Greek Literature

Ancient Greek literature is divided into three periods: Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. Archaic literature started with the musical recitations of prose before it was ever written. Then came poetry surrounding mythology. The first written prose was suspected to be laws, but after that, in the 600s BCE, literacy spread. In this period was Homer, and his works are still well-loved today, The Illiad and The Odessey. The creation of "tragedies" and "comedies" come from the Greeks, as a form of worship for Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy... ironic, I bet they'd drunk some good wine before they decided to kill the main character of their new play for the shock factor. Aesop (somewhat confirmed as an actual person) wrote his famed fables, which I still want to read. It's been on my TBR for....6 years?

The classical period of ancient Greek literature recreated the tragedy (making it more sad!) and the comedy (making up people in fictional worlds now!) in ways that would stick around through the Middle Ages. The works of Plato and Aristotle came around in the 4th century BCE, works that have since formed the basis of Western philosophy. Big deal people, I'll read their Britannica pages!

The Hellenistic and Greco-Roman periods were under the oversight of Alexander the Great's empire and the Byzantine Empire. It lasted from the end of the 4th century BCE to the end of the 1st century BCE. Lots of works during this time were sent directly to the Library of Alexandria as it was created (you know, the one that famously burned down. But it actually didn't burn down all at one time. Neglect, war, and religious conflicts actually contributed a lot to its decline. That and multiple fires). Artistic creation now came from patronage as the city-state was in decline.

During the Byzantine Empire Christian literature held heavy influence and changed the vibe. When the Byzantine Empire was failing the state was a wreck. In the 9th and 10th centuries, a political revival pushed for literary expression (a mimicry of Hellenistic-Christian writings before the fall), and in the 12th century the creation of romantic fiction and satire took literary expression to a new height. An era during the Crusades (4th Crusade (1204)- Capture of Constantinople (1453)) allowed the Greeks to flaunt their cultural power over the West and revived the classical and Christian writing that had dominated the Byzantine era.

The influence of the printing press was very slow into Greece. The first book printed relating to Greek was printed in Italy (it was a grammar book). Other books in Greek followed, coming out of Italy. A press dedicated to Greek print was set up in Venice in the late 15th century and the printing press was not used in Greece proper until the 1620s. The Renaissance period was the revival of Classic literature, and such attention created the popularity Greece was happy to receive. Many scholars left Greece and went abroad to Italy to experience the Renaissance as the Greek-homeland did not experience the Renaissance under Ottoman ruling like Western Europe did.