The Life of Greece Read online

  BY WILL DURANT

  The Story of Philosophy

  Transition

  The Pleasure of Philosophy

  Adventures in Genius

  BY WILL AND ARIEL DURANT

  THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION

  1. Our Oriental Heritage

  2. The Life of Greece

  3. Caesar and Christ

  4. The Age of Faith

  5. The Renaissance

  6. The Reformation

  7. The Age of Reason Begins

  8. The Age of Louis XIV

  9. The Age of Voltaire

  10. Rousseau and Revolution

  11. The Age of Napoleon

  The Lessons of History

  Interpretation of Life

  A Dual Autobiography

  Copyright 1939 by Will Durant

  Copyright renewed © 1966 by Will Durant

  All rights reserved

  including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form

  Published by Simon and Schuster

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  Preface

  MY purpose is to record and contemplate the origin, growth, maturity, and decline of Greek civilization from the oldest remains of Crete and Troy to the conquest of Greece by Rome. I wish to see and feel this complex culture not only in the subtle and impersonal rhythm of its rise and fall, but in the rich variety of its vital elements: its ways of drawing a living from the land, and of organizing industry and trade; its experiments with monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, dictatorship, and revolution; its manners and morals, its religious practices and beliefs; its education of children, and its regulation of the sexes and the family; its homes and temples, markets and theaters and athletic fields; its poetry and drama, its painting, sculpture, architecture, and music; its sciences and inventions, its superstitions and philosophies. I wish to see and feel these elements not in their theoretical and scholastic isolation, but in their living interplay as the simultaneous movements of one great cultural organism, with a hundred organs and a hundred million cells, but with one body and one soul.

  Excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture that does not come from Greece. Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism, stoicism, epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, philanthropy, cynicism, tyranny, plutocracy, democracy: these are all Greek words for cultural forms seldom originated, but in many cases first matured for good or evil by the abounding energy of the Greeks. All the problems that disturb us today—the cutting down of forests and the erosion of the soil; the emancipation of woman and the limitation of the family; the conservatism of the established, and the experimentalism of the unplaced, in morals, music, and government; the corruptions of politics and the perversions of conduct; the conflict of religion and science, and the weakening of the supernatural supports of morality; the war of the classes, the nations, and the continents; the revolutions of the poor against the economically powerful rich, and of the rich against the politically powerful poor; the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, between individualism and communism, between the East and the West—all these agitated, as if for our instruction, the brilliant and turbulent life of ancient Hellas. There is nothing in Greek civilization that does not illuminate our own.

  We shall try to see the life of Greece both in the mutual interplay of its cultural elements, and in the immense five-act drama of its rise and fall. We shall begin with Crete and its lately resurrected civilization, because apparently from Crete, as well as from Asia, came that prehistoric culture of Mycenae and Tiryns which slowly transformed the immigrating Achaeans and the invading Dorians into civilized Greeks; and we shall study for a moment the virile world of warriors and lovers, pirates and troubadours, that has come down to us on the rushing river of Homer’s verse. We shall watch the rise of Sparta and Athens under Lycurgus and Solon, and shall trace the colonizing spread of the fertile Greeks through all the isles of the Aegean, the coasts of Western Asia and the Black Sea, of Africa and Italy, Sicily, France, and Spain. We shall see democracy fighting for its life at Marathon, stimulated by its victory, organizing itself under Pericles, and flowering into the richest culture in history; we shall linger with pleasure over the spectacle of the human mind liberating itself from superstition, creating new sciences, rationalizing medicine, secularizing history, and reaching unprecedented peaks in poetry and drama, philosophy, oratory, history, and art; and we shall record with melancholy the suicidal end of the Golden Age in the Peloponnesian War. We shall contemplate the gallant effort of disordered Athens to recover from the blow of her defeat; even her decline will be illustrious with the genius of Plato and Aristotle, Apelles and Praxiteles, Philip and Demosthenes, Diogenes and Alexander. Then, in the wake of Alexander’s generals, we shall see Greek civilization, too powerful for its little peninsula, bursting its narrow bounds, and overflowing again into Asia, Africa, and Italy; teaching the cult of the body and the intellect to the mystical Orient, reviving the glories of Egypt in Ptolemaic Alexandria, and enriching Rhodes with trade and art; developing geometry with Euclid at Alexandria and Archimedes at Syracuse; formulating in Zeno and Epicurus the most lasting philosophies in history; carving the Aphrodite of Melos, the Laocoön, the Victory of Samothrace, and the Altar of Pergamum; striving and failing to organize its politics into honesty, unity, and peace; sinking ever deeper into the chaos of civil and class war; exhausted in soil and loins and spirit; surrendering to the autocracy, quietism, and mysticism of the Orient; and at last almost welcoming those conquering Romans through whom dying Greece would bequeath to Europe her sciences, her philosophies, her letters, and her arts as the living cultural basis of our modern world.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to Mr. Wallace Brockway for his scholarly help at every stage of this work; to Miss Mary Kaufman, Miss Ethel Durant, and Mr. Louis Durant for aid in classifying the material; to Miss Regina Sands for her expert preparation of the manuscript; and to my wife for her patient encouragement and quiet inspiration.

