Archaic period of ancient literature. Periodization of Ancient Greek Literature

100 RUR bonus for first order

Select type of work Thesis Course work Abstract Master's thesis Practice report Article Report Review Test work Monograph Problem solving Business plan Answers to questions Creative work Essay Drawing Essays Translation Presentations Typing Other Increasing the uniqueness of the text Master's thesis Laboratory work On-line help

Find out the price

The set of literary works of ancient authors, including all the work of ancient Greek poets, historians, philosophers, orators, etc., up to the end of the history of Ancient Greece.

Of the huge variety of works of ancient Greek literature, only very few have reached us; many writers and their works are known to us only by name; There is almost no ancient Greek writer from whom all of his literary heritage has come to us. Added to all this is the corruption of the original texts due to time, the ignorance of copyists and other circumstances. It is clear why, to this day, there is no such review of Greek literature that would depict its entire consistent development, without gaps or arbitrary theoretical constructions. However, through the centuries-old efforts of Western European scientists, much has been achieved in terms of restoring ancient texts and comprehensive elucidation of literary works.

Periodization of Ancient Greek Literature

1) Archaic period (2nd century BC - 5th century AD):

a) the period of formation of the classical slave society and state of the 5th-7th centuries. BC. (Lyrics of Archilochus)

b) Homeric period 8th century. BC. (epic poetry) 1. Homeric epic (Homer) 2. Didactic epic (Hesiod)

c) pre-literary, pre-Homeric period. (from 2nd century BC – 8th century BC)

2) Attic or classical period (5th century BC) Center of Athens. This is the period of heyday and formation of the policy. Drama occurs in the attic in two forms.

1) Tragedies (Aeschylus, Sophocles)

2) Comedy (Aristophanes). At the same time, the development of theater and drama took place.

3) Hellenistic period (3rd century BC) The period of the Greco-Macedonian wars. Epic poem (“Apollonius of Rhodes”) Alexandrian poetry (Callimachus, Theocritus) Menander – creator of the epic poem

4) Greek literature of the era of Roman rule (from 1st century BC to 5th century AD) This is the period when Greece became a province of the Roman Empire. But, nevertheless, people still came there to study. Genre literary biography(Plutarch) Classical satire (Lucian) Romance (2nd sophistry, historiography, travelogue. The Greeks considered the novel a low form of literature. Lot and Heliodorus. They tried to bring the novel to a higher level)

1. Archaic period - up to 6 centuries. BC. A long series of centuries of oral literature. No monuments have survived except the Iliad and the Odyssey. The roots are in the Cretan-Mycenaean culture. The Greeks knew the underlying legends from childhood. The works did not have an author, because there was no such thing. The author is a collective one. The whole value system was different; traditionality and similarity were valued. The works were arranged in hexameter.
2. Classical or Attic period. 5th-4th centuries BC. The formation and flourishing of Greek classical slavery. In connection with the development of personality, numerous forms of lyricism and drama appear (the tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, the comedy of Aristophanes), as well as a rich prose literature consisting of the works of Greek philosophers and orators.
3. Hellenistic period. - before the conquest of Greece by Rome., usually called Hellenistic, arises in new level ancient slavery, namely large-scale slavery. Instead of policies, huge military-monarchical organizations arise. A greater differentiation of human subjective life also appears, sharply different from simplicity, spontaneity and rigor classical period. Consequently, this post-classical period occupies a huge period of time - from the 3rd century BC. to 5th century AD Roman literature also belongs to it, which is why it is often called the Hellenistic-Roman period. Epic poem (“Apollonius of Rhodes”), Alexandrian poetry (Callimachus, Theocritus), Menander is the creator of the epic poem. Genre of literary biography (Plutarch) Classical satire (Lucian).

PRE-LITERARY PERIOD

In accordance with the periodization of Greek history accepted in Soviet historiography, the history of Greek literature can be divided into the following main periods:

I. Archaic period (literature of “early Greece”) - until the beginning of the 5th century. BC e. (the time of the decomposition of the tribal system and the transition to a slave state).

II. Attic period (literature of “classical Greece”) - V-IV centuries. BC e. (the time of heyday and crisis of the slave-holding Hellenic policies before they lost state independence).

III. Hellenistic period (literature of Hellenistic society) - from the end of the 4th century. until the end of the 1st century. BC e.

IV. Roman period ( Greek literature times of the Roman Empire) - from the end of the 1st century. BC e.

Within the archaic period we will distinguish:

1) pre-literary (“pre-Homeric”) period;
2) the most ancient literary monuments (Homeric poems, Hesiod);
3) literature from the period of formation of the ancient slave society and state (VII century - early 5th century BC).

The oldest written monuments of Greek literature are the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, attributed to Homer (p. 33). These large epics with a developed art of storytelling, with already established techniques of the epic style, should be considered as the result of a long development, the previous stages of which left no written traces and, perhaps, have not yet found written confirmation at all. Ancient scientists (for example, Aristotle in “Poetics”) had no doubt that “before Homer” there were poets, but historical information there was no mention of this period in ancient times. Only stories of a mythological nature circulated about this time: an example of them can be the legend of the Thracian singer Orpheus, the son of the muse Calliope, whose singing enchanted wild animals, stopped flowing waters and made forests move after the singer.

Modern science has the opportunity to fill this gap to a certain extent, and despite the lack of direct historical tradition, draw in general outline a picture of Greek oral literature "before Homer". To this end, the science of ancient literature attracts, in addition to the information that can be gleaned directly from Greek writing, also material supplied by other related scientific disciplines - archaeology, linguistics, ethnography and folklore.

The special significance of archeology as a source of additional information for the science of ancient literature lies in the fact that it provides material related directly to Greek territory and, moreover, allowing for relatively accurate chronological dating. Thanks to archaeological discoveries, it is now possible to trace cultural history inhabitants of Greece for a number of millennia preceding the Greek written monuments, from the Stone Age down to historical times.

The history of these discoveries is very significant role played by the use of data from Greek mythology. They served as a compass, guiding the path of archaeological research. Systematic excavations at the sites of ancient Greek settlements were started not by a professional scientist, but by the self-taught Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), a businessman and enthusiastic lover of Homeric poems, who made a large fortune through all sorts of speculation, and then stopped commercial activities and devoted his life to archaeological work in the field, famous for the poems of Homer. Schliemann proceeded from the naive conviction that these poems accurately described historical reality, and set as his goal to find the remains of those objects about which the Greek epic narrates. The statement of the problem was unscientific and fantastic, since Homer’s poems are not a historical chronicle, but an artistic adaptation of tales about heroes. Excavations undertaken for this purpose seemed doomed to failure, but they led to a completely unexpected result, much more significant than the question of the accuracy of Homer's descriptions. The places where the action of the heroic tales of the Greeks was confined turned out to be centers of ancient culture, surpassing in its richness the culture of the early periods of historical Greece. This culture, called Mycenaean, after the city of Mycenae, where it was first discovered in 1876 by Schliemann, was already unknown to ancient historians. Vague memories of her are preserved only in the oral tradition of mythological stories. The instructions of the myth attracted Schliemann's attention to Fr. Crete, but serious archaeological work on Crete was carried out only by the Englishman Evans at the beginning of the 20th century, and then it turned out that the Mycenaean culture is in many respects a continuation of the more ancient and very unique Cretan culture. All branches of early Greek culture are connected by numerous threads with its historical predecessors, the Mycenaean and Cretan cultures.

Already in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. we find in Crete a rich, even lush, material culture, a highly developed art and writing. The initial pictorial writing, which soon took the form of hieroglyphs, by 1700 BC. e. was replaced by Linear writing, known in two varieties “A” and “B”. Variety “B” is more recent; it was used in the Cretan city of Knossos and on the mainland, while in other areas of Crete the letter “A” continued to be used. As a result of the work of the Bulgarian linguist Georgiev and the English scientist Ventris, significant advances have recently been made in deciphering Linear B (1953). It turned out that this was a syllabary used for the Greek language. Letter "A" and the hieroglyphic preceding it have not yet been deciphered and, apparently, belong to a people speaking a language other than Greek. Slavery had already developed in Cretan society, but numerous remnants of the tribal way of life remained. Thus, in the Cretan culture, undoubted remnants of matriarchy are found, and in the religious ideas of the Cretans, a female deity associated with agriculture occupied a central place. The Cretan goddess closely resembles " great mother", which was revered by the peoples of Asia Minor as the embodiment of the power of fertility. Cretan monuments often depict cult scenes accompanied by dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments. Thus, a sarcophagus painted with scenes of sacrifice was found: one of them depicts a man holding a stringed instrument, very similar to the later Greek cithara; on the other, the sacrifice is accompanied by a flute. There is a vase depicting a procession: participants march to the sounds of a sistrum (percussion instrument) and sing with their mouths wide open. Cretan musicians and dancers enjoyed fame in later times. It is believed that Greek musical instruments are in continuity with Cretan ones. It is characteristic that the names of Greek instruments for the most part cannot be explained from the Greek language; many genres of Greek lyric poetry - elegy, iambic, paean, etc. - also have non-Greek names; probably these names were inherited by the Greeks from their predecessor cultures.

From the second half of the 2nd millennium, the decline of Crete began and, in parallel with this, the flourishing of that culture on the Greek mainland, which is conventionally called “Mycenaean”. As the decipherment of Linear B showed, the carriers of the “Mycenaean” culture were the Greeks. It is believed that from the beginning of the 2nd millennium, Greek tribes began to populate the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula and that this settlement took place in a series of successive waves. The tribes living in Greece at this time are repeatedly mentioned in Egyptian texts under the names "Ahaivasha" and "Danuna", and these names correspond to the names "Achaeans" and "Danaans", which are used in the Homeric epic to designate the Greek tribes as a whole. The former inhabitants of these lands - Greek tradition often mentions the tribes of "Pelasgians" and "Lelegs" - were largely assimilated with the Greeks and adopted their language, becoming part of the "Achaeans". As the deciphered texts show, the “Achaean” society belonged to the slave-owning type, although the slave-owning system was still very primitive in nature. The powerful fortifications of the “Mycenaean” castles, dominating the surrounding settlements, testify to the significant role of the military nobility. In the “Achaean” religion, those gods whose veneration was preserved by later Greeks already played a significant role: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, etc. Around 1500, the “Achaeans” invaded Crete and captured Knossos. By adapting Linear A to the Greek language, they created the B letter. The archives of Knossos (XV century) and Messenian Pylos (XIII-XII centuries) contain the bulk of the documents of letter “B” known to us. From Egyptian and Hittite sources it is clear that the "Achaeans" made long-distance raids into Egypt. Cyprus, Asia Minor.

By the end of the 2nd millennium, the “Mycenaean” culture was in decline. This is probably due to a new wave of movements of Greek tribes, which left behind a historical memory as the “relocation of the Dorians.”

Dorian tribes captured a number of areas previously occupied by the “Achaeans”; The “Achaeans” moved to neighboring areas. The spread of the Greeks to the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Asia Minor coast becomes more intense. The fall of the primitive slave-owning “Achaean” states is accompanied by the revival of the tribal way of life and communal orders. Social relations become much more primitive, and the so-called “dark period” of Greek history begins, stretching until the 8th-7th centuries. BC e., - it’s time to decentralize small independent communities and weaken foreign trade relations. Despite the famous technical progress(transition from bronze to iron), there is a decrease in the overall level material culture: the fortresses and treasures of the “Mycenaean” time are already becoming a legend. Writing appears to have been forgotten.

