Classical and
Biblical
Backgrounds
to
Western
Literature
by
Brother
Anthony, of Taizé
Sogang
University
CPO Box 1142
Seoul 100-611
Republic of
Korea
¨Ï 2002, Brother Anthony of Taizé
Contents
Sumerian Culture
The First Assyrian Empire
Mesopotamian Mythology
A summary of Gilgamesh
Early History: The Patriarchs
Moses and the Exodus
The Jerusalem Kingdom
Exile and Return
Early Greek History
Crete
Mycenae
The Dorians, Ionia, and Heroic Legend
The First Named Poet : Homer
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Hesiod
From the Theogony
The Phoenicians, the Greek Alphabet
Greek Colonies
The City-State
Social Change
Sparta
Athens
The Persians
Victory at Salamis
From 480 until the Fall of Athens
The Early Greek Philosophers
Quotations from Xenophanes
Quotations from Heraclitus
Quotations from Parmenides
Quotations from Zenon
The Sophists
Socrates
From Socrates' Defense
The Death of Socrates
Plato3
Plato's Teaching
Texts from Plato5
The Image of the Cave
Diotima's speech
Aristotle
Aristotle on Tragedy
Later Philosophy
Quotations from Epicurus
Stoicism
Hellenistic Philosophy
Aeschylus
Agamemnon
Coephori
Eumenides
Prometheus Bound
Sophocles
Oedipus the King
Antigone
Euripides
Greek Comedy
Aristophanes
Greek Lyric Poetry
Archilochus
Sappho
Anacreon
Pindar
After Alexander
The Culture of the Hellenistic Age
Asia Minor and Israel
The Greek Novel
Hercules
Perseus & Theseus
The Trojan War
The Argonauts
Ovid's Metamorphoses
Daphne
Deucalion
Pyramus and Thisbe
Baucis and Philemon
Echo and Narcissus
Icarus
Pan and Syrinx
Diana and Actaeon
Pygmalion
Venus and Adonis
Hero and Leander
Orpheus and Eurydice
Early Roman History
The Civil War
Plutarch : The Death of Julius Caesar
Augustus
Literature
Cicero's De Officiis
Lucretius: De Rerum Natura
Augustan Literature
From Virgil's "Pollio"
The Aeneid
The Emperors after Augustus
Literary Figures of the Post-Augustan Period
The Later Empire
The Writers of the Silver Age
The Decline and Fall
11 The Bible: The Old Testament
The Text of the Old Testament
The Books of the Old Testament
Genesis
Exodus
The Rest of the Pentateuch
Early History of Israel
Kingship
Poetry: Wisdom Literature
The Prophets
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The "Minor" Prophets
The Social Vision of the Prophets
Conclusions
12 The Bible: The New Testament
The Four Gospels
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
The Acts of the Apostles
The Epistles
Revelation
English Translations of the Bible
Persecutions and Martyrdom
Early Christian Thinkers
Persecutions and Victory
The Teaching Church
Ambrose and Augustine
Augustine's Conversion
Into the Middle Ages
"Beauty
is Truth, Truth Beauty, - that is all
Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.
"
(John Keats,
"Ode on a Grecian Urn")
History, theory, politics, economy, dialectic,
democracy, tyrant, anarchy, alphabet, cosmos, tragedy and
comedy, idea, philosophy, theology, geometry, atom, ode: when we
realize that each of these words is Greek, borrowed directly into English,
French and the other European languages, we may begin to sense what is special
about a culture which is at the origin of so many different human activities
that have continued from then until today. Out of Greece the modern world received both philosophy and
science.
The Bible continues to challenge and puzzle the
world; the Christian faith has marked Western culture so deeply that it is
still not easy to separate the two; yet why should texts, some written three
thousand years ago, remain alive with meaning today? And not only texts, for millions of people look beyond the
texts to the Living God and the Risen Christ in whom they find the origin and
the goal of human history, at a time when there are more Christians in Latin
America, Africa and Asia than in Europe and North America.
