their borders but never controlled the entire Greek-speaking world.

Where was ancient Greece located?

Ancient Greek civilization was concentrated in what is today Greece and along the western coast of Turkey . However, ancient Greek colonists established cities all around the Mediterranean and along the coast of the Black Sea .

Each ancient Greek city-state had its own government. Common forms of government included tyranny and oligarchy . In 507 BCE, under the leadership of  Cleisthenes , the citizens of Athens began to develop a system of popular rule that they called democracy , which would last nearly two centuries. In their governing body, the Assembly ( Ecclesia ), all adult male citizens, perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the total population, were eligible to vote.

When did ancient Greece start and end?

Ancient Greek civilization flourished from the period following  Mycenaean  civilization, which ended about 1200 BCE, to the death of  Alexander the Great , in 323 BCE. By that time, Greek cultural influence had spread around the Mediterranean and, through Alexander the Great’s campaign of conquest, as far afield as India.

The political, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements of ancient Greek civilization formed a legacy with unparalleled influence on Western civilization. Greek political ideas have influenced modern forms of government, Greek pottery and sculpture have inspired artists for millennia, and Greek epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry is still read around the world.

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ancient Greek civilization , the period following Mycenaean civilization, which ended about 1200 bce , to the death of Alexander the Great , in 323 bce . It was a period of political, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements that formed a legacy with unparalleled influence. The larger historical period spanning from the output of ancient Greek author Homer in the 8th century bce to the decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century ce is known as " Classical antiquity ," encompassing Greco-Roman culture , playing a major role in the Mediterranean sphere of influence and in the creation of Western civilization, and shaping areas as diverse as law , architecture , art , language , poetry , rhetoric , politics, and philosophy .

The early Archaic period

The period between the catastrophic end of the Mycenaean civilization and about 900 bce is often called a Dark Age . It was a time about which Greeks of the Classical age had confused and actually false notions. Thucydides , the great ancient historian of the 5th century bce , wrote a sketch of Greek history from the Trojan War to his own day, in which he notoriously fails, in the appropriate chapter, to signal any kind of dramatic rupture. (He does, however, speak of Greece “settling down gradually” and colonizing Italy , Sicily , and what is now western Turkey . This surely implies that Greece was settling down after something.) Thucydides does indeed display sound knowledge of the series of migrations by which Greece was resettled in the post-Mycenaean period. The most famous of these was the “ Dorian invasion ,” which the Greeks called, or connected with, the legendary “return of the descendants of Heracles .” Although much about that invasion is problematic—it left little or no archaeological trace at the point in time where tradition puts it—the problems are of no concern here. Important for the understanding of the Archaic and Classical periods, however, is the powerful belief in Dorianism as a linguistic and religious concept. Thucydides casually but significantly mentions soldiers speaking the “Doric dialect” in a narrative about ordinary military matters in the year 426. That is a surprisingly abstract way of looking at the subdivisions of the Greeks, because it would have been more natural for a 5th-century Greek to identify soldiers by home cities. Equally important to the understanding of this period is the hostility to Dorians , usually on the part of Ionians , another linguistic and religious subgroup, whose most-famous city was Athens . So extreme was this hostility that Dorians were prohibited from entering Ionian sanctuaries; extant today is a 5th-century example of such a prohibition, an inscription from the island of Paros .

Phenomena such as the tension between Dorians and Ionians that have their origins in the Dark Age are a reminder that Greek civilization did not emerge either unannounced or uncontaminated by what had gone before. The Dark Age itself is beyond the scope of this article. One is bound to notice, however, that archaeological finds tend to call into question the whole concept of a Dark Age by showing that certain features of Greek civilization once thought not to antedate about 800 bce can actually be pushed back by as much as two centuries. One example, chosen for its relevance to the emergence of the Greek city-state , or polis , will suffice . In 1981 archaeology pulled back the curtain on the “darkest” phase of all, the Protogeometric Period ( c. 1075–900 bce ), which takes its name from the geometric shapes painted on pottery . A grave, rich by the standards of any period, was uncovered at a site called Lefkandi on Euboea , the island along the eastern flank of Attica (the territory controlled by Athens). The grave, which dates to about 1000 bce , contains the (probably cremated) remains of a man and a woman. The large bronze vessel in which the man’s ashes were deposited came from Cyprus , and the gold items buried with the woman are splendid and sophisticated in their workmanship. Remains of horses were found as well; the animals had been buried with their snaffle bits. The grave was within a large collapsed house, whose form anticipates that of the Greek temples two centuries later. Previously it had been thought that those temples were one of the first manifestations of the “monumentalizing” associated with the beginnings of the city-state. Thus, that find and those made in a set of nearby cemeteries in the years before 1980 attesting further contacts between Egypt and Cyprus between 1000 and 800 bce are important evidence. They show that one corner of one island of Greece, at least, was neither impoverished nor isolated in a period usually thought to have been both. The difficulty is to know just how exceptional Lefkandi was, but in any view it has revised former ideas about what was and what was not possible at the beginning of the 1st millennium bce .

Ancient Greece - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Ancient Greece, a civilization known for its significant contributions to art, philosophy, politics, and science, has left a lasting impact on the modern world. Essays on this topic could explore the various city-states, the classical philosophers, the political concepts of democracy and oligarchy, and the advancements in arts and sciences. Furthermore, discussions might delve into the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and the enduring legacy of Ancient Greece. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Ancient Greece you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

How did Ancient Greece’s Geography Affect its Civilization

Ancient Greece was mostly made up of many small and separated islands. Most people today know about the great Greek Philosophers, the Olympics, the battles, so most people should know at least a little of the history of ancient Greece. Many people don't know how Greece came to be a great civilization though. I think that the reason why many democracies and civilizations fought for Greece was because of where Greece was located. Ancient Greece's geography is the thing that […]

History of Ancient Greece

Between the Mediterranean and Aegean seas on a peninsula lies the land of Greece. A land sculpted by mountainous terrain with limited farmable land led the Greeks to be avid seafaring peoples. Ancient Greece has a very rich history separated by various periods that denote their success and decline as a civilization. A rather unconventional ancient civilization, early Greeks did not develop like their contemporaries, but grew to be quite isolated from one another due to the mountainous terrain that […]

Greek and Roman Affects on Western Civilization

After discussing Greek and Roman architecture and engineering in class, I wanted to garner a deeper understanding of just how much of an affect these two cultures had on modern Western Civilizations. For instance, what else have these magnificent cultures contributed to to other aspects of society. This paper will discuss the similarities and differences between the Greeks and Romans, as well as its influence on Western Civilizations that haven't already been discussed in our class. While both Roman and […]

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Culture Ancient Greece and the Odyssey

Ancient Greece had a very unique culture. In The Odyssey by Homer, it teaches us that Ancient Greece was based on fate power(ranking in society) and believing in many gods. Not only Odysseus but his son Telemachus were controlled by fate ancient. The Greek gods were the ones in control of the fate of and his family. Telemachus is a young boy when his father Odysseus leaves Ithaca to fight in the Trojan war. As Odysseus is away Telemachus grows […]

