Thumbnail Sketches of Important Greek Authors

• Homer
• Hesiod
• Solon
• Aeschylus
• Sophokles
• Euripides
• Aristophanes
• Herodotus
• Thucydides
• Plato

Homer Epic poet ca. 700 BCE Seven Ionian cities claimed him as their own--Smyrna, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos and Athens. The claims of Chios and Smyrna are the most plausible. Ancient tradition about his poverty and blindness is not based on any evidence.

Homer, the great epic poet of Greek culture, was identified by the ancient Greeks as the author of both the Iliad, the story of the war against the Greeks and the Trojans, and the Odyssey, the story of the return of Odysseus to his home on Ithaka after the Trojan War. It is generally believed that Homer composed his epic poems orally and that they were originally meant to be sung at public performances. They were written down only later and eventually the texts which we read today were established. The principles of oral composition were studied by Milman Parry and other scholars who spent time with contemporary oral poets in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere; some of the characteristics of oral composition are meter, frequent use of epithets (e.g., "swift-footed Achilles" and "wine-dark sea"), and the repetition of large chunks of description. The Homeric epics are composed in dactylic hexameter.

Hesiod wrote the Works and Day and the Theogony. The former is, supposedly, an account of a dispute with his brother Perses over their father's estate and a call to Perses to work and to a just way of life. The latter is an account of the origin of the cosmos and the births of the Greek gods; it shares many things in common with the Near Eastern epic, the Enuma Elish. One of the most common literary tropes of ancient literature--the scene of the poet inspired by the Muses on Mount Helikon--appears for the first time in Hesiod's Theogony. Like the Homeric epics, the Works and Day and the Theogony are written in dactylic hexameter. Fragments of other poems attributed to Hesiod are extant.

Solon was selected in 595 BCE as special Tenth Archon and given the task of reforming the Athenian governance with an aim towards alleviating social tensions and civil unrest to avoid tyranny. He describes his political program in some of his poetry and Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 9.1) preserves important information about the so-called Solonian Constitution. His program, which is often referred to by the term Eunomia, cancelled all existing debts and prohibited debt slavery. He increased the functions of the Ekklesia (the public assembly) and instituted a Boule (the legislative council) of 400, or 100 men from each of the traditional four Ionian tribes. Election to the Boule and to the archonships was based on wealth under the Solonian Constitution. After getting these reforms passed, he is said to have made the Athenians promise to follow them for ten years. During that time he travelled to Egypt and the East; Herodotos, for example, describes in a great detail his visit to the court of Kroisos, king of Lydia--a visit which solidified his reputation as a wise man but which, historically, is impossible. His poetry is full of gnomai, cliched truisms, but preserves important historical information for the development of Athenian democracy.

Aeschylus Tragic poet ca. 525 - 456 BCE, born at Eleusis in Attica, died at Gela in Sicily. He was a member of the Eupatridae, an aristocratic clan in Athens, and fought in the major battles of the Persian War: Marathon in 490 BCE, Salamis in 480 BCE, and Plataia in 479 BCE. His first play was produced in 499 BCE.

It was Aeschylus who seems to have been responsible for developing the genre of tragedy in the form in which we now know it. He is credited with introducing a second actor to Greek drama which increased the scope for dialogue and dramatic tension. He was also fond of using rich costumes and masks and stunning visual props used in his tragedies. According to a late source, for example, the Furies in his play Eumenides looked so terrifying that pregnant women in the audience had miscarriages. This story is probably not true, but it does suggest that he enjoyed impressive spectacular effects. Aeschylean tragedy is, above all, grand and dignified. The language is often opaque and difficult to understand and is characterized by complex metaphors and images. He is also well-known for producing trilogies, that is three plays produced on the same day whose plots were connected. One of his trilogies -- the Oresteia -- is extant. It was produced in 458 BCE and won first prize. The plays of the Oresteia are the Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. In these plays, Aeschylus traces the story of the house of Agamemnon from the time Agamemnon returns home after the defeat of Troy until Orestes is acquitted at Athens for the murder of his mother Klytemestra. Aeschylus is known to have written 90 tragedies, only 7 of which are extant: Persians (472 BCE), Seven Against Thebes (468 BCE), Suppliants (463 BCE?), Prometheus Bound (450 BCE?), and the three tragedies of the Oresteia (458 BCE).

Sophokles / Sophocles Tragic poet 495-406 BCE, born at Colonus (a deme of Attica), probably into an elite family, though one late source says his father was a carpenter or bronzeworker. He held a number of important political positions in Athens in his later years. When the cult of Asklepios was introduced to Athens, Sophocles housed the sacred snakes until cult facilities could be built for them. This story suggests that Sophocles was a devoted believer in the Greek gods. He defeated Aeschylos for the first time at the Greater Dionysia of 468 BCE.

