1
Historical Outline of Classical Antiquity and its
Impact on the European Middle Ages
for
Western General History and Literature Courses
The following brief outline is in rough form, but I post it because it is the foundation of all those things I talk about in Humanities and English Literature classes for the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance periods. Do with it as you will. When I have time, I will try to arrange the material better than I have it now, and perhaps will even supply a table of contents. In the meantime, the dates I will ask you to memorize for the course are largely taken from the list of dates at the end of this summary. They are part of my attempt to identify the key 100 events important to know.
The following five books are the foundational source for this information, even though I have added to the outline over the years from other sources too:
Frederick Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages
Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature
Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.
Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
C. Warren Hollister, Medieval Europe: A Short History
Please feel free to ask me about any of this information. Robert Kibler
InstructorRobert Kibler
The Ancient Western World
529 A.D. Justinian closes schools of Ancient Greek philosophy because they are not Christian.
But before then
Pre-Socratics
Thales of Miletus mort 546 BCE
Pythagoras of Ionia 497 BCE
Heraclitus Logos
Parmeneides The One
Anaxagoras Nous
Anaxamander: Heated Slime
Anaximenes: Air, Rarified Air-the Soul
Xenophenes: Paradox
One god there is, midst God and men the greatest; in form not like to mortals; he without toil rules all things; ever unmoved in one place he abideth
How come Ethiopean gods have dark skin, and Thracian ones have blond hair and green eyes?
Main contributions of schools:
Idea of a Single Force
Idea of an Ordered Cosmos
Idea of Material Origins rather than Divine
Socrates and Plato
Socrates mort 399 BCE
Plato mort 347 BCE
Plato's School: The Academy 387 B.C. to 529 A.D.
First elaboration of the theistic philosophy of a divinely made and directed Universe. A world of eternal realities, of:
1. Forms/Ideas that make up structure of real being
2. The above structure is highest form of the Good, the
│ FIRST PRINCIPLE OF REALITY.
│ └────differs from Judaism cause the highest form does not incorporate others, as does Hebrew God.
3. 1st Principle defined in 3 Aspects:
a. Divine Craftsmen
b. Forms of Ideas
c. World Spirit [deputy or agent of Div. Craftsman]
....our world but feeble copies of spiritual realities. We know of Forms because SOUL knew them before entering body, and is reminded of them by perceiving thru senses those things in life that participate in them.....
World of senses as world of flux,
but it is 1/2 real
....those that know this accept appropriate intellectual discipline [accepting REASON first, then RELIGIOUS FAITH, and can come to see forms of Justice and Beauty, realities that are real as nothing in this world is real.
....It is only of immaterial, unchanging realities that man may have knowledge, all else but sensation and opinion.
Faults with Plato:
1. Abstractions do not replace concise definition
2. Does not deal adequately with finite world.
3. No method of expanding factual info about man and world.
4. Vague, incomplete system.
Platonic influence on side of super rational monotheism and reasonable ascetism.
Only the Timaeus available in Latin during Middle Ages.
But he influenced Cicero and Roman Church Fathers, who made him dominant in Church criticism in 1st thru 12th centuries, afterwhich Aristotle comes in to vogue also.
We see development towards Christian principles, a turn towards the metaphysical. For Socrates and Plato:
1. Development of the Soul most important thing in life.
2. Universe ruled by intelligent and moral Force/s
3. Virtue lies in knowledge, full comprehension of the Good.
4. All wickedness due to ignorance.
Socrates: "know thyself"
Before Socrates, philosophy concerned with beginnings, after, concerned with the end for which world exists.
Turning from Facts
to Values
Aristotle: Master of Those Who Know
Unmoved Mover
Protogoras: "Man is the measure of all things;" so everything is relative
Aristotle's Lyceum 335 B.C. 529 A.D.
until the 12th, only
Categories [classes of propositions]
DeInterpretative [parts and kinds of sentences]
│
└both available only in Latin, translated by Boethius.
Dante on Arry: "Master of those who know"
in 12th, Spanish Arabs [Avveroes]
Aristotle:
1. Careful and objective investigation
2. Rejected Plato's separation of Form from things
3. Forms have no existence outside of things
4. Matters and Form are relative terms.
5. Only God has separate real existence, apart from matter.
6. Only MIND separates FORM and MATTER [Great Chain of Being]
7. Looking at individuals to gain transcendent end.
Great Chain of Being:
[matter]
earth
air inorganic life ...organic life
fire Vegetable
water Animal Soul
[cap of sensation/motion]
Man [rational being
FIRST CAUSE
PURE FORM W/O MATTER
UNMOVED MOVER
We all move by inner necessity, towards the unmoved mover.
