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Submitted by rcb2008 on May 14, 2006
Category: History Other
Words: 1307 | Pages: 6
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Athenian Greece at its height created a wave of classic, time withstanding, poems and plays that has never been matched. This wave of creative writing brought about poems such as Oedipus Rex, Antigone, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. These poems are wrought with themes and characteristics that reflect the intellect and opulence of the Athenian culture. These themes include the intervention of gods, power of reasoning and science, and temptation, themes that were not always used in previous writing. New philosophies and an enriched culture allowed for the Athenians to believe that “Man is the measure of all things” and this belief was epitomized through their writing.
Ancient Athens valued a person’s sense of self enough to inscribe it on their temple of Delphi. The inscriptions on the temple were “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess”. This was to remind the Athenians that self-moderation lead to prosperity while greed and temptation led them to act like the barbaric tribes that had conquered. Greek tragedies were written as reminders of what would happen if people were to forget these beliefs. In Homer’s epic story of Troy, the Iliad, the young prince Paris fails to overcome the temptation of greed and takes Queen Helen, “the most beautiful maiden in all of Greece” away from the palace of King Menelaus. What befalls young Paris? He is eventually killed and the illustrious kingdom of Troy, his inheritance, is destroyed. Athenians were also warned not to think of themselves as greater than the Gods, but prosperity and realization of their own power gave the Greeks an arrogant confidence. Homer illustrates this in his equally famous poem, the Odyssey. Odysseus, king of Ithaca and creator of the famous and ingenious Trojan horse, thought his intellect allowed him to be free of the Gods. He proclaimed to the gods “I do not need you! I can think, no longer must I bow to the will of the gods”. Angered by the victory spawned arrogance of Odysseus, Poseidon...
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