Women in Ancient Greece Theatre Practices

It is taught throughout history books that women were not in the early stages of Greek theatre. As theatre developed in Greece, the role of women in the theatre was greatly diminished. Scholars believe they were banned from the stages, and even from attending the performances. Is this true, or did women play a bigger role than once thought? Women were once the leaders of multiple religious rituals and ceremonies. What provoked the removal of them? Were they really not […]

Ancient Greek Contributions to Western Civilization

Greece has made invaluable contributions to worldwide civilization.  Greece has vastly influenced, Western Civilization, culture, and even our way of thought.    It has been written that Greece is the birthplace of western civilization. One of Greece's invaluable influences of Western Civilization is the arts.  The ancient Greeks were well-known for their temples, art work, and sculptures.  In fact, Greece introduced sculpturing into architecture, as evidenced in their columns, be it what is still used today, Dorian, Ionic and Corinthian design […]

Ancient Greece’s Three Types of Heroes

The definition of the word hero is quite skewed. People tend to have their own definitions and interpretations of what the word means. However, people can usually agree on who a hero is and what makes a person a hero. In most cases, a hero can be described as one who shows great courage and is admired for noble achievements and noble qualities. Greek heroes show all of these qualities. They were admired for achieving incredible mythological feats and were […]

Democracy in Ancient Greece

How did people in Athens and Sparta obtain the right to participate in public life and make decisions affecting the community? To be eligible to participate in government in either Athens or Sparta, one had to be a free male citizen of the polis. Athens had an additional requirement that the individual male be born of Athenian citizens, whereas Sparta had no such requirement. (Brand, 2010). In Athens, there was an additional subclass of people that were disenfranchised known as […]

Pan’s Labyrinth Greek Mythology

Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 surreal fairytale film in which an 11-year-old girl named Ofelia deals with the reality of her bleak life on a military compound in 1944's fascist Spain with her sickly pregnant mother and her violent stepfather by seamlessly blending fantastical elements with reality. Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth undergoes labors to reach an ultimate "happy" ending and the film draws from Greek myth, blending ancient narratives with modern culture and politics. Pan's Labyrinth, following the typical hero's […]

Theatrical Lighting in Ancient Greece

Lighting in ancient Greece was lit by daylight and the dramas were frequently designed to take advantage of the position of the sun. There were sites specifically placed to gain the best effects of the natural light. Most plays could begin in the morning and last until the evening, so there was no need for artificial lights. The history of Greek lighting would then evolve to use mirrors with the sun's light to alter the lighting for their plays. If […]

Alexander the Great – King of Macedonia and Ancient Greece

Who is Alexander the Great? Alexander the Great is was the king of Macedonia and Ancient Greece. He may be known as the greatest military commander in history. Alexander the Great was born July 20, 356 BC. Alexander died at a very young age at 32. At a young age he accomplished a lot of things in his short life. Alexander's accomplishments was to do so much in his lifetime even thought it was such a lasting affect to him. […]

An Important Role Free Will in Oedipus the King

Fate is often said to be inevitable, an adverse outcome, condition, or end and free will is the ability to choose at your own discretion. In our everyday life, we make decisions and are often told that life is about making choices. It is because we have free will that we make choices which may lead to positive consequences if the choice is rational and yet other times our decisions lead to negative consequences. Free will plays an important role in Oedipus the King and fate […]

Wars of Ancient Greece

In the ancient Greek world, warfare was seen as a necessary evil of the human condition. Whether it be small frontier battles between neighboring city-states, lengthy city-sieges, civil wars, or large-scale battles between multi-alliance blocks on land and sea, the vast rewards of war could outweigh the costs in material and lives. While there were long periods of peace and many examples of friendly alliances, the powerful motives of territorial expansion, war loot, revenge, honor, and the defense of liberty […]

The Architecture of Ancient Greece

The Greeks set a tone for Western world and art history we know today through their paintings, sculptures, architecture, and many other innovations. Although they were influenced highly from Egypt and Mesopotamia, they would develop their own independent identity. The biggest concern while building what would become such impactive architecture, dealt with the proportion, harmony, and perspective. This would lead to the creation of many temples, theatres, and stadia that would become staple features of their cities/towns antiquity onwards. Greek […]

Alexander the Great the Gleaming Pearl of Ancient Greece

In the history of the ancient world, there are outstanding leaders with strategic minds and the ability to defeat all enemies. Among the most talented kings in the world, the most important one is probably Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great (356 - 323 BC) was the emperor who crushed the mighty Persian Empire and built the Greek Empire. He was a natural military genius and also considered to be a great contributor to the development of the history of […]

Spartan Warfare and Society in Ancient Greece

Introduction Sparta experienced territorial expansion due to its well organized and trained army (Cartledge 3). The Spartans inhabited fertile lands located in Eurotas and Pamisos where they practiced agricultural activities (Cartledge 3). On the other hand, the Helots were pushed to marginalized lands. They were nevertheless allowed by Spartans to live semi-autonomous lives in spite of being slaves. The Spartan helots would also be allowed to serve as warriors (Whitmore 3). This paper will discuss the Spartan warfare and how […]

Sparta and Athens Society Compare and Contrast

The life of a man or a woman in Ancient Greek was really different from the lives we have today. What I say is not about technology but about human rights such as the right to participate in public life. In Ancient Greek, women had no right to elect or to be elected, and only free men had their voice in the government. In Sparta, most people did not have any role for decision making for the community and Spartan […]

Historical Events of Ancient Greece

What importance did the Battles of Marathon and Salamis, and the Punic Wars have for Ancient Greece and Rome? Ancient Greece: The battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion on Greece. Citizens of Athens and citizens of Plataea revolted against the Persian army. The battle was a very big victory for the Greeks. From this victory, they gained confidence in their defense system and a new battle tactic called phalanx. The phalanx tactic is […]

Daily Life in Ancient Greece

Daily life in Greece is much different from ours today. In today's world male and female should have equal rights. Men should help the women clean house, women can mow the lawn, women can build houses and do construction work if they desire to do so. In Greece, it's a totally different story. Men are required to take a roll of being very involved in the community. While the women's lives were ALWAYS being at home doing work around the […]

Ancient Greece Art Essay

Ancient Greece is one of my favorite subjects to talk and learn about. I love the history, the stories, and the art, Greece itself is a masterpiece. However, even though Greece has many legendary art works, there is one that I considered my favorite above all of them. There is a vase called “Ajax and Achilles Playing a Game” by the famous Exekias who was known as an ancient Greek vase-painter and potter. Exekias made many beautiful pieces of artwork […]

Ancient Greece: a Women’s Life

The treatment of Women in Ancient Greece was often based on the social economic class that they were born into, or married into. The rich women had less rights than the poor women. Women that were married to rich men were often confined to their homes. Their only jobs were to manage the house and to give birth to sons for the husband. These women also lived in different parts of the house away from the men. They even ate […]