Only from the 8th century. a new growth begins, this time already leading to the creation of a Greek slave society. During this “dark” period, immediately preceding the most ancient literary monuments, the Greek tribes of historical time were finally formed, and historical dialects of the Greek language were formed.

Greek myth depicts the relationship between the main groups of tribes and dialects in the form of a "pedigree". Hellenus had three sons, Dor, Aeolus and Xuthus, whose son was Ion; tribes and dialects differed accordingly - Dorian, Aeolian and Ionian. This classification corresponded to the situation on the Asia Minor coast, where the Aeolians were located in the north, the Ionians in the center, and a small strip in the south was occupied by the Dorians. IN European Greece the picture was more complex. The Dorian dialects were only a branch of a wider group of Western Greek dialects, which also included the dialects of Thessaly, Boeotia and a number of other regions; The so-called “Achaean” dialects (in Arcadia, Cyprus) are closely related to the Aeolian dialects. By studying the relationships between these dialects, linguistics reveals to a certain extent the complex history of the settlements and movements of Greek tribes in prehistoric time. Not all Greek tribes, however, took an equal part in literary development, and for the history of literature those three groups of dialects that were already indicated by Greek myth are of greatest importance.

The Achaean-Aeolian tribes occupied northern and partly central Greece, part of the Peloponnese and a number of northern islands Aegean Sea; most of the islands and Attica in central Greece were inhabited by Ionian tribes; The Dorians strengthened themselves in the east and south of the Peloponnese, leaving, however, significant traces in northern and central Greece, where other “Western Greek” tribes related to them also lived. By the 8th century. Most of these tribes were already at the last stage of development of clan society, at the end of the “highest stage of barbarism” and at the turn of the era of “civilization” (in Morgan’s terminology adopted by Engels in “The Origin of the Family”), and culturally they were to some extent the successors Cretan-Mycenaean era, and this is reflected in both Greek mythology and Greek art.

The nature of verbal creativity, characteristic of earlier stages of development of pre-class society, is well known from ethnographic observations of primitive peoples and from the remnants of this creativity in the folklore of civilized peoples. Very few texts have survived from Greek folklore, and only in relatively late records; however, this insignificant material shows that Greek literature is based on the same types of oral literature that usually exist in tribal society: myths and fairy tales, spells, songs, proverbs, riddles, etc. Ethnographic data was masterfully used by Marx and Engels to illuminate the early periods of ancient history. “Through the Greek race,” Marx wrote, “the savage is clearly visible (for example, the Iroquois).” 1 These data play no less important role in the study of ancient literature, helping to detect in it traces of earlier stages of verbal creativity.

Primitive poetry is the poetry of a collective from which the individual has not yet emerged; Therefore, its main content is the feelings and ideas of the collective, and not of the individual. Other characteristic primitive creativity lies in the fact that the collective’s ideas about nature and society are embodied in mythological images. Almost all types of Greek folklore are permeated with mythological material from tales of gods and heroes: mythology, according to Marx, “constituted not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also its soil.”

The emergence of mythological ideas belongs to a very early stage of development human society. The dependence of man of this time on natural and social forces incomprehensible to him, his powerlessness before them, was expressed in fantastic, mythological ideas about nature and ways of influencing it. The most backward peoples have myths, and in the vast majority of cases they are stories about the origin of certain objects, natural phenomena, customs, and institutions, the presence of which plays a significant role in social life. The primitive hunter is especially interested in animals, and each tribe has many stories about how and where they came from. different types animals and how they received their characteristic features. The story is based on the analogy of human experiences. For Australians, the red spots on the feathers of the black cockatoo and the hawk come from severe burns, the whale's breathing hole from a blow from a spear, which he once received in the back of the head while still a man. There are similar stories about the emergence of rocks, lakes, and rivers; The windings of the river are associated with the movement of some fish or snake. Legends about the origin of fire are widespread everywhere, and the fire usually turns out to be hidden somewhere and then stolen for people. The subject of the myth is also the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon, and the constellations; the myth tells of their arrival in heaven and how their form, direction of movement, phases, etc. were created. Animals and motifs of transformation play a significant role in all these stories. At the same time, each tribe, each group has myths about its origin, which determine their relationships with neighboring tribes and groups. The myths reflect the entire historical experience of the tribe, and fantasy merges with the rudiments of real knowledge. Myth is never considered as fiction, and primitive peoples strictly distinguish fiction that serves only for entertainment, or stories about true events in the native tribe and among foreign peoples, from myths, which are also thought of as true history, but history is especially valuable, establishing patterns and norms social behavior and labor activity. The mythological story about the emergence of certain objects and relationships, as it were, “fixes” the natural and social conditions of work - both existing and desired - reality and dreams.

The idealistic interpretation of mythology, based on the idea that primitive consciousness does not reflect objective reality, is completely untenable. Thus, the French sociologist Lévy-Bruhl created a theory about the “pre-logical thinking” of “savages”, from which he deduces the origin of myths. This theory, very convenient for the colonialists, was implanted in our country by N. Ya. Marr and his students. Meanwhile, primitive society creates not only fantastic myths, but also completely rational tools, the creation of which is impossible without “logical” thinking, at least in its most elementary forms. Peculiarities of worldview primitive people are rooted not in the absence of logical thinking in these people, but in the insufficient development of abstraction, in insufficient awareness of the properties of objects, due to the low level of development of productive forces, and insufficient ability to actively change nature.

Myth-making is not a simple game of fantasy; this is a stage in the process of exploration of the world through which all peoples have passed; “... the low economic development of the prehistoric period had as its addition, and sometimes even as a condition and even as a cause, false ideas about nature.” 1 The cognitive root of this fantasy is explained by Lenin: “The bifurcation of human knowledge and the possibility of idealism (= religion) are already given for the first time to the elementary abstraction “house” in general and individual houses. The approach of the mind (man) in a separate thing, taking a cast (= concept) from it is not a simple, immediate, mirror-dead act, but a complex, bifurcated, zigzag one, including the possibility of fantasy flying away from life; moreover: the possibility of transformation (and, moreover, an imperceptible, unconscious transformation by a person) of an abstract concept, an idea into a fantasy (ultimately - a god). For even in the simplest generalization, in the most elementary general idea (“table” in general) there is a certain piece of fantasy.”

Low level productive forces, insufficient dominance over nature is revealed in primitive society there is wide scope for fantastic ideas about reality, and subsequently, with the development of social inequality and the formation of classes, fantastic religious ideas are consolidated in the interests of the ruling strata.

One of the most important prerequisites for myth formation is the attribution of human properties to environmental objects. Everything living, as well as moving and, thus, seeming to be alive - animals, plants, the sea, heavenly bodies, etc. - is thought of as personal forces that perform certain actions for the same reasons as people. The reason for every thing is seen in the fact that someone once made it or found it. Another, no less important prerequisite for myth formation is associated with the inability to distinguish essential features and relationships of things from non-essential ones: thus, the name of an object seems to be an integral part of it. Primitive man considers it possible to “magically” influence a thing, performing any actions on a part of the thing, on its name, image or similar object; he admits that a part of a thing or a similar object, a story about a thing, its image or a dance performance can “replace” the thing itself. “All mythology overcomes, subdues and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and with the help of the imagination.”

Let's give a few examples. Thus, one of the surest means of achieving success in any action is, according to primitive ideas, magic (magic), which consists in first performing this action with. desired result. Before setting off on a hunt, fishing, war, etc., hunting groups reproduce in an imitative dance those moments that are considered necessary for the successful completion of the undertaking. Agricultural tribes create complex system rituals to ensure the harvest. In this case, mythological ideas associated with the depicted process also serve as material for game reproduction: when warm weather arrives, in order to “consolidate” it, they play out the struggle between summer and winter, ending, of course, with the victory of summer, and they “kill” winter, i.e. drown or they burn an effigy representing winter. In this case, the ritual game reproduces the natural process, the change of seasons, but reproduces it in a mythological understanding as a struggle between two hostile forces, which appear to be independent beings. The transition from one state to another is often represented in the images of “death” and a new “birth” (or “resurrection”). This includes, for example, the “initiation of young men” rituals, widespread in primitive society. Society is divided into groups based on gender and age, and the transition from the "age class" of youth to the "class" of adults usually consists of a ceremony in which the youth "dies" and is then "reborn" as an adult (a ceremony of this type survives in Christian rite of tonsure as a monk). The death and resurrection of the god of fertility plays a huge role in the religion of many ancient Mediterranean peoples - the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks. The place of “death” and “resurrection” can be taken by other images: “disappearance” and “appearance”, “abduction” and “finding”. Thus, in the Greek myth, the god of the underworld “kidnaps” Kore (Persephone), the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture; however, Cora spends only a third of the year underground, the cold time; in the spring it “appears” on the earth, and with it the first spring vegetation appears. An equally important point in agrarian ritual is “fertilization”: in Athens, the sacred “marriage” of the god Dionysus with the wife of the archon-king, the religious head of the holy fool, takes place annually.

He drew attention to the moments of active attitude towards the world clearly expressed in ancient myths; attention A. M. Gorky: “The older the fairy tale and myth, the more powerfully the victorious triumph of people over the forces of nature sounds in it.” 1

As one of the most important forms of ideological creativity in pre- class society, mythology is the soil on which science and art subsequently grow. These farms of ideology are not yet differentiated; they merge in myth, which is a fantastic understanding of nature and public relations and, at the same time, their unconscious artistic processing in folk fantasy, unconscious precisely in the sense that the artistic moment has not yet been highlighted and realized. As, with success cognitive activity, the myth loses its “sacred” meaning, and the elements of scientific thought and artistic creativity contained in it are released. Mythology becomes the property of art and is included in the fund of linguistic metaphors (“Hercules”, “Procrustean Bed”, etc.). Reflecting the experience and aspirations of peoples, myths often contain generalizations of the essential relationships of man to nature and society and retain their meaning regardless of the worldview system that once created them, already irretrievably a thing of the past. J.V. Stalin in his final speech at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1937, speaking about unbreakable connection Bolshevik party with the people, cited the Greek myth about the giant Antaeus, the son of the Earth, who defeated his opponents, thanks to the fact that every touch of the Earth, his mother, gave him new strength.

A richly developed mythological system is one of the most important components of the heritage that Greek literature received from previous stages of cultural development, and myth-making went through many stages before it was cast into the forms known to us from Greek mythology. A large number of layers deposited in different eras were discovered in it, and “the past reality is reflected in the fantastic creations of mythology.” Greek myths contain numerous echoes of group marriage, matriarchy, but at the same time they reflect historical destinies Greek tribes in later times; they tell about the origin of natural phenomena and objects of material culture, social institutions, religious rituals, the origin of the world (cosmogony) and the origin of gods (theogony). IN mythological tales The Greeks also reflected those ideas about nature that were mentioned above in connection with various forms of ritual play. The struggle between good and evil forces, death and resurrection, descent into kingdom of the dead and a safe return from there, abduction and return of the stolen property - all this is also found in Greek myths.

The “Mycenaean” era played a decisive role in the formation of Greek mythology. The action of the most important Greek myths is confined to those places that were the centers of the “Mycenaean” culture, and the more significant the role of the area in the “Mycenaean” era, the more myths around this area are concentrated, although in later times many of these areas have already lost all significance. It is even very possible that among the Greek heroes there are real historical figures (in the recently sorted documents of the Hittites, the names of the leaders of the Akhhiyawa people, i.e., the Achaeans, are read, similar to the names known from Greek myths, but the reading and interpretation of these names cannot yet be considered quite reliable).