Aristotle’s Ethics
Nothing is bad, save when it is in excess
Excess throws Man's Soul off Balance
Rule: Act Always between Two Extremes;
follow the Golden Mean
Nothing in Excess
For Arry, Soul and Body United, unlike Plato.
Scientific, Arry nonetheless ends his logic in the mystical character of the Unmoved Mover, especially when talking of matter of Soul. He is in this way a good Platonist.
Arry more Monotheist than Plato.
Plato's style; casts a spell
Arry's style; jottings, rather like telegrams
Problems with Arry:
1. System denies idea of Divine Providence, God’s Intervention.
2. Matter is eternal, unlike Genesis account.
3. Denied Personal Immortality
Conclusion: Ideas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle came to Middle Ages through later Greek Schools:
Stoics
Neo Platonists
And through works of Romans:
Cicero
Seneca
Great Shifts in Understanding
Great Migrations
Mid Fourth Century B.C. for 300 years
350 B.C. Alexander the Great destroyed selfgoverning Greek City States, set up dictatorship. But he dies early, so next 3 centuries this region in tumult. Calm only comes through founding of Roman Empire (not Republic) by Augustus just prior to Christian era [33 B.C. at Phillipi over Antony]
Old Greek City States not just a corporation, but a training ground for youth. It had ethical function, furnished police protection, just like Medieval Church and Hegelian State.
There was little idea in ancient Greece of conflict between interests of individual and interests of the state. No thoughts of a self apart from state until:
1. destruction of Greek CityStates.
2. Gradual loss of faith in old Gods.
3. Long Wars and disorder.
Then, After Alexander, folk thought to a perfection separate from the state. State now seen as Evil, as a Killing Machine
Turn to Religions of the Balm│
UNSTABLE ENVIRONMENT MADE MAN FEAR LIFE
THUS
WAY TO FREEDOM AND PEACE SEEN THROUGH REDUCTION OF FIELD OF INTEREST......
┌─────── RELIGIOUNS OF RENUNCIATION AND CONSOLATION
│ RESULTING FROM "FAILURE OF NERVE'
│
│
REVIVAL OF GREEK MYSTERY CULTS
EGYPTIAN MYSTERY RELIGIONS
PYTHAGOREANISM REVIVED
Note the change: Plato and Aristotle plunging ahead to know more. After Alexander, philosophy becomes no longer a bright star, but a stretcher bearer:
Stoic Epictetus: consciousness of ones own weakness
Cicero: healing of the soul
Plutarch: only medicine for spiritual diseases
New philosophies of Personal Salvation independent of state:
Philosophies become cosmopolitan, classless.
community redefined.
Epicureanism
Epicurus [270 B.C.] The Garden:
1. indifferent to learning
2. No belief in soul, immortality, God.
Anticipation of death saps strength [Keatsian], courage:
There is nothing to fear in God
There is nothing to feel in Death
What is good easily procured
What is bad easily endured
Epicurianism urges withdrawal, non participation
Pleasure is negative, avoidance oriented, seeking
a Peaceful state
Epicurianism has an essential Distrust of Life
Escapist
Note; hedonism and materialism attractive to later Greeks, inspired by Lucretius poem
De Rerum Natura [55 B.C.]
Lucretius condemned by Middle Ages
back in vogue in 16th with
Montaigne
Hobbes
Holbach
Stoicism
Stoics founded by Zeno [263 B.C., on the Stoa, or "Porch" in Athens:
1. Socratic idea of knowledge as Virtue
2. Platonic Universe [not atomic Democritus]
3. Belief in Moral Order
4. Reason and Justice at Heart of Universe
5. Man's Reason, suppressing emotions, to attain temperance, courage, peace, harmony with God.
7. Emphasis on duty to family, friends, obligations
8. Belief Man must listen to his conscience, his inner light.
9. Doctrine of "Natural Law"; maintaining Soul as Fortress:
Fighting Alone
Stern Self Sufficiency
Inaccessibility to Grief Best
No reliance on loving God, Salvation
Stoicism is essentially a religious ethic.
Stoic Epictetus:
Have courage to look up to God and say; "deal with me as thou wilt. I am thine. I flinch from nothing so long as thou thinkest if good. Would'st thou have me hold office or eschew it, be rich or poor? for all this I will defend thee before men."