  I am deeply indebted to Sir Gilbert Murray and to his publishers, the Oxford University Press, for permission to quote from his translations of Greek drama. These translations have enriched English literature.

  I am-also indebted to the Oxford University Press for permission to quote from its excellent Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation.

  W. D.

  Notes

  ON THE USE OF THIS BOOK

  1. This book, while forming the second part of the author’s Story of Civilization, has been written as an independent unit, complete in itself. The next volume will probably appear in 1943 under the title of Caesar and Christ—a history of Roman civilization and of early Christianity.

  2. To bring the book into smaller compass, reduced type (like this) has been used for technical or recondite material. Indented passages in reduced type are quotations.

  3. The raised numbers in the text refer to the Notes at the end of the volume. Hiatuses in the numbering of the notes are due to last minute curtailments.

  4. The chronological table given at the beginning of each period is designed
to free the text as far as possible from minor dates and royal trivialities. All dates are B.C. unless otherwise stated or evident.

  5. The maps at the beginning and the end of the book show nearly all the places referred to in the text. The glossary defines all unfamiliar foreign words used, except when these are explained where they occur. The starred titles in the bibliography may serve as a guide to further reading. The index pronounces ancient names, and gives dates of birth and death where known.

  6. Greek words have been transliterated into our alphabet according to the rules formulated by the Journal of Hellenic Studies; certain inconsistencies in these rules must be forgiven as concessions to custom; e.g., Hieron, but Plato (n); Hippodameia, but Alexandr(e)ia.

  7. In pronouncing Greek words not established in English usage, a should be sounded as in father, e as in neigh, i as in machine, o as in bone, u as June, y like French u or German ü, ai and ei like ai in aisle, ou as in route, c as in car, ch as in chorus, g as in go, z like dz in adze.

  Table of Contents

  BOOK I: AEGEAN PRELUDE: 3500–1000 B.C.

  Chronological Table

  Chapter I. CRETE

  I. The Mediterranean

  II. The Rediscovery of Crete

  III. The Reconstruction of a Civilization

  1. Men and Women

  2. Society

  3. Religion

  4. Culture

  IV. The Fall of Cnossus

  Chapter II. BEFORE AGAMEMNON

  I. Schliemann

  II. In the Palaces of the Kings

  III. Mycenaean Civilization

  IV. Troy

  Chapter III. THE HEROIC AGE

  I. The Achaeans

  II. The Heroic Legends

  III. Homeric Civilization

  1. Labor

  2. Morals

  3. The Sexes

  4. The Arts

  5. The State

  IV. The Siege of Troy

  V. The Home-Coming

  VI. The Dorian Conquest

  BOOK II: THE RISE OF GREECE: 1000–480 B.C.

  Chronological Table

  Chapter IV. SPARTA

  I. The Environment of Greece

  II. Argos

  III. Laconia

  1. The Expansion of Sparta

  2. Sparta’s Golden Age

  3. Lycurgus

  4. The Lacedaemonian Constitution

  5. The Spartan Code

  6. An Estimate of Sparta

  IV. Forgotten States

  V. Corinth

  VI. Megara

  VII. Aegina and Epidaurus

  Chapter V. ATHENS

  I. Hesiod’s Boeotia

  II. Delphi

  III. The Lesser States

  IV. Attica

  1. The Background of Athens

  2. Athens under the Oligarchs

  3. The Solonian Revolution

  4. The Dictatorship of Peisistratus

  5. The Establishment of Democracy

  Chapter VI. THE GREAT MIGRATION

  I. Causes and Ways

  II. The Ionian Cyclades

  III. The Dorian Overflow

  IV. The Ionian Dodecapolis

  1. Miletus and the Birth of Greek Philosophy

  2. Polycrates of Samos

  3. Heracleitus of Ephesus

  4. Anacreon of Teos

  5. Chios, Smyrna, Phocaea

  V. Sappho of Lesbos

  VI. The Northern Empire

  Chapter VII. THE GREEKS IN THE WEST

  I. The Sybarites

  II. Pythagoras of Crotona

  III. Xenophanes of Elea

  IV. From Italy to Spain

  V. Sicily

  VI. The Greeks in Africa

  Chapter VIII. THE GODS OF GREECE

  I. The Sources of Polytheism

  II. An Inventory of the Gods

  1. The Lesser Deities

  2. The Olympians

  III. Mysteries

  IV. Worship

  V. Superstitions

  VI. Oracles

  VII. Festivals

  VIII. Religion and Morals

  Chapter IX. THE COMMON CULTURE OF EARLY GREECE

  I. Individualism of the State

  II. Letters

  III. Literature

  IV. Games

  V. Arts

  1. Vases

  2. Sculpture

  3. Architecture

  4. Music and the Dance

  5. The Beginnings of the Drama

  VI. Retrospect

  Chapter X. THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM

  I. Marathon

  II. Aristides and Themistocles

  III. Xerxes

  IV. Salamis

  BOOK III: THE GOLDEN AGE: 480–399 B.C.