The “Mycenaean” era is the historical basis of the main core of Greek heroic tales, and these tales contain many elements of mythologized history - this is the indisputable conclusion arising from a comparison of historical data about Greece of the 2nd millennium with later Greek myths; and here the “past reality” is reflected in the “fantastic creations of mythology.” Mythological stories, which themselves often go back to much more ancient times, are framed in Greek legend based on the history of the “Mycenaean” time. Greek mythology also retained memories of the more ancient culture of Crete, but much more vague. The brilliant results of excavations by Schliemann and other archaeologists who started their work from Greek legends, are explained by the fact that these legends capture the general picture of the relationships between Greek tribes in the second half of the 2nd millennium, as well as many details of the culture and life of that time.

From this we can draw a conclusion that is of great importance for the history of Greek literature. If the Homeric poems, separated from the “Mycenaean” era by a number of centuries, still reproduce numerous features of this era, then, in the absence of written sources, this can only be explained by the strength of the epic tradition and the continuity of oral creativity from the “Mycenaean” period to the time of the design of the Homeric poems . The origins of the Greek epic must be traced back, in any case, to the “Mycenaean” era, and perhaps to earlier times.

As observations of the verbal creativity of primitive peoples show, such narratives take on both poetic and prose forms. Often they resemble a modern folk tale in many of their features. No examples have survived from the Greek folk tale: in a developed ancient society, the educated strata treated with contempt “old wives’ stories” for children or in the women’s half of the house, and fairy tales were not collected. Only one literary adaptation of an ancient tale has reached us, completely preserving its stylistic forms, but it dates back to a later time: this is the tale of “Cupid and Psyche” in a novel by a Roman writer of the 2nd century. n. e. Apuleius "Metamorphoses" (p. 466). There is, however, a whole series of indirect data about the Greek fairy tale, and material of the “fairytale” type is used in many monuments of ancient literature (Odyssey, comedies). Among the myths about Greek “heroes” there are plots that are very close to fairy tales. This is, for example, the myth of Perseus. King Acrisius of Argos received an oracle's prediction that he would be killed by the grandson who would be born from his daughter. Frightened by the oracle, he locked his daughter Danae in an underground copper chamber. However, the god Zeus entered Danae, turning into golden rain for this purpose, and Danae gave birth to a son, Perseus, from Zeus. Then Acrisius locked Danae and her child in a box and threw them into the sea. Yashik was washed up by the waves on the island. Serif, where he was picked up and the prisoners in him were released. When Perseus grew up, he received an order from the king of the island to obtain the head of Medusa, one of the three monstrous Gorgons, whose appearance turned anyone who looked at her into stone. The Gorgons had heads covered with dragon scales, teeth the size of pigs, copper arms and golden wings. With the help of the gods Hermes and Athena, Perseus arrived to the Gorgon sisters, the three Phorkids, old women from birth, who all three had one eye and one tooth and used them alternately. Having taken possession of the eye and tooth of the Phorkids, Perseus forced them to show him the way to the nymphs, who provided him with winged sandals, an invisibility cap and a magic bag. With the help of these wonderful objects, as well as a steel sickle donated by Hermes, Perseus completed the task. On sandals, he flew across the ocean to the Gorgons, beheaded the sleeping Medusa with a sickle, looking not directly at her, but at her reflection in the copper shield, hid her head in a bag and, thanks to the invisibility cap, escaped from the pursuit of other Gorgons. On the way back, he freed the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, who had been given over to the power of a sea monster, and took her as his wife. Then he returned with his mother and wife to Argos; the frightened Acrisius hastened to leave his kingdom, but Perseus subsequently accidentally killed him during a gymnastic competition.

However, the wealth of “fairy-tale” elements that we find in the myth of Perseus is already a largely passed stage for Greek mythology. In the era immediately preceding the most ancient literary monuments, in Greek mythology there was a tendency to eliminate or at least soften the crudely miraculous elements of legends. The characters of Greek myth are almost completely humanized. In the mythological systems of many peoples, animals play a significant role; this occurs, for example, in the mythology of the Egyptians or Germans, not to mention more primitive peoples. The Greeks also went through this stage, but only minor remnants remained of it. The Greeks are characterized by two main categories of mythological images: “immortal” gods, to whom the human appearance and human virtues and vices are attributed, and then mortal people, “heroes”, who are thought of as ancient tribal leaders, ancestors of historically existing tribal associations, founders of cities, etc. etc. Greek myth-making of the time under review develops mainly in the form of tales about heroes; the gods are assigned a central role only in some special types of myths - in cosmogonies, in cult legends. Another feature of Greek mythology is that the myths are very little burdened with metaphysical philosophizing, which takes place in many Eastern systems that took shape in a class society under the ideological dominance of a closed caste of priests. “Egyptian mythology,” notes Marx in the passage already quoted from the introduction to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” “could never have been the soil or the mother’s womb of Greek art.” The “soil of Greek art” was mythology in its most humanized form, however, the more primitive forms of mythological ideas did not die, clothed in the folk genres of fairy tales or fables.

Of the genres of Greek folklore, we know best the song in its various forms.

In ancient Greek poetry, the verse word does not appear independently, but in combination with singing and rhythmic body movements. The rhythm of labor operations is accompanied musical word, a song in time with the production process. The work song of a work collective engaged in the execution of the same labor action in the order of simple cooperation is one of the simplest types of song creativity. Ancient sources report songs sung during the harvest, squeezing grapes, grinding grain, baking bread, spinning and weaving, drawing water, and rowing. The texts that have reached us date back to a relatively late time. In Aristophanes’s comedy “The World,” there is (probably in a literary adaptation) the song of the loaders who must pull the goddess of peace out of a deep hole on a rope; it contains calls for simultaneous tension of forces and is accompanied by the interjection “eyya”, in the form of a refrain. “Oh hey, hey, hey, there! Oh hey, hey, hey. All!" (cf. Burlatsky “whoop”). An authentic example of a work song has also been preserved, the song of flour millers, composed at the beginning of the 6th century. on o. Lesbos: “Shallows, mill, shallows.” After all, Pittacus also ground, ruling in the great Mytilene.”

This “shoal, mill, shoal” is sung in Greece to this day, but in modern Greek folklore “Pittacus” is no longer mentioned, and newer social material has been introduced instead.

The nature of the ancient Greek military (“march”) song is illustrated by the Spartan song attributed to Tyrtaeus (p. 78):

Forward, O sons of fathers, citizens of the Men of glorified Sparta!

Place your shield with your left hand.

Shake your spear bravely and do not spare your life:

After all, this is not in the customs of Sparta.

There are also reports of love songs, children's songs, etc.

The song also accompanies the ritual game that is performed before every important act in the life of a primitive group. The meaning of the song is the same as the dancing: both are considered as a means of influencing nature, as an aid to the process for which the ritual is performed. Since the community takes part in the ritual as part of its various groups, the ritual song, like the work song, is performed collectively, in choir. The choir's composition reflects the gender and age stratification of primitive society; Thus, the Greek ritual choir usually consists of persons of the same sex and the same age division; choirs of girls, women, boys, husbands, elders, etc. participate in rituals, separately or together, but as independent choral units, sometimes entering into “competition” with each other (in Greek - “agon”).

Three choirs danced at Spartan festivals. The choir of elders began:

We were good guys before we were strong.

The chorus of middle-aged men continued:

And now we: whoever wants to, let him try.

The boys' choir answered:

And we will become much stronger in the future.

Some of the surviving examples of ritual songs are associated with the agricultural calendar. On about. In Rhodes, children walked from house to house, announcing the arrival of the swallow, which “brings good time years and good year”, and asked to “open the door for the swallow” and serve something - sweets, wine, cheese. In other places, after the harvest, children carried "iresions", olive or laurel branches entwined with wool, on which various fruits hung; Hanging these branches at the doors of the house, the children's choir promised the owners an abundance of supplies and all kinds of prosperity and asked them to give something. The nature of the spring search for the first flowers appears to be a dance, probably performed by two choirs:

Where are the roses, where are the violets, where is the beautiful parsley?

That's where the roses are, that's where the violets are, that's where the beautiful parsley is.

The spring fertility festivals were riotous. Depicting the victory of the bright forces of life over the dark forces of death, farmers counted on a rich harvest and the fertility of livestock. On holidays of this type, mourning, fasting, and abstinence were followed by the reproduction of life-giving forces in the form of revelry, gluttony, and sexual licentiousness. Laughter, bickering, and foul language were presented as means that would magically ensure the victory of life, and the usual rules of decency throughout the year were lifted during these holidays. There were mocking and shaming songs, “iambs,” directed against individuals or entire groups (cf. p. 77). These songs could be a means of denunciation, public censure; Subsequently, in the era of class stratification, the ritual freedom of the disgraceful song became one of the weapons of class struggle and political agitation (Athenian political comedy V century).

At the wedding, songs were heard, accompanied by the exclamation “O Hymen” (marriage deity). The wedding procession is described in the Iliad:

There are brides from the palaces, bright and shining lamps,

Wedding songs are accompanied by cliques and escorted along the city streets;

The young men dance in choruses; are heard between them

The lyre and pipes are cheerful sounds.

€Iliad», book 18, art. 492-495.

From the wedding ritual song, a special genre of Greek lyric poetry (and later also oratorical wedding speech), hymens or epithalamiums, subsequently developed, which retained a number of folklore motifs, such as farewell to girlhood or the glorification of the bride and groom. Such, for example, is an excerpt from the epithalamium of the poetess Sappho (about 600).

Hey, raise the ceiling, -

Oh, Hymen!

Higher, carpenters, higher!

Oh, Hymen!

A groom like Ares enters,

Taller than the tallest men.

My innocence, my innocence,

where are you leaving me?

- “Never now, never now

I won’t come back to you.”

Another type of ritual song is lamentation (threnos), lamentation over the deceased. The Iliad depicts a picture of crying, in which specialist singers lead the singers, and in response, women cry in chorus:

On a magnificently arranged bed they laid the Body; singers, starters of lamentation.

€Iliad>, book. 24, art. 719-722.

After this, the widow, mother and daughter-in-law of the deceased perform lamentations. In the same “Iliad” we find another stylization of the widow’s lament: she cries about her unhappy lot, about the sorrows awaiting her orphan son.

His continuous work, endless grief in the future

They are waiting for the unprotected: the alien will seize the orphan fields.

On Orphanhood Day, the orphan loses his childhood comrades;

He wanders alone, with his head bowed and his eyes streaked with tears.

Iliad", book. 22. Art. 488- 491.

In the context of the Iliad, this lament seemed inappropriate to later ancient criticism, since the orphan in question was the royal grandson. This apparent irrelevance is explained by the fact that the Iliad is still close to folk poetry and retained the motifs of traditional ritual lamentation. “Crying” was predominantly a woman’s job: there were even professional “mourners” who were invited to the funeral ceremony for a fee.

