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 EDITED, WITH
INTRODUCTIONS
AND NOTES
BY MARGARET L . KING

The
Western Literary
Tradition AN INTRODUCTION
IN TEXTS

1
VOLUME
TH E H E B R E W B I B L E TO J O H N M I LTO N
The Western Literary Tradition
An Introduction in Texts

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Volume 1
The Hebrew Bible to John Milton
The Western Literary Tradition
An Introduction in Texts

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Volume 1
The Hebrew Bible to John Milton

Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by

Margaret L. King

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 For my grandchildren,
a look back, for the way forward
 CONTENTS

Chronologyxii
Preface to Volume Onexvii

Section I
Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature
Introduction to Section I 1
Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises 7
Introduction  7
1. Genesis 22:1–18 8
2. Exodus 20:1–21 9
3. Job 38, 40, and 42 11
4. Psalms 8 and 139 13
5. Isaiah 40 and 55 15
Chapter 2. Greek Origins 18
Introduction18
1. Homer, Iliad (c. 800–700 BCE) 22
2. Hesiod, Works and Days (c. 700 BCE) 29
3. Sappho, Poems and Fragments (c. 650 BCE) 34
4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon (c. 458 BCE) 37
5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (c. 428–425 BCE) 45
6. Euripides, Medea (431 BCE) 54
7. Aristophanes, Clouds (423 BCE) 62
8. Plato, Phaedo (c. 380–c. 360 BCE) 71
Chapter 3. Roman Innovations 76
Introduction76
1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (59 BCE) 78
2. Catullus, Poems (before 54 BCE) 83
3. Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) 86
4. Virgil, Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE) 93
5. Cicero, Fourth Philippic (December 20, 44 BCE) 100
6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia (c. 40–45 CE) 105
7. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania (c. 98 CE) 110
8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (167 CE) 115

vii
viii Contents
Chapter 4. The New Testament: Repentance and Redemption 120
Introduction120
1. Matthew 5 (c. 80–90 CE) 121
2. John 3:1–21 (c. 90–110 CE) 123
3. Acts 17:16–31 (c. 80–90 CE) 125
4. Revelation 21 (c. 95 CE) 126

Section II
The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition
Introduction to Section II129
Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture 134
Introduction134
1. Saint Augustine, Confessions (397)140
2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 526) 145
3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia (c. 970) 151
4. Hildegard of Bingen, Know the Ways (1141–1151)158
5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes (c. 1130) 163
6. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430–1436) 168
7. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (c. 1420–1427) 172
Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles 177
Introduction177
1. Einhard, Life of Charlemagne (c. 817–836) 182
2. Beowulf (c. 975–c. 1025) 187
3. Song of Roland (c. 1040–c. 1115) 193
4. Song of My Cid (c. 1140–1207) 200
5. Marie de France, Lanval (c. 1155–1189) 205
6. Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love (1184–1186)210
Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations 215
Introduction215
1. Marco Polo, The Description of the World (1298)220
2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno (c. 1308–1320) 225
3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1349–1351)232
4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (c. 1380–1400) 236
5. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) 242
Contents ix

Section III
Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal
Introduction to Section III 247
Chapter 8. The New Learning251
Introduction251
1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer (1345, 1360)
and Sonnets (1327–1368)256
2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence (1404) 263
3. Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese (1416) 268
4. Lauro Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of
Constantinople (1453) 272
5. Cassandra Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies (1487) 277
Chapter 9. The High Renaissance 281
Introduction281
1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)285
2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1518) 290
3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (1516)295
4. Thomas More, Utopia (1516)300
Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent306
Introduction306
1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso
(Roland Goes Mad, 1516/1521/1532) 310
2. François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534/1535) 316
3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580, 1587–1588) 321
4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605/1615) 326
Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England332
Introduction332
1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (c. 1582) 337
2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1587/1588) 342
3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies (1594–1601) and Sonnets (1609) 350
4. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets (1633) 359
x Contents

Section IV
Early Modern: New Horizons
Introduction to Section IV 363
Chapter 12. Other Places 367
Introduction367
1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World (1502/1503)373
2. Hernán Cortés, Second Letter of Relation (1520)378
3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of
the Incas (1609, 1616–1617) 383
4. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues (1552)388
5. Luís de Camões, The Lusiads (1572)392
6. Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)397
7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688) 401
Chapter 13. Other Voices 406
Introduction406
1. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron (1558)412
2. Anonymous, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)417
3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565) 421
4. María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion (1647) 426
5. Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women (1600)430
6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul (1621) 433
7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems (c. 1669–1694) 438
Chapter 14. Man Alone 443
Introduction443
1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea (1640) 447
2. Molière, The Misanthrope (1666)454
3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671) 461

Credits470
Index473
 CHRONOLOGY

Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

BCE
c. 800–700 Homer, Iliad
c. 700 Hesiod,Works and Days
c. 650 Sappho, Poems
c. 586–539 Isaiah
c. 600–200 Psalms
c. 538–330 Genesis
c. 538–330 Exodus
c. 458 Aeschylus, Agamemnon
431 Euripedes, Medea
c. 428–425 Sophocles, Oedipus
423 Aristophanes, Clouds
c. 380–360 Plato, Phaedo
330–164 Job
59 Lucretius, Nature of Things
Before 54 Catullus, Poems
44 Cicero, Fourth Philippic
c. 29–19 Virgil, Aeneid

CE
c. 8 Ovid, Metamorphoses
c. 80–90 Matthew
c. 80–90 Acts
c. 90–110 John
c. 95 Revelation
c. 98 Tacitus, Agricola
167 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

xii
Chronology xiii

The Middle Ages: Formation of the

Western Literary Tradition

397 Augustine, Confessions

c. 526 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
c. 817–36 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne
c. 970 Hrotswitha, Sapientia
c. 975–1025 Beowulf
c. 1040–1115 Song of Roland
c. 1130 Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes
c. 1140–1207 Song of My Cid
1141–51 Hildegard, Know the Ways
c. 1155–89 Marie de France, Lanval
1184–86  Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love
1298  Marco Polo, The Description of the World
c. 1308–1320 Dante, Inferno
1349–51 Boccaccio, Decameron
c. 1380–1400 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
1405 Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
c. 1420–27 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
c. 1430–36 Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
xiv Chronology

Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal

1327–68 Petrarch, Letters and Sonnets

1404 Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence
1416 Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese
1453 Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V
1487  Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies
1513 Machiavelli, The Prince
1516 Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince
1516 More, Utopia
1516/1521/1532 Ariosto, Orlando furioso
1518 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier
1534/1535 Rabelais, Gargantua
c. 1582 Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
1587/1588 Marlowe, Faustus
1580, 1587–88 Montaigne, Essays
1594–1601, 1609 Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Sonnets
1605/1615 Cervantes, Don Quixote
1633  Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets
Chronology xv

Early Modern: New Horizons

1502/1503 Vespucci, New World

1520 Cortés, Second Letter of Relation
1552 Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues
1554 The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
1558 Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron
1565 Saint Teresa, The Book of Her Life
1572 Camões, The Lusiads
1600 Fonte, The Worth of Women
1609, 1616–17 Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas
1621  Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul
1640 Calderón, The Mayor of Zalamea
1647 Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion
1666 Molière, The Misanthrope
c. 1669–94 Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems
1671 Milton, Samson Agonistes
1688 Behn, Oroonoko
 PREFACE TO VOLUME ONE

This volume introduces students to major writers of the Western tradition

from Antiquity to 1700. It cannot include all authors of high significance,
but in the sum, it presents a sampling of essential literary texts, highlights
significant themes, and traces prominent trends over a more than two thou-
sand year span. It includes exemplars of a range of genres including epic,
lyric, and dramatic verse; prose narrative including story, romance, and nov-
el; and nonfiction prose including autobiography, biography, letter, speech,
dialogue, and essay. Languages represented include the ancient languages
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and the modern languages (in different stages of
development) English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
The decision to include selections from the works of the seventy authors
represented here, and to do so within a volume of normal size, has meant
that few of the component works are given in their entirety. The Greek plays
and Shakespearean dramas that are commonly assigned for classroom use
are readily available in multiple inexpensive editions, so that every instructor
may choose his or her favorite play or translation. The broad array of texts
provided here, however, displays the full panorama of the Western literary
heritage through the seventeenth century.

xvii
 SECTION I

Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

Introduction to Section I
The Western literary tradition sits on a three-legged stool. The three legs are
the Mediterranean civilizations that gave birth to European culture when
antiquity ended and a new age began: ancient Israel, ancient Greece, and
ancient Rome. Not one of these three, at its origin, was impressive. All three
were surrounded by nations, empires, and city-states that were wealthier,
more populous, and more powerful. But as they developed, they gathered
strength. After they no longer existed as independent entities, their cultural
legacy continued to shape the vision of the Western world, and still does
today.
The Israelites were a small and beleaguered people among the occu-
pants of the eastern Mediterranean region where civilization began—where,
that is, approximately from the third to the first millennium BCE,1 agricul-
ture, commerce, cities and states, writing, and law originated. By around
1200 BCE, they lived in the hills, clustered in villages, and tended their
flocks. They did not occupy the more fertile plains along the coasts of the
Mediterranean or bordering the great rivers of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq
and adjacent regions) and Egypt. They were neither clever merchants like
the Phoenicians; nor builders of temples and pyramids like the Babylonians
and Egyptians; nor masters of a fierce military machine like the Assyrians;
nor skilled at statecraft like the Persians. They shared in the religious culture
of their Canaanite neighbors, who believed in many gods and goddesses
whom they worshiped with ritual sacrifices of produce or livestock. But
the Israelites were unique in believing that their god, whom the West later
esteemed as the one God, had called them to a special mission: to worship
him by obeying his commandments.
The commandments that the God of the Israelites laid down were not
about petty crimes or paying taxes: they demanded deeds of mercy and righ-
teousness, an entire commitment of mind and spirit. This was new. Some
ancient deities of other peoples, notably the Egyptians, issued judgment,

1. This volume employs the abbreviations BCE and CE (Before the Common Era and Com-
mon Era) to denote the principal divisions of past time that scholars now generally prefer to
the older BC and AD (Before Christ and Anno Domini, “the year of the Lord”).

1
2 I. Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

reward, and punishment, but no other ancient religion framed the relation-
ship between the divine and the human overall in terms of moral affiliation.
The Israelites did not always follow God’s commandments, of course, and
their sacred texts record their frequent failures—failures that were greeted
recurrently by God’s anger, forbearance, and forgiveness. Those sacred texts
were compiled in the last centuries BCE in what is called the Hebrew Bible;
Hebrew is the language the Israelites spoke, and “bible” derives from the
Greek word for “book.” From the eighth through the first century BCE,
the Israelites were defeated in turn by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the
Greeks, and the Romans; the latter two naming the region “Judea,” and its
citizens “Jews,” as they are known in the modern age. Having lost their state
and their independence, the Jews scattered throughout the Mediterranean
region and into western and northern Europe. They never abandoned their
ancient faith, inscribed in the Hebrew Bible.
Like the ancient Israelites when the first millennium dawned, the inhab-
itants of the mainland and nearby islands of modern Greece were a poor and
meager population. Farmers, herders, and fishermen, they lived in scattered
settlements divided from each other by rugged mountains or stretches of sea.
Their settlements, or poleis (from which term our word “politics” is derived),
formed around a sacred site, usually a hill, called the acropolis. There, they
believed, a patron deity dwelled, to whom they offered sacrifices, and for
whom, by the seventh century BCE, they began to build wooden temples—
the ancestor of one of the enduring architectural forms of Western culture.
The Greeks were unified by their temple building; by their exquisitely
crafted pottery; and above all by their language, which we know as Greek.
The terms “Greek” and “Greece” derive from the Latin of the Romans who
later triumphed over these people and renamed them. The inhabitants, how-
ever, called themselves the “Hellenes” and lived in “Hellas,” the place where
their language was spoken. The civilization they created we call, accordingly,
“Hellenic,” and in its later manifestations, after Greece was absorbed into the
empire forged by the Macedonian prince Alexander the Great, “Hellenistic.”
The brilliant civilization of these Hellenes rose on the ashes of an earlier
civilization, the Mycenaean. The Mycenaean kingdoms resembled the states
of the ancient Near East with which they were engaged commercially and
militarily, where the fearsome incursions of their skilled warriors left scars
and destruction. Their own civilization suffered annihilation not long after
1200 BCE. From the ruins of their burnt cities and palace complexes, the
Hellenes emerged after a lapse of four centuries, their first great poet Homer
celebrating in two-verse epics2 the heroic deeds of long-dead Mycenaean

