TTC Video - Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature

All our lives, we've been taught the importance of the ancient Greeks to so much of the world that came after them, and particularly to our own way of living in and seeing that world. Mention politics, philosophy, law, medicine, history, even the visual arts, and we barely scratch the surface of what we owe this extraordinary culture. How can we best learn about these people who have given us so much; who have deepened and enriched our understanding of ourselves?

We can look to modern historians for perspectives on the origins of their own discipline, and on the two thinkers, Herodotus and Thucydides, whose contributions to that discipline were immense. To political scientists for the links between the U.S. Senate and the councils of Athens. And to teachers of philosophy for insights to illuminate the deepest implications found in Plato.

But there is an entirely different perspective found in another of their great legacies—the classic Greek literature that is still read today and that is still able to engage and enthrall us. Would we find that Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato might engage us in advanced levels of understanding when their works are examined as not only history or philosophy, but as literature, their words weighed and forms shaped as carefully as those of any poem or drama?

From the viewpoint of Professor David J. Schenker, the answer is "absolutely yes." In Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature he offers a view of literature that roams beyond a common definition of the word. By introducing us to a world that remains far closer than we might imagine, he opens up to us the epics of Homer; the dramatic genius of the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; and the poems of Archilochus, Sappho, and many others. He includes some of the world's greatest works of history and philosophy, and he gives rhetoric and oratory their proper due as well.

"We might disagree with the Romantic poet Shelley that 'we are all Greeks,'" Professor Schenker notes. "But we can indeed trace back to them, in some cases through them, much of what makes us who we are today. … To study the Greeks is a valuable lesson in what we can call cultural literacy. To know them is to know ourselves. Or, as the Roman statesman Cicero said, 'If you don't know where you come from, you'll always be a child.'

"We do, in many ways, come from the Greeks, and in order to function as responsible and productive human beings, it's important that we know something about the Greeks."

Beginning with Homer and the two great epics credited to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey—including a provocative discussion of whether Homer even existed—Professor Schenker offers a wide-ranging overview of the subject that is instructive and entertaining.

For example, you'll learn that the arming scenes so familiar to us in action films, the moments when heroes prepare for the climactic battle—clicking magazines into assault rifles, tossing ammunition belts over shoulders, and slamming sharpened bayonets into scabbards—go all the way back to Homer and perhaps even earlier.

In epics like the Iliad and Odyssey, the tension is built very slowly during a traditional formulaic scene, with the hero shown preparing for battle one piece of armor or a single weapon at a time, donning breastplate, helmet, shield, sword, and other paraphernalia of war one by one before venturing out to meet his opponent.