I couldn’t do without song and food, a joint meal between men. At the early stages of Greek society, the feast also had a ritual character, and the feasters were usually related to each other by participating in some kind of clan or age association. The themes and methods of performing drinking songs were varied. The songs were love, humorous, satirical, but also had serious content - maxims or epic songs on mythological and historical themes. In Athens in the 5th century. BC e. we encounter the custom of alternate performance and even improvisation of songs by the participants of the feast, who at the same time passed a myrtle branch to each other in a certain “crooked” order (the song was called “skoliy”, i.e. “crooked”). In the Odyssey, which depicts feasts of the tribal nobility, a necessary part of the feast is songs performed by an aedom, that is, a professional singer, about the deeds of husbands and gods. Such epic songs were no longer attached to a specific ritual: the hero of the Iliad, Achilles, in inaction, “delights himself with the ringing lyre,” singing “the glory of men.”

An epic song with mythological content, a story about gods and heroes, represents the most developed type of Greek folk song of the pre-literary period. In the Aed's repertoire, epic songs occupied a central place; they were performed both at feasts of the nobility and before gatherings of the people, as part of a festive ritual and as entertainment in their free time. Their development paved the way for the appearance of great poems. One should not, however, think that song was the only epic form of Greek folklore. Next to it, prosaic forms (p. 27), tribal and cult legends, fairy tales, fables, etc. are quite conceivable.

Finally, the pre-literary period dates back to the emergence of various types of cult songs, hymns, prayers, etc. These songs received different names in ancient times, depending on which deity they were addressed to (for example, paean and nom in the cult

Apollo, a dithyramb in the cult of Dionysus), on the composition of the choir (for example, parthenium - the song of a choir of girls), the method of performance (procession, dance, etc.), but the common term for all cult songs was the word “hymn”. The Greek hymn is usually a prayer addressed to one or another god, but in its structure it retains remnants of an earlier stage in the development of religion, when a person sought to bind with the magical power of a rhythmic word the demon whose help seemed necessary, to force the demon to fulfill human will. A typical example is the prayer of the priest Chryses to the god Apollo in the Iliad:

Silver-bowed God, hearken to me: O thou who guardest, bypass Chryse, the sacred Killa, and reign powerfully in Tenedos, -

Sminfey! If when I decorated your sacred temple.

If when I kindled the fat thighs of Goats and Taurus before you, hear and fulfill one desire for me:

Avenge my tears on the Argives with your arrows.

€ Iliad", book. I, art. 37-42.

In this short prayer, all the rules of the ancient appeal to the deity are observed. God is named by name (Smintheus is one of Apollo’s ritual nicknames), along with the epithet “silver-bowed,” after which he is obliged to come to the call. His power is indicated - this is done so that God cannot make an excuse that he is unable to fulfill the request of the suppliant. Then mention is made of the honors which were bestowed upon the god, and which placed upon him the obligation to repay the favor with favor, and the contents of the request are stated. This hymn structure will be found many times in ancient literature. The motif of describing the power of a deity provides especially many opportunities for artistic development, since in connection with this myths about his various “deeds” can be told.

A special group consists of various types of didactic folklore. Already primitive society consolidates and preserves its experience not only in the form of myth, but also in the form of various rules of folk wisdom, which contain both instructions and observations of people and nature. This includes commandments, aphorisms, proverbs, rules folk calendar etc. In patriarchal societies, where great importance is attached to the nobility of the family and ancestors, “genealogies” (“genealogies”) are very common, often memorized in poetic form; poetic form They also accept various lists (“catalogues”), especially lists of gods and heroes. Among the Greeks we find all these types of didactics already in literary form in such an ancient monument as the poems of Hesiod (p. 61); in comparison with ethnographic data, this allows us to draw a conclusion about their pre-literary origin. In a significant number of samples, only the proverb (paroimia) has been preserved; proverbs as an expression of “ancient” wisdom aroused interest in the educated circles of ancient society and have come down to us in a number of late antique and Byzantine collections. As an example, we can cite such well-known proverbs as “the beginning is half the whole,” “one swallow does not make spring,” “a hand washes a hand.” Greek didactic folklore is characterized by a predominance of small forms; These latter also include riddles, spells, etc.

This is the level of oral literature reached by the Greeks “before Homer.”

From the 8th century In Greek social and cultural life there comes a turn associated with the emergence of slave policies. Greek communities are developing more active trade and entering into livelier relations with the East. In art, the schematic “geometric” style characteristic of the “dark” period gives way to the desire for a more realistic reflection of reality, arousing interest in its most varied manifestations. First spreading the so-called. The “oriental” style is soon replaced by the independent style of Greek “archaic” art.

The advanced region of Greece in the 8th-7th centuries. there was Asia Minor, primarily Ionia. Here, for the first time, new economic forms generated by the emergence of a slave-owning society flourished. Here the process of formation of policies proceeded most intensively as specific shape ancient state. Here the Greeks came into direct contact with more ancient class cultures slave-owning East. With Ionia in the 6th century. The origin of Greek science and philosophy is connected, but even before that time it became the cultural center in which Greek literature first took shape.

These socio-historical relationships have been finally clarified only recently as a result of recent discoveries. However, Engels restored them in Anti-Dühring general outline, based on data from Homer’s poems: “Even in heroic times, Greece entered history already divided into classes, whose very existence testifies to a long preliminary history that remained unknown, but even in it a significant part of the land was cultivated by independent peasants; the larger estates of noble families and tribal leaders were exceptions and then soon disappeared.” (F r. Engel s. Anti-Dühring, Works, vol. XIV, 1931, p. 179). Thanks to archaeological finds and the decipherment of the “Mycenaean” Greek letter, the “long preliminary history” that Engels speaks of has become partly known.

SECTION I. ARCHAIC PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATURE

CHAPTER I. PRE-LITERARY PERIOD

1. Greek folklore

The oldest written monuments of Greek literature are the poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, attributed to Homer (p. 30). These large epics with developed narrative art, with already established techniques of the epic style, should be considered as the result of a long development, the previous stages of which left no written traces and, perhaps, have not yet found written confirmation at all. Ancient scholars (for example, Aristotle in “Poetics”) had no doubt that “before Homer” there were poets, but there was no historical information about this period in ancient times. Only stories of a mythological nature circulated about this time: an example of them can be the tale of the Thracian singer Orpheus, the son of the Muse Calliope, whose singing enchanted wild animals, stopped flowing waters and made forests move after the singer. Modern science has the opportunity to fill this gap to a certain extent and, despite the lack of a direct historical tradition, paint a general picture of Greek oral literature “before Homer.” To this end, ancient literary studies attracts, in addition to the information that can be gleaned directly from Greek writing, also material provided by other related scientific disciplines. The Iliad and Odyssey took shape already at the last stage of development of tribal society, at the end of the “highest stage of barbarism” and at the turn of the era of “civilization” (according to Morgan’s terminology adopted by Engels in “The Origin of the Family”). The nature of verbal creativity characteristic of the earlier stages of pre-class society is well known from ethnographic observations of primitive peoples and from the remnants of this creativity in the folklore of civilized peoples. Very few texts have survived from Greek folklore, and in relatively late records: however, even this insignificant material shows that Greek literature is based on the same types of oral literature that usually take place at the stage of tribal society: myths and fairy tales, spells, songs, proverbs, riddles, etc. Ethnographic data was masterfully used by Marx and Engels to illuminate the early periods of ancient history. “Through the Greek race,” Marx wrote, “the savage is clearly visible (for example, the Iroquois).” These data play no less a role in the study of ancient literature, helping to detect in it traces of earlier stages of verbal creativity. Classic studies in the field of primitive poetry belong to the great Russian literary critic, academician Alexander Veselovsky (1838 - 1906); his works on “historical poetics” are also of great value for the history of ancient literature, they make it possible to introduce Greek folklore and the development of Greek poetry into a broad historical connection, and clarify their place in the general process literary development . One of the most important features of primitive poetry is that it is the poetry of a collective from which the individual has not yet emerged; Therefore, its main content is the feelings and ideas of the collective, and not of the individual. Another feature is syncretism (Veselovsky’s term), characteristic of ancient poetry, that is, “the combination of rhythmic, orchestral movements with song - music and elements of words.” At these earlier stages, the verse word does not appear independently, but in combination with singing and rhythmic body movements. The rhythm of labor operations is accompanied by a musical word, a song in time with the production process. The work song of a work collective engaged in the execution of the same labor action in the order of simple cooperation is one of the simplest types of song creativity. Ancient sources report songs sung during the harvest, squeezing grapes, grinding grain, baking bread, spinning and weaving, drawing water, and rowing. The texts that have reached us date back to a relatively late time. In Aristophanes’s comedy “The World,” there is (probably in a literary adaptation) the song of the loaders who must pull the goddess of peace out of a deep hole on a rope; it contains calls for simultaneous tension of forces and is accompanied by the interjection “eyya”, in the form of a refrain. “Oh hey, hey, hey, there! Oh hey, hey, hey everything!” (cf. Burlatsky “whoop”). An authentic example of a work song has also been preserved, the song of flour millers, composed at the beginning of the 6th century. on about Lesbos: “Shallows, mill, shallows. After all, Pittacus also ground, ruling in the great Mytilene.” This “shoal, mill, shoal” is sung in Greece to this day, but in modern Greek folklore “Pittacus” is no longer mentioned, and newer social material has been introduced instead. The song also accompanies the ritual game that is performed before every important act in the life of a primitive group. The dependence of man of this time on natural and social forces incomprehensible to him, his powerlessness before them, was expressed in fantastic, mythological ideas about nature and about methods of influencing it (cf. below, p. 22 et seq.). “All mythology overcomes, subdues and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and with the help of the imagination.” One of the surest means of achieving success in any action is, according to primitive ideas, magic (magic), which consists in first performing this action with the desired result. Before setting off on a hunt, fishing, war, etc., hunting groups reproduce in an imitative dance those moments that are considered necessary for the successful completion of the undertaking. Agricultural tribes create a complex system of rituals to ensure the harvest. In this case, mythological ideas associated with the depicted process also serve as material for game reproduction: for example, when warm weather approaches, in order to “consolidate” it, they play out the struggle between summer and winter, ending, of course, with the victory of summer, and “kill” winter, i.e. They drown or burn an effigy representing winter. In this case, the ritual game reproduces the natural process, the change of seasons, but reproduces it in a mythological understanding, as a struggle between two hostile forces that appear to be independent beings. The transition from one state to another is often represented in the images of “sweeping away” and a new “birth” (or “resurrection”). This includes, for example, the “initiation of young men” rituals, widespread in primitive society. Even at a very early, prenatal stage, the division of society into groups based on gender and age (“sex-age commune”) was established, and the transition from the “age class” of young men to the “class” of adults usually consists of a ceremony in which the young man “dies” and then "reborn" as an adult (a ceremony of this type is preserved in the Christian rite of tonsure). The death and resurrection of the god of fertility plays a huge role in the religion of many ancient Mediterranean peoples - the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks. The place of “death” and “resurrection” can be taken by other images: “disappearance” and “appearance”, “abduction” and “finding”. Thus, in Greek myth, the god of the underworld “kidnaps” Kore (Persephone), the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture; however, Cora spends only a third of the year underground, the cold time; in the spring it “appears” on the earth, and with it the first spring vegetation appears. An equally important point in agrarian ritual is “fertilization”: in Athens, the sacred “marriage” of the god Dionysus with the wife of the archon-king, the religious head of the city, took place annually. From the combination of such rituals, a ritual performance, “drama,” is created, the forerunner of literary drama. The ritual game is accompanied by a song, and the song has the same meaning as the ritual dance; it is considered as a means of influencing nature, as an aid to the process for which the ritual is performed. Since the community takes part in the ritual as part of its various groups, the ritual song, like the work song, is performed collectively, in choir. The choir's composition reflects the gender and age stratification of primitive society; Thus, the Greek ritual choir usually consists of persons of the same sex and the same age division; choirs of girls, women, boys, husbands, elders, etc. participate in rituals, separately or together, but as independent choral units, sometimes entering into struggle, “competition” among themselves (in Greek - “agon”). Three choirs danced at Spartan festivals. The choir of elders began: We were strong fellows before. The chorus of middle-aged men continued: And now we: whoever wants to, let him try. The boys' choir answered: And we will become much stronger in the future. Some of the surviving examples of ritual songs are associated with the agricultural calendar. On about. In Rhodes, children went from house to house, announcing the arrival of the swallow, which “brings a good season and a good year,” and asked to “open the door to the swallow” and serve something - sweets, wine, cheese. In other places, after the harvest, children carried "iresions", olive or laurel branches entwined with wool, on which various fruits hung; Hanging these branches at the doors of the house, the children's choir promised the owners an abundance of supplies and all kinds of prosperity and asked them to give something. The character of the spring search for the first flowers appears to be the dance, probably performed by two choirs: Where are the roses, where are the violets, where is the beautiful parsley?
That's where the roses are, that's where the violets are, that's where the beautiful parsley is. The spring fertility festivals were riotous. Depicting the victory of the bright forces of life over the dark forces of death, farmers counted on a rich harvest and the fertility of livestock. On holidays of this type, mourning, fasting, and abstinence were followed by the reproduction of life-giving forces in the form of revelry, gluttony, and sexual licentiousness. Laughter, bickering, and foul language were presented as means that would magically ensure the victory of life, and the usual rules of decency over the course of the year were lifted during these holidays. There were mocking and shaming songs, “iambs,” directed against individuals or entire groups (cf. p. 75). These songs could be a means of denunciation, public censure; Subsequently, in the era of class stratification, the ritual freedom of the disgraceful song became one of the weapons of class struggle and political agitation (Athenian political comedy of the 5th century). At the wedding, songs were heard, accompanied by the exclamation “O Hymen” (marriage deity). The wedding procession is described in the Iliad: There, brides are escorted from the palaces, the lamps are bright and shining, Marriage songs are accompanied by shouts, along the city streets, Young men dance in choirs; merry sounds of the lyre and pipes are heard between them. "Iliad", book. 18, art. 492 - 495. From the wedding ritual song, a special genre of Greek lyrics (and later oratorical wedding speech), hymens or epithalamiums, subsequently developed, which retained a number of folklore motifs, such as farewell to girlhood or the glorification of the bride and groom. Such, for example, is an excerpt from the epithalamium of the poetess Sappho (about 600). Hey, raise the ceiling, - oh, Hymen! Higher, carpenters, higher! Oh, Hymen! A groom like Ares enters, Higher than the tallest men. Or: “My innocence, my innocence, where are you leaving me?” - “Now I will never, now I will never come back to you.” Another type of ritual song is lamentation (threnos), lamentation over the deceased. The Iliad depicts a picture of lamentation, in which the lead singers are specialist singers, and in response, women cry in chorus: ... On a magnificently arranged bed They laid the Body; the singers, the initiators of lamentation, were placed near him, who sang lamentable songs with a gloomy voice; and the wives echoed them with a groan. "Iliad", book. 24, art. 719 - 722. After this, the widow, mother and daughter-in-law of the deceased come forward with lamentations. In the same “Iliad” we find another stylization of the widow’s lament: she cries about her unhappy lot, about the sorrows awaiting her orphan son. His continuous labor, endless grief in the future They are waiting for the unprotected: a stranger will seize the orphan fields. On Orphanhood Day, the orphan loses his childhood comrades; He wanders alone, with his head bowed and his eyes streaked with tears. "Iliad", book. 22, art. 488 - 491. In the context of the Iliad, this lament seemed inappropriate to later ancient criticism, since the orphan in question was the royal grandson. This apparent inappropriateness is explained by the fact that the Iliad is still close to folk poetry and retains the motifs of traditional ritual lamentation. “Crying” was predominantly a female affair: there were even professional “mourners” who were invited to the funeral ceremony for a fee. A feast and a joint meal between men would not be complete without song. In the early stages of Greek society, the feast also had a ritual character, and the feasters were usually related to each other by participation in some kind of clan or age association. The themes and methods of performing drinking songs were varied. The songs were love, humorous, satirical, but also had serious content - maxims or epic songs on mythological and historical themes. In Athens in the 5th century. BC e. we encounter the custom of alternate performance and even improvisation of songs by the participants of the feast, who at the same time passed a myrtle branch to each other in a certain “crooked” order (the song was called “skoliy”, i.e. “crooked”). In the Odyssey, which depicts feasts of the tribal nobility, a necessary accessory to the feast is ae d, that is, a professional singer who delights those gathered with his songs about the deeds of men and gods. Such epic songs were no longer attached to a specific ritual: the hero of the Iliad, Achilles, in inaction, “delights himself with the ringing lyre,” singing “the glory of men.” Finally, the pre-literary period includes the emergence of various types of cult songs, hymns, prayers, etc. In ancient times, these songs received different names depending on which deity they were addressed to (for example, paean and nome in the cult of Apollo, dithyramb in cult of Dionysus), on the composition of the choir (for example, parthenium - the song of a choir of girls), the method of performance (procession, dance, etc.), but the common term for all cult songs was the word “hymn”. The Greek hymn is usually a prayer addressed to one or another god, but in its structure it retains remnants of an earlier stage in the development of religion, when a person sought to bind with the magical power of a rhythmic word the demon whose help seemed necessary, to force the demon to fulfill human will. A typical example is the prayer of the priest Chryses to the god Apollo in the Iliad: Silver-bowed God, hearken to me, O thou who guardest, bypass Chryse, the sacred Killa, and reign mightily in Tenedos - Smintheus! If when I decorated your sacred temple, If when I burned the fat thighs of Goats and calves before you, hear and grant me one desire: Avenge my tears on the Argives with your arrows. "Iliad", book. 1, art. 37 - 42. In this short prayer, all the rules of the ancient appeal to the deity are observed. God is named by name (Smintheus is one of Apollo’s ritual nicknames), along with the epithet “silver-bowed,” after which he is obliged to come to the call. His power is indicated - this is done so that God can make an excuse that he is unable to fulfill the request of the suppliant. Then mention is made of the honors which were bestowed upon the god, and which placed upon him the obligation to repay the favor with favor, and the contents of the request are stated. This hymn structure will be found many times in ancient literature. The motif of describing the power of a deity provides especially many opportunities for artistic development, since in connection with this myths about his various “deeds” can be told. All genres of Greek folklore are permeated with mythological material from tales of gods and heroes. “....mythology,” according to Marx, “constituted not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also its soil.” The emergence of mythological ideas dates back to a very early stage in the development of human society. Among peoples at the stage of hunting and gathering economy, myths in the vast majority of cases are stories about the origin of certain objects, natural phenomena, rituals, institutions, the presence of which plays a significant role in social life. The primitive hunter is especially interested in animals, and each tribe has many stories about how and whence the different species of animals came, and how they acquired their characteristic appearance and coloring. The story is based on the analogy of human experiences. For Australians, the red spots on the feathers of the black cockatoo and the hawk come from severe burns, the whale's breathing hole from a blow from a spear, which he once received in the back of the head while still a man. There are similar stories about the emergence of rocks, lakes, and rivers; The windings of the river are associated with the movement of some fish or snake. Stories about the origin of fire are common everywhere, with fire usually being hidden somewhere and then stolen for people (at the hunting stage, people are much more likely to find things than to make them). The subject of the myth is also the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon, and the constellations; the myth tells of their arrival in heaven and how their form, direction of movement, phases, etc. were created. Animals and motifs of transformation play a significant role in all these stories. At the same time, each tribe, each group has myths about its origin, which determine their relationships with each other, myths about how all kinds of magical rituals and spells. Myth is never considered as fiction, and primitive peoples strictly distinguish fiction, which serves only for entertainment, or stories about true events in the native tribe and among foreign peoples, from myths, which are also thought of as true history, but especially valuable history, establishing norms for future. The social function of myth is to be an ideological justification and guarantee of the preservation of the existing order in nature and society. Justification is achieved by the fact that the emergence of the corresponding objects and relations is transferred to the past, when especially revered beings established a certain world order; the telling of a myth aims to instill confidence in the strength of this order, and sometimes the very process of storytelling is considered as a magical means of influencing the preservation of this order and is often accompanied by corresponding magical actions or is an integral part of a cult ceremony. Myth is the “sacred history” of the tribe, and its guardians are social groups that are called upon to maintain the inviolability of existing customs - old people, in later stages - shamans, sorcerers, etc., depending on the forms of social stratification. The “sacred” appears to be the prototype, norm and driving force of the ordinary. One of the most important prerequisites for myth formation is the attribution of properties of the human psyche to environmental objects. Everything living, as well as moving and thus appearing to be alive - animals, plants, the sea, heavenly bodies, etc. - are thought of as personal forces that perform certain actions for the same reasons as people. The cause of every thing is seen in the fact that someone once made it or found it. Another, no less important prerequisite for myth formation is the insufficient differentiation of ideas about things, the inability to distinguish the essential aspects of a thing from the unimportant; thus, the name of an object seems to be an integral part of it. Primitive man considers it possible to “magically” influence a thing, performing any actions on a part of the thing, on its name, image or similar object. Primitive thinking is “metaphorical”: it admits that a part of a thing, or its property, or a similar object, a story about a thing, its image or a dance performance can “replace” the thing itself. These features of primitive thinking pose before science a difficult question about the history of thinking, about the stages through which it passed. The French scientist Lévy-Bruhl created a theory about “pre-logical thinking”, from which he deduces the origin of myths. In the USSR, the problem of the stage-by-stage development of thinking was posed by the creator of the new doctrine of language, academician N. Ya. Marr, and his school. One should, however, beware of the idealistic interpretation of mythological thinking, the idea that primitive consciousness does not reflect objective reality. The peculiarities of the thinking of primitive people are rooted in the low development of abstract forms of thought, in insufficient awareness of the properties of an object, due to the low level of development of productive forces, and insufficient ability to actively change nature. Myth-making is not a simple game of fantasy; this is a stage in the process of exploration of the world through which all peoples have passed. “...the low economic development of the prehistoric period had as its addition, and sometimes even as a condition and even as a cause, false ideas about nature.” The cognitive root of this fantasy is explained by Lenin: “The bifurcation of human knowledge and the possibility of idealism (= religion) are already given in the first elementary abstraction “house” in general and individual houses. The approach of the mind (of a person) to a separate thing”, taking a cast (= concept) from it is not a simple, immediate, mirror-dead act, but a complex, bifurcated, zigzag, including the possibility of fantasy flying away from life; moreover: the possibility of transformation (and, moreover, an imperceptible, unconscious transformation by a person) of an abstract concept, an idea into a fantasy (ultimately = God). For even in the simplest generalization, in the most elementary general idea (“table” in general) there is a certain piece of fantasy.” The low level of productive forces and insufficient dominance over nature open up wide scope in primitive society for fantastic ideas about reality, and subsequently, with the development of social inequality and the formation of classes, fantastic religious ideas are consolidated in the interests of the ruling strata. The richly developed mythological system is one of the most important components of the heritage that Greek literature received from previous stages of cultural development, and myth-making went through many stages before it was cast into the forms known to us from Greek mythology. A large number of layers deposited in different eras were discovered in it, and “the past reality is reflected in the fantastic creations of mythology.” Greek myths contain numerous echoes of group marriage, matriarchy, but at the same time they also reflect the historical fate of Greek tribes in later times. As the main form of ideological creativity in pre-class society, mythology is the soil on which science and art subsequently grow. These forms of ideology are not yet differentiated; they merge in myth, which is a fantastic understanding of nature and social relations and, at the same time, their “unconscious artistic processing in popular fantasy” (Marx), unconscious precisely in the sense that the artistic moment is still not highlighted and not realized. We have seen that mythological fantasy, unlike later artistic fantasy, perceives its images as reality and, moreover, as a special, “sacred” reality, different from everyday reality. Greek myths tell about the origin of natural phenomena and objects of material culture, social institutions, religious rituals, the origin of the world (cosmogony) and the origin of the gods (theogony). The mythological tales of the Greeks reflect those ideas about nature that were mentioned above in connection with various forms of ritual play. The struggle between good and evil forces, death and resurrection, descent into the kingdom of the dead and a safe return from there, abduction and return of the stolen - all these are common plots of Greek myth, widespread among other peoples. As observations of the verbal creativity of primitive peoples show, such narratives most often take the form of a prose tale and in many ways resemble a modern folk tale. No examples have survived from the Greek folk tale: in a developed ancient society, the educated strata treated with contempt “old wives’ stories” for children or in the women’s half of the house, and fairy tales were not collected. Only one literary adaptation of an ancient tale has reached us, completely preserving its stylistic forms, but it dates back to a later time: this is the tale of “Cupid and Psyche” in a novel by a Roman writer of the 2nd century. n. e. Apuleius "Metamorphoses" (pp. 475 - 476). There is, however, a whole series of indirect data about the Greek fairy tale, and material of the “fairytale” type is used in many monuments of ancient literature (Odyssey, comedies). Among the myths about Greek “heroes” there are plots that are very close to fairy tales. This is, for example, the myth of Perseus. King Acrisius of Argos received an oracle's prediction that he would be killed by the grandson who would be born from his daughter. Frightened by the oracle, he locked his daughter, the girl Danae, in an underground copper chamber. However, the god Zeus entered Danae, turning into golden rain for this purpose, and Danae gave birth to a son, Perseus, from Zeus. Then Acrisius put Danae and her child in a box and threw them into the sea. The box was washed up by the waves. Serif, where he was picked up and the prisoners in him were released. When Perseus grew up, he received an order from the king of the island to obtain the head of Medusa, one of the three monstrous Gorgons, whose appearance turned anyone who looked at her into stone. The Gorgons had heads covered with dragon scales, teeth the size of pigs, copper arms and golden wings. With the help of the gods Hermes and Athena, Perseus arrived to the Gorgon sisters, the three Phorkids, old women from birth, who all three had one eye and one tooth and used them alternately. Having taken possession of the eye and tooth of the Phorkids, Perseus forced them to show him the way to the nymphs, who provided him with winged sandals, an invisibility cap and a magic bag. With the help of these wonderful objects, as well as a steel sickle donated by Hermes, Perseus completed the task. On sandals, he flew across the ocean to the Gorgons, beheaded the sleeping Medusa with a sickle, looking not directly at her, but at her reflection in the copper shield, hid her head in a bag and, thanks to the invisibility cap, escaped from the pursuit of other Gorgons. On the way back, he freed the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, who had been given over to the power of a sea monster, and took her as his wife. Then he returned with his mother and wife to Argos; the frightened Acrisius hastened to leave his kingdom, but Perseus subsequently accidentally killed him during a gymnastic competition. However, the wealth of “fairy-tale” elements that we find in the myth of Perseus is already a largely passed stage for Greek mythology. In the era immediately preceding the most ancient literary monuments, in Greek mythology there was a tendency to eliminate or at least soften the crudely miraculous elements of legends. The figures of Greek myth are almost completely humanized. Animals play a significant role in the mythological systems of many peoples; this occurs, for example, in the mythology of the Egyptians or Germans, not to mention more primitive peoples. The Greeks also went through this stage, but only minor remnants remained of it. The Greeks are characterized by two main categories of mythological images: “immortal” gods, to whom the human appearance and human virtues and vices are attributed, and then mortal people, “heroes”, who are thought of as ancient tribal leaders, ancestors of historically existing tribal associations, founders of cities, etc. . d. Greek myth-making of the time under review develops mainly in the form of tales about heroes; the gods are assigned a central role only in some special types of myths - in cosmogonies, in cult legends. Another feature of Greek mythology is that the myths are very little burdened with metaphysical philosophizing, which takes place in many Eastern systems that took shape in a class society under the ideological dominance of a closed caste of priests. “Egyptian mythology,” notes Marx in the passage already quoted from the introduction to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” “could never have been the soil or mother’s womb of Greek art.” The “soil of Greek art” was mythology in its most humanized form, however, the more primitive forms of mythological ideas did not die, clothed in the folk genres of fairy tales or fables. Finally, mention should be made of small folklore forms, rules of folk wisdom, proverbs, many of which have become widespread among the peoples of Europe (“the beginning is half of the whole,” “one swallow does not make spring,” “a hand washes a hand,” etc. .), riddles, spells, etc.

The development of ancient Greek literature, accessible to us within the limits of known literary monuments, covers approximately the 8th century. BC. – IV century AD However, it is always necessary to remember the rich folklore heritage of the Greeks, the creative potential of which will indicate its main specificity. This is taken into account in the proposed periodization:

1. Archaic period:

a) pre-literary stage (ancient times – 9th century BC);

b) early literary stage (VIII–VI centuries BC).

2. Attic (classical) period (V–IV centuries BC).

3. Hellenistic period (III–II centuries BC).

4. The period of Roman rule (1st century BC – 4th century AD).

Archaic period

Pre-literary stage. Mythology. Myth-making as a spontaneously manifested human need to build in words an intuitive-figurative universe of ideal gods and heroes on top of the routine of everyday life, although to varying degrees, is inherent in all peoples. However, few, like the ancient Greeks, managed not only to create an extensive mythology, but also to fill it with the literary and artistic potential that remains in demand to this day. The person who created the myths directly lived in them as in the natural environment, since he had not yet learned to distinguish between material-physical and spiritual-psychic phenomena. The world of myths knows no doubts; it is built on the absolute truths of the gods and fate. Therefore, mythology developed along with the pagan religious cult, acting as a guarantor of the mercy of the gods.

The most ancient generation of gods, ruled by Uranus (sky) and Gaia (earth), inspired only fear. It was born from the imagination of a person who is still completely helpless before the forces of nature, threatening suffering and death at any moment. The children of Uranus and Gaia were terrible giants and monsters. One of the titans, Kron (time), overthrew his father and began to rule together with his sister-wife Rhea (one of the epithets of the earth). This second generation of gods, like the first, remains hostile and frightening to people. The third generation is the gods of Olympus (Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hestia) and others, the main one of which is Zeus (that through which everything exists), also Krona takes power from his father by force and marries his sister Hera (guardian, mistress). Historians date the formation of the mythological pantheon of these gods, who are noticeably more merciful to people, to the middle of the 16th century. BC, when the Hellenes established themselves in the main Greek territories. By this time, primitive man had managed to make significant progress in mastering the world around him and understanding his own nature. The Olympians are already attracting mortals to participate in battles with the terrible creatures of Chaos and to contribute to the establishment of the Cosmos.

This is how the first people-heroes appear, blood-related to God and man, powerful, but mortal, along with the immortals who received the right to be characters in mythological narratives. The centuries-old movement from chaos to order, from ugliness to beauty, from gods to man continues virtually. However, it is important to remember here: within the framework of mythological consciousness itself, there is not and cannot be an equation of ordinary earthlings with gods and heroes. At this stage, the limit of human audacity was to present them as anthropomorphic. The real earthly inhabitant, whose vivid imagination painted a complete picture of the forces governing him, was not yet ready to see himself beyond the daily exhausting struggle for existence, to appreciate the gift of free creation, akin to the divine, that had long been manifested in him. On the part of people, the border between the heavenly and the earthly remained impenetrable: for the gods - the sublime, for people - the vain.

Oral epic. Turn of the XII–XI centuries. BC. opens up new prospects for material and ethno-cultural development in Greek territories. The Achaeans, armed with bronze swords and spears, are defeated by the Dorians, who have mastered iron weapons. More durable and lighter metal is beginning to be actively introduced into all spheres of life. The role of private property, agricultural and handicraft production is noticeably increasing, people are more confidently and thoroughly organizing their lives, and more boldly confronting the elements of nature. Through the merger of small settlements, early city-states are formed (called policies by the Greeks), where, overcoming the resistance of tribal leaders, the tribal aristocracy comes to power and where the main events of antiquity subsequently unfold. The community structure is gradually being destroyed by the advancing slave-owning formation.

The increase in awareness, purposefulness of collective actions, the expansion of the circle of individuals who have emerged from the general mass - the emerging clan nobility, the activation of linguistic presence in the arrangement of life pushes a person, so to speak, to discover himself, to take a closer look not only at heavenly, but also at his own everyday affairs. Along with the transcendental mythological distance, folk imagination solemnly paints large-scale pictures of the exploits of great ancestors, albeit still relegated to a distant idealized past, but already turned to the present as a necessary role model. Epic Hero, like the mythological one, does not belong to itself, it is also closed in its fatal predestination, however, the motivation, the demand for its heroics are already determined by the earthly. Hence, if the mythical image is hermetic and equal to the meaning, then the meaning of the epic is determined by the ideals dominant in a given community. The appeal to the mercy of the gods in the epic is not limited to their praise and begging for less cruel treatment of man. Every now and then the desire to really help resolve its pressing problems comes to the fore. The contemporary, an ordinary mortal, is not yet among the characters, but in this way his nascent claim to free will indirectly expresses itself. Of course, in an epic, where events are told as something separate from the narrator, and the hero is equal to his destiny, any expression of will is objectified and does not go beyond generally accepted norms.

The oral epic was created in both poetic and prosaic expression. The narratives turned out to be especially ramified heroic pathos exalting the glorious era of tribal unity, powerful forefathers, great wars and endless family revenge. Numerous tales, legends, traditions gradually form large narrative cycles, the most important of which are the Trojan, Theban, the Argonauts, and the exploits of Hercules. They will first of all be destined to become fertile material for literary heroic epic and tragedy. Another type of oral epic was also quite widespread - didactic, in the form of unwritten rules of folk wisdom, concentrating both instructions and observations on people and nature. These are commandments, labor experience, aphorisms, signs of the folk calendar and everyday life. The most popular were small forms: proverbs, riddles, spells.

Song folklore . If large-scale epics, like mythology, must be judged primarily by their literary adaptations, then even in later times one could become familiar with the song in its oral form. Perhaps this is why, and also because it is in demand in literally all spheres of human life, its special species richness is observed. Labor songs were sung during the harvest, squeezing grapes, grinding grain, baking bread, spinning and weaving, drawing water, and rowing. Diverse military, love, children's, ritual(especially wedding epithalamies and funeral patches) songs. The mytho-epic beginning is visible in cult songs, hymns, prayers, performed both at feasts of the nobility and at public meetings as part of the festive ritual and as an element of free time. Wide subject matter table songs, where especially often serious content was intertwined with humorous, even satirical, and mocking, shaming “iambs” were directed both against individuals and entire groups.