2. epic: a long poem, often derived from oral tradition or earlier texts, celebrating in lofty
language the deeds of a legendary hero or the origins of a nation.
Introduction to Section I 3

ancestors that had been preserved in folk memory and transmitted orally.
Like those ancestors, the characters of Homer’s epics were warriors, intent
on violence. They displayed on the battlefield not only their skill at arms,
but also, vividly, their acuity, tenacity, and strength of will. Homer’s two
epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, describing respectively the Greek conquest
of the non-Greek city of Troy and the long, arduous journey home of one
of the victorious heroes, became the bible of the Greeks, and the source of
much of Western literature.
Soon after Homer composed his epics, other poets, now literate—the
Hellenes having adapted the Phoenician alphabet for that purpose—wrote
in both epic and lyric3 genres. The epic poet Hesiod told the origin of the
gods of their people in his Theogony, while his Works and Days narrates
the annual cycle of tasks incumbent on the striving peasant. Over the next
centuries, lyric poets—natives of the many cities now sprouting throughout
Hellas—described exquisitely their personal experiences of love, joy, and fel-
lowship. Among them is the first known female poet, Sappho, whose verse
depicting her erotic desires influenced much ancient poetry, although mod-
erns did not recover her work until the twentieth century, reconstructing it
from quoted fragments, recovered potsherds, and papyrus scraps buried in
desert sands.
In the fifth century, Greek literature reached new heights in the original
genres of drama,4 both tragic and comic, and the prose genres of history,
rhetoric, and philosophy. Greek tragedies returned, as had Homer, to the
imagined ancestors of the Hellenes and their struggles with an implacable
destiny. In the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, mortals of
great vision and purpose strive against the relentless power of the gods, the
athanatoi, who, unlike the humans with whom they toyed, were not bound
by death. The comedies of Aristophanes, meanwhile, like Hesiod’s Works
and Days, consider the events of the present moment, laying bare the absur-
dity of human interactions.
Greek drama, like its precursors, was written in verse, as were the first
philosophical speculations about the nature of the cosmos by the thinkers the
Greeks called sophoi (sages), and we call “pre-Socratics.” They bear the latter
name because they precede Plato’s depiction in prose dialogues of his mentor
Socrates, who is often considered the Western world’s first philosopher, or
“lover of wisdom.” Socrates does not seek to know about the cosmic realm,
but rather the human one: what motivates humans to act; how they know;
3. lyric: lyric verse (originally, in the Greek context, poems sung to the accompaniment of the
lyre, an ancient musical instrument) generally takes the form of a short, non-narrative poem,
expressive of the poet’s emotions.
4. drama: a composition (at first in verse, later also in prose) narrating a story through the
action and dialogue of characters, generally intended for theatrical performance.
4 I. Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

why they love; how best they can live; and will they indeed die. Socrates him-
self wrote nothing, but his pupil Plato conveyed his ideas, much elaborated,
in elegant literary dialogues. Plato’s prose works followed a century of prose
composition, coincident with the era of fifth-century dramatic verse, whose
authors included the two inventors of historical writing, Herodotus and
Thucydides, as well as the Sophists, professional teachers of rhetoric, whose
willingness to manipulate language for advantage provoked the criticism of
both the comedian Aristophanes and the philosopher Socrates.
The thoughts and visions of the Greek poets and philosophers were not
lost—as had been the palaces of the Mycenaeans—when the Greek cities
fell to the Macedonian conqueror Alexander in the fourth century BCE, or
to Roman generals in the second. The Hellenistic civilization hatched from
Alexander’s conquest cherished, edited, copied, and circulated the works of
the Greek masters throughout the Mediterranean region, and bestowed that
legacy upon the Romans.
The Romans, who would later conquer both Jews and Greeks, were at
the outset a scanty band of farmers inhabiting a village in the orbit of the
Etruscans, the lords of northern Italy. Their city on the river Tiber may
indeed have originated, as is told in legend, in the eighth century, when
Homer had not yet composed his epics, and the Hebrew Bible had not yet
been codified in writing. Little more is known until the fifth century, when
Rome, having freed itself from Etruscan sovereignty and the reign of kings,
became a republic ruled by a Senate, the ancestor of our own, composed of
elders from the ruling class of “patricians.” In time, the aristocratic Senate
was balanced by the creation of an Assembly representing the whole of the
adult male citizenry. With a few more modifications, by the second century
BCE, the village of Rome had matured into the Roman Republic, the capi-
tal of an empire. For by this time, Rome dominated nearly the whole of the
Italian peninsula, and had launched a series of wars that won them mastery
of the entire Mediterranean region. Of all the great empires of the ancient
Mediterranean world, Rome was the greatest.
Rome’s political dominance, for a time, lacked corresponding cultural
achievements. In its early stages, Rome borrowed from the neighboring
cultures it admired and then conquered. From the Etruscans, it borrowed
architecture, religious rites, funerary practices (including gladiatorial com-
bat), and an evaluation of women higher than that of Near Eastern societ-
ies or the Greeks. From the Greek colonies clustered in southern Italy, the
Romans took their gods, their mythology, and their theater. The earliest lit-
erary products of ancient Rome that are still extant—the plays of P ­ lautus—
are Latin imitations, nearly translations, of Greek comedies.
Into the last century BCE, Greek models shaped Roman literary works:
Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, which in Latin verse explains Greek
Introduction to Section I 5

Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience; the lyric poems of Catullus;

the poetry of Ovid, especially his Metamorphoses narrating the most appeal-
ing Greek myths; Virgil’s epic Aeneid, patterned on the Homeric epics. Prose
works as well had Greek antecedents: Cicero’s speeches, saturated with prin-
ciples of Roman law and particulars of Roman political life, were derived
from Greek prototypes he had studied under expert rhetoricians trained
in the tradition of the orator Demosthenes. Like Cicero, the elite youth
of Rome sought an advanced education by journeying to Greece, whose
language they had probably learned in childhood—if we are to believe the
pedagogue Quintilian—even before they learned Latin.
While Cicero was still delivering speeches in the Roman forum, and
before Virgil wrote his epic of Rome’s founding, the Republic gave way, after
a bloody unraveling, to an Empire. A monarch now ruled, surrounded by
an ever-growing bureaucracy, consulting as he pleased with a hapless Senate
that endured, nonetheless, until the Empire’s eventual collapse. In the first
two centuries CE, when Rome was politically and militarily at its zenith,
its boundaries at their maximum extent, it continued to produce writers of
the highest quality. Their works, while they still hearkened back to Greek
precedents, also gave expression to what was now a Roman tradition of
thought. Seneca, a moralist, essayist, and playwright, and Tacitus, a histo-
rian and critic, exemplify this era of Roman civilization. So too does M­ arcus
­Aurelius, at once emperor and scholar, whose Meditations, grounded in
Greek philosophical Stoicism,5 were written, appropriately, in Greek.
The last three centuries of the Roman era, in contrast, feature few Latin
authors of comparable stature, the Empire’s literary fortunes waning along
with its political stature. For Rome was losing traction as its borders were
breached and its sovereignty frayed. Migrations of foreign tribal peoples,
mainly Germanic, changed the demographic makeup of the Roman popula-
tion and impaired its administrative and military machinery. In response to
these challenges, Roman leaders divided the empire into two zones, headed
by two emperors: a western zone anchored in Rome, and an eastern zone
anchored in Constantinople—a new city founded by the emperor ­Constantine
in the fourth century on the site of the older Greek one, Byzantium.
During the turbulent decades of the late fifth and early sixth century
CE, the western empire faltered or, as historians have described it, “fell.” Its
governing structures crumbled, and Germanic kings took the place of sena-
tors and emperors. The eastern empire, soon abandoning Latin for Greek
and now referred to as “Byzantine,” endured into the fifteenth century,

5. Stoicism: a school of late Greek (Hellenistic) philosophy that posits the cosmic order of
the universe, governed by laws of nature, knowable by reason, to accord with which the sage
must lead a life of virtuous self-restraint.
6 I. Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

when it, too, fell—to a new enemy, the Ottoman Turks. The administra-
tive division of the Roman Empire into West and East prefigured a cultural
divergence between the two zones as they developed from the fifth century.
The cultural organism that emerged in the West in the aftermath of imperial
Rome constitutes what we call Western civilization, whose literary product
is Western literature.
Meanwhile, during the same five centuries that saw the triumph and
fall of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic culture that Rome had adopted
as its own was yielding to a competitor: Christianity. An offshoot of ancient
Judaism, Christianity had become the principal cultural force in the Medi-
terranean region. Sheltering within the Roman shell, initially ignored, then
persecuted, then legalized, and at last established as the official state religion,
it refined its message and strengthened its institutions. When Rome fell in
the West, the system of churches Christians had built survived, led by gover-
nors called bishops who wielded authority that secular leaders had vacated;
and defined by a theology, or belief system, elaborated by the learned think-
ers known as the “Fathers” of the church.
Christianity centers on the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew learned
in the Hebrew Scriptures, who preached compellingly the imminent com-
ing of the kingdom of God. Jewish leaders viewed him as a threat, and
the Roman governor of Jerusalem, the principal city of Judea, ordered his
execution. According to his followers, the crucified Jesus rose from the dead,
having atoned by his death for the sins of those who believed in him. Thus
purified, or “saved,” they would, like Jesus, attain life after death, the very
immortality the Greeks had deemed impossible for humankind. The story
of Jesus the “Christ,” meaning “savior” in Greek and signifying “Messiah” in
Hebrew, is told in the New Testament. For Christians, this brief collection
of narrative accounts, or “Gospels,” history, letters, and prophecy, consti-
tutes the counterpart and fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible, which they call
the Old Testament.
 Chapter 1
The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

Introduction
Composed in its final form over some five hundred years (eighth to third
centuries BCE), and based on texts and legends reaching back perhaps as
many more, the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament,
is an amalgam of histories, narratives, laws and ritual prescriptions, devo-
tional poetry, wisdom literature, proverbs, and prophecy; it is distributed in
thirty-nine (Jewish and Protestant Bibles), or forty-six (Catholic), or fifty-
one (Eastern Orthodox churches) books.1 Of immeasurable richness and
variety, it has a coherent theme: that the one God, creator of the universe
and all living things, chose the Jews—the ancient Hebrews or Israelites—for
a special relationship, or covenant, with him, laying upon them a special
responsibility to obey his commandments. Those commandments, ranging
from high moral injunctions to detailed rules for ritual practice and purity,
are to be remembered and taught to each new generation so that the com-
mitment to the worship of the one God winds through the ages in a great
solemn chain linking past and future.
Selections are included here from Genesis and Exodus, the first two
books of the Bible (which are at the same time the first two of the Torah,
or the “Law,” consisting of the Bible’s first five books); the Psalms; Job;
and Isaiah. From Genesis is taken the account of Abraham’s response to
God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac—a response that demonstrates the
magnitude of Abraham’s faith. From Exodus is taken the first narration of
God’s delivery to Moses, the Israelite leader, of the Ten Commandments,
the principal moral laws binding the Israelites in their covenant with God.
From the one hundred and fifty Psalms, excerpts from two are selected that
express wonderment at God’s majesty and reliance on his omniscience and
omnipotence. From the Book of Job—an extended tale of one righteous
man’s sufferings and questioning of God’s justice—is taken a passage in
which God asserts the immensity of his power. From the second section of
Isaiah are taken two chapters in which God comforts his people exiled in
Babylon, and offers spiritual sustenance to those who are in eternal covenant

1. In addition to a scattering of others, mostly later, not included in the official, or “canoni-
cal,” collection, and referred to as deuterocanonical, pseudepigraphic, or apocryphal.