Stoics took over gods and used allegory to explain myths. All mythology given a physical and moral meaning:
ex: Zeus hangs Hera in air;
this points to origin and succession of elements
│
└Jews and Christians got Typology, script interp from this.
Stoics accepted astrologies and astral systems flourishing in Roman world after 200 B.C.
Stoics taught submission to authority, like Confucius.
Stoics influences development of Roman Law by pushing it towards ideal of "Natural Law."
Virgil stoic
Seneca Stoic
St Paul Stoic
Marcus Aurelius Stoic
Problems with Stoicism:
1. Making a desert in ones heart and calling it peace.
2. Slight purpose and little hope for future of mankind.
Christianity brought Hope.
Cynics
Cynics [precursors, school of Socrates, witty, gypsy]:
1. Supreme value of Virtue
2. Utter insignificance of all else.
Virtue for the Cynics the only basis for distinction among Men
Cynic:
Look at me, I am without house or city, property, or slave. I sleep on the ground. I have no wife, no children. What do I lack? Am I not without distress and fear? Am I not free?
Turning Points in Time
Oracle of Delphi : Mysterious Prophecy governing actions
to
Aristotles : "Golden Mean"
to
Ascetic view of life in Epicureans and Stoics
Passions and Desires in Themselves neither good nor bad, except in the manner of their use [Aristotle], now seems as an EVIL philos.
Earlier ideas of Temperance give way to
Doctrine of Renunciation [Saint Jerome Letters]
Ptolemy [160 B.C.] Last great Greek works [astronomy]
Galen ...... [medicine]
Christianity
First Three [3] Centuries of Christianity loaded with religions:
Platonists
Aristotelians
Cynics
Skeptics
Cyrenoics
Stoics
Epicurians
plus
NeoPythagoreans
NeoPlatonists
also
Astral theologies
Gnosticism
Hermes
Orphism
Mystery Religions etc...
NeoPlatonism:
founded by Christian, Ammonius Saccas, in Alexandria.
His pupils:
Plotinus [dies 270 B.C.]
Longinus
Origen [a father of church]
Plotinus and Origen in same school just as
St Ignatius Loyola and Jean Calvin at Univ of Paris in 16th.
Plotinus ashamed that he had a body
NeoPlatonism: thru study, prayer, and ascetic practices, we may attain some knowledge of the One.
1. One [undefinable, unlimited]
2. Universal Mind [world of ideas, archetypes, forms]
3. Soul [in individuals, gives existence, longs to return
to the One.]
4. Evil and Illusion
5. World of phenomena results from a falling way from the
One towards denser Matter.
6. At height, Man's intellect fades into a haze of the One,
has an immediate identity which rises
above senses
above life of intellect
attains cosmic consciousness
Cosmic Consciousness: "flight of the alone to the alone"
Plotinus' Enneads: Metaphysics warmed by religious faith
Plotinus' ascending order of Virtues tops with Contemplation
Matter becomes almost Illusion in Hypostasis
Plotinus' Heirarchy has some evil spirits; his system contributed to vogues of
angelology
demonology
magic
astrology
Origen in East ┐
Neo Platonic bases in Christianity
Augustine in West ┘
Augustines conversion to NeoPlatonism last step in a long spiritual Aeneid before his conversion to Christianity. Renounced NP because too cold, impersonal, could not reach masses, and because it lacked a religious leader like Jesus.
Psellus, Byzantine, 11th century:
God is not the sky, nor the sun, not anything that can be perceived, not the best possible mind, not a Platonic form apart from matter. God is of an unfathomable nature."
John Scotus Erigen a 9th century NeoPlatonist
Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, 15th cent N.P.
By Third century A.D.
Knowledge is no longer attained my mental effort alone, but by revelation also.
Mystery Religions
Great changes in popular religion after 300 B.C. due to spread of mystery religions originating in Near and Middle East;
Magna Mater [Asia Minor, from 6 B.C. reached Rome 204 B.C.]
Isis [Egypt, flourished mainly 300 B.C. to 300 A.D.]
Mithra [Persia]
1
In pre 300 B.C. GrecoRome, cults of Eleusis, some foreign mystery religions, Orphism, philosophic schools, and Pythagoreans and Platonists.
2
In 1 300 A.D. some of the most fervent religious activity in world.
3
Post 300 A.D. Christianity about to become official religion of Roman Empire.
Magna Mater
From 6 B.C. reaching Rome 204 B.C.
1. Great Mother, source of all life, infuriated with Attis, her lover unfaithful. Drove him Mad so he emasculated himself below a pine tree into which his spirit passed; at same time his blood was turned into violets.