Sophocles was the most successful playwright of his time. He is credited with introducing the third actor to the drama and for increasing the size of the chorus from 12 to 15 members. He is famous for his powerful delineations of character. Aristotle's description of good tragedy in the Poetics focuses on strong central characters; in this regard, it is a description of Sophoklean tragedy. Sophokles is known to have written at least 123 plays, only seven of which are still extant. Late sources say that he won first place 24 times. Of those seven extant plays, three of them deal with the House of Laius at Thebes: Antigone (442 BCE), Oidipous Tyrannos (also known as Oedipus Rex, 429 - 425 BCE) and Oidipous at Colonos (posthumously produced in 401 BCE). His other extant plays are Ajax (460 BCE), Trachiniai (450-430 BCE), Electra (420 BCE), and Philoctetes (409 BCE).

Euripides Tragic poet 485-406 BCE. He was born in Attica, in the deme of Phlya, north of Mt. Hymettus. He is said to have left Athens in 408 BCE and to have died in Macedonia at the court of King Archelaus in 406 BCE. Late sources record that he knew Sokrates who was apparently fond of his plays.

Euripides was not as successful in the Dionysiac competitions as was his contemporary Sophokles. He wrote 92 plays, but won first place only five times in twenty-two competitions. Presumably because of this lack of success, he left Athens as an old man to go to Macedonia to the court of King Archelaus (where they were a number of other artists present) in a kind of self-exile. He died and was buried in Macedon in 407/6 BCE. The comic poets frequently made fun of him and satirized his plays, depicting him as anti-traditionalist, a hater of women, and unorthodox in his religious views. Read his plays and decide for yourself if these charges are true. After his death, however, he became very popular, and his plays were repeatedly performed throughout antiquity. It was a common view in antiquity that Sophocles depicted men as they ought to have been and Euripides depicted them as they truly were. It is commonly said that he brought the heroic figures of myth down to the standards of ordinary men and women and explored the human mind and emotions. He was particularly interested in how men and women reacted to terrible or pitiful acts. His plots are often very convoluted and are resolved only by the appearance of a deus ex machine ("the god from the machine") at the end of the play. Nineteen of his plays survive: Alcestis (438 BCE, 2nd prize), Medea (431 BCE, 3rd prize), Children of Heracles (ca. 430 BCE), Hippolytus (428 BCE, first prize), Andromache (ca. 425 BCE, not produced in Athens), Hecuba(ca. 424 BCE), Suppliant Women (ca. 423 BCE), Electra (ca. 420 BCE), Heracles (ca. 416 BCE), Trojan Women (415 BCE, second prize), Iphigenia among the Taurians (ca. 414 BCE), Ion (ca. 413 BCE), Helen (412 BCE), Phoenician Women (ca. 410 BCE), Cyclops (date unknown, possibly ca. 410 BCE), Orestes (408 BCE), Bacchae (posthumous, ca. 401 BCE) and Iphigenia in Aulis (posthumous, first prize). Many believe that he also wrote the Rhesus.

Aristophanes Comic poet ca. 447/6 - ca. 380 BCE. He belonged to the urban deme Kydathenaion and was a full-fledged Athenian citizen. Little is known about his life. Plato, in the Symposion, portrays Aristophanes as being comfortable among the social and intellectual elite of Athens. He had two sons, both of whom became comic poets.

Aristophanes was considered to be the best poet of "old" Attic comedy. His first comedy was produced in 427 BCE and his last in 386 BCE or later. He is known to have written 44 comedies, 11 of which survive. He was quite popular during his lifetime, and the Athenian people were so delighted by the Frogs that they bestowed on him an honorific crown of sacred olive for the advice he had given the state in its parabasis and decided that the play should have the unique honor of being performed a second time. His comedies are characterized by urbane and sometimes vulgar language and by very pointed caricatures of contemporary people and events; particularly scathing is his criticism of Kleon, the foremost politician of the day. The Peloponnesian War and the politicians and generals who led it were the frequent targets of his writing, nor did Sokrates, sophistry, popular education, contemporary tragedians, and the Athenian legal system escape his critical and satiric eye. To judge from his plays, he was a keen observer of the social and political life of contemporary Athens. His extant plays are Acharnians (at the Lenaea, 425 BCE), Knights (Lenaia, 424 BCE), Clouds (Dionysia 423; the surviving version is an incomplete and never-staged revision dating from 419-17), Wasps (Lenaea, 422 BCE), Peace (City Dionysia, 421 BCE), Birds (City Dionysia, 414 BCE), Lysistrata (Lenaea, 411 BCE), Thesmophoriazoussai (City Dionysia, 411 BCE), Frogs (Lenaea, 405 BCE), Ecclesiazusai (ca. 391 BCE), Plutus (388, BCE).

