A Brief History of Greece and Rome

The time span we're addressing extends from the late eighth century BCE to the early fifth century CE, a period of some 1,100 years. In the study of ancient literature and history, as in most study of past times, it is conventional to speak of certain subdivisions or "periods" of both literary history and sociopolitical history: thus in English literature we refer to the Romantic movement, the Victorian age, and so on. In Greek history a common modern division is into:

• the Archaic Period (up to the end of the sixth century BCE),
• the Classical Period (from about 500 BCE to the death of Alexander), and
• the Hellenistic Age (from Alexander to the beginning of the Roman Empire).

In Roman history, the obvious division is between the Republic and the Empire, and lesser subdivisions also reflect political change, for instance the Augustan age, the Julio-Claudian or Flavian periods, the "High" and "Low" Empire. Such divisions are convenient, but can often be misleading. In literary history, one division which, for all its popularity, has hampered criticism in the past is between the so-called golden and silver eras of Latin literature. The metaphor of metals, as in Hesiod’s myth of ages, reflects an evaluative judgement, a traditional assumption that Cicero and Virgil belong to a golden age of literature, while Lucan and Tacitus do not. All period-divisions of this kind are suspect, for there are many writers who bridge the divisions, many kinds of literature that are not affected by political change, and many aspects of the arts which are more fruitfully examined in a long perspective. However, it is obvious that literary forms do not remain static over a period of centuries, and some attempt to define phases in literary history is inevitable; what matters is that we should remain aware of their partial validity and artificial construction.

Greece

Greek literature begins for us with Homer and Hesiod, authors of extensive poetic works dealing mainly with myths of man and god. The chronology is murky, but we are probably dealing with compositions from around 720–680 BCE. At this date the Greeks had already begun to travel more widely. They inhabited not only the mainland region we still call Greece but Asia Minor, and were also settling permanently all around the Mediterranean: "colonies" soon existed in Sicily, South Italy, North Africa and the Black Sea. What most strikes the modern reader, especially in contrast with Rome, is the separation of Greeks into independent political units: the polis (plural poleis), the small city-state, was tiny by modern standards, but throughout their history the Greeks resisted unification into larger leagues or kingdoms.

Greek travellers and traders regularly encountered the large monarchies of Egypt, Lydia and later Persia. Contact with the Near East not only fertilized the mythic imagination but gave the Greeks access to more prosperous cultures and (very importantly) an alphabet. The Homeric poems were preserved because someone, probably in the seventh century, thought them important enough to write down. After Homer and Hesiod there is a large gap of time before we reach the next writers to survive in bulk, namely Pindar and Aeschylus in the fifth centuries. In between we have the tantalizing remains of lyric poetry, composed by poets of scattered date and origin – Archilochus from Paros, Alcaeus and Sappho from Lesbos, others from other Greek islands, from Rhegium in Italy, from Ephesus and Smyrna in Asia Minor. Continuous historical narrative has to be reconstructed from later accounts, making detailed study of most poleis an impossibility. The exceptions tend to be those which were politically or culturally important, or both, so that in later times readers wanted to know about these places and authors were able to supply the information. Hence the bulk of our evidence concerns Athens and Sparta: in particular, they figure prominently in the History of Herodotus.

The authors of 1066 and All That concluded that in English history only two dates were truly memorable. In describing the classical world I shall allow myself five (emboldened in what follows to distinguish them from other dates mentioned more in passing). The first is 479 BCE, the conclusion of the Persian King Xerxes’ unsuccessful invasion of Greece (following up the earlier attempt by his father Darius). The paradoxical success of the Greeks in repelling the far larger forces of the Persians was a key moment in their development: not only did it seem to vindicate their own way of life, one of freedom and self-sufficiency as opposed to enslavement to a monarch, but it also stimulated their cultural self-confidence. The rest of the century is the heyday of Athens, which eventually assumed leadership of an anti-Persian alliance, one that gradually developed into an empire run in Athens’ own interests. Athenian literature of the fifth century included the great tragedies and comedies; many other writers and thinkers (including Herodotus) were drawn to Athens because of her wealth and power. Socrates talked and taught there, visiting sophists such as Gorgias performed there. This was also the period of the radical democracy, which made Athens famous for its constitutional structures as well as for its literary achievement. In the end Athens fought a long war against Sparta and her allies rather than be deprived of her empire; defeated, she lost it anyway. Thucydides (writing from 431 onwards) chronicled the conflict in a work which became a paradigm of political and military history. In the fourth century our evidence shifts from verse to prose: instead of tragedy and comedy, oratory and philosophy become especially important. Plato and Aristotle taught in Athens, though the former grew steadily more disillusioned with his city, and the latter (not a native Athenian) migrated to Macedonia, where he gave instruction to the young Prince Alexander.

