The Classical Moment

Literature

      Fifth-century BCE Athens was the focal point of the brief age of brilliance sometimes referred to as the Classical Moment. With Pericles as leader and people like the playwright Sophocles and the sculptor Pheidias expressing Greek ideals in artistic forms, Athenian society reached a cultural peak. It was a period of optimism, when the Greeks believed that their world could be made better, and that troubles they faced could be overcome. In Antigone, Sophocles wrote this hymn to humankind:

There are many wonders, but none more wondrous than man
Across the white-caped sea in the storms of winter this creature makes his way on through the billowing waves. And earth, the oldest of the gods, the undecaying and unwearied one, he wears away with constant ploughing, back and forth, year after year, turning the soil with horses he has bred ...
Language, thought swift as the wind, and the patterns of city life he has taught himself, and escape from the shafts of storms, and the shelter -- piercing frosts of clear days. He can cope with everything, never unprepared whatever the future brings. Only from death does he fail to contrive escape. Even for diseases thought hopeless he has figured out cures. Clever, with ingenuity and skill beyond imagining, He veers now toward evil, not toward good ...

Antigone 1.322-368

      Other playwrights, such as Aeschylus and Euripides, hoped to improved their world by examining serious issues like the basis of justice, and the status of women in Greek society. The comic playwright Aristophanes also aimed to change his world -- by making fun of ti. In Lysistrata, he turns the world upside down by having Greek women go on strike -- they refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands in order to force the men to end their destructive war: 

When the War begin, like the prudent, dutiful wives that we are, we tolerated you men, and endured your actions in silence. (Small wonder--you wouldn't let us say boo.) You were not precisely the answer to a matron's prayer--we knew you too well, and found out more. Too many times, as we sat in the hosue, we'd hear that you'd done it again--manhandled another affair of state with your usual staggering incompetence. Then, we'd ask you, brightly, "How was the Assembly today, dear? Anything in the minutes about PEace?" And my husband would give his stock reply.
"What's that to you? Shut up!" And I did...
But this time was really too much:...
We women met in immediate convention and passed a unanimous resolution: To work in concert for safety and Peace in Greece. We have valuable advice to impart, and if you can possibly deign to emulate our silence, and take your turn as audience, we'll rectify you--we'll straighten you out and set you right. 

Aristophanes Lysistrata 1.507-528

Architecture

      The most celebrated of all Greek buildings ever constructed is the Parthenon, built in Periclean Athens as a showpiece of Athenian wealth and power. It dominated all of Athens from its perch high on the Acropolis. Designed by Pheidias and the architect Ictinus, this temple to Athena is a marvel of skill and beauty, inspired in part by the Greek victories over the Persians.

       The construction of the Parthenon would not have been possible without masonry and sculpture techniques Greeks had learned 200 years earlier in Egypt. Each block of this huge temple was carved with incredible accuracy, using only hand tools.

       It is the Parthenon's sculpture, however, that is its most striking feature. Though some remains in Athens, most of the sculpture fro around the temple is now kept in the British Museum in London. The figures show the ideal forms of human beauty, serenely calm and unaffected by the momentary events of the world around them. Represented in the sculpture are mythological battles such as the Battle of the Gods and the Giants. The Birth of Athena, the goddess to whom the temple is dedicated is also portrayed. The Greeks chose not to represent the real battle with the Persians because they believed that such pride (hubris) in their own victory would surely be punished by the gods. 

       Housed in the great cella (centre room) of the Parthenon was a towering statue of the warrior goddess Athena, made by the artist Pheidias. It was over 12 m high and made of ivory and gold plates set on a wooden frame. a reflecting pool sat in front of it. Once can only imagine the awe that it inspired. Such magnificent works of art were not cheap and it was the revenue from Athens's Empire, a forced federation, that paid for much of this beauty. 

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.