The Golden Age

ARCHITECTURE

• The athenians surrounded themselves with beauty (building temples, gymnasiums, and theaters)
• The artist decorated these structures with their finest work.
• A high hill called Acropolis was the center of the original city-state.
• Nearby stood a towering bronze statue of the goddess Athen.
• At the top of the Acropolis stood the Parthenon, while marble temple built in honor of athena.

PANTING

• Most original artwork has been lost or badly damaged.
• Greek panting comes mainly from written descriptions and from later Roman copies.
• The best preserved greek pantings are found on vases.
• These artists delighted in showing graceful and natural movements of their subjects.
• The greeks initially adopted styles of panting from other cultures

SCULPTURE

• Greek sculpture chiefly from studying copies made during roman times.
• Unnatural poses, men and women were often portrayed standing with their arms straight down by their sides.
• By 400B.C. however, greek Sculptures were creating figures the were more lifelike.
• Many used mathematical proportions to make their works look realistic.
• Myron and Phidias were two of history's greatest sculpure.

SOCRATES

• One of the most important thinkers of the new era was an Athenian.
• He taught that education was the key to personal growth.
• He criticized democracy, saying that unskilled people should not hold positions of power.
• Socrates enemies falsely accused him of denying the existence of many greek gods.
• They also said his teachings corrupted the minds of Athenian youth.

PLATO

• Afterthe death of Socrates, Plato a wealthy young aristocrat and the greatest of Socrates students.
• Plato wrote, dialogues, or imaginary discussion among several people.
• He dealt with government, education, justice, and religion.
• Plato believed that all material things were imperfect expressions of perfect and universal ideas, or "forms".
• Plato's ideal government was an aristocracy a government ruled by an upper class.

ARISTOTLE

• Aristole founded his own school in Athens in 336B.C. Aristotle believed that every field of knoweledge had to be studied logically.
• He collected as many as facts as possible and organized them into systems.
• Aristotle investigated almost every field of study known during his time.
• He collected, described, and classified plants and animals.
• He wanted people to be happy.

DRAMA

• The Greek were to fist people to write dramas- plays containing action or dialogue and involving conflicting and emotion.
• The Greeks always wrote plays in poetic form.
• Two or three actors spoke or sang the lines for an audience.

TRAGEDIES

• In Greek tragedies the main character struggled against fate, or events.
• Usually a combination of outside forces defeated the main character.

COMEDIES

• Greek comedies also originated at the Great Dionysia festival.