Eternal Prominence: The Impact of Ancient Greece
In the eighth century B.C. a revolutionary force embarked on a cultural conquest that would change the western world forever. Greece was conceived, a lustrous gem in a world dominated by routine and rigid conformity. Egypt, renowned up to that point as the pinnacle of civilization, cast a bleak outlook on life, shared by most of the World. Obsessed with death, and the suppression of the human spirit, humanity was chained under the guise of congruity. Edith Hamilton illustrates the eminent flowering of society, “…while Egypt submitted…and turned her face toward death, Greece resisted and rejoiced and turned full face to life” (Hamilton 22). This newfound enthusiasm sparked a fire, inextinguishable by the passage of time. Hamilton revels, “The thought of the Greeks has penetrated everywhere; their style, the way they write…” (Hamilton 45). Thucydides describes the Greek’s as “lovers of beauty without having lost the taste for simplicity, and lovers of wisdom without manly vigor” (Hamilton 66). With this passion for aesthetics, the Greeks sent art and literature into new dimensions, their inherent wisdom plunged them into the depths of the human mind, and an exuberant quest for
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As the man who defined epic poetry, Homer’s works, The Iliad and The Odyssey are some of the World’s most valuable works. Graves implicates that the inspiration of this ancient imagination has shaped our cultural inheritance (Graves 17). Through the influence of the stoics, and allure of wisdom, classical Greece was a major part of the soul of this great empire. Despite the fall of her civilization, the spirit of classical Greece lived on as a major influence to the whole of western civilization. Like Hamilton writes, “Greece has been copied by sculptors and builders from the days of Rome on” (Hamilton 45). The ideas of this intuitive historian serve as the roots of the sciences of geography, archaeology, anthropology, and even sociology. Hamilton sums up the impact of the arts of Classical Greece, “The thought of the Greeks has penetrated everywhere; their style, the way they write, has remained peculiar to them alone” (Hamilton 45). The Greek astronomers proposed countless numbers of revolutionary theories such as a heliocentric universe, and the idea of a spherical Earth. knowledge led the Greeks to revolutionary ideas in almost every field of science. The world was changed as Hamilton writes, “The Greeks were the first scientists and all science goes back to them” (Hamilton 28). Drama, a Greek invention, created a new medium from which people could escape from reality, see many truths about the world, and illustrate their views to a mixed public. The essential mathematicians Euclid, Archimedes, and Pythagoras hailed from ancient Greece. The Roman poet Horace put it simply, “captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror” (Spielgovel 128). The great potential of the common man has, no doubt, consistently proven to elevate society to new levels of growth and achievement. Spielgovel explains, “Hippocrates was the first to separate medicine from philosophy” (Spielgovel 107).
Approximate Word count =
1518
Approximate Pages =
6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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