It is difficult to pinpoint a time when the study of ancient Greece began. Our earliest literature from ancient Greece—Homer's Iliad and Odyssey—deal with the history of the Trojan War and the kings of Mycenaean Greece. As a result, one could argue that the study of ancient Greece dates back as far as the eighth century, before the majority of what we now consider to be "ancient Greek history" actually took place.
The word history itself is a Greek term meaning inquiries, and it was first used in the modern sense by the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote the history of the Persian invasions that occurred during the fifth century. This "father of history" was the first non-myth-based historian in Greece. He was followed by his protege Thucydides who, in the fifth and fourth centuries, wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War. These, in turn, were followed by such fourth-century historians as Xenophon, whose work is one of our main sources for information about Cyrus of Persia, Socrates of Athens, and Sparta in general. Information about Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms that sprang up in his wake comes from Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the late first century b. c.e.; Justinus, who summarized the works of an otherwise lost historian of the first century c. e. named Trogus Pompeius; and Plutarch of Chaeronea, who wrote in the second century c. e. and left us several biographies of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Other historians important to the study of ancient Greece are Strabo, who lived in the first centuries b. c.e.-c. e. and whose Geography sheds much light on the ancient world; and Pausanias, who wrote The Description of Greece (the ancient equivalent of a Blue Guide) in the second century c. e. The works of the authors of antiquity, especially those of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Pausanias, and Strabo, form the core of our knowledge about the history of ancient Greece.
The Romans conquered Greece and many parts of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the second and first centuries b. c.e. (see chapter 4). Fortunately for Hellenists, several of the later Roman emperors, notably Hadrian the philhellen ("Greek lover"), thought very highly of the achievements of the ancient Greeks and preserved their works, language, and even culture in at least the eastern
Half of the Roman Empire. It is notable that although Julius Caesar wrote his history of the Gallic Wars in Latin, the second century c. e. philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his Stoic treatise "Meditations" in Greek. The Romans recognized that the Greek language allowed for greater subtleties than did Latin, making the former a better language for philosophy and, later, theology.
This tendency to write in Greek was further enhanced by a trend called Atticism, which began as early as the age of Augustus (first century c. e.) and grew during the second century c. e. By this time, the Greek language had changed considerably from what it had been in the Golden Age of Greece—the fifth and fourth centuries b. c.e.—as is evident in the grammar and vocabulary of the Bible's New Testament. Nevertheless, Roman-period scholars decided that the Attic dialect of Aristotle and Thucydides was the most appropriate form of the language, and, thus, the only form acceptable for the Empire's educated elite. So began a tradition (which still exists to some extent in modern Greece) of writing in a language utterly different from the spoken vernacular. As one can imagine, this fostered several manuals of Attic grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, as well as the repeated publication of the works of the authors of the purest dialects, so that the Roman literati could imitate historians and philosophers who had been dead for at least 400 years.
As in modern times, the great works during the time of the Greeks and Romans were kept in libraries, the most famous of which in the ancient world were those of Athens (Greece), Constantinople/Istanbul (Turkey), Pergamon (Turkey), Antioch (Syria), Beirut (Lebanon), Gaza (Palestine), and Alexandria (Egypt). Each of these libraries had its own areas of specialization: The library at Beirut was a law school, while students of Plato and the later Neoplatonic doctrines held sway in Athens (Wilson 1983, 28 ff.). The library in Alexandria was where Hellenistic scholars began the compilation and criticism of the ancient Greek poets and where the Roman geographer/historian Strabo did much of the research for his Geography; at Gaza, the Byzantine historian Procopius wrote a scandalous biography of the Empress Theodora, paraphrased the works of Homer, and possibly invented the ancestor of the modern footnote (Wilson 1983, 30-36). The library at Pergamon was the first of this group to go into decline, specifically when Marc Antony donated many of its contents to the library at Alexandria to make up for losses experienced there in a recent fire (Plutarch, Antony 58). Collectively, these libraries were the loci of extensive studies of the ancient Greeks, their culture, and their history.
World History