Political independence ended for the Greek states when Philip II of Macedon, Alexander’s father, conquered their armies at the battle of Chaeronea: the orator Demosthenes’ long efforts to nurture resistance to Philip ended in disaster. From that time on Greece was dependent on the will of larger and far more powerful states, first Macedon and ultimately Rome. But Greek horizons were now hugely expanded. The conquests of Alexander, extending as far as the northern regions of India, created with astonishing speed an empire larger than that of Persia, but he seems to have given little thought to the preservation of his conquests, and after the death of Alexander in 323 (my second memorable date) they became the object of jealous conflict among his heirs and generals. Alexander’s death marks the start of the Hellenistic age (so-called because of the theory that he and his successors "Hellenized" or educated their conquered peoples into civilized Greek ways, a proposition now viewed as neither factually nor politically correct). One of the more notable effects of Greek expansion was the development of a more universal form of the Greek language, the so-called koine or "common speech": the various regional dialects became less important for literature, though sometimes utilized for recherché effect. A persistent counter-tendency to ignore the koine and mimic the old Attic classics even in vocabulary and syntax reached its height in the second century CE.

Alexander’s empire eventually split into three vast kingdoms, Macedonia itself, the Seleucid empire (Asia and the East) and the Ptolemaic kingdom (Egypt), the last two being named after two of Alexander’s marshals. Greece itself became a political backwater, though Athens long retained its intellectual glamour as a university city. In due course Romans such as Cicero and the poet Horace would go there for education, especially in philosophy. But other major centres of culture now emerged, especially Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, where under royal patronage major poets composed in old genres and new (Apollonius in epic, Theocritus in short and exquisite poems on country life, Herodas in deliberately coarse verse on city lowlife). Minor poets above all cultivated the epigram. Prose flourished too, including much scientific and speculative writing: Alexandria with its great library was a centre of learning. The scholar-poet Callimachus, who had a powerful influence on Roman literature, supremely merged poetry and arcane learning.

Greece and Rome

Inevitably we think that Greece comes first, then Rome. This is true in terms of literature but entirely false if we think of history. One traditional date for the "beginnings" of Greek history is the supposed date of the first Olympic Games, 776 BCE; this is little more than 20 years away from the legendary foundation date for Rome, 753 BCE. More substantially, Greeks had been resident in parts of Sicily and Italy since at least 700; Aristotle and others knew about Rome. More militaristic than the Greeks, the Romans determinedly extended their domain throughout Italy, then to Sardinia, Sicily and beyond. Firm discipline and organization, strong, sometimes ruthless leadership, and a refusal to accept defeat, eventually made theirs one of the most formidable empires in history. Their attitude to the Greeks and their culture was always complex: on the one hand Quintilian could claim that "the Greeks excel in teaching, but the Romans in examples of doing – and that is greater." On the other hand, Horace memorably commented that "vanquished Greece captivated her savage conqueror" – that is, Romans succumbed to the spell of Greek culture. The earliest major figure known to us is Livius Andronicus, who may have been part-Greek and who translated the Odyssey into Latin, wrote both comedies and tragedies on Greek mythic themes, and transplanted a number of Greek metres. But our first complete works in Latin, the comedies of Plautus, do not much predate 200 BCE, by which time virtually all the most famous Greek writers were dead. Roman literature is strongly indebted to Greek, yet is never merely imitative.