The Role of Women and Stereotypes in the Greek Society in the Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey is a classic poem by Homer ha revolves around the narrative of Odysseus an ancient Greek hero. Homer describes a full twenty-year journey that Odysseus spends fighting the Trojan War and traveling back to his family. The most significant theme is the nature and the role of women in Greek society. According to the story, men during the period were dominant and made most of the rules. However, Homer defies and illustrates the disparity in the role of […]

Ancient Greece Modern Comparison Project

Since the Grecian times, poems have been a very integral and influential part of every culture. Poems have affected whole countries at a time by expressing emotion, deep feelings, and a sense of what is beautiful about the world. From India to America, people have always drawn important parts of life and history from poems. A couple of the most unforgettable and prominent poets of all time include Homer and William Shakespeare. For my comparison essay, I will analyze the […]

Ancient Greece at the Met

Old Greek engineers tackle rigor and excellence of craftsmanship which are the trademark of Greek art universally. The methods they fabricated during the early sixth century B.C. still influence modern architecture. According to Sayre, H. M., (2013) there are two main principal orders in Classical and Archaic Greek architecture. They are commonly called Doric and the Ionic. In the Doric order, columns are fluted without any form of base. While with the Ionic order, bases support the columns, which have […]

Unveiling the Tapestry: the Pervasive Influence of Ancient Greece Geography

In the grand tapestry of human history, few threads are as intricately woven into the fabric as the geography of Ancient Greece. Beyond being a backdrop of azure seas and rugged mountains, the geographical features of this ancient land wielded a profound impact on the course of its history, culture, and societal structures. Let's embark on a journey through the undulating hills and craggy coastlines, unraveling the influence of Ancient Greece geography on the shaping of a civilization. The defining […]

Harmonies of History: the Lyre in Ancient Greece

The ancient Greeks, known for their rich contributions to art, philosophy, and politics, also held a profound affinity for music, with the lyre standing as a testament to this cultural passion. This stringed instrument, deeply intertwined with Greek mythology, literature, and daily life, resonates not just with musical notes but also with historical significance. The lyre, with its elegant structure, typically consisted of a soundbox made from tortoiseshell or wood, with arms extending upwards and joined by a crossbar. Strings, […]

Oedipus and the Sphinx

The great sphinx is a famous landmark known around the world for its loin body and a human head. It was built for a pharaoh as a guide in the afterlife. There is so much to learn about the sphinx. Like when and where it as built, ancient Greek myths, and King Khafre (the head of this amazing monument). Not to mention all the astonishing facts about the statue. When and where was the great sphinx built? The sphinx was […]

The Contribution of Ancient Greece to the Western Civilization

The ancient Greeks gave many contributions to the western civilization. They gave the Pythagorean Theory, Hippocratic Oath, limited democracy and more. Today those contributions benefit us. Pythagoras gave the Pythagorean Theory to us. He made a formula (a2+b2=C2); this formula is used to calculate the relationship between the sides of a right triangle. Euclid was a Greek mathematician and is often called the father of geometry. He put together, scientifically arranged, and wrote portions of the mathematics textbook Elements. Very […]

Birthdays: a Wish for the Gods

Birthdays are celebrated to remember personal achievements, show appreciation to those we love and care for, and to simply acknowledge our existence. Although lives are measured by the ceaseless passing of time, birthdays are a time to be remembered. That is how birthdays are defined in America today. The single day that all people have to mark a time in history, celebrate youth or adulthood, highlight milestones, rites of passage, and feel recognized; it is a celebration of life. They […]

Conquests of Alexander the Great

Alexander was set up to succeed his dad Philip II through watchful direction. When his dad kicked the bucket, he had mentored him from multiple points of view and he had additionally set the ground for his successes. Alexander acquired a urbanized people, an efficient military, and philosophical and military training and he used his insight to vanquish Persia and different parts of Asia. His heritage comprised of his despotic governments and utilization of military power as a major aspect […]

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The Legacy of the Ancient Greeks

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The ancient Greeks left the world such an impressive legacy of ideas that many of them were seen for centuries in the civilizations that followed and, even today, cultures around the world continue to display many of the quintessential features of life in ancient Greece . In this collection of resources, we examine such lasting ideas as democracy, the architectural orders, the Olympic Games , the Hippocratic oath, drama and Pythagoras ' theorem. We also look at such now-familiar structures as the theatre and stadium , and the lasting influence of the Greeks' great contribution to world literature , Homer 's Iliad .

Sporting competitions had already been seen in the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations of the Bronze Age Aegean , but it was in Archaic Greece that a sporting event would be born which became so popular and so important that it was even used as a reference for the calendar. The first Olympic Games were held in mid-July in 776 BCE at Olympia in honour of the Greek god Zeus . Every four years, thereafter, athletes and spectators gathered from across the Greek world to perform great sporting deeds and win favour with the gods. The last ancient Olympics would be in 393 CE, after an incredible run of 293 consecutive Olympiads.

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Cults and Rites in Ancient Greece: Essays on Religion and Society. (Edited by Allaire B. Stallsmith)

Ana isabel jiménez san cristóbal​ , universidad complutense de madrid. [email protected].

This volume assembles 13 articles on cults and rites in ancient Greece written by M. Jameson over a period of nearly fifty years. Widely known as an epigrapher, historian, and archaeologist, each of his articles included in this book has had a lasting impact on scholarship since the time of its publication. The author himself had collected the essays in this book when his untimely death in 2004 interrupted the preparation of the volume. The present collection results from the encouragement of his colleagues Paul Cartledge, Irene Polinskaya and Allaire B. Stallsmith, who celebrate the figure of their mentor and colleague in the preface. Jameson’s papers are divided into four parts: Gods and Heroes; Rites; Religion and Society; and The Study of Greek Religion. Such a framework offers a clear and sharp view of Jameson’s methodological and conceptual approach to the study of Greek religion. Each of the four parts is introduced by an essay by a leading international scholar: Fritz Graf, Christopher Faraone, Robert Parker, and Jan Bremmer. Their contributions honour Jameson with a detailed and insightful review of his papers that goes beyond the current selection of texts included in this book. Each of them highlights in a different way Jameson’s engagement with the subject of ancient Greek religion.

Paul Cartledge writes the General Introduction, which attempts a conspectus of Jameson’s published scholarship; it is interwoven with some personal observations and larger commentary. He tries to give a representative account of Jameson’s works by separating them into four topics: epigraphy, religion, intensive field-survey archaeology, and agriculture and slavery. A complete bibliography of Jameson is included at the end of this chapter.