Rome, too, has left its mark in words: republic,
empire, urban, justice, dictator, liberty, university, humanity,
religion, and in whole languages too, since French (from which many current
English words are derived), Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian derive
directly from Latin.
These two great cultural streams combine
fruitfully, but confusingly, to give Western culture: the Graeco-Roman and
the Judaeo-Christian. Put as simply as this, the reader may not realize
the full scope of what is being said.
The Jewish religion and people, the Christian religions in all their
variety, all that has been thought and written in the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, the centuries since then until today in philosophy, poetry,
fiction,
drama, history, social theory, ideology, the Humanism which is at present
fiercely contested in parts of the West, certain aspects of modern science, and
much of the dialectics called Marxism, to say nothing of the art and the
architectural design of many countries, all these have their historical roots
here. What follows in this book is
designed to introduce some of the main background to these.
The Origins of Culture
While people were nomads, living in tents,
always travelling, or set¡©tled alone in family farmsteads, they had to plant
their own food and do everything for themselves. With the rise of sophisticated technology, this was no
longer possible. Specialists were
needed. Urban society gives rise
to an economy based first on exchange (barter), then on money. Money means records and contracts,
archives and a collective memory.
In most early societies there was a ruling,
royal class or family, within a sacral vision of kingship. Certain people, close to the king, had
responsibility for public law, order, prosperity. Each society had its religious observances, which were
institutionalized in public temples of many kinds, with castes of priests and
traditions of mythical stories to be transmitted.
Among the ordinary people, who as
"citizens" had a greater or lesser role in the democratic running of
the city-state, there were responsibilities for the defense of the city against
enemies. Military activity gave rise,
in some cases, to a professional military class; in other places, the male
citizens were all obliged to contribute military service, while they were able
to, and according to their wealth and position in society.
Older forms of living continued in the farms
outside the cities. There was thus
a relationship between city and countryside to be developed, since the city
needed food. The other aspect of
this new world was the possibility it offered for exchanges of technology,
culture, religions, between different cities. This was often done in the course of exploring another
aspect of inter-city living, as people from one city tried to exer¡©cise power
over other cities by attacking them and making them pay regular tributes in
taxes or raw materials.
All of this gives rise to the need for permanent
records, a collective memory for future generations. The origin of writing, probably in a religious context, is
only the beginning of the story.
It quickly becomes normal to use writing for financial records of taxes,
of imports and exports, of debts and promises. Each society generates its own laws, which are also
recorded, often in public places so that all can know them. Contracts between cities are necessary
for peace; diplomacy needs correspondence.
Humanity must be supposed to have sung its joys
and its pains, its memories and its hopes, from the moment it began to
communicate in words. Songs and
stories, great events to be remembered in a people's history, as in a family's,
or a religion's. There is a
beginning of litera¡©ture, when these songs and stories were found to be worth
writing down, as alphabets developed.
Skills, too, must be transmitted to new
generations. Writing (and
therefore reading) must be learned.
Some kind of schooling arises.
And since nothing is fixed, there are people who begin to ask questions,
to challenge old ideas, to suggest new ways of thinking. Technology gives rise to science,
religion gives rise to philosophy, all of it the fruit of a restless curiosity
driven by practical necessities.
From the earliest times, people in different countries, China, Babylon,
Egypt, measured the movements of the sun and stars. They discovered, slowly, the ordered universe, the
possibility of measuring time in years, centuries. Chronicles of the great events of a city's life could be
fixed by dates.
All of this is a matter of communication. Languages are means of communicating
with others, but also obstacles, since there are so many different
languages. The history of human communication
is one of constant fusion, change and exchange, words from one city passing to
another, one group of people giving up their former language to blend with
another group. The history of
language is the history of encounters, with the need to understand one another.
