A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Greek Poetry 69
Boeotia about 700 B.C. His Works and Days gives us a Hesiod.
clearer view of country life than we can find anywhere else
in ancient literature.
Additional light on rural conditions
Ancient
of early Greece is shed by the poems of Solon, the great Solon.
Athenian lawgiver of about 600 B.C. Both poets tell of
the peasants' hard lot under the oppressive rule of the
nobles. The military spirit of the seventh century is well
represented by Tyrtasus of Sparta and CalUnu's of Ephesus,
Tyrtaeus.
Ionia. Early in the sixth century lived the two famous Ancient
lyric poets of Lesbos, Alcaeus and Sappho. Their poems 153.
afford interesting glimpses of their own character and of Alcaeus and
the society in which they moved. These names Jiave been ^^^
taken as representative of a far larger group of seventh
and sixth century poets, whose genius dominated the
intellectual life of that period and whose extant works,
though mere fragments, are, apart from a few short inscriptions,
the sole contemporary source for that period.
For the early fifth century we have another great Pindar.
lyric poet, Pindar, whose best work has survived.
Though Ancient
a native of Boeotia, he represents for all Hellas the spirit
of the old aristocracy, which was soon to disappear. His
poems are in honor of victors at the great national games.
A contemporary of Pindar was ^schylus, the first great ^schylus.
Attic dramatist. The characters of Attic tragedy are
generally mythical persons of the distant past, whereas
the ideas ascribed to them are those of the writer's time.
Occasionally, however, the poet chooses as his theme a recent
event and introduces historical persons. Such is the
Persians of ^Eschylus, which presents in dramatic form
the invasion of Xerxes and his overthrow at Salamis,
whereas the Prometheus has to do with mythical characters.
A warrior in the mighty struggle for the maintenance
of Hellenic freedom, ^Eschylus chose the divine and the
lb. 213 f.