As we see, the subsequent development of written literature was thoroughly prepared by a diverse pre-literary tradition.

Early literary stage. The first sign indicating the separation of literary creativity from folklore is usually considered to be the appearance of works recorded in writing, and therefore stable in volume and content, which have a specific author. Deep down, behind this lies a radical change in the worldview of people who have finally realized not only the separate existence of the sphere of fantasy and the sphere of reality, the imaginary and the real, intentions and actions, but also their most complex interconnectedness. The divine Cosmos, which seemed perfect and complete in mythology, is collapsing, and the system of reference for values begins to change polarly: not man for the world, but the world for man. Along with the unwritten, taken-for-granted traditional truths, more and more new ones are asserting themselves, written by specific people and not seeming unconditional to everyone. The area of literature will be this junction, the zone of correlations, human contrasts (an approach to the problem of the problematic nature of man, who has undertaken to organize the universe according to his own understanding). The extraordinary capacity and multi-vector nature of the emerging artistic world will be reflected in the fact that from the very beginning all three main types will be formed in ancient Greek literature: epic, lyricism, drama.

Epic. Works of literary epic, united in their orientation towards an objective (super-individual, generally established) approach, towards the creation of high role models, towards demonstrating the growing ability of the human community to worthily share responsibility for the world order with higher powers, can seriously differ in plot and thematic material and forms of meaning formation . Therefore, we will talk about heroic epic, didactic epic, irocomic and cyclic poems, literary prose.

The main material for heroic epic were chronologically distant key moments of the legendary-mythological past (for example, the events of Troy, the fall of which is attributed to the turn of the 13th–12th centuries BC, literature will turn to only four hundred years later). This distance in time is an important artistic discovery of the epic. The author is given additional opportunities to idealize the heroes, shift the emphasis from the external specifics of life and actions (they seem to remain an attribute of the past) to the inner world of the characters, their spiritual greatness, and truly heroic dedication. The oldest surviving monuments of Greek literature are the heroic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, which are based on stories from the Trojan mythological-legendary cycle. According to most scientists, they were written in the 8th century. BC. blind aed Homer, but there are other points of view. The dispute over their authorship even gave rise to the notorious “Homeric question,” where different opinions also collided about the origin of the poems and the options for their creation. There are three main positions: the theory of small songs, the unitary theory (or theory of unity), and the theory of the main grain. We will adhere to the unitary theory, which defends Homeric authorship and the artistic integrity of his works.

The poem is recommended for program reading "Iliad", however, it is advisable to become familiar with the Odyssey. When studying, it is necessary to trace the plot unity of each of them (“Iliad” - a poem about the wrath of Achilles, “Odyssey” - about the return of Odysseus to his homeland). It is also important to come to an understanding of the features of the epic style (constant epithets, repetitions, frozen formulas, extended comparisons, hyperboles), composition and central conflict. After all, for the author, the main thing is no longer the mythological clash of the Greeks and Trojans, but the categorical differences in the heroes’ understanding of the best way to fulfill their fatal destiny and duty. This is the reason for the attention-grabbing diversity of characters (in the Iliad - Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Paris, Menelaus, Patroclus, Helen, Andromache, Nestor, Priam, Diomedes, Odysseus, Ajax, gods and goddesses; in the Odyssey - Penelope, Odysseus, Telemachus, Alcinous, Nausicaa, Eumaeus, Eurycleia, Nestor, Helen, Menelaus, Kirke, “suitors”, various monsters, gods and goddesses). Ultimately, the heroic in Homer is composed both of the qualities glorified in legends and myths, and of the strong-willed and physical efforts demonstrated by his characters to overcome their own delusions and pride, an endless series of internal and external obstacles on the way to the fulfillment of their fatal predestination and public duty. Through heroic poems one should also become acquainted with the basics of ancient Greek versification, with a poetic meter such as hexameter.

By the end of the 8th - beginning of the 7th century. BC. is developing didactic (instructive) epic, exemplified by Hesiod's poem "Works and Days". In it we see for the first time the personality of the author (the poet speaks on his own behalf, provides specific biographical information), a number of other artistic solutions that allow us to talk about a significant difference, both in theme and in semantic orientation, between the didactic and heroic epics. The poem becomes an expression of the worldview of free villagers already living outside the community, ensuring their own well-being at their own peril and risk. It reflects the age-old peasant wisdom, which helps the farmer to feed himself from a small piece of land, which others are not averse to encroaching on. Hence a very critical attitude towards the existing order, a protest against the injustice of the “kings” and judges. The famous legends included in the poem about the five centuries (where the ancient was “golden” and fair, and the modern one was iron and dishonest), about Pandora, and the fable of the nightingale and the hawk help to more accurately understand Hesiod’s artistic intent. Ultimately, all the didactic principles of the poem revolve around the glorification of labor as a source of material well-being, moral balance, and mutual respect between people.

IN cyclical poems scale, integral focus on the sublime ideals of the heroic and didactic epic is replaced by fragmentation, multidirectionality of the narrative. They detail not the most heroic episodes from the life of gods and heroes, and pay a lot of attention to everyday life. The authors, as it were, string chains of small poems onto the cores of traditional plots, developing in their own way the famous cycles (in Greek - kikli): Trojan, Theban, about the Golden Fleece, about the exploits of Hercules. Such are the “Cyprias” of Stasinus from Cyprus, “Ethiopides” and “The Destruction of Ilion” by Arctinus of Miletus, the “Small Iliad” of Lesches from Pyrrhus and many others. Losing in epic monumentality, the cyclic poems moved much more boldly towards the diversity of reality, oriented, what can you do, not only to the lofty.

The most radical changes in the epic manifested themselves in irocomic poems, the artistic principles of which can be correlated with Menippean satire, tragicomedy, burlesque, and travesty. This is a kind of expression of longing for a lost paradise, regret for heroism, so often reduced to farce. We pay special attention: it is this intentional or unintentional farce that is ridiculed, but not the heroism itself. Let us recall the poem “Margit” ( telling name- fool), about the hero of which it is said that he knew a lot, but everything was bad. Knowing how to count only to five, he intends to calculate the number of sea waves, reveal the secret of human conception, and generally enthusiastically tackles matters of which he has a very rough idea. Of course, everything turns out topsy-turvy, even on the wedding night. The “War of Mice and Frogs” (“Batrachomyomachy”) is widely known, where, in a spirit clearly reminiscent of the “Iliad,” it is no longer glorious heroes, but mice and frogs. The cause of the conflict is presented ironically, the mythologically pompous presentation of their weapons looks funny, and the description of the battle using traditional epic formulas. The mice begin to win, and even the all-powerful Peruns of Zeus cannot help the frogs. Then God sends crayfish to their aid, the mice take flight, and the end of the “one-day war” is celebrated.

Finally, this is the time of formation literary prose, in which mythological themes are inferior to historical and everyday ones. In terms of plot and style, it largely inherits the prosaic forms of folklore, in particular the fairy tale. Prose genres such as fables, everyday and historical stories, and early works of a historiographical, philosophical, and rhetorical nature deserve attention. By the 6th century BC. include the work of the legendary fabulist Aesop, who in prose form was able to write short, ironic, understandable to the common man stories where entertainment was accompanied by didactic morality based on everyday experience. In the future, predominantly poetic fables will inherit his plots and images right up to the present day.

Lyrics. Early literary lyric poetry is based both on folklore traditions and on the epic developments that preceded it, especially in language and technique of versification. For us, consideration of its formation in Ancient Greece is also an initial approach to comprehending the laws of the lyrical kind of literature itself, the difficult correlation of the subjective and objective principles in it. First of all, the isolation and emphasis on the uniqueness of the experience of the lyrical subject does not at all indicate his isolation from phenomena that are generally significant for the era, the people, and other people. In some ways, the herd principle of integration of the primitive communal masses already turned out to be ineffective in the slave-owning policy. What was needed was a new, civil organization of the community, where common tasks are realized through formulated laws and the conscious participation of everyone in their implementation. Not only labor and military duties, but also leisure time are increasingly used for the necessary orientation and unity of people.

The most ancient official celebrations were initially ritual and only for the top of society. Dating back to the 8th century. BC. At first, the Olympic Games in honor of the god Zeus were also religious and cultic. Later, sports and music competitions were introduced, although victories were awarded only to athletes. A similar order was followed at the Italian Games in honor of the god Poseidon. And in the Eleusinian mysteries, where the goddess Demeter was glorified, only initiates - mystes - could participate. However, the development of polis democracy and the need to manage an increasing number of people demanded a different type of public holidays, which are beginning to be dedicated to previously not particularly famous gods. The most significant and widespread are those related to the cult of Dionysus: lenae, anthesteria, dionysia. During the Great Lenya (late January - early February) and the Great Dionysia (late March - early April), the winners in the musical and poetic competitions of lyricists, then playwrights, begin to be determined.

It must be remembered that the term “lyrics” itself arose only in the Hellenistic era, when the lyre became the main instrument of musical accompaniment. At this stage, these were the flute and the cithara. The most famous types of early lyric poetry were elegy, iambic and melica.

Elegy. The elegies of Tyrtaeus (7th century BC) are distinguished by the simplicity and clarity of the images and the expressiveness of the verse. They pursue primarily practical goals, calling on the Spartans to courageously defend their homeland, glorifying brave warriors and reproaching cowards. His contemporary Callinus of Ephesus had a similar theme. The Athenian legislator Solon (634–559 BC) used the form of elegy to propagate his political and moral philosophical views. The political and social struggle of the era constitutes the main content of the elegies of the aristocratic poet Theognis (VI century BC). Mimnermus (7th century BC) is considered the founder of the love elegy: he glorifies the joy of life and love, regrets the passing of youth, and fears old age and death. The collection “Nanno” is named after his beloved flutist, which marked the beginning of erotic poetry and influenced many subsequent poets.

Iambic. Among the authors of iambic poems, the most famous is Archilochus (VII century BC) - one of the first in the history of ancient literature to have a bright poetic human individuality. In his poems, the poem “On a Shipwreck,” the characteristic genre features of iambic poetry are finally formalized - mocking, accusatory, satirical content, sharp attacks against enemies, a tendency to self-irony and at the same time the affirmation of a “cheerful spirit.” Semonides of Samos (7th century BC) in his “female iambics” compared women with animals (pig, fox, dog, donkey, ermine, horse, monkey), with a bee, earth, sea, giving preference to the hardworking bee. Hipponact of Klazomensky (VI century BC) invented the “lame iambic” (holyamb), with the help of which he wrote realistic, witty, rude, impudent, blasphemous and pleading poems.

Melika (song poetry) was divided into solo (monodic) and choral. As the name suggests, solo melika works were intended to be performed by one person and were perceived as the most sincere expression of the poet’s emotional experiences. The famous poetess Sappho (VII–VI centuries BC) made love the main theme; she organized an entire “school” in which she taught girls the art of living, loving and the ability to be real women. Together with the cult of Aphrodite, the poetess glorified nature: the starry night, the moon, the wind, which together help achieve the ideal of beauty. Her fellow countryman and contemporary Alcaeus paid a lot of attention to political civil strife on his native island of Lesbos (the “Songs of Struggle” cycle) and to the glorification of the Olympian gods. His satirical cycles are known, as well as songs glorifying the joys of life, love, wine and friendly feasts. Anacreon (VI century BC) placed the glorification of worldly pleasures, wine, and feasts at the center of his poetry, which was later called “Anacreontic” and is famous for its imitations and alterations. At the same time, he is known both as a satirist and as a pioneer of philosophical poetry.