Another great question in the world of business,
particularly, was the possibility of recording numbers. How many ships? How much grain? In some ways, the difficulty of precise
numerical writing has been much greater than that of phonetic alphabet. In an age dominated by 1, 2, 3... it is
good to think of humanity's struggles to count and compute before the age of
the computer. How did a Roman add
XXXVIII and CCCLXXIV?
The history of human culture is also written in
brick and stone. Each culture
leaves its traces in buildings which survive, whole or in ruins, or excavated
from beneath more recent layers of civilization. Temples (the Parthenon), tombs (the Pyramids), theatres
(Athens), palaces (the centre of Rome), homes (in Pompeii).
Inside these buildings, and outside too,
artisans placed what we now call "works of art", products of the
visual arts of sculpture, painting, furnishing. And in many such buildings, for various purposes, people
came to make music with voice and instruments. This too is part of the history of human culture, as is the
study of the simple tools the workers used, the crops the farmers planted, and
the clothes people wore.
All of this, applied to the Middle East and
Egypt, to North Africa, to Greece, to Rome, and to Western Europe from the
Mediterranean to Scandinavia, and followed through from the earliest days,
perhaps 3000 years before Christ, until today, goes to make up the Backgrounds
of Western Culture, which is the material of this book.
Those using this book for teaching will need to
develop their course according to the level, capacity and interest of their
students. In this Second Edition, over a hundred pages of primary texts have
been added in order to illustrate more fully what is being said by way of
introduction. Needless to say, it may somteimes be found helpful to have
students read entire works, be it in Greek drama, literature, or the books of
the Bible.
One major lack is the absence of pictures. This
can easily be overcome by giving students 'Scrapbook' assignments in which they
find pictures in the library or on the Internet and compose their own visual
presentations.
Both texts and illustrations can now be found in
considerable quantities on the Internet, although the quality is sometimes not
good, and the more modern translations of classical texts are mostly, for
copyright reasons, not available. Since Internet addresses are notoriously
unstable, it is not realistic to include lists in this book. At the time of publication,
the author's Home Page includes lists of links to useful resources:
http://www.sogang.ac.kr/~anthony
It is assumed that the reader is able to refer
to a Bible. For further
information, readers are directed to the many Encyclopedias and standard works
that exist, and in particular to such works as the following, which have been
of immense assistance in preparing this book:
Edith
Hamilton Mythology
Pierre Grimal, The
Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Blackwell).
Thomas Bulfinch, The
Age of Fable (Dent).
The Oxford
Classical Dictionary ed. N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard.
The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church ed. F. L. Cross.
The Oxford
Companion to Classical Literature ed.
Sir P. Harvey.
The Cambridge
History of Classical Literature, ed.
P. E. Easterling and E. J. Kenney.
Vol. 1, Greek Literature.
The Oxford
Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich. OUP, 1995.
The Oxford
Book of Classical Verse in Translation, ed. Adrian Poole &
Jeremy Maule. OUP, 1995.
M. Noth, The History
of Israel (2nd ed., Harper & Row, 1960)
A. R. Burn, The
Pelican History of Greece.
A New
Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (Nelson, 1975).
Latin
Literature: An Anthology ed.
M. Grant (Penguin Classics)
R. Warner, The Greek Philosophers
(Mentor, 1958)
2560 B.C. Cheops of Egypt dies (Great
Pyramid).
1500 Minoan culture in Crete.
1350 Tutankhamen.
1250 Ramses II of Egypt; Moses.
1200 Destruction of Troy.
1012 David becomes King.
972-931 King Solomon; Jerusalem Temple
built.
800-700 Homer.
750-700 Greeks adopt alphabet.
722 Destruction of Northern Kingdom
of Israel (Samaria).
700 Hesiod.
600-500 Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha, Pythagoras,
Lao Tzu,
Second
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Parmenides, Heraclitus...
587 Nebuchadrezzar takes Jeru¡©salem,
Jewish Exile in Babylon.
