Greek Literature: Genres, Periods and Major Authors from Homer to the Hellenistic Age

Dramatic Genres

Dramatic genre: Drama means action. Poetry is dramatic when it needs to be performed. To cultivate Greek theater, four types of performances were developed: the tragedy, the satirical drama, the comedy and the mime.

Tragedy

The tragedy (from the Greek tragoidia) dealt with mythical themes and serious arguments. It was characterized by the presence of two or three main actors, who were all male, and a chorus of fifteen choristers. The presence of the chorus was essential: it sang and danced, and it commented on the action. Actors wore masks, long robes, shawls, and the buskin, a high-soled shoe. Female characters were played by men and wore white shawls.

Three great tragic myths were treated by the tragedians: the house of Thebes, told in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes; the story of Oedipus, in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus; and the story of Antigone, as well as the Phoenician settlers in Euripides' The Suppliants.

Satirical Drama

The satirical drama was a short piece performed after the tragedies. Its purpose was to make the audience laugh and to offer moral lessons.

Comedy

Comedy criticizes some citizens and society of its time, with a lively and full of obscenities style.

• Old Comedy (5th century BC): its greatest representative was Aristophanes, author of Lysistrata, Clouds and Peace.
• Middle Comedy (400-320 BC): treated mythological themes and stereotyped characters as a consequence of the first comedy's satire. Aristophanes' Plutus is a politically oriented work, but political representation no longer existed.
• New Comedy (from 320 BC): focused on everyday themes and the private life of citizens. Its greatest representative was Menander.

The Mime

Mime scenes were picaresque and had a strong realism inspired by everyday life. Sophron of Syracuse, with the intention of representing mimed scenes of private life, wrote works in prose with rhythm.

Stages of Greek Literature

Dark Age (c. 1100-800 BC)

With the adaptation of the alphabet around 800 BC, alphabetic writing made possible the fixation of Greek literature in writing. Until then, transmission had been oral.

Archaic Period (800-500 BC)

• Creation of epic poetry: Homer and Hesiod (representatives of didactic epic).
• Archaic lyric poetry, composed in verse and accompanied by the lyre, a stringed instrument. It includes monodic lyric, elegy, iambic poetry and choral lyric.
• Main writers and philosophers: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras and Xenophanes.
• Top figures of historiography: the logographer Hecataeus of Miletus.
• First dramatists: Phrynichus (tragedy) and Epicharmus (comedy).

Classical Period (500-323 BC)

The golden age of Greek letters:

• Choral lyric: Pindar.
• Historiography: Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon.
• Rhetorical prose: Isocrates, Lysias, Demosthenes and their contemporaries.
• Philosophical prose: Plato.
• Scientific prose: Aristotle and Hippocrates.
• Tragedy: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
• Comedy: Aristophanes.

Hellenistic Period (323-31 BC)

Also known as the Alexandrian period.

• Birth of philology and the Library of Alexandria. The mythological library of Apollodorus.
• New epic recreations: the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes.
• Scholarly poetry: Callimachus and Theocritus.
• Hellenistic historiography: the chronicles of Alexander.
• Geographical prose: Eratosthenes.
• Philosophical prose: Theophrastus.
• Scientific prose: Euclid and Archimedes.
• Origins of the novel.
• New Comedy: Menander.

Roman Period (from 31 BC onwards)

• Epigram and poetry anthologies, and lyric poetry: Meleager of Gadara.
• Historiography: Polybius and Plutarch.
• Geographical prose: Strabo.
• Philosophical prose: Philo and Plutarch.
• Rhetorical prose: Lucian.
• Novel: Daphnis and Chloe by Longus of Lesbos.

Epic Poetry

The Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed to Homer. The Iliad tells the story of 51 days in the tenth year of the Trojan War, and the turning point of the wrath of Achilles. The Odyssey recounts the return of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca.

Hesiod, representative of didactic epic, is the author of the Theogony, which systematizes the genealogy of the divine gods, and of Works and Days, among others attributed to him. Also associated with his name is the Shield of Heracles.

Callimachus and Theocritus, of Rhodes, and Apollonius (the Argonautica) are representatives of the epic genre in the Hellenistic era.

In ancient tradition, Homer was credited with the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as the Homeric Hymns, the Margites and the Batrachomyomachia. Homer's biography is legendary: it is said that he was a blind singer and rhapsode who wandered from city to city reciting the deeds of heroes.

There exists the Homeric Question: whether there was one single author. Scholars such as d'Aubignac and the German Friedrich August Wolf doubted that Homer existed and believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by a single author in the same period. They argued that the poems were not the work of one person, but a cluster of originally independent songs, which were gradually joined by anonymous compilers into the extensive poems we know.

The Unitarian school defends the unity of authorship, while the analytic school denies the existence of a single personal author.

Despite the monotony one might expect, the Iliad follows a rectilinear plot, yet the Odyssey is so dynamic and varied in its narrative scenes. The Odyssey incorporates folk and popular elements and many fantastic elements absent from the Iliad. The behavior of the gods is very different in the Odyssey than in the Iliad: they are so arbitrary that they seem to be closer to humans.

The Odyssey represents a more purely aristocratic society and a more varied picture than the Iliad. Its heroes are disposed to give their lives for ideals, while in the Odyssey the hero's central aim is to save his life.

Many critics consider that the Iliad is the work of a young poet, and the Odyssey the work of Homer in his mature years.

Greek education was based on Homeric poems.