7
8 Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

with him. The New International Version is used, a translation that gives
the biblical text in readily accessible modern English.
Examined here as a collection of literary texts, the Hebrew Bible is a
sacred book for the some fourteen million Jews worldwide, cherished as
the basis of their faith and their identity as a people. As the Old Testa-
ment, it is central as well for Christians, the world’s most populous religious
group, and a respected book as well for Muslims, the second most numer-
ous, whose own sacred book, the Qur’an, includes characters and themes
drawn from its pages.

$$$

1. Genesis 22:1–18
God tests Abraham’s faith
Abraham must demonstrate his faith in God by sacrificing his son Isaac, the
treasure of his later years—the sacrifice of a child to win the favor of a deity
being a feature of many ancient religions. Isaac, unknowing, accompanies
his father to the mountaintop where the deed is to be done; Abraham binds
the child, and lays him on top of the wood that will burn the sacrificial
offering. At that moment, an angel, a messenger from God, commands
Abraham to stop and not harm his son. Abraham quickly finds a ram in the
bushes to sacrifice instead. And the angel conveys God’s message: because
his faith was so strong that he was willing to sacrifice his beloved son, God
will make an eternal covenant with Abraham. His descendants will be “as
numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore,” they will
vanquish their enemies, and through them “all nations on earth will be
blessed,” because he obeyed the Lord.

Genesis 22:1–18
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—
Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offer-
ing on a mountain I will show you.”
Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He
took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut
enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had
told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place
in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while
2. Exodus 20:1–21 9

I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back
to you.”
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son
Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went
on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the
burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt
offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built
an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid
him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and
took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him
from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him.
Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me
your son, your only son.”
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its
horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offer-
ing instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Pro-
vide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be
provided.”
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time
and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done
this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you
and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the
sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities
of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be
blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

$$$

2. Exodus 20:1–21
God’s words delivered by Moses to the Israelites
On two stone tablets inscribed by the hand of God are displayed the Ten
Commandments, as they are generally named: the principal laws of God by
which his people are to be bound forevermore. The leader of the “exodus,”
10 Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises
or journey, of the Israelites who have fled enslavement in Egypt to seek the
land God has promised them in Canaan,2 Moses has received the tablets
from God at Mount Sinai in the desert, and delivers them to those whom
God has chosen. Thus is sealed the covenant the Lord has made with his
people.

Exodus 20:1–21
And God spoke all these words:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the
land of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in
heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not
bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jeal-
ous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and
fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand
generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord
will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor
and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your
God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daugh-
ter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner
residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and
the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the
land the Lord your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your
neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything
that belongs to your neighbor.”
When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet
and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a
distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do
not have God speak to us or we will die.”

2. Canaan: region bordering the Mediterranean in the ancient Near East.

3. Job 38, 40, and 42 11

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you,
so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”
The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick
darkness where God was.

$$$

3. Job 38, 40, and 42

From within a storm cloud, God rebukes Job
A good man who has committed no wrong, Job suffers unimaginable pain:
the loss of his wealth, the death of his children, his bodily afflictions; his
wife counsels him to “curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) and his friends give
him useless advice. Job does not blame God, but questions God’s justice.
God replies, rebuking him from the depths of a storm cloud, challenging
him to know what God knows, to see what he sees, or do what he can
do. Job comes to understand his smallness, out of all proportion to God’s
almighty greatness. He is sorry and he repents.

Job 38, 40, and 42

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2
“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy? . . .
33
“Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
34
“Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
12 Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises
35
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? . . .”

40 The Lord said to Job:

2
“Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”
3
Then Job answered the Lord:
4
“I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
5
I spoke once, but I have no answer—
twice, but I will say no more.”

6
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:

7
“Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

8
“Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
9
Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like his?
10
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
11
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look at all who are proud and bring them low,
12
look at all who are proud and humble them,
crush the wicked where they stand.
13
Bury them all in the dust together;
shroud their faces in the grave.
14
Then I myself will admit to you
that your own right hand can save you. . . .”

42 Then Job replied to the Lord:

2
“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
4. Psalms 8 and 139 13
4
“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

$$$

4. Psalms 8 and 139

The glory of God, the creator, guardian, and hope of humankind
Psalm 8, one of the earliest composed, celebrates the majestic power
and creativity of God, who has appointed human beings—whom he has
made but “a little lower than the angels,” and “crowned . . . with glory and
honor”—to do his work on earth. Psalm 139, one of the later psalms, cel-
ebrates God as well; but he is a personal God, who intimately knows the
person who addresses him: it was he who had “created my inmost being,”
the psalmist writes, and “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” God
does not only know his worshiper, but will test him, and bring him to ever-
lasting life.

Psalm 8
1
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
......
3
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
14 Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises
7
all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8
the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 139
1
You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
5. Isaiah 40 and 55 15
15
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you. . . .
23
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

$$$

5. Isaiah 40 and 55
God offers comfort to those suffering in desolation
The prophet Isaiah, the second of the three authors gathered under that
name, writes during the nearly fifty-year exile in Babylon of the leaders
of the Israelites. In chapter 40, he delivers God’s comforting words to his
people, conveying the promise of return and reconciliation. In chapter 55,
he delivers God’s invitation to his people—freely offering spiritual food
and drink to those who are “thirsty” for fellowship with the Lord—to live in
everlasting covenant with him.

Isaiah 40
1
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins. . . .
16 Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises
21
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23
He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24
No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. . . .