536 Jews return to Jerusalem.
490 Battle of Marathon.
480 Persian invasion; Thermopylae;
Athens burnt; Salamis.
500-420 Anacreon, Pindar, Parmenides
& Zeno, Phidias, Herodotus.
470-400 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Aristophanes.
460-429 "Age of Pericles" in
Athens.
437 Parthenon dedicated.
404 Athens surrenders to Sparta.
403 Popular uprising restores
Democracy in Athens.
399 Trial and Death of Socrates.
347 Death of Plato.
322 Death of Aristotle.
336-323 Alexander the Great conquers
Middle East, reaches India.
323 Death of Alexander in Babylon.
323 Ptolemy family begins to rule
Egypt from Alexandria.
264-227 Asoka first King of united India,
Buddhist art begins.
218-203 Hannibal (from Carthage) in
Italy.
200-160 Plautus (d. 184), Terence (d.
159).
146 Romans destroy Carthage; Roman
Empire begins to grow.
100-44 Cicero, Marius, Cato, Sulla,
Pompey, Crassus, Julius Caesar.
55 Julius Caesar first lands in
Britain.
44 Julius Caesar killed in Senate by
Brutus, Cassius.
31 Battle of Actium; deaths of
Antony and Cleopatra.
27 Octavian given title
"Augustus."
27-A.D.14 The Augustan Age: Virgil, Horace,
Ovid.
5 / 4 B.C.
Jesus born.
A.D. 33?
Jesus crucified; Resurrection proclaimed; Church begins.
54-68 Nero.
64 Fire of Rome; Peter and Paul
martyred.
65 Seneca ordered to commit suicide.
65-90 Gospels written.
70 Titus captures Jerusalem,
destroys it. Jewish "Dias¡©pora"
complete.
212 Persecution of Christians
intensifies.
284-305 Diocletian Emperor; final
persecution.
306-337 Constantine the Great.
313 Edict of Milan, Christianity
accepted.
325 Council of Nicea; Arianism
rejected.
331 Constantinople becomes main
capital of Empire.
374-397 Ambrose, of Milan, influences
Augustine
387 Augustine baptized; Bishop of
Hippo 396-430.
381-395 Theodosius makes Christianity the
state religion.
404 Legions leave Britain.
410 Alaric (Visigoth) captures Rome.
453 Attila the Hun sacks Rome, dies.
800 Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman
Emperor .
Abraham 26,
235
Academy 93
Achilles 172
Acropolis 70
Acts of the
Apostles 283
Aeschylus
Agamemnon 107
Coephori 113
epitaph of 69
Eumenides 118
life &
works 106
Prometheus
Bound 119
The Persians 66
Aethiopica (by
Heliodorus) 151
Agamemnon 107
Agora (Athens) 63
Akhenaton 22
Alaric 221
Alexander the
Great 23,
145
Alexandria 147
Alkibiades 71
Ambrose 307
Anacreon 141
Anaxagoras 69,
84
Anaximander 76
Anaximenes 76
Andromache 38
Antigone 134
Aphrodite 157
Apocrypha 225
Apollo 158
Apollonios 148
Apostles' Creed 296
Archilochus 138
Archon 60
Areopagus
(Athens) 60
Ares 156
Argonauts 148,
173
Argos
(Odysseus' dog) 52
Ariadne 170
Arianism 306
Aristarchos 147
Aristophanes 89,
136
Aristotle 99
Artemis 159
Asoka 146
Assyrian Empire 15
Assyrians 28
Athena 158
Athenian
Democracy 63
