Greek Poets & Philosophers

Early Greek Poets

• Homer (8th c BCE)--Iliad, Odyssey, Homeric Hymns
   

• Sappho (late 7^th c. BCE) "Of an estimated 12,000 lines of verse attributed to her, virtually all is lost, much having been destroyed by the medieval Church: one complete poem, some citations, and fragments survive. Originally accompanied by lyre, her poetry included cultic hymns, mythological narrative, epithalamia, satire, and intensely passionate poetry about women." (Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States)

Tragic Playwrights of Classical Greece

• Aeschylus 525-456 BCE
   
• Sophocles 496-406 BCE
   
• Euripides 480-406 BCE

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound (ca. 478?) + Oresteia trilogy (456); Seven Against Thebes

Sophocles. Oedipus Rex (date unknown), Antigone (early) + Oedipus at Colonnus (prod. 401)

Euripides. Medea (431) + The Trojan Women (415), The Bacchae (405), Electra, Heracles--and Hippolytus (429 BCE), on which Racine's Phedre(1677) and O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms (1924) are based.

Classical Greek Comic Playwright: Aristophanes c. 448-385 BCE

The Birds (414 BCE), Lysistrata (411), The Wasps, The Frogs (405)

Classical Greek Philosophers (many others are less well known)

Socrates 470-400 BCE (wrote nothing but appears as main character in Plato's Dialogues)

Plato 428-348 BCE The Republic + Dialogues

Aristotle 384-322 BCE Poetics, Rhetoric, Nicomachean Ethics, & many works on nature and logic