Do you not know?

28

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

29
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 55
1
“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
5. Isaiah 40 and 55 17
2
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
3
Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David. . . .

8
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12
You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
13
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”
 Chapter 2
Greek Origins

Introduction
The Hebrew Bible, recording the experience of a human community with
an overpowering spiritual force, is the unique and incomparable literary
product of the Israelites. Greek literature, documenting the quest for mean-
ing in the cosmos beyond and the human soul within, is the startlingly
original and profound achievement of the Hellenes, the inhabitants of
the poor and remote mainland of Greece and nearby Aegean islands and
colonies. As Greece emerged from its Dark Ages—the four-century era of
cultural stagnation that followed the fall of Mycenaean civilization after
1200 BCE—its commerce and manufactures revived, polis-formation and
temple-building thrived, and unnamed poets assembled the fragmentary
oral accounts of gods and heroes that had never been forgotten, though the
technology of writing had died and would need to be rediscovered. The
epics of Homer (active late eighth to early seventh century BCE)—the ear-
liest to survive, the first and unequalled expressions of this Archaic period,
as it is known—circulated only in performance by professional reciters of
verse, the rhapsodes, until they were written down most likely in the sixth
century BCE.
Homer’s epics depict an organized company of gods and goddesses, the
chief twelve of whom dwell on Mount Olympus on the Greek mainland.
Although they are moved by the same passions—though on a larger scale—
that drive human actions, these deities are supremely powerful and sub-
limely immortal. At the same time, Homer portrays the gallery of heroes,
the nearly forgotten shadows of earlier Mycenaean kings, who as rulers of
the cities and regions of Hellas band together for a ten-year siege of Troy, a
non-Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor facing Greece across the narrow
Hellespont, the sea corridor between the Aegean and Black Sea. The Iliad
narrates the last moments of the battle for Troy, and the Odyssey, the adven-
tures of one of the survivors, the hero Odysseus, on his ten-year journey to
return to his homeland, the island of Ithaca. The gods intervene variously
and contradictorily in the war and its aftermath, favoring this or that Greek
or Trojan combatant. But the key figures of Homer’s epics are the human
beings who face fateful decisions and irremediable conflicts as they strive to
do what they must in the face of inescapable destinies and inevitable death.

18
Introduction 19

The selection given here is from the Iliad, and focuses on the chief protago-
nist and victor of that battle, Achilles.
Just as Homer had explored the interactions between gods and humans,
crafting the Greek lexicon of twelve Olympian deities who are principal
actors throughout the Greek literary tradition and its successors, Hesiod
(active c. 750–c. 650 BCE), composing his Theogony some fifty or one hun-
dred years later, assumes the task of explaining their origin and genealogy.
His Works and Days, from which is taken the selection given here, acknowl-
edges the supercelestial forces that control human action, but has the more
humble purpose of prescribing, in the form of an instruction to his brother
Perses, what the mere human mortal must do to prosper as best he can in
a world corseted by the brutality of the rich and cosmic limitations beyond
his control.
In the seventh century, not long after Hesiod had composed his epic
poems, a generation of authors designated as Lyric poets emerged in several
Greek centers. Their verse is called “lyric” because it was meant to be sung to
the accompaniment of the stringed musical instrument, the lyre, probably
in the company of a small group in a domestic setting, in contrast to epic
verse, which is believed to have been recited to large gatherings. As such,
it was suited to the cultivation of aristocratic leisure characteristic of the
mature polis system. The lyric genre flourished through the end of antiquity
and again from the European Renaissance on into modern times.
Lyric verse is intensely personal, giving expression to passions of anger,
loss, and especially love. As such, it is especially interesting that one of the
foremost lyric poets was Sappho (c. 630–570 BCE) of Mytilene, a city on
the island of Lesbos. The only significant female author to emerge in antiq-
uity, Sappho was highly admired into the first centuries CE, after which
exemplars of her works disappeared from sight. Although some passages of
her verse were preserved in quotations by others, much remained unknown
until the late nineteenth century, when her works began to be recovered
from potsherd troves unearthed by archeologists and papyrus scraps buried
in desert sands. Through that process, adding to the fragments already in
hand, perhaps ten percent of Sappho’s verse has been reconstituted. Likely
composed within or for a community of women, it is remarkable for its
powerful expression of homoerotic desire.
As the Archaic gave way to the Classical age of Greece in the fifth cen-
tury BCE, the two main forms of dramatic verse, tragedy and comedy,
developed especially in Athens, then the region’s dominant city. Like epic—
and unlike lyric poetry—dramatic verse was performed in a public arena,
most importantly in the annual City Dionysia, a civic festival in honor of
the god Dionysius. There, among other celebrations spanning many days,
three days were eventually designated for the performance of tragedies and
20 Chapter 2. Greek Origins