  Chronological Table

  Chapter XI. PERICLES AND THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENT

  I. The Rise of Athens

  II. Pericles

  III. Athenian Democracy

  1. Deliberation

  2. Law

  3. Justice

  4. Administration

  Chapter XII. WORK AND WEALTH IN ATHENS

  I. Land and Food

  II. Industry

  III. Trade and Finance

  IV. Freemen and Slaves

  V. The War of the Classes

  Chapter XIII. THE MORALS AND MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS

  I. Childhood

  II. Education

  III. Externals

  IV. Morals

  V. Character

  VI. Premarital Relations

  VII. Greek Friendship

  VIII. Love and Marriage

  IX. Woman

  X. The Home

  XI. Old Age

  Chapter XIV. THE ART OF PERICLEAN GREECE

  I. The Ornamentation of Life

  II. The Rise of Painting

  III. The Masters of Sculpture

  1. Methods

  2. Schools

  3. Pheidias

  IV. The Builders

  1. The Progress of Architecture

  2. The Reconstruction of Athens

  3. The Parthenon

  Chapter XV. THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

  I. The Mathematicians

  II. Anaxagoras

  III. Hippocrates

  Chapter XVI. THE CONFLICT OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

  I. The Idealists

  II. The Materialists

  III. Empedocles

  IV. The Sophists

  V. Socrates

  1. The Mask of Silenus

  2. Portrait of a Gadfly

  3. The Philosophy of Socrates

  Chapter XVII. THE LITERATURE OF THE GOLDEN AGE

  I. Pindar

  II. The Dionysian Theater

  III. Aeschylus

  IV. Sophocles

  V. Euripides

  1. The Plays

  2. The Dramatist

  3. The Philosopher

  4. The Exile

  VI. Aristophanes

  1. Aristophanes and the War

  2. Aristophanes and the Radicals

  3. The Artist and the Thinker

  VII. The Historians

  Chapter XVIII. THE SUICIDE OF GREECE

  I. The Greek World in the Age of Pericles

  II. How the Great War Began

  III. From the Plague to the Peace

  IV. Alcibiades

  V. The Sicilian Adventure

  VI. The Triumph of Sparta

  VII. The Death of Socrates

  BOOK IV THE DECLINE AND FALL OF GREEK FREEDOM 399–322 B.C.

  Chronological Table

  Chapter XIX. PHILIP

  I. The Spartan Empire

  II. Epaminondas

  III. The Second Athenian Empire

  IV. The Rise of Syracuse

  V. The Advance of Macedonia

  VI. Demosthenes

  Chapter XX. LETTERS AND ARTS IN THE FOURTH CENTURY

  I. The Orators

  II. Isocrates

  III. Xenophon

&nbs
p; IV. Apelles

  V. Praxiteles

  VI. Scopas and Lysippus

  Chapter XXI. THE ZENITH OF PHILOSOPHY

  I. The Scientists

  II. The Socratic Schools

  1. Aristippus

  2. Diogents

  III. Plato

  1. The Teacher

  2. The Artist

  3. The Metaphysician

  4. The Moralist

  5. The Utopian

  6. The Lawmaker

  IV. Aristotle

  1. Wander-Years

  2. The Scientist

  3. The Philosopher

  4. The Statesman

  Chapter XXII. ALEXANDER

  I. The Soul of a Conqueror

  II. The Paths of Glory

  III. The Death of a God

  IV. The End of an Age

  BOOK V: THE HELLENISTIC DISPERSION: 322–146 B.C.

  Chronological Table

  Chapter XXIII. GREECE AND MACEDON

  I. The Struggle for Power

  II. The Struggle for Wealth

  III. The Morals of Decay

  IV. Revolution in Sparta

  V. The Ascendancy of Rhodes

  Chapter XXIV. HELLENISM AND THE ORIENT

  I. The Seleucid Empire

  II. Seleucid Civilization

  III. Pergamum

  IV. Hellenism and the Jews

  Chapter XXV. EGYPT AND THE WEST

  I. The Kings’ Register

  II. Socialism under the Ptolemies

  III. Alexandria

  IV. Revolt

  V. Sunset in Sicily

  Chapter XXVI. BOOKS

  I. Libraries and Scholars

  II. The Books of the Jews

  III. Menander

  IV. Theocritus

  V. Polybius

  Chapter XXVII. THE ART OF THE DISPERSION

  I. A Miscellany

  II. Painting

  III. Sculpture

  IV. Commentary

  Chapter XXVIII. THE CLIMAX OF GREEK SCIENCE

  I. Euclid and Apollonius

  II. Archimedes

  III. Aristarchus, Hipparchus, Eratosthenes

  IV. Theophrastus, Herophilus, Erasistratus

  Chapter XXIX. THE SURRENDER OF PHILOSOPHY

  I. The Skeptical Attack

  II. The Epicurean Escape

  III. The Stoic Compromise

  IV. The Return to Religion

  Chapter XXX. THE COMING OF ROME

  I. Pyrrhus

  II. Rome the Liberator

  III. Rome the Conqueror

  EPILOGUE: OUR GREEK HERITAGE