Choral melika was intended for ceremonial performance with musical and choreographic accompaniment. Its main types were:

dithyramb - a hymn in honor of the god Dionysus;

paean - initially a hymn in honor of the god Apollo, and later in honor of other gods and even people;

epiniky - glorification of winners in war or sports competitions;

encomium - a song of praise in honor of gods or people, performed during festive processions;

Parthenium is the hymn of the girls’ choir in honor of women.

The most recognized author of choral songs was Pindar (VI–V centuries BC), who especially stood out for his epinikia, written in a complicated, sublime syllable. The glorification of the winner of sporting competitions necessarily included praising not only the merits of himself, but also of his family and community. Also mandatory were the mythological component and edifying reflections. Easier to understand were the epinikia of Bacchylides (VI–V centuries BC), who was prone to a pessimistic view of the world. His gods give happiness to very few, and life without worries and worries is so rare in this world. The dithyrambs of Bacchylides are sharply dramatized, which indicates their connection with the emerging dramatic art. Other authors of choral melika include Simonides of Keos, Arion, Alcman, and Stesichorus.

Drama and theater. Although the dramatic art of antiquity was quite multi-genre, we will pay attention only to tragedy And comedy. The establishment of the cult of the god Dionysus makes festivals and hymns in his honor - dithyrambs - central. This genre of choral meloki reaches particular brilliance in the middle of the 6th century. BC. in the work of Arion, whose praises were sung by a choir dressed in satyr costumes (this is probably where the name of the tragedy comes from). The poet Thespis was the first to use, along with the choir, which included its leader, the luminary, a separate actor-reciter, the exarchon, thus introducing dialogue. The officially approved production of just such a complicated dithyramb by Thespis in 534 BC. on the Great Dionysia it is also considered the time of birth of tragedy. Consequently, the tragedy was initially presented by a choir of 12 people and one actor. The earliest tragedies have not reached us, and only the “Taking of Miletus” by Phrynichus is known from the titles.

On Dionysian holidays, free ritual games were held outside the sanctuaries. These folk entertainments included processions of choirs with dances and comic songs, performances by mummers, and amusing squabbles in the partying crowd (called komos, hence the word comedy). From its very inception, comedy was distinguished by its combination of serious, civil issues with fiction, fantasy, fairy-tale and farcical elements. In it, long enough to enhance the satirical, grotesque, slapstick atmosphere of mass festivities, a large choir remains in size - 24 people, divided into two semi-choirs. Epicharmus, Cratinus, and Eupolis are considered the most ancient comedians. The comedy will receive official recognition much later than the tragedy; its authors will be able to claim victory in poetry competitions only from 486 BC. on the Great Dionysia and from 442 BC. on the Great Lenei.

Theatrical performances took place in the open air, the actors dressed in long robes and used special shoes with high wooden or leather soles (cothurns). They dressed in masks and wigs, and a special mouthpiece was inserted into the mouth of the mask to amplify their voices. Each role was assigned a separate mask. All roles - both male and female - were performed by men. The choruses were without masks, and their attire was determined by the image assigned to the choir in a given drama.

Student (s) OYU: Yakubovich V.I.

Open Law Institute

Moscow 2007

Introduction

Ancient literature is usually called the literature of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Italian humanists of the Renaissance called Greco-Roman culture ancient (from the Latin word antiquus - ancient) as the earliest known to them. This name has remained with it to this day, although more ancient cultures have been discovered since then. It has been preserved as a synonym for classical antiquity, i.e. the world that formed the basis for the formation of the entire European civilization.

The chronological framework of ancient literature covers the period from the IX-VIII centuries BC. to 5th century AD inclusive. The ancient Greeks inhabited the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea, the western coast of Asia Minor, Sicily and the southern part of the Apennine Peninsula. The Romans initially lived in Latium, a region located on the territory of the Apennine Peninsula, but as a result of wars, the Roman power gradually grew, and by the end of the 1st century BC. e. it occupied not only the Apennine Peninsula, but also a significant part of the territory of Europe, including Greece, part of Western Asia, North Africa, and Egypt.

Greek literature is older than Roman literature, which began to develop at a time when Greek literature had already entered a period of relative decline.

Ancient literature is inextricably linked with mythology. The authors of works of literature and fine art drew their plots mainly from myths - works of oral folk art, which reflect people’s naive, fantastic ideas about the world around them - about its origin, about nature. Greek myths contain stories of gods created in the image of humans; The Greeks transferred all the features of their own earthly life to the gods and heroes. Therefore, for the study of ancient literature, familiarity with Greek mythology is of particular importance.

The historical significance of ancient literature lies primarily in the enormous influence it had on the development of the cultures of other European peoples: true knowledge of these literatures is impossible without familiarity with ancient literature.

In the 5th century n. e. the general decline of culture, despotism, which gave rise to complete indifference of the population to the fate of the country, undermined the Roman Empire from within; it was unable to resist the barbarians (Germanic tribes). The Roman Empire fell. At this time, a huge part of the texts of ancient literature perished: some authors aroused displeasure, others simply did not arouse interest and were not rewritten, and yet the papyrus on which they were written literary texts, - is short-lived, and those texts that were not rewritten on parchment in the Middle Ages were doomed to disappear. Works that contained thoughts that appealed to Christianity (for example, the works of Plato, Seneca, etc.) were carefully copied and preserved.

The ancient book was a papyrus scroll that unfolded when read. The volume of such a book could be up to forty pages in the typographic design familiar to us. Each of Homer's poems was written on 24 scrolls (books); each book of Tacitus’s “Annals” or Caesar’s “Notes on the Gallic War” was a separate scroll.

Only from the 3rd century AD. e. the papyrus scroll begins to be replaced by the codex - a book of the familiar type for us, made of parchment.

Ancient literature turned out to be close to the Renaissance because it embodied the freedom of human thought and human feelings. Cultural figures of this era began to find and publish works of ancient authors, carefully rewritten and preserved by enlightened monks in the Middle Ages.

During the Renaissance, writers used Latin and ancient themes for their works; They tried to give works of art maximum resemblance to ancient ones, in which they saw standards of beauty.

Directly after the Renaissance came the era of classicism. The name itself suggests that it was aimed at antiquity, at classical antiquity. Classicism was mainly oriented towards Roman literature.

The influence of ancient literature was strong in the 19th century. it has survived to this day.

Literature of Ancient Greece

The history of ancient Greek literature is organically connected with the life of Hellas, its culture, religion, traditions; it reflects in its own way changes in the socio-economic and political fields. Modern science distinguishes four periods in the history of ancient Greek literature:

Archaic, which covers the time before the beginning of the 5th century. BC e. This is the era of “early Greece”, when there is a slow disintegration of the patriarchal clan system and the transition to a slave state. The subject of our attention is the preserved monuments of folklore, mythology, the famous poems of Homer “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, the didactic epic of Hesiod, as well as lyrics.

Attic (or classical) covers the V-IV centuries. BC e., when the Greek city-states and, first of all, Athens, experienced a heyday, and then a crisis, they lost their independence, finding themselves under the rule of Macedonia. This is a time of remarkable growth in all artistic fields. This greek theater, dramaturgy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes; Attic prose: historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides), oratory (Lysias, Demosthenes), philosophy (Plato, Aristotle).

Hellenistic covers time from the end of the 4th century. BC e. until the end of the 1st century. n. e. The subject of attention is Alexandrian poetry and neo-Attic comedy (Menander).

Roman, i.e. the time when Greece becomes a province of the Roman Empire. Main topics: Greek novel, works of Plutarch and Lucian.

Chapter I Archaic period

1.1. Mythology

Myth translated from Greek means “narration, tradition.” The concept of “myth” could include all poetic activity, artistic creations born in archaic period, it was mythology that served as the foundation for the subsequent development of science and culture. The images and plots of mythology inspired the work of poetic geniuses from Dante to Goethe, Schiller, Byron, Pushkin, Lermontov and others.

Myths were created in the pre-literate era, and therefore these tales and legends existed orally for a long time, often transforming and changing. They were never written down as a single book, but were reproduced and retold later by various poets, playwrights, historians: the Greeks Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, the Romans Virgil, Ovid, who presented a truly treasury of myths in his book “Metamorphoses”.

Myths existed in various parts of European continental Greece, in Attica, Biotia, Thessaly, Macedonia and other areas, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, on Crete, on the coast of Asia Minor. In these regions, separate cycles of myths developed, which later began to merge into a single pan-Greek system.

The main characters of Greek mythology were gods and heroes. Created in human likeness, the gods were beautiful, could take on any form, but most importantly, they were distinguished by immortality. Like people, they could be generous, generous, but also insidious and merciless. The gods could compete, envy, be jealous, and be cunning. The gods performed feats, but they were familiar with failure and grief. Aphrodite's lover Adonis dies. From Demeter, the god of death Hades kidnaps her daughter Persephone.

The Greek gods constituted several categories in terms of significance. The twelve main supreme gods of the “Olympians” lived on the snow-capped Mount Olympus, the highest in Greece. There was also the palace of the supreme god Zeus, the dwellings of other gods.

Zeus, father of gods and people. He was considered the son of Cronus, the god of time and agriculture. His mother was Rhea. Zeus shared power over the world with his brothers: he received the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld.

From his first wife Metis, Zeus gave birth to Athena. He also had numerous other children from goddesses and mortals. Zeus' wife Hera was the supreme Greek goddess, queen of the gods. She patronized marriage, conjugal love and childbirth.

Zeus's brother Poseidon was the god of the sea, all springs and waters, as well as the owner of the earth's bowels and their riches. His palace was located in the depths of the sea; Poseidon himself commanded the waves and seas. If Poseidon waved his trident, a storm began. It could also cause an earthquake.

God underworld and the kingdom of death appeared Hades, the brother of Zeus, deep underground he owned a kingdom, he sat on a golden throne with his wife Persephone, the daughter of the fertility goddess Demeter. Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and became his wife and mistress of the underworld.

One of the ancient gods - Apollo, the son of Zeus and the goddess Latona, brother of Artemis, was the god of light and arts, a sharp archer. Apollo received from Hermes the lyre he invented and became the god of the muses. The muses were nine sisters - the daughters of Zeus and the goddess of memory Mnemosyne. They were goddesses of art, poetry and sciences: Calliope - muse epic poetry; Euterpe is the muse of lyric poetry; Erato - the muse of love poetry; Thalia is the muse of comedy; Melpomene - the muse of tragedy; Terpsichore – muse of dance; Clio is the muse of history; Urania – muse of astronomy; Polyhymnia is the muse of hymn (from hymn) poetry and music. Apollo was revered as a patron and inspirer of poetry and music; This is how world art has captured him.

The sister of the golden-haired Apollo was the daughter of Zeus Artemis, huntress, patroness of animals, goddess of fertility. She was usually depicted with a bow, which she skillfully wielded while hunting in forests and fields. IN various areas In Greece, her cult existed, and a beautiful temple of Artemis was erected in the city of Ephesus.

The goddess Athena, the most revered in Greece, was born by Zeus himself, appeared from his head in full military garb. The goddess of wisdom and justice, she patronized cities and states both during war and in peacetime, and determined the development of sciences, crafts, and agriculture. It was named in her honor main city in Greece - Athens.