The first part of the collection, dedicated to Gods and Heroes, is introduced by Graf, who affirms that Jameson naturally thought of Greek religion in the framework of local religion. Graf explains Jameson’s attitude towards Greek religion as that of an epigrapher who works in the first instance on local inscriptions and local cults. In the words of Graf, “Jameson’s essays remain models – for epigraphers in how to think about Greek religion, and for historians of Greek religion in how to use the documents of epigraphy” (p. 8). Indeed, two of the four papers in this first part have their point of departure from an inscription. The paper “Apollo Lykeios in Athens” edits and comments on an Athenian decree that establishes a tax that must be paid by the hoplites in the temenos of the god. Apollo Lykeios becomes the god of adult men in their military situation. “Perseus, the Hero of Mycenae” begins with two late inscriptions from Mycenae in order to analyze the local evidence of his cult. Perseus is tied to the Archaic polis’ institution of initiation into adulthood and citizenship. Without denying the influence of the Ancient Near East on the Perseus myth, he defends the idea that the local Peloponnesian rites of maturity were attached to the myth from the Near East, which in turn may have been influenced by Spartan rituals. The third paper of this section focuses on Echetlaeus, the hero of Marathon, who is linked with the sacred rite of plowing. Taking his starting point from a detail of a painting in Athens’ Stoa Poikile, Jameson presents a linguistic analysis of the hero and concludes that the name and the hero must be connected with the plow- handle, an object with ritual associations. The fourth paper, “The Asexuality of Dionysus,” tackles the paradox that the god most closely associated with the phallus has a feminine side, lacks sexual interest in women and is usually represented as “detached and unconcerned with sex.” Jameson explains these characteristics through Dionysus’ role as mediator between male and female. This explanation is hardly satisfactory for Bremmer (p. 296), who concedes, however, that Jameson’s paper appeared just before the publication of several Macedonian inscriptions connecting Dionysus the “pseudo-male” with initiation.

“Rites” is the rubric of the second part, introduced by Faraone. In “Sophocles, Antigone 1005-1022: An Illustration,” Jameson links a scene described by Tiresias at the end of the Antigone with a vase-painting in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, which shows an animal sacrifice performed on an altar. According to him, the scene represents the moment in which the officiant and other observers are taking the omens from the behaviour of the tail. In “Sacrifice before Battle,” Jameson gives a thorough discussion of the various kinds of pre-battle sacrifice through the myths and the images and metaphors of poetry. There were two basic types: the usual burnt sacrifice and the sacrifice performed at the battle line (σφάγια). The author contextualizes the different stages of the battle and the different types of sacrifices and also connects the historical battle sacrifice with the mythical human sacrifices of the Greeks. The article “Ritual of the Athena Nike Parapet” explains how detailed knowledge of Greek ritual is crucial to interpret the sculptures of the shrine’s friezes. A winged Nike in the act of killing a bull represents a battle-line σφάγια, whereas the Nike setting up war trophies symbolizes the end of the battle. In the last essay of the section, “Theoxenia,” Jameson examines the evidence for the offering of meals on tablets to gods and heroes in different areas of the Greek world. Combining epigraphic and iconographic data and small votive reliefs, he places the ritual within the system of Greek sacrifice, where division and reciprocity between human and divine is the major aim. One of the great merits of this essay, as well as “Sacrifice before Battle” and “Apollo Lykeios,” is the assemblage of exhaustive evidence for these rites, making these papers the starting point for any future work on these topics.

The heading of the third section is “Religion and Society”; the section is introduced by Parker. “Labda, Lambda, and Labdakos” connects the names of Labda and Labdakos with the archaic Corinthian form of the lambda. This hypothesis presupposes that the stories of Labda and Labdakos postdate the adoption in Greece of the Phoenician alphabet. This article, together with the earlier article on Perseus, tackles mythical themes, a minority in Jameson’s bibliography. Nevertheless, although Jameson does not focus on a mythical subject, his essays show clearly the complicated relationship between myth and cults. “Sacrifice and Animal Husbandry” maintains that the sacrificial calendar of rural Attica was determined by the seasonal availability and habits of different animals, by the annual increase of young and the culling of the older ones. Jameson’s deep knowledge of the ancient agricultural world is clearly seen in this paper. Also remarkable is the analysis of the evidence from excavated bones for the selection of animals for sacrifice. “Religion in the Athenian Democracy” notes that, contrary to the traditional view, management of cults by aristocratic gene emerged for the first time under the democracy. However, it is the polis that is the provider of sacrificial meat on a large scale. Jameson minimizes the crisis in late fifth century religion, which was supposedly due to the emergence of foreign and mystic cults and the skepticism of intellectuals. “The Spectacular and the Obscure in Athenian Religion” tackles how the demos of the city organized, adapted, and preserved the sacred space and time of the city as a whole. Jameson analyses the nature of public sacrificial ritual as performance, as well as other types of sacrifice that did not require an audience, such as purification rites, animal sacrifice for obtaining favorable signs, and the many small-scale sacrifices conducted by individuals.

The fourth and last section of the book, entitled “The Study of Greek Religion,” is introduced by an essay by Bremmer. With “Sacred Space and the City: Greece and Bhaktapur,” Jameson responds to Robert Levy’s comparison between this medieval small city in Nepal and the archaic Greek polis. Jameson deals with the subject of symbolic space and stresses the absence of a separation between town and country, unlike Asian cities. The lack of information about the creation of sacred space in Greek cities may be due to the absence of a clergy made up of religious experts.

The volume closes with an exhaustive bibliography covering all the essays and an index of names and topics.

This collection of papers illustrates clearly Jameson’s approach to Greek religion: his most important contributions are several articles in the field of sacrifice and the nature of Greek religion. Throughout the pages of this volume, he appears as an expert aware that one needs to master several distinct approaches in order to write a properly interconnected account of complex phenomena. Jameson emerges as a scholar of both literary and epigraphic texts, who combines them with iconographic evidence as necessary, to deal with the study of Greek religion. He reveals himself not as a theorist of Greek religion but as a scholar interested in the social and political contexts and consequences of the rituals he analyzes. His studies of local rituals connected with gods and heroes explain local beliefs but also contribute to the panhellenic image of these figures. The main merit of the volume lies in posing a wide range of questions and responding to them with judicious answers.

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Collection Finding Our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond

Ancient greek astronomy and cosmology.

As the stars move across the sky each night people of the world have looked up and wondered about their place in the universe. Throughout history civilizations have developed unique systems for ordering and understanding the heavens. Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers developed systems that became the basis for Greek astronomy, while societies in the Americas, China and India developed their own.

Ancient Greek astronomers' work is richly documented in the collections of the Library of Congress largely because of the way the Greek tradition of inquiry was continued by the work of Islamic astronomers and then into early modern European astronomy. This section offers a tour of some of the astronomical ideas and models from ancient Greece as illustrated in items from the Library of Congress collections.

The Sphere of the World

By the 5th century B.C., it was widely accepted that the Earth is a sphere. This is a critical point, as there is a widespread misconception that ancient peoples thought the Earth was flat. This was simply not the case.