Rome

As for politics, Rome increasingly showed interest in the nations to the East and by the second century BCE was expanding her conquests across the Mediterranean. The kingdoms established by Alexander’s successors were gradually overthrown. Rome’s conquest ("liberation") of Greece, together with her other achievements from 220–146, were chronicled by the Greek historian Polybius, the first of a long line of Greek writers who came to Rome and celebrated, or at least sought to record, explain, or justify, her successes. The last of the Hellenistic kingdoms, Egypt, fell to Rome with the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra (a descendant of Ptolemy) in 31 BCE. This is our third key date, marking not only the end of the Hellenistic era but the beginning of the Roman empire, with the ascendancy of Octavian, shortly to take the solemn title of Augustus. His establishment of one-man dynastic rule changed the nature of Roman politics, after an eventful half-century dominated by civil wars (the period which witnessed the careers of Caesar and Cicero, the poetry of Lucretius and Catullus, and the early works of Virgil and Horace). The "Augustan" era (31 BCE to CE 14) was distinguished by some of the most gifted writers Rome ever produced, especially Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus and Livy. Ovid, a younger author, straddled the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius; exile was the punishment for his subversively frivolous poetry. The last years of Augustus saw not only exiled writers but burning of books. Autocracy was on the increase.

The Republic was never restored, despite emperors’ proclamations and the efforts of conspirators. Much literature of the first century CE is overshadowed by the expectations of the emperor and the fears of the authors. Writers could be executed for their politics (Lucan, Seneca), and it is hardly fair for us to condemn some of them for playing it safe (Pliny, Martial). Imperial literature of this period often has a dark and sinister flavour (Seneca’s tragedies, Lucan’s and Statius’ epic, Juvenal’s satires); philosophy emphasizes personal morality and the need to preserve the inner integrity of the individual (Seneca, Epictetus); the historical works of Tacitus, with their damning presentation of royal family, court and senate, are the high empire’s most lasting memorial. Yet in many ways the stability of the empire improved government and even benefited the citizens: our perspective is skewed because so much of the Latin literature of this period comes from the disenchanted aristocratic class.

Bad emperors could not go on forever. The period from Nerva’s accession to the death of Marcus Aurelius was famously singled out by Gibbon as a time of supreme human prosperity. Roman literature becomes less viciously intense and more refined: archaism becomes the fashion, led by the Emperor Hadrian. Greece re-enters the picture with a change in the balance of our evidence in the second century, from which the most attractive figures are the moralist-biographer Plutarch, and Lucian, the immortal writer of satiric dialogues, essays and fantasies. Though politically powerless, the Greeks had not lost their capacity to devise new genres and pour old wine into new bottles.

Modern studies of later antiquity are naturally much concerned with the rise of Christianity. Its gradual encroachment on the literature of the pagan world makes a fascinating study: we see both antagonism and interaction. Pagan thinkers sometimes dismiss the new faith as trivial, but are in due course obliged to argue in detail against it, only to be countered by more skilful polemicists (Origen against Celsus). Christians sometimes reject all pagan culture, but sometimes present Christian beliefs in attractively classical dress (Minucius Felix). By any standards a key date (the fourth in our series) is the adoption of the Christian faith by the Emperor Constantine, who then gave it his endorsement throughout the empire (CE 312). It would be exaggerating to claim that henceforth paganism was on the defensive, but there was now no doubt that Christianity would survive and prosper. Julian the Apostate’s attempt to turn the clock back came too late, even if he had not swiftly died on campaign.

Late antiquity sees the split of the Roman empire into two halves. By the fourth century Rome had lost its prominence in the West, and emperors often ruled from Milan or Trier. In the East power was firmly established in Constantinople (formerly known as Byzantium, but established as a new capital by Constantine). The business of ruling, defending and administering the empire had become too vast. But the potential for a complete division was accelerated when invaders from northern Europe assailed the frontiers of Italy over the period from the late fourth century to the end of the fifth. The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in CE 410 (the last of my five key years) has a claim to be the end of the classical era: this was the first time that foreign invaders had taken Rome in more than 800 years. This sack stimulated the writing of Augustine’s late masterpiece, The City of God, a meditation on the transience of the worldly city in contrast with the kingdom of heaven. Rome did not fall in a day: there were further emperors of the West after 410, and classical culture lived on in the Eastern empire, but Augustine’s enormous epitaph on Rome provides a terminus to our study.