Throughout Greece, but particularly in Athens, the arts began to flourish in Archaic times. Poetry entered its first flowering with writers such as Sappho (SA-foh; fl. c. 610-c. 580 b. c.) One of the few prominent women of ancient Greece, Sappho lived on the isle of Lesbos (LEZ-bohs) in Asia Minor. Her work concerned jealousy and the pains of love, often for other women. Thus the English word for a homosexual woman became lesbian, though some scholars have suggested that Sappho was writing about an ideal kind of love rather than anything explicitly sexual. In any case, homosexuality was quite common in ancient Greece, where men and women lived virtually separate lives.
The Archaic Age saw developments in pottery and its decoration. One of the most frequently seen symbols of ancient Greece is the Grecian vase or urn, which in about 700 B. C. began to feature primarily human or human-looking figures—warriors, maidens, heroes, and gods. “Black-figure” technique, introduced in Corinth, would have widespread importance. Artists using this technique would paint areas of the vase black and then draw figures against the black by making very shallow, narrow cuts. Artists in Athens took on the black-figure technique as their own but later introduced red-figure vase painting. Using the red-figure method, the artist painted around the figure in black and left the figure itself in the red of the clay. Instead of making cuts, artists added details by painting them in.
The depictions of the human figure on the vases of the time were astonishingly accurate, a sign of the degree to which Greek art had developed. Also impressive was sculpture representing the human form, in particular the kouros (KOO-rohs; pl. kouroi). The kouros was a type of nude, always a young male, depicted with his arms at his side and one foot forward. Kouroi were intended to be viewed from the front. Despite the achievement represented by the kouroi, however, comparison with later sculptures showed just how far Greek artists progressed in the Classical Age. The Archaic Age sculptors had not yet worked out the proportions of the human figure—for instance, the size of the head in relation to the feet.
The Archaic Age marked the first phase of distinctly Greek architecture. The Greeks had built in wood since at least the end of the Mycenaean Age, but in the 600s b. c., they began building in stone. Their temples soon exhibited elements of what would become the recognized Greek style: a row of columns supporting a pediment (PED-uh-mehnt), the triangular gable end of a roof. The pediment might often be decorated with a frieze (pronounced like “freeze”), a band of sculptured figures or ornaments.
The columns holding up the roof were fluted, or marked by grooves. The space between the column and the
The columns of the Temple of Juno are examples of the Doric order of architecture.
AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
Pediment—the capital, or top of the column, and the entablature (ehn-TAB-luh-choor), the decorative band above it—developed distinctive styles. The most simple of these was the Doric order, which developed in the Peloponnese in the 600s b. c. Within half a century, the Ionic order emerged in eastern Greece. Characterized by spiral scrolls (what might be commonly described as “curlicues”) on the capital, the Ionic is probably the most recognizable of all Greek styles. Finally, the 500s would see the introduction of the much more elaborate Corinthian order.
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