In the 5th century B.C., Empedocles and Anaxagoras offered arguments for the spherical nature of the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, they identified the shadow of the Earth on the moon. As the shadow moves across the moon it is clearly round. This would suggest that the Earth is a sphere.

Experiencing the Sphere of the Earth

Given that opportunities for observations of a lunar eclipse do not come along that often, there was also evidence of the roundness of the earth in the experiences of sailors.

When a ship appears on the horizon it's the top of the ship that is visible first. A wide range of astronomy texts over time use this as a way to illustrate the roundness of the Earth. As the image suggests this is exactly what one would expect on a spherical Earth. If the Earth were flat, it would be expected that you would be able to see the entire ship as soon as it became visible.

Measuring the Size of the Earth

Lunar eclipses also allowed for another key understanding about our home here on Earth. In 3rd Century B.C., Aristarchus of Samos reasoned he could figure out the size of the Earth based on information available during a lunar eclipse. The diagram at the right illustrates a translation of his work. The large circle is the sun, the medium circle is the Earth and the smallest circle is the moon. When the Earth is in-between the sun and the moon it causes a lunar eclipse and measuring the size of the Earth's shadow on the moon provided part of the information he needed to calculate its size.

Eratosthenes estimated Earth's circumference around 240 B.C. He used a different approach, measuring the shadows cast in Alexandria and Syene to calculate their angle relative to the Sun. There is some dispute on the accuracy of his calculations as we don't know exactly how long the units of measure were. The measurement however was relatively close to the actual size of the Earth. The Greeks were applying mathematics to theorize about the nature of their world. They held a range of beliefs about nature and the world but they were, in many cases, working to ground those beliefs in an empirical exploration of what they could reason from evidence.

Aristotle's Elements and Cosmology

In the tradition of Plato and Empedocles before him, Aristotle argued that there were four fundamental elements, fire, air, water and earth. It is difficult for us to fully understand what this meant as today we think about matter in very different terms. In Aristotle's system there was no such thing as void space. All space was filled with some combination of these elements.

Aristotle asserted that you could further reduce these elements into two pairs of qualities, hot and cold and wet and dry. The combination of each of these qualities resulted in the elements. These qualities can be replaced by their opposites, which in this system become how change happens on Earth. For example, when heated, water seemingly turns steam which looks like air.

The Elements in Aristotle's Cosmic Model

In Aristotle's Cosmology, each of these four elements (earth, water, fire and air) had a weight. Earth was the heaviest, water less so, and air and fire the lightest. According to Aristotle the lighter substances moved away from the center of the universe and the heaver elements settled into the center. While these elements attempted to sort themselves out, to achieve this order, most of experience involved mixed entities.

While we have seen earth, fire, air and water, everything else in the world in this system was understood as a mixture of these elements. In this perspective, transition and change in our world resulted from the mixing of the elements. For Aristotle the terrestrial is a place of birth and death, based in these elements. The heavens are a separate realm governed by their own rules.

The Wandering and Fixed Stars in the Celestial Region

In contrast to the terrestrial, the celestial region of the heavens had a fundamentally different nature. Looking at the night sky the ancient Greeks found two primary kinds of celestial objects; the fixed stars and the wandering stars. Think of the night's sky. Most of the visible objects appear to move at exactly the same speed and present themselves in exactly the same arrangement night after night. These are the fixed stars. They appear to move all together. Aside from these were a set of nine objects that behaved differently, the moon, the sun and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter each moved according to a different system. For the Greeks these were the wandering stars.

In this system the entire universe was part of a great sphere. This sphere was split into two sections, an outer celestial realm and an inner terrestrial one. The dividing line between the two was the orbit of the moon. While the earth was a place of transition and flux, the heavens were unchanging. Aristotle posited that there was a fifth substance, the quintessence, that was what the heavens were made of, and that the heavens were a place of perfect spherical motion.

The Unchanging Celestial Region

In Aristotle's words, "In the whole range of time past, so far as our inherited records reach, no change appears to have taken place either in the whole scheme of the outermost heaven or in any of its proper parts." It's important to keep in mind that in Aristotle's time there simply were not extensive collections of observational evidence. Things that looked like they were moving in the heavens, like comets, were not problematic in this model because they could be explained as occurring in the terrestrial realm.

This model of the heavens came with an underlying explanation. The celestial spheres were governed by a set of movers responsible for the motion of the wandering stars. Each of these wandering stars was thought to have an "unmoved mover" the entity that makes it move through the heavens. For many of the Greeks this mover could be understood as the god corresponding to any given entity in the heavens.

Ptolemy's Circles on Circles

Claudius Ptolemy (90-168) created a wealth of astronomical knowledge from his home in Alexandria, Egypt. Benefiting from hundreds of years of observation from the time of Hipparchus and Eudoxus, as well as a set of astronomical data collected by the Babylonians, Ptolemy developed a system for predicting the motion of the stars that was published in his primary astronomical work, Almagest . Ptolemy's success at synthesizing and refining ideas and improvements in astronomy helped make his Almagest so popular that earlier works fell out of circulation. Translated into Arabic and Latin the Almagest became the primary astronomy text for the next thousand years.

Ptolomaic Data

The Almagest is filled with tables. In this sense the book is a tool one can use to predict the locations of the stars Compared to earlier astronomy the book is much more focused on serving as a useful tool than as presenting a system for describing the nature of the heavens. Trying to accurately predict the place of the stars over time resulted in creating a much more complicated model.

The Ptolemaic Model

By the time of Ptolemy Greek astronomers had proposed adding circles on the circular orbits of the wandering stars (the planets, the moon and the sun) to explain their motion. These circles on circles are called epicycles. In the Greek tradition, the heavens were a place of perfect circular motion, so the way to account for perfection was with the addition of circles. This resulted in disorienting illustrations.

To escape the complicated nature of this extensive number of circles, Ptolomy added a series of new concepts. To accurately describe planetary motion, he needed to use eccentric circles. With the eccentric circle the center of the planets orbit would not be Earth but would instead be some other point. Ptolemy then needed to put the epicycles on another set of circles called deferents. So the planets moved on circles that moved on circular orbits. Ptolomy also needed to introduce equants, a tool that enabled the planets to move at different speeds as they moved around these circles. The resulting model was complex, but it had extensive predictive power.

Ptolemy and Aristotle's Cosmic Legacy

Ptolemy came to represent a mathematical tradition, one focused on developing mathematical models with predictive power. Aristotle came to be known for putting forward the physical model of the heavens. Ptolemy was also interested in deploying his model of the heavens to describe its physical reality. However, his most important work was the mathematical models and data he used for predicting the motion of heavenly bodies. For a long time his name was synonymous with the model of the heavens.

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Architecture in ancient greece.