Athens, history
of 62
atomic theory 85
Atreus 171
Attila 221
Augean Stables 169
Augustine 307
City of God 311
Conversion of 308
Augustus 195
Aurora 163
Baucis and
Philemon 179
Beatitudes 268
Benedict 317
Bible in
English 292
Boethius 313
Boule (Athens) 60
Bronze Age 22
Byblos 58
Cain and Abel 231
Caligula
(emperor) 212
Cambyses 23
Canaan 25
Carthage 59
Cassiodorus 317
Catacombs 302
Catullus 199
Cerberus 160
Ceres 160
Charlemagne 222
Charon 160
Cheops 21
Choregus 105
Chorus 105
Chronicles,
Books of 244
Cicero 196
Claudius 213
Cleisthenes 63
Cleopatra 23
Clovis 221
Cnossos 33
codex 150
Coephori 113
Comedy 136
Consolation of
Philosophy 313
Constantine
(emperor) 220
Constantinople 220
Cosmogonical
myths 165
Crete 33
cuneiform 14
Cupid 157
Cynics 102
Cyrus 64
Daniel 257
Daphne 175
Daphnis and
Chloe 151
David 27
Dead Sea 25
Death of Julius
Caesar 193
Death of
Socrates 91
Deianira 169
Delphi 159
Demeter 160
democracy 64
Democritus 85
Deucalion 176
Diana 159
Diana and
Actaeon 184
Didache 297
Diocletian
(emperor) 220
Diogenes 102
Dionysius the
Areopagite 104
Dionysus 161
Diotima 97
Donatism 305
Dorians 35
Draco 63
Drama 105
Echo and
Narcissus 181
Edict of Milan 305
Egypt 21
Ekklesia 60
Eleatic School 82
Eleatics 77
elenchus 88
Elgin Marbles 70
Elysian Fields 160
Emmaus 279
Empedocles 82,
84
Epistles 285
Colossians 288
Ephesians 287
Galatians 286
Hebrews 289
I Corinthians 285
II Corinthians 286
James 289
John 289
Jude 290
Peter 289
Philemon 288
Philippians 287
Romans 285
Thessalonians 288
Timothy, Titus 288
Eratosthenes 148
Eros 157
Eschatological
myths 165
Etiological
myths 166
Etruscans 189
Eucharist 297
Eumenides 118
Euphrates 13
Euripides 136
Eusebius 305
Exile 29
Exodus 240
Fates 162
fertility
religion 15
First Dynasty 21
Flood myths 167
Forms, theory
of 95
four elements 84
Four Gospels 266
Furies 163
Gaea 162
Gaeseric 221
Galilee 25
Genesis 28,
226
Gilgamesh 16
Gods 153
Golden Fleece 175
Good Samaritan 275
Graces 162
Great Pyramid 21
Greek Alphabet 58
Greek Colonies 59
Greek Lyric
Poetry 138
Greek Novel 151
Hades 160
Hadrian's Wall 217
Hannibal 190
Hebrew 26
Hecate 159
Heliodorus 151
helots 62
Hephaestos 157
Hera 156
Heraclitus 80
Hercules 167
Hero and
Leander 186
Herod the Great 150
Herodotos 70
Hesiod 55
hieroglyphics 22
History of
Israel 243
Homer 35
Horace 206
Horae 164
Hyksos 22
Icarus 182
Ideas, theory
of 95
Iliad 37
Ionia 35
Iphigenia 172
Irenaeus 303
Isaac 26
Isaiah, book of 254
Isidore of
Seville 318
Isokrates 99
Israel 25
Jacob 26
Jehovah 27
Jeremiah 256
Jerome 312
Jerusalem 25
Job 246
John, Gospel of 280
Joseph 236
judgement of
Paris 171
Julius Caesar 192
Juno 156
Jupiter 155
Juvenal 218
Kallimachos 148
Kandahar 145
Kings, Books of 244
Kronos, 162
Labyrinth 170
Last Supper 277
Leonidas (king
of Sparta) 66
