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THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY

From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS

IX. CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION

» Contents of this Chapter

The Classical City   * Education and the Condition of Children   * Marriage and the Position of Women   * The Home and Private Life   * Amusements   * Slavery   * Greek Literature   * Greek Philosophy   * Roman Literature   * Greek Architecture   * Greek Sculpture   * Roman Architecture and Sculpture   * Artistic Athens   * Artistic Rome

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GREEK PHILOSOPHY

THE SOPHISTS

The Greek philosophy took its rise in the seventh century B.C., when a few bold students began to search out the mysteries of the universe. Their theories were so many and so contradictory, however, that after a time philosophers gave up the study of nature and proposed in turn to study man himself. These later thinkers were called sophists. They traveled throughout Greece, gathering the young men about them and lecturing for pay on subjects of practical interest. Among other things they taught the rhetoric and oratory which were needed for success in a public career.

SOCRATES

One of the founders of Greek philosophy and the greatest teacher of his age was Socrates the Athenian. He lived and taught during the period of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates resembled the sophists in his possession of an inquiring, skeptical mind which questioned every common belief and superstition. But he went beyond the sophists in his emphasis on problems of every-day morality.

Though Socrates wrote nothing, his teaching and personality made a deep impression on his contemporaries. The Delphic oracle declared that no one in the world was wiser than Socrates. Yet he lived through a long life at Athens, a poor man who would neither work at his trade of sculptor, nor (as did the sophists) accept money for his instruction. He walked the streets, barefoot and half-clad, and engaged in animated conversation with anyone who was willing to discuss intellectual subjects with him. Socrates must have been a familiar figure to the Athenians. His short body, large, bald head, and homely features hardly presented the ideal of a philosopher. Even Aristophanes in a comedy laughs at him.

 

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THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents

url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp

Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy