The first great writer of history was Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who was also a geographer and anthropologist. The theme of his history, written in large part for Athenian readers, is the clash between Europe and Asia culminating in the Persian War. The account of the war itself, which occupies roughly the second half of the work, must have been composed by means of laborious inquiry from those whose memories were long enough to recall events that happened when Herodotus was a child or earlier. The whole history, though in places badly put together, is magnificent in its compass and unified by the consciousness of an overriding power keeping the universe and humankind in check.

Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400) was perhaps the first person to apply a first-class mind to a prolonged examination of the nature of political power and the factors by which policies of states are determined. As a member of the board of generals he acquired inside knowledge of the way policy is shaped. After his failure to save Amphipolis in 424, he spent 20 years in exile, which he used as an opportunity for getting at the truth from both sides. The result was a history of the war narrowly military and political but of the most penetrating quality. Thucydides investigated the effect on individuals and nations both of psychological characteristics and of chance. His findings were interpreted through the many speeches given to his characters.

Just as Thucydides had linked his work to the point at which Herodotus had stopped, so Xenophon (c. 430–died before 350) began his Hellenica where Thucydides’ unfinished history breaks off in 411. He carried his history down to 362. His work was superficial by comparison with that of Thucydides, but he wrote with authority of military affairs and appears at his best in the Anabasis, an account of his participation in the enterprise of the Greek mercenary army, with which the Persian prince Cyrus tried to expel his brother from the throne, and of the adventurous march of the Greeks, after the murder of their leaders by the Persians, from near Babylon to the Black Sea coast. Xenophon also wrote works in praise of Socrates, of whom his understanding was superficial. No other historical writing of the 4th century has survived except for a substantial papyrus fragment containing a record of events of the years 396–395.

Rhetoric and oratory

In few societies has the power of fluent and persuasive speech been more highly valued than it was in Greece, and even in Homer there are speeches that are pieces of finished rhetoric. But it was the rise of democratic forms of government that provided a great incentive to study and instruction in the arts of persuasion, which were equally necessary for political debate in the assembly and for attack and defense in the law courts.

The formal study of rhetoric seems to have originated in Syracuse c. 460 bc with Corax and his pupils Tisias and Gorgias (died c. 376); Gorgias was influential also in Athens. Corax is reputed to have been the first to write a handbook on the art of rhetoric, dealing with such topics as arguments from probability and the parts into which speeches should be divided. Most of the Sophists had pretensions as teachers of the art of speaking, especially Protagoras, who postulated that the weaker of two arguments could by skill be made to prevail over the stronger, and Prodicus of Ceos.

Antiphon (c. 480–411), the first professional speech writer, was an influential opponent of democracy. Three speeches of his, all dealing with homicide cases, have been preserved, as have three “tetralogies,” sets of two pairs of speeches containing the arguments to be used on both sides in imaginary cases of homicide. In them ideas are expressed concerning bloodguilt and the duty of vengeance. Antiphon’s style is bare and rather crudely antithetical. Gorgias from Sicily, who visited Athens in 427, introduced an elaborate balance and symmetry emphasized by rhyme and assonance. Thrasymachus of Chalcedon made a more solid contribution to the evolution of a periodic and rhythmical style.

Andocides (c. 440–died after 391), an orator who spent much of his life in exile from Athens, wrote three speeches containing vivid narrative; but as an orator he was admittedly amateurish. Lysias (c. 455–died after 380) lived at Athens for many years as a resident alien and supported himself by writing speeches when he lost his wealth. His speeches, some of them written for litigants of humble station, show dexterous adaptation to the character of the speaker, though the most interesting of all is his own attack on Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants imposed on Athens by the Spartans in 404 bc.

The 12 extant speeches of Isaeus, who was active in the first half of the 4th century bc, throw light on aspects of Athenian law. Isocrates, who was influential in Athens for half a century before his death in 338, perfected a periodic prose style that, through the medium of Latin, was widely accepted as a pattern; and he helped give rhetoric its predominance in the educational system of the ancient world. In his writings, which took the form of speeches but were more like pamphlets, Isocrates shows some insight into the political troubles besetting Greece, with its endless bickering between cities incapable of cooperation.

The greatest of the orators was Demosthenes (384–322), supreme in vehemence and power, though lacking in some of the more delicate shadings of rhetorical skill. His speeches were mainly political, and he is best remembered for his energetic opposition to the rise of Macedonia under its king Philip II, embodied in the three “Philippics.” After Demosthenes, oratory faded, together with the political setting to which it owed its preeminence. Three more 4th-century-bc writers need only be mentioned: Aeschines (390–c. 314; the main political opponent of Demosthenes), Hyperides (c. 390–322), and Lycurgus (c. 390–324).

Philosophical prose

Prose as a medium of philosophy was written as early as the 6th century. Practitioners include Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Philosophical prose was the greatest literary achievement of the 4th century. It was influenced by Socrates (who himself wrote nothing) and his characteristic method of teaching by question and answer, which led naturally to the dialogue. Alexamenus of Teos and Antisthenes, both disciples of Socrates, were the first to use it; but the greatest exponent of Socratic dialogue was the Athenian Plato (428/427–348/347). Shortly after Socrates’ death in 399 Plato wrote some dialogues, mostly short; to this group of work belong the Apology, Protagoras, and Gorgias. In the decade after 385 he wrote a series of brilliant works, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, and the Republic. His Socrates is the most carefully drawn character in Greek literature. Subsequent dialogues became more austerely philosophical; Socrates tended increasingly to be a mere spokesman for Plato’s thought; and in the last of his works, the Laws, he was replaced by a colourless “Athenian.” Plato’s style is a thing of matchless beauty, though ancient critics, who were likely to entangle themselves in the rules they had invented, found it too poetical.

Plato’s pupil Aristotle (384–322) was admired in antiquity for his style; but his surviving works are all of the “esoteric” sort, intended for use in connection with his philosophical and scientific school, the Lyceum. They are without literary grace, and at times they approximate lecture notes. His works on literary subjects, the Rhetoric, and above all, the Poetics, had an immense effect on literary theory after the Renaissance. In the ancient world, Aristotelian doctrine was known mainly through the works of his successor Theophrastus (c. 372–288/287), now lost except for two books on plants and a famous collection of 30 Characters, sketches of human types much imitated by English writers of the 17th century.

Late forms of poetry

The creative period of the Hellenistic Age was practically contained within the span of the 3rd century bc. To this period belonged three outstanding poets: Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. Theocritus (c. 310–250), born at Syracuse, is best known as the inventor of bucolic mime, or pastoral poetry, in which he presented scenes from the lives of shepherds and goatherds in Sicily and southern Italy. He also dramatized scenes from middle-class life; and in his second idyll the character Simaetha, who tries by incantations to recover the love of the man who has deserted her, touches the fringe of tragedy. He also used another Hellenistic form, the epyllion, a short scene of heroic narrative poetry in which heroic stature is often reduced by playful realism and delicate psychology. In his hands the hexameter attained a lyric purity and sweetness unrivaled elsewhere. He was the first of the nature poets, succeeded by Moschus and Bion.

Callimachus (flourished about 260) was a scholar as well as a poet. His most famous work, of which substantial fragments survive, was the Aitia, an elegiac poem describing the origins of various rites and customs. It was heavy with learning but diversified by passages of entertaining narrative. His six hymns show immense poetic expertise but no religious feeling, for the gods of Olympus had long since become obsolete. Callimachus also wrote epigrams, and fragments survive of iambi (“iambs”). The form was widely used throughout the 3rd century to denounce the vanities of the world. Sometimes, in a mixture of prose and verse, these pieces had links with satire; and their chief exponents were Bion the Borysthenite, Menippus of Gadara, Cercidas of Megalopolis, and Phoenix of Colophon.

Callimachus avoided epic in favour of the greater intensity possible in shorter works. The last surviving Classical Greek epic was written by his successor at Alexandria, Apollonius of Rhodes (born about 295). Apollonius’ account of the voyage of the Argonauts is so full of local legend that the coherence of the poem is lost; but the story of Medea’s wild passion for Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, is marked by a new sort of romantic awareness that is fully realized in the episode of Dido’s passion for Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid.

The desire to combine learning with poetry led to the revival of didactic verse. The Phaenomena of Aratus of Soli (c. 315–c. 245) is a versification of a treatise on the stars by Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390–c. 340). Chance has preserved the poems of Nicander (probably 2nd century) on the unlikely subjects of cures for bites and antidotes to poisons.

The mimes of Herodas (3rd century), short realistic sketches of low life in iambic verse, have affinities with the non-pastoral mimes of Theocritus. They perhaps give a hint as to the character of the literature of popular entertainment, now largely lost. Mime, especially pantomime, was the main entertainment throughout the early Roman Empire.

After the middle of the 3rd century, poetic activity largely died away, though the great period of scholarship at Alexandria and at Pergamum was still to come. The names of a few poets are known: Euphorion (born about 275) of Chalcis and Parthenius (flourished 1st century bc), the teacher of Virgil. Thereafter Greek poetry practically ceased, apart from a sporadic revival in the 4th century ad. An exception exists in the case of epigrammatic poetry in elegiac couplets, surviving mainly in two compilations, the Planudean and Palatine anthologies.