Lethe 160
Leukippos 85
Linear B 33
Livy 208
Longinus 104
Lucretius 198
Luke, Gospel of 270
Lyceum 100
Maccabees 150
Macrobius 313
Marathon 65
Marcus Aurelius 219
Mark, Gospel of 269
Mars 156
Martial 218
Martianus
Capella 313
Matthew, Gospel
of 268
Medes 28
Menander 138
Mesopotamia 13
Metamorphoses
(Ovid) 175
Middle Kingdom 22
Milesian school 75
Minerva 158
Moses 26
Mother Goddess 16
Muses 163
Mycenae 33
Mythology 165
Nebuchadrezzar 28
Nefertiti 22
Neo-Platonism 104
Neptune 156
Nero (emperor) 213
New Kingdom 22
New Testament 263
Nicene Creed 306
Noah 232
Odyssey 48
Oedipus the
King 125
Old Kingdom 21
Old Testament 223
Olympic Games 59
Oresteia 107
Orosius 312
Orpheus and
Eurydice 187
Ovid 208
Pan 161
Pan and Syrinx 183
Parmenides 82
Parthenon 70
Pasiphae 170
Patriarchs 235
Peloponnesian
League 62
Penelope 53
Pentateuch 225
Pergamum 149
Pericles 69
Peripatetics 100
Persecutions 299
Persepolis 65
Perseus 169
Persians 64
Personifications 162
Peter and Paul 213
Philippides 65
Philistines 23,
27
Phoebus 158
Phoenicians 58
Pindar 142
Pisistratos 63
Plato 93
Platonism 94
Plautus 138
Plotinus 104
Plutarch 70,
219
Pluto 160
Polycarp 299
Poseidon 156
Prodigal Son 276
Prometheus 162
Prometheus
Bound 119
Prophets 253
Protagoras of
Abdera 87
Prudentius 318
Ptolemaic model 148
Ptolemy 23,
146
Punic War 190
Pygmalion 185
Pyramus and
Thisbe 177
Pythagoras 79
Quintillian 217
Rameses II 23
Revelation 290
Rhea 162
Rome
Augustan 195
Civil War 191
founding of 189
Later Empire 216
republic 189
sacked 221
Silver Age 217
Romulus 189
Salamis 66
Sallust 200
Samaria 25
Samuel 27
Samuel, Books
of 243
Sappho 139
Scholasticism 101
Selene 159
Seleukos 147
Semitic
languages 15
Seneca 214
Sennacherib 28
Septuagint 149,
224
Sinai 25
Socrates 88
Socrates, death
of 91
Socrates'
Defense 89
Solomon 28
Solon 63
Song of Songs 252
Sophists 85
Sophocles 125
Antigone 134
Oedipus the
King 125
sings Paean 70
Sparta 61
Sphinx 21
Statius 217
Stoicism 103
Strife 163
Styx 160
Suetonius 219
Suffering
Servant 255
Sumerian
Culture 14
Sumerians 14
Synoptic
Gospels 267
Tacitus 218
Tammuz 16
Tantalus 171
Tarquin the
Proud 64,
189
Ten
Commandments 241
Terence 138
Tertullian 303
Tetragrammaton 27
Thales of
Miletus 76
Thera 33
Thermopylai
(battle of) 66
Theseus 170
Thomas of
Aquinas 101
Thucydides 71
Thyestes 171
Tiberias
(emperor) 212
Tigris 13
Titans 161
tragedy 105
Transfiguration 275
transmigration 79
trilogy 105
Trojan War 170
Tutankhamen 22
Underworld 160
universal
brotherhood 103
Uranos 162
Venus 157
Venus and
Adonis 186
Virgil 200
Aeneid 202
Eclogues 200
Georgics 202
Pollio 201
Vulcan 157
Winds 163
Wisdom
Literature 245
wooden horse 172
Works and Days
(Hesiod) 57
Xenophanes 77
Xerxes 65
Yahwist 28,
226
Zarathustra 64
Zenon of Elea 83
Zenon of Kition 103
Zeus 155
Zoroaster 64