2. Great Mother mourned death of Attis, brought back to life. It is a nature myth, a Vegetation Myth. Attis is God of Vegetations.
3. Great Mother mourned in autumn and winter, but in spring able to restore. rites celebrated in March, especially 21 March. Pine Tree felled, wrapped in woolen bands and violets to temple of Goddess, and then buried midst ceremony, shrieks, flagellation. Priesthood candidates emasculated selves then.
4. March 25: Pine Tree dug up, wild celebration
March 27: Procession through Streets
5. Baptismal Ceremony:
a. pit dug, candidates in, under planks
b. Bull slain on planks
c. Blood runs down over naked initiates to
wash away human sin, weakness, and to give a
second birth.
a. Pit signifies kingdom of the dead
b. Enter pit to die, blood resurrects
c. Ascending like Infant, initiates given
milk to drink.
6. Baptismal Ceremony repeated every twenty years; ritual meal of bread served on drum and symbol, sacred instruments of Magna Mater. It is a ceremony personifying the interaction of the force of nature andhuman hope for a final triumph of life over death.
Cult of Isis
Vegetative, like Demeter, Magna Mater
Supreme Deity a Female, and her lover, Osiris, giver of laws, arts.
Osiris killed, reborn through efforts of Isis.
"As truly as Isis lives, he also shall live, as truly as Osiris is not dead, shall he not die."
Note that Eleusinian Mysteries, Magna Mater, Isis, and Mithra emphasize dignity and value of the individual.
In GrecoRoman World, worship of Isis popular amongst women:
1. daily liturgy in morning
2. benediction in afternoon
3. Chanting, ringing of bells, sprinkling of water,
burning of candles, incense.
Mithra
keenest competitor with Christianity and most moral.
form of old Zoroastrianism, a dualistic system where powers of light and darkness contend for mystery of universe and over the Soul of Man.
Mithra: Agent of Light, upholder of virtue, truth. Legend:
1. Mighty hunter who slays bulls.
2. 25 December his birthday
3. Sacred day the first of week
4. Strengthened followers in fight against temptation of flesh.
5. Those of merit got immortality
6. Baptism by water [later taurobolium/ie bulls blood]
7. Eating of sacred bread, wine.
8. No women devotees.
9. Appeal to soldiers,, Scotland to Persia to Afrique
Note that Mithraism, like other mystery religions, is at once monotheistic and polytheistic; one deity makes, sustains world, but other divine forces at work; saviors, heroes, saints.
All Mystery Religions, except Christianity, identified its deities with those of others. Phrygians recognized Great Mother in Syrian Goddesses, etc....Greeks and Romans saw Dionysius or Bacchus in Osiris, Hercules in Samson....Magna Mater...Demeter...Ceres.
Slowly Classical World turned,withinmillenniums, from
Animism [simple nature religion]
through rationalism..
to
monotheism
ascetism note that these are all
mysticism medieval religious traits
world worthlessness
From Love of Sensual, to
condemnation of the Corporeal.
Greek word for athlete 'asketes' has become the word for ascetic.
Judaism
Northern kingdom of Israel fell 721 B.C.
Southern kingdom of Judea fell 586 B.C.
ruled by:
Babylonians
Persians
Romans
Hebrew style grand, solemn, and powerful, influenced by Egyptian, Canaanite, and Mesopotamian religious literature.
│
this sublime tone runs from O.T. to N.T. to Medieval Literature
Significance of Judaism: connection of stern morality with a lofty religion
1. Contains little Mysticism, no merging with God [New Testament from Greek Philosophy and Mystery Religions]
2. Contains little Ascetism, little warring of body and soul.
3. Condemned sensuality, sex for children only.
4. No reference to heaven as abode of dead. Dead to Sheol.
5. Messianic hope centered not on person, but on Jewish state purged, readied.
6. Little/nothing on Holy Ghost, Trinity, Virgin Birth.
But what survives of the Old Testament in both the New Testament and Mohammedism:
1. All powerful, all just God.
2. Ideas of holy book revealing God's Will and Ways.
3. Use of Sacred caste set aside to direct religious
services.
4. Concept of Orthodoxy to which all must conform.
5. Interpretation of Church/State.
6. Hostility toward foreign governments and emperor worship.
7. Unwillingness to take part in state ceremonies, theater, etc.
8. Idea of Divine Plan in history, fulfillment of God's Will [Greeks regarded whole world process as an eternal repetition and a vain recurrence, as did Romans.