Marble column from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis

Marble akroterion of the grave monument of Timotheos and Nikon

Lion felling a bull, from a marble pediment

Terracotta architectural tile

Colette Hemingway Independent Scholar

October 2003

Ancient Greek architects strove for the precision and excellence of workmanship that are the hallmarks of Greek art in general. The formulas they invented as early as the sixth century B.C. have influenced the architecture of the past two millennia. The two principal orders in Archaic and Classical Greek architecture are the Doric and the Ionic. In the first, the Doric order, the columns are fluted and have no base. The capitals are composed of two parts consisting of a flat slab, the abacus, and a cushionlike slab known as the echinus. On the capital rests the entablature, which is made up of three parts: the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice. The architrave is typically undecorated except for a narrow band to which are attached pegs, known as guttae. On the frieze are alternating series of triglyphs (three bars) and metopes, stone slabs frequently decorated with relief sculpture. The pediment, the triangular space enclosed by the gables at either end of the building, was often adorned with sculpture, early on in relief and later in the round. Among the best-preserved examples of Archaic Doric architecture are the temple of Apollo at Corinth, built in the second quarter of the sixth century B.C., and the temple of Aphaia at Aegina, built around 500–480 B.C. To the latter belong at least three different groups of pedimental sculpture exemplary of stylistic development between the end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth century B.C. in Attica.

In the Ionic order of architecture, bases support the columns, which have more vertical flutes than those of the Doric order. Ionic capitals have two volutes that rest atop a band of palm-leaf ornaments. The abacus is narrow, and the entablature, unlike that of the Doric order, usually consists of three simple horizontal bands. The most important feature of the Ionic order is the frieze, which is usually carved with relief sculpture arranged in a continuous pattern around the building.

In general, the Doric order occurs more frequently on the Greek mainland and at sites on the Italian peninsula, where there were many Greek colonies. The Ionic order was more popular among Greeks in Asia Minor and in the Greek islands. A third order of Greek architecture, known as the Corinthian, first developed in the late Classical period, but was more common in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Corinthian capitals have a bell-shaped echinus decorated with acanthus leaves, spirals, and palmettes. There is also a pair of small volutes at each corner; thus, the capital provides the same view from all sides.

The architectural order governed not only the column, but also the relationships among all the components of architecture. As a result, every piece of a Greek building is integral to its overall structure; a fragment of molding often can be used to reconstruct an entire building. Although the ancient Greeks erected buildings of many types, the Greek temple best exemplifies the aims and methods of Greek architecture. The temple typically incorporated an oblong plan, and one or more rows of columns surrounding all four sides. The vertical structure of the temple conformed to an order, a fixed arrangement of forms unified by principles of symmetry and harmony. There was usually a pronaos (front porch) and an opisthodomos (back porch). The upper elements of the temple were usually made of mud brick and timber, and the platform of the building was of cut masonry. Columns were carved of local stone, usually limestone or tufa; in much earlier temples, columns would have been made of wood. Marble was used in many temples, such as the Parthenon in Athens, which is decorated with Pentelic marble and marble from the Cycladic island of Paros. The interior of the Greek temple characteristically consisted of a cella, the inner shrine in which stood the cult statue, and sometimes one or two antechambers, in which were stored the treasury with votive offerings.

The quarrying and transport of marble and limestone were costly and labor-intensive, and often constituted the primary cost of erecting a temple. For example, the wealth Athens accumulated after the Persian Wars enabled Perikles to embark on his extensive building program, which included the Parthenon (447–432 B.C.) and other monuments on the Athenian Akropolis. Typically, a Greek civic or religious body engaged the architect, who participated in every aspect of construction. He usually chose the stone, oversaw its extraction, and supervised the craftsmen who roughly shaped each piece in the quarry. At the building site, expert carvers gave the blocks their final form, and workmen hoisted each one into place. The tight fit of the stones was enough to hold them in place without the use of mortar; metal clamps embedded in the stone reinforced the structure against earthquakes. A variety of skilled labor collaborated in the raising of a temple. Workmen were hired to construct the wooden scaffolding needed for hoisting stone blocks and sculpture, and to make the ceramic tiles for the roofs. Metalworkers were employed to make the metal fittings used for reinforcing the stone blocks and to fashion the necessary bronze accoutrements for sculpted scenes on the frieze, metopes, and pediments. Sculptors from the Greek mainland and abroad carved freestanding and relief sculpture for the eaves of the temple building. Painters were engaged to decorate sculptural and architectural elements with painted details.

Hemingway, Colette. “Architecture in Ancient Greece.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grarc/hd_grarc.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Avery, Catherine B., ed. The New Century Handbook of Greek Art and Architecture . New York: Appleton–Century–Crofts, 1972.

Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 3d ed., rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Lawrence, A. W. Greek Architecture . 4th ed., rev. by R. A. Tomlinson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.

Pedley, John Griffiths, Greek Art and Archaeology . 2d ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

Pomeroy, Sarah B., et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Robertson, Martin. A History of Greek Art . 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Additional Essays by Colette Hemingway

• Hemingway, Colette. “ Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition .” (April 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Greek Hydriai (Water Jars) and Their Artistic Decoration .” (July 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Hellenistic Jewelry .” (April 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Intellectual Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age .” (April 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Mycenaean Civilization .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Retrospective Styles in Greek and Roman Sculpture .” (July 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Africans in Ancient Greek Art .” (January 2008)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Ancient Greek Colonization and Trade and their Influence on Greek Art .” (July 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Greek Gods and Religious Practices .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.) .” (January 2008)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Labors of Herakles .” (January 2008)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Athletics in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Rise of Macedon and the Conquests of Alexander the Great .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Technique of Bronze Statuary in Ancient Greece .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Women in Classical Greece .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Cyprus—Island of Copper .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Music in Ancient Greece .” (October 2001)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and Art .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Etruscan Art .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Prehistoric Cypriot Art and Culture .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Sardis .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Medicine in Classical Antiquity .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Southern Italian Vase Painting .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Theater in Ancient Greece .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Kithara in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Minoan Crete .” (October 2002)

Related Essays

• The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.)
• Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition
• Greek Art in the Archaic Period
• Greek Gods and Religious Practices
• Ancient Greek Colonization and Trade and their Influence on Greek Art
• Antique Engraved Gems and Renaissance Collectors
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• Anatolia and the Caucasus (Asia Minor), 1000 B.C.–1 A.D.
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• 1st Century B.C.
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• Religious Art
• Sculpture in the Round

The Aegean Sea. Photo by Krista Rossow/National Geographic

The sea was never blue

The greek colour experience was made of movement and shimmer. can we ever glimpse what they saw when gazing out to sea.

by Maria Michela Sassi   + BIO

Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos , to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ ( polios ) and ‘blue-grey’ ( glaukos ) to deep blue and almost black ( kuaneos , melas ). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ ( ioeides ), ‘wine-like’ ( oinops ), or purple ( porphureos ). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.

Yellow, too, seems strangely absent from the Greek lexicon. The simple word xanthos covers the most various shades of yellow, from the shining blond hair of the gods, to amber, to the reddish blaze of fire. Chloros , since it’s related to chloe (grass), suggests the colour green but can also itself convey a vivid yellow, like honey.

The ancient Greek experience of colour does not seem to match our own. In a well-known aphorism, Friedrich Nietzsche captures the strangeness of the Greek colour vocabulary:

How differently the Greeks must have viewed their natural world, since their eyes were blind to blue and green, and they would see instead of the former a deeper brown, and yellow instead of the latter (and for instance they also would use the same word for the colour of dark hair, that of the corn-flower, and that of the southern sea; and again, they would employ exactly the same word for the colour of the greenest plants and of the human skin, of honey and of the yellow resins: so that their greatest painters reproduced the world they lived in only in black, white, red, and yellow). [My translation]

How is this possible? Did the Greeks really see the colours of the world differently from the way we do?

J ohann Wolfgang von Goethe, too, observed these features of Greek chromatic vision. The versatility of xanthos and chloros led him to infer a peculiar fluidity of Greek colour vocabulary. The Greeks, he said, were not interested in defining the different hues. Goethe underpinned his judgment through a careful examination of the theories on vision and colours elaborated by the Greek philosophers, such as Empedocles, Plato and Aristotle, who attributed an active role to the visual organ, equipped with light coming out of the eye and interacting with daylight so as to generate the complete range of colours.

Goethe also noted that ancient colour theorists tended to derive colours from a mixture of black and white, which are placed on the two opposite poles of light and dark, and yet are still called ‘colours’. The ancient conception of black and white as colours – often primary colours – is remarkable when compared with Isaac Newton’s experiments on the decomposition of light by refraction through a prism. The common view today is that white light is colourless and arises from the sum of all the hues of the spectrum, whereas black is its absence.

Goethe considered the Newtonian theory to be a mathematical abstraction in contrast with the testimony of the eyes, and thus downright absurd. In fact, he claimed that light is the most simple and homogeneous substance, and the variety of colours arise at the edges where dark and light meet. Goethe set the Greeks’ approach to colour against Newton’s for their having caught the subjective side of colour perception. The Greeks already knew, Goethe wrote, that: ‘If the eye were not Sun-like, it could never see the Sun.’

Today, no one thinks there has been a stage in humanity when some colours were ‘not yet’ being perceived

Another explanation for the apparent oddness of Greek perception came from the eminent politician and Hellenist William Gladstone, who devoted a chapter of his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858) to ‘perceptions and use of colour’. He too noticed the vagueness of the green and blue designations in Homer, as well as the absence of words covering the centre of the ‘blue’ area. Where Gladstone differed was in taking as normative the Newtonian list of colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). He interpreted the Greeks’ supposed linguistic poverty as deriving from an imperfect discrimination of prismatic colours. The visual organ of the ancients was still in its infancy, hence their strong sensitivity to light rather than hue, and the related inability to clearly distinguish one hue from another. This argument fit well with the post-Darwinian climate of the late 19th century, and came to be widely believed. Indeed, it prompted Nietzsche’s own judgment, and led to a series of investigations that sought to prove that the Greek chromatic categories do not fit in with modern taxonomies.

Today, no one thinks that there has been a stage in the history of humanity when some colours were ‘not yet’ being perceived. But thanks to our modern ‘anthropological gaze’ it is accepted that every culture has its own way of naming and categorising colours. This is not due to varying anatomical structures of the human eye, but to the fact that different ocular areas are stimulated, which triggers different emotional responses, all according to different cultural contexts.

So was Goethe right that the Greek experience of colours is quite peculiar? Yes, he was. There is a specific Greek chromatic culture, just as there is an Egyptian one, an Indian one, a European one, and the like, each of them being reflected in a vocabulary that has its own peculiarity, and not to be measured only by the scientific meter of the Newtonian paradigm. The question then is: how can we hope to understand how the Greeks saw their world?

L et’s begin with the colourimetric system, based on the Color Sphere created in 1898 by an American artist named Albert Henry Munsell. According to this model, any colour sensation can be defined through three interacting aspects: the hue , determined by the position in the Newtonian spectrum, by which we discriminate one colour from another; the value or lightness, ranging from white to black; and the chroma , which corresponds to the purity or saturation of the colour, depending on the wavelength distribution of light. Fire-red and sky-blue are highly saturated, whereas grey is not at all.

Add to these the concept of saliency , that is, the capacity of a colour to catch visual attention, and the defective definition of blue and green that Gladstone interpreted as a symptom of colour-blindness can be explained since the linguistic definition of hue is proportionate to the saliency of a colour. That is why red, the most salient colour, is the first to be defined in terms of hue in any culture ( eruthros in Greek), while green and blue are generally first perceived as brightness because they are less salient colours, and are slowly focused as hues later. This means that in some contexts the Greek adjective chloros should be translated as ‘fresh’ instead of ‘green’, or leukos as ‘shining’ rather than ‘white’. The Greeks were perfectly able to perceive the blue tint, but were not particularly interested in describing the blue tone of sky or sea – at least not in the same way as we are, with our modern sensibility.

This model is helpful for describing the different ways in which a chromatic culture can segment the huge range of possible combinations of the three dimensions by privileging one or the other. A culture might emphasise hue or chroma or value, each with varying intensity. And so the Munsell model is useful in that it helps to demonstrate the remarkable Greek predilection for brightness , and the fact that the Greeks experienced colours in degrees of lightness and darkness rather than in terms of hue.

However, the Munsell model doesn’t completely explain how the Greeks perceived colour since it leaves out the richness of the ‘colour event ’ – the subjective, felt perspective of colour that Goethe so valued. For the Greeks, colour was a basic unit of information necessary to understanding the world, above all the social world. One’s complexion was a major criterion of social identity, so much so that contrasting light women and dark men was a widespread cliché in Greek literature and iconography, rooted in the prejudice that the pale complexion of women is due to their living in the darkness of the domestic sphere, whereas men are tanned and strengthened by physical exertion and outdoor sports. So the Greek word chroa/chroiá means both the coloured surface of a thing and the colour itself, and is significantly related to chros , which means ‘skin’ and ‘skin colour’. The emotional and ethical values of colour cannot be forgotten in trying to discern Greek chromatic culture.

Homer calls the sea ‘winey’, alluding not so much to the water’s tint as to the shine of the liquid inside a cup

Of use are two further parameters, in addition to the Munsell model and the subjective value of colour. There is the glitter effect of colour, which is produced by the interplay of the texture of the object and the light conditions, and there is the material or technological process by which a certain colour is obtained in the practice of painters and dyers. With these in hand, the full range of Greek colours will come into view – even the notorious ‘curious case’ of porphureos, the chromatic term most difficult to grasp.

