There was a religious character to much of the poetry that flourished during the classical Age. Among the finest poets of the era was Pindar (PIN-duhr; c. 522-c. 438 b. c.), whose most famous works were his odes to the victors in the Olympic Games. He was but the most prominent of many, and there were at least a dozen important poets in his time.
As with Pindar, among the most noted works of the sculptor Praxiteles (prak-SIT-uh-leez; fl. 370-330 b. c.) were those he created in honor of Olympic heroes. He sculpted the statues at two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Then of course there was Phidias, the other most notable sculptor of his day, not to mention the architects who, along with him, were responsible for the magnificent Parthenon.
Leucippus and Democritus developed the idea that all nature is made up of tiny particles called atoms. Twenty-four centuries later, humankind would witness the terrible power of the atomic bomb. Archive Photos/American Stock. Reproduced by permission.
Nor was Classical Greece weak in the area of the sciences, which were then in their birthing years. Aside from the investigations of Aristotle, there was the work of Leucippus (loo-SIP-uhs; 400s B. C.) and his student Democritus (deh-MAHK-ri-tus; c. 460-c. 370 b. c.) Leucippus established and Democritus developed an idea that was about twenty-four centuries ahead of its time: that all of nature is made up of tiny pieces called atoms. In the twentieth century a. d., scientists such as Albert Einstein (1879-1955) would look deeply into the atom and there find a source of marvelous and terrible power.
Yet another piece of Classical Greece that is as fresh today as it was then is the Hippocratic (hip-oh-KRAT-ik) Oath. The latter is named after the scientist and physician Hippocrates (hi-PAHK-ruh-teez; c. 460-c. 370 b. c.), who developed an oath sworn by graduating medical students through the ages. For instance, one of the pledges in the Hippocratic Oath is “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked nor suggest any such counsel.”
Modern people might find one of Hippocrates' other ideas—that all diseases are caused by four different bodily fluids, or “humors”—less impressive. The idea of the humors would plague medicine through the end of the Middle Ages, leading to such dangerous practices as removing “excess” blood, which happened to be one of the humors. But when Hippocrates came up with the idea, it was a massive step forward. For the first time, instead of looking for the roots of disease in divine causes (i. e., the gods), Hippocrates looked for the cause in chemicals. Today doctors know that indeed chemical imbalances often are the cause of illness.
World History