one day for comedy. The playwrights were producers as well as composers
of their plays, which were performed by male citizens, participating as actors
(two or three in each play) or members of the chorus, who both sang and
danced before an audience of some 15,000 viewers. A committee of judges
selected a winner in each category, tragedy and comedy, a prize for which
the participants competed vigorously.
Like epic poetry, tragedy explores the corpus of myth and legend formed
before the historical rebirth of Greek civilization but on a smaller scale. It
focuses on moments of irreconcilable conflict between mortals—especially
the searing conflicts between fathers, mothers, children, and siblings, or
between male and female—within a cosmic framework dominated by the
gods. Its aim is not to recall the glories of a lost heroic epoch, but to explore
the passions driving those individuals and to assert of eternal truths of the
limits of human life and action. The three playwrights Aeschylus (c. 525–
c. 455 BCE), Sophocles (c. 496–c. 406), and Euripides (c. 480–c. 406)—
whose careers overlapped—were the peerless creators of hundreds of trag-
edies, of which just thirty-two in total survive: seven by Aeschylus; seven
by Sophocles; and eighteen by Euripides. Selections are included here from
plays by each writer offering portraits of towering and doomed personali-
ties: Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Oedipus the King by Sophocles, and Medea
by Euripides.1
Comedy had a different purpose than tragedy. Its aim was to amuse and
outrage, but in so doing, to criticize contemporary behavior, public policy,
and cultural trends. As such, it was not concerned with gods and heroes—as
was tragedy and before it epic—yet it was not dismissive of deity or ancient
ideals. Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386), in fact, the sole comic playwright
whose work survives from this era (eleven of forty plays), was a conservative,
and his biting satire and ruthless ridicule of political and cultural leaders
summoned them to meet the standard set by an earlier generation.
Among the targets of Aristophanes’s knife-sharp humor were the
­Sophists (sophistes), a group of thinkers and teachers who circulated through
the Greek cities and were a major presence in Athens. They taught rhetori-
cal skills to young aristocrats seeking powerful positions in government or
success in cases brought before the law courts. As experts in verbal expres-
sion, they taught the skill of persuasion, a skill that sometimes entailed the
manipulative use of language. Previously, the principal Greek intellectuals
had been known as “sages” (sophoi), whose investigations of the nature of
the cosmos, and whose theories about matter, being, and change remained
1. Texts in this chapter are discussed in chronological order of their composition with the
exception of Euripides’s Medea, which was first produced a few years before Sophocles’s Oedi-
pus; but since Euripides was the younger poet, and his work is generally understood to be
more modernizing, his play is discussed after Sophocles’s.
Introduction 21

fundamental in subsequent scientific thought in the Western world. Aristo-

phanes viewed the intellectual product of the Sophists, in contrast to their
predecessors, as deceptive and dangerous. In the Clouds, an excerpt from
which appears in this chapter, he mercilessly lampoons the Sophists, whom
he mistakenly personifies as the Athenian thinker Socrates.
But Socrates was not a Sophist, although in externals, he resembled
them: he taught publicly in the Athenian marketplace and other venues, and
he was an expert at making fine distinctions in argumentation. Unlike the
Sophists, however, he consistently held that the object of reasoning was the
discovery of truth, and certainly not career advancement or financial gain.
He called himself a “philosopher” (philosophos)—not someone who was
wise, that is, or a teacher of wisdom, but rather a lover, or seeker, of wisdom.
He is often considered to be the first philosopher of the Western tradition.
Socrates is the key figure in most of the works of Plato (c. 428/427–
c. 348/347), his student. In engaging and readable literary dialogues, Plato
depicts Socrates interacting with friends, students, and opponents, always
gently leading them through ladders of reasoning that yield the certainty
of truth. In the sum, these dialogues present a fairly consistent philoso-
phy, called Platonism, in which the material world we encounter through
our senses is viewed as only a filtered representation of a greater reality of
abstract essences, or Forms. The philosopher’s goal is to know the ultimate
truth of things, the Forms themselves—and may come to do so only when
his immortal soul is released from the body in which it is held captive. That
argument is especially well presented in the dialogue Phaedo, from which
a selection appears here. It blasts apart the conundrum that lay at the core
of Greek thought: the predicament of death-bound mortals in the face of
deathless gods.
From the era of Socrates and Plato, Athens became the center of philo-
sophical thought not only in Greece, but also in the whole Mediterranean
region. This political and cultural unification followed upon the conquests
of the Macedonian prince Alexander the Great, who in his youth was the
pupil of Plato’s pupil, the philosopher Aristotle. The era that followed the
Alexandrian conquest is called Hellenistic, indicating its kinship to, and
divergence from, the Hellenic civilization that is the subject of this chap-
ter. In the Hellenistic era, the philosophical and literary products of the
Hellenic were systematically studied, collected, imitated, diffused, and
implanted throughout the Mediterranean region. The leaders of Rome, city,
republic and empire, were schooled in the Hellenistic tradition, and thus
inherited the legacy of Greece.

$$$
22 Chapter 2. Greek Origins

1. Homer, Iliad (c. 800–700 BCE)

The Iliad is the epic account of the fall of Troy, or Ilion; but it is even
more the account of the actions and destinies of the victorious Greek
heroes, especially Achilles. Homer tells us so in line 1, where he invokes
the Muse to empower him to sing of the anger that gripped his hero:
“Sing, Goddess, Achilles’s rage.” Achilles was angry because Agamem-
non, the chief of the expedition, had snatched away his concubine;
proud and furious, he withdraws from the battle. The Greeks are hard-
pressed and need Achilles to return, and a delegation is sent to persuade
him to do so. He refuses. But when his comrade Patroclus, determined to
aid the Greek cause, dons Achilles’s armor, joins the battle, and is killed,
the anger of Achilles surges to new heights. Determined to avenge his
friend’s death, he charges to the front—unarmed, as his armor and weap-
ons had been taken by Hector from the corpse of Patroclus—and howls
murderous rage at the enemy. Soon his goddess mother will procure him
a divinely wrought shield and weapons, and he will conquer Troy, and
vanquish its defender, Hector. In these passages from books 9 and 18,
Homer portrays Achilles as a fully developed individual, asserting his
will, driven by ferocious passions, and possessing limitless strength, the
foremost hero of the Greeks.

The Iliad
A delegation sent by Agamemnon and led by Odysseus, seeks Achilles out in his
tent to which he has withdrawn in anger.

They went in tandem along the seething shore,

Praying over and over to the god in the surf
For an easy time in convincing Achilles.
They came to the Myrmidons’2 ships and huts
And found him plucking clear notes on a lyre3. . .
Accompanying himself as he sang the glories
Of heroes in war. He was alone with Patroclus,
Who sat in silence waiting for him to finish.
His visitors came forward, Odysseus first,
And stood before him. Surprised, Achilles
Rose from his chair still holding his lyre.
Patroclus, when he saw them, also rose,
And Achilles, swift and sure, received them:

2. Myrmidons: the followers of Achilles.

3. lyre: a stringed instrument.
1. Homer, Iliad 23

“Welcome. Things must be bad to bring you here,

The Greeks I love best, even in my rage.”