Not only does porphureos not correspond to any definite hue, placed as it is on the borderline between red and blue (in Newtonian terms), but it is often applied to objects that do not appear straightforwardly ‘purple’, as in the case of the sea. (The fact that the sea can appear purple at sunset is not sufficient to explain the frequency of this epithet in Greek literature.) When the sea is called porphureos , what is described is a mix of brightness and movement, changing according to the light conditions at different hours of the day and with different weather, which was the aspect of the sea that most attracted Greek sensitivity. This is why Homer calls the sea ‘winey’, which alludes not so much to the wine tint of the water as to the shine of the liquid inside the cups used to drink out of at a symposium. As shown by the naval friezes and the aquatic animals painted inside many drinking vessels, vase painters turned the image around, so that the surface of the drink suggested the waving of the sea. Porphureos conveys this combination of brightness and movement – a chromatic term impossible to understand without considering the glimmer effect.

The material effect of shimmering under the light rays is well-caught by Aristotle within a discussion on the colours of the rainbow (one of them being violet). In his Meteorology , he states:

The same effect [as in the rainbow] can also be seen in dyes: for there is an indescribable difference in the appearance of the colours in woven and embroidered materials when they are differently arranged; for instance, purple is quite different on a white or a black background, and variations of light can make a similar difference. So embroiderers say they often make mistakes in their colours when they work by lamplight, picking out one colour in mistake for another.

The luminous quality of purple textiles is due to the particular manufacturing of porphura , the material from which the dye was drawn. Purple dye was produced as early as 1200 BCE in Phoenicia from urine, sea water, and ink from the bladder of murex snails. To extract the snails, the shells were put in a vat where their putrefying bodies excreted a yellowish liquid that would be boiled (the verb porphurō means ‘swirling’ besides ‘growing/dying purple’). Various nuances from yellow to green, to blue, to red could be obtained, depending on how much water was added and when the boiling process was stopped. The red and purple tones were greatly prized in antiquity because of the costliness of the process (one mollusc providing just a few drops of undiluted juice) and the colour did not easily fade – on the contrary, it became brighter with weathering and sunlight. This is why purple was associated throughout antiquity – and beyond – with power, prestige and glorious beauty, worn for centuries by Emperors and kings, cardinals and Popes.

So the curious case of porphura shows how the effects of movement, variation and luminosity went along with resonances of preciousness. (Gold was also appreciated for similar reasons, and it is not by chance that the heroes and gods from Homer to Philostratus are often attired in gold and porphura .) By moving beyond the Newtonian model, a clearer picture of the Greek chromatic world emerges. However, there is one lingering question about the Greek perception of colour: why, after all, did the Greeks value brightness so much? The philosophers that inspired Goethe offer a clue.

T he first pre-Socratic philosopher to mention colour was Parmenides, who wrote in the fifth century BCE that ‘changing place and altering in bright colour’ are among the characteristics that mortals ascribe to reality, ‘trusting them to be true’. Then came Empedocles, with a fragment that compares the mixing of the four elements that build the sensible world to the work that painters do when mixing different pigments in variable proportions:

As when painters decorate votive offerings – men through cunning well-taught in their skill – who when they take the many-coloured pigments in their hands, mixing in harmony more of these and less of those, out of them they produce shapes similar to all things, creating trees and men and women and beasts and birds and fishes nurtured in water and long-lived gods highest in honours

The effect of splendour was likely important to Empedocles’ concept of colour, as he explained the production of all colours through the mixture of two elements, fire and water, which correspond respectively to white (light) and black (darkness), and are considered the two extremes in the chromatic continuum.

Plato’s list of primary colours includes white, black, red, and the ‘brilliant and shining’ – to us, not a colour at all

During the second half of the fifth century BCE, Democritus argued that the nature of colours depends on the interaction between visual rays, daylight and the atomic structure of objects. He considered brilliance to be a factor as important as hue for defining colours. Moreover, in explaining the various colours as mixtures of a basic set of four (white, black, red and green), or as mixtures of the primary mixtures, he considered the mixture of red and white (corresponding to the golden and copper-colour) plus a small amount of green (adding a sense of freshness and life) to give ‘the most beautiful colour’ (probably gold). He regarded purple as a particularly ‘delightful’ colour, on the grounds that it comes from white, black and red, the presence of white being indicated by its brilliance and luminosity. The same appreciation of brilliance is found in Plato, whose account of vision in Timaeus is centred on the interaction of three factors, namely: the fire internal to the observer’s eye; daylight; and the ‘flame’ (that is, again, the light) transmitted by the coloured object. Plato’s list of primary colours includes white, black, red and, most remarkably, the ‘brilliant and shining’, which to us is not a colour at all.

Aristotle differs from Plato on crucial points in metaphysics and psychology. Nevertheless, he shares Plato’s predilection for brilliant colours. In On Sense and the Sensible , he devotes a chapter to colour where he argues that the various colours arise from different proportions in the mixtures of white and black. These last two, moreover, correspond in his view to the fire and the water in the physical bodies, and determine the transparent medium as light and darkness respectively. Red, purple, green and dark blue, kuanoun, are primary mixtures of white and black, the remaining colours resulting from mixtures of the primary ones. Purple, red and green are ‘most pleasant’ to the eye as they are endowed with a peculiar reflectivity, which is due to the neat proportion of light and darkness in their composition.

Aristotle elaborates on the aesthetic assumptions of his predecessors and makes explicit statements on colour being an indicator of vitality and vigour, both in the world and in painting (which recalls the need to take into account the emotional meaning of a colour). Indeed, Aristotle describes the embryo’s development in his biological work On the Generation of Animals by an analogy with painting practice:

In the early stages [of the embryo’s formation] the parts are all traced out in outline; later on, they get their various colours and softnesses and hardnesses, quite as if a painter were at work on them, the painter being nature. Painters, as we know, first of all outline the figure of the animal and after that go on to apply the colours.

What is more visible in painting to Aristotle’s eyes, so as to help to explain the embryo’s growth, is how the pairing of line and colour works: first the drawing of an outline provides the essential features of an image, then comes colour to add ‘flesh’ and the beauty of life. It is most noteworthy that a similar attitude emerges from a number of ancient descriptions of the aesthetic effect produced by the colouring of statues, pervaded by the celebration of the brightening and enlivening properties of colour. For instance, the character of Helen in Euripides’ tragedy, in complaining about the devastating events caused by her beauty, wishes for her colours to be erased from a statue, so as to eliminate her fatal charm. The literary evidence has recently received striking corroboration on this subject from important archaeological reconstructions of ancient sculptural polychromy. The effect sought by applying the most brilliant (and saturated) colours was exactly one of splendour, along with energy, movement and life.

So Goethe was right. In trying to see the world through Greek eyes, the Newtonian view is only somewhat useful. We need to supplement it with the Greeks’ own colour theories, and to examine the way in which they actually tried to describe their world. Without this, the crucial role of light and brightness in their chromatic vision would be lost, as would any chance to make sense of the mobility and fluidity of their chromatic vocabulary. If we rely only on the mathematical abstractions of Newton’s optics, it will be impossible to imagine what the Greeks saw when they stood on their shores, gazing out upon the porphureos sea stretching into the distant horizon.

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