Classical Greece [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Apart from its other claims to fame, the importance assigned by Classical Greece to individual achievement assures it a place among the great ages of man. There were earlier great ages, but those periods were dominated for the most part by absolute rulers of monolithic states; the truly creative individuals who certainly existed in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia are almost entirely anonymous. Classical Greece was different. We know the names of more than 20,000 individuals in Athens alone, most of them recorded because of their participation in civic affairs. Recent excavations in the heart of Athens have yielded over a thousand ostraka (the potsherds, or pottery fragments, that gave their name to the institution of ostracism), each bearing the name of some outstanding man— Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles and many others. Each ostrakon offers proof that at some stage in their careers the men were suspected by their fellow citizens of aiming at tyranny. These ostraka remind us that the Athenians were ever mindful of the need to maintain a balance between personal ambition and the civic interest. In other aspects of life, we find that the beginnings of the various literary genres, of the schools of philosophy, of the major artistic trends are all associated with individual men. Even in the crafts the individual stands out. The fine pottery made in Athens in the Sixth and Fifth Centuries B.C. can be assigned to some five hundred different masters, many of whom signed their products. To this emphasis on the individual man Greek history owes much of its sparkling and perpetual human interest. For this reason, too, that study may be salutary for our own society, all too prone to accept regimentation and nameless conformity. The distinguished Commission on the Humanities, established in 1963 by three of the leading scholarly organizations in the United States, has stated: Even the most gifted individual, whether poet or physicist, will not realize his full potential or make his fullest contribution to his times unless his imagination has been kindled by the aspirations and accomplishments of those who have gone before him. Humanist scholars have therefore . . . the privilege and obligation of interpreting the past to each new generation of men who 'necessarily must live in one small corner for one little stretch of time.' This book in the Time-Life series on the Great Ages of Man makes important contributions to the achievement of these goals. Its author is a happy choice. Sir Maurice Bowra has devoted his life to the contemplation of Greek literature, art and society. His brilliant distillation of Hellenism on the following pages shows us Greece in all its dewy freshness. In the picture essays that document various aspects of the Greek experience, even the most assiduous reader of the current spate of books on Greece will discover much that is new and refreshing, imaginatively deployed to bring out the essence of Classical Greece. HOMER A. THOMPSON Field Director, American School of Classical Studies at Athens