With these words Achilles led them in

And had them sit on couches and rugs
Dyed purple,4 and he called to Patroclus:
“A larger bowl, son of Menoetius,
And stronger wine, and cups all around.
My dearest friends are beneath my roof.” . . .

At Achilles’s request, Patroclus prepares food and drink for the Greek visitors.

They helped themselves to the meal before them,

And when they had enough of food and drink,
Ajax nodded to Phoenix. Odysseus saw this,
And filling a cup he lifted it to Achilles:

“To your health, Achilles, for a generous feast.

There is no shortage in Agamemnon’s hut,
Or now here in yours, of satisfying food.
But the pleasures of the table are not on our minds.
We fear the worst. It is doubtful
That we can save the ships without your strength.
The Trojans and their allies are encamped
Close to the wall that surrounds our black ships
And are betting that we can’t keep them
From breaking through. They may be right.
Zeus5 has been encouraging them with signs,
Lightning on the right. Hector trusts this—
And his own strength—and has been raging
Recklessly, like a man possessed.
He is praying for dawn to come early
So he can fulfill his threat to lop the horns
From the ships’ sterns, burn the hulls to ash,
And slaughter the Achaeans dazed in the smoke.
This is my great fear, that the gods make good
Hector’s threats, dooming us to die in Troy
Far from the fields of home. Up with you, then,
If you intend at all, even at this late hour,

4. Expensive purple dye was associated with royalty.

5. Zeus: the foremost of the twelve Olympian gods.
24 Chapter 2. Greek Origins

To save our army from these howling Trojans.

Think of yourself, of the regret you will feel
For harm that will prove irreparable.
This is the last chance to save your countrymen. . . .

Agamemnon is offering you worthy gifts

If you will give up your grudge. Hear me
While I list the gifts6 he proposed in his hut:
Seven unfired tripods, ten gold bars,
Twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen horses—
Solid, prizewinning racehorses
Who have won him a small fortune—
And seven women who do impeccable work,
Surpassingly beautiful women from Lesbos
He chose for himself when you captured the town.
And with them will be the woman he took from you,
Briseus’s daughter, and he will solemnly swear
He never went to her bed and lay with her
Or did what is natural between women and men.
All this you may have at once. And if it happens
That the gods allow us to sack Priam’s city,
You may when the Greeks are dividing the spoils
Load a ship to the brim with gold and bronze,
And choose for yourself the twenty Trojan women
Who are next in beauty to Argive Helen.
And if we return to the rich land of Argos,
You would marry his daughter . . . .”

Odysseus names more benefits Achilles would have from Agamemnon if he re-
turned to the fight.

“All this he will do if you give up your grudge.

But if Agamemnon is too hateful to you,
Himself and his gifts, think of all the others
Suffering up and down the line, and of the glory
You will win from them. They will honor you
Like a god.
And don’t forget Hector.
You just might get him now. He’s coming in close,

6. In this primitive era, there were few material goods of value; here are listed iron imple-
ments—tripods, cauldrons—along with gold, horses, and women.
1. Homer, Iliad 25

Deluded into thinking that he has no match

In the Greek army that has landed on his beach.”

And Achilles, strong, swift, and godlike:

“Son of Laertes in the line of Zeus,

Odysseus the strategist—I can see
That I have no choice but to speak my mind
And tell you exactly how things are going to be.
Either that or sit through endless sessions
Of people whining at me. I hate it like I hate hell
The man who says one thing and thinks another.
So this is how I see it.
I cannot imagine Agamemnon,
Or any other Greek, persuading me,
Not after the thanks I got for fighting this war,
Going up against the enemy day after day.
It doesn’t matter if you stay in camp or fight—
In the end, everybody comes out the same.
Coward and hero get the same reward:
You die whether you slack off or work.
And what do I have for all my suffering,
Constantly putting my life on the line? . . .”

Achilles details his great exploits, and the insufficiency of rewards he received
from Agamemnon, who to top it all off, took from Achilles the woman he loved.

“What the others did get they at least got to keep.

They all have their prizes, everyone but me—
I’m the only Greek from whom he took something back.
He should be happy with the woman he has.
Why do the Greeks have to fight the Trojans?
Why did Agamemnon lead the army to Troy
If not for the sake of fair-haired Helen?7
Do you have to be descended from Atreus
To love your mate? Every decent, sane man
Loves his woman and cares for her, as I did,
Loved her from my heart. It doesn’t matter
That I won her with my spear. He took her,

7. Helen: the wife of Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon; her abduction by the Trojan prince
Paris triggered the battle against Troy.
26 Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Took her right out of my hands, cheated me,

And now he thinks he’s going to win me back?
He can forget it. I know how things stand.
It’s up to you, Odysseus, and the other kings
To find a way to keep the fire from the ships.
He’s been pretty busy without me, hasn’t he,
Building a wall, digging a moat around it,
Pounding in stakes for a palisade.
None of that stuff will hold Hector back. . . .”

Achilles threatens to load his ships tomorrow and set off for his home in Phthia.

“So report back to him everything I say,

And report it publicly—get the Greeks angry,
In case the shameless bastard still thinks
He can steal us blind. He doesn’t dare
Show his dogface here. Fine. I don’t want
To have anything to do with him either.
He cheated me, wronged me. Never again.
He’s had it. He can go to hell in peace,
The half-wit that Zeus has made him.
His gifts? His gifts mean nothing to me. . . .

Not even if Agamemnon gave me gifts

As numberless as grains of sand or dust,
Would he persuade me or touch my heart—
Not until he’s paid in full for all my grief.
His daughter? I would not marry
The daughter of Agamemnon son of Atreus
If she were as lovely as golden Aphrodite
Or could weave like owl-eyes Athena.8
Let him choose some other Achaean
More to his lordly taste. If the gods
Preserve me and I get home safe
Peleus will find me a wife himself. . . .
I’ve always wanted to take a wife there,
A woman to have and to hold, someone with whom
I can enjoy all the goods old Peleus has won.
Nothing is worth my life. . . .

8. Aphrodite and Athena: goddesses of love and wisdom respectively, two of the Olympian gods.
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