Herodotos / Herodotus Prose writer / Historian ca. 485/4 - 425 BCE, born at Halikarnassos in Caria (SW corner of modern Turkey). He was born into an elite family at Halikarnassos but left for Samos at an early age to escape the oppressive government of the tyrant Lygdamis. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, especially in Egypt, and eventually died at Thurii in Italy.

This image is a double bust: Herodotus on the left and Thucydides on the right. Now in the Naples Museum, the bust depicts the birth of history.

Herodotus tella the history of the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians which culminated in what we call the Persian Wars (490-479 BCE). He lived after the time of the Persian War and was still alive at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431 BCE). He is often referred to as the "father of history," though his methodology has been criticized for its use of myth and popular accounts. Indeed, in antiquity, he was sometimes referred to as the "father of lies." Herodotos entitled his account of the Persian Wars "the inquiries" (historiê in Greek) and called them "narratives / accounts" (logoi in Greek). They were written in prose and drew extensively on information he personally gathered during his travels. He traced the enmity between Greece and Persia back to mythical times and believed that the Trojan War was just one step on a long-standing road to war. He identified the reign of King Kroisos of Lydia as an important turning point in the relations between East and West. Herodotus modeled his narrative both on the monumental Homeric epics and on contemporary geographical and ethnographic literature. In the preface he says that he wants to memorialize the great and marvelous deeds of the Greeks and of non-Greeks so that they will not be forgotten or lose their fame over time. His account is characterized by the lively flow of its narrative and by his awareness that different cultures have their own customs and norms. Herodotus uses this cultural perspective to explain the motivations behind historical events (see 3.38 for example). He records not only the deeds of famous men, but also the monuments and artifacts left behind in the landscape as testimony of those deeds. The story recorded by Lucian that he recited his History aloud at Olympia and again at the Panathenaia festival at Athens is surely apocryphal.

Thucydides / Thoukydides Prose writer / Historian ca. 460s/450s - 400s/390s BCE, born at Athens, in the deme Halimous. Thucydides came from one of the leading families of Athens and had strong personal connections to the leading family of Thrace where he had sources of great wealth.

Thucydides was an elite Athenian with strong family connections to Thrace, the source of his family's considerable wealth. His literary masterpiece is his History of the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431 - 404 BCE). He himself fell victim to the plague which devastated Athens early in the course of the Peloponnesian War and which is described in great detail in book 2 of his History of the Peloponnesian War. Likewise he participated in some of the military actions of the war, serving as the commander of a squadron of ships during a naval battle in 424 BCE. Because he failed to come to the aid of another Athenian commander during that battle, he was exiled from Athens. This exile gave him the opportunity to meet with people of both sides, Peloponnesians and Athenians, and to investigate matters "at his leisure." He probably returned to Athens around 403 BCE and died soon after. Thucydides was not the first person to compose prose history, but unlike his predecessors -- including Herodotus -- he contrasts his history from others' because of his diligence in trying to verify his sources and present a balanced view of events (1.22.3). He says in his introduction that he is writing for posterity, least these events be forgotten. Modern historians have taken him at his word and, in the past, have routinely praised him for his impartiality and insight, but recent scholarship has shown that his representation of events is not without bias. He is particularly famous for his reconstruction of speeches delivered by important politicians leading up to and during the war. He lived to see the end of the war, but not the end of his History which breaks off in mid-sentence during the events of the summer of 411 BCE. You must read Xenophon's Hellenica for the rest of the story. The Funeral Oration from book 2 of his History is said to be the inspiration for Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and is one of the finest statements of the place of Athens in the Greek world to have survived from antiquity.

Plato Prose writer / Philosopher ca. 429/8 - 347 BCE, born at Athens to an elite family. His uncle Critias was a leader of the Thirty Tyrants, a group of oligarchs who deposed the democratic government and briefly ruled Athens in 404-403 BCE. After Socrates' death in 399 BCE, Plato visited Egypt, Sicily and several cities in Magna Graecia. He returned to Athens and died at the age of 82.

Ancient commentators record that Plato wrote 42 dialogues, all of which have survived. We also have several letters, a collection of epigrams, and one of definitions from his hand. Plato is perhaps the best-known of Sokrates' students and ardent admirers and eventually set up his own philosophical school which was known as the Academic because he taught in the shady groves around the gymnasium of the Academy. His philosophical treatises are written in the form of dialogues and are distinguished by a purity of language and an elegant style. Many of the dialogues are dominated by the figure of Sokrates who spent his time discussing ethics with other people, trying to demonstrate to them what virtue was and how, by becoming virtuous, they might be happy. Sokrates was tried on a charge of impiety in 399 BCE and was convicted; he was imprisioned and forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock. The trial and death of Socrates are recorded by Plato in the Apology, Phaedo, and Crito. The relationship between the historical Socrates, the Socrates of Plato's dialogues, and Plato himself is extremely controversial.

Socrates, portrait head on a herm, ca. 2nd century BCE. The image follows the literary tradition that says that Socrates resembled a satyr.

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