Greece Literature

Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles. – According to plus-size-tips, the affinity with previous poetic manifestations was so close that some of these philosophers preferred to continue expressing their theories in verse, mostly in the heroic hexameter.

This happened above all in the West, through the work of transmigrated from Ionia, such as Xenophanes of Colofone, or of his disciples, such as Parmenides of Elea; and finally by Empedocle d’Agrigento, author of a physical poem, Della natura, and a mystical poem, The purifications, in which the doctrinal elements were enlivened by enthusiastic passion.

Novelism. On the other hand, not only did doctrinal and scholarly matter enter the new organ of prose, but also infinite fantastic elements, now mixed, now carried out separately; above all those of more humble and popular origin belonging to the repertoire of short stories, novels and fable: which were not lacking even in the epic, in the elegy and in the iambo, in the parodic poems, etc., but outside the metro they found much greater range of expansion.

In fact, during the century. VI, on the soil of Asia Minor, the animalistic tales attributed to Aesop, which put animals into action, or even inanimate beings and plants, with juicy moral understanding took vogue. They were not written in a definitive literary form, but were handed down in spoken language, that is, in simple and unadorned prose. Around Aesop, a poor native Phrygian slave, a bizarre kind of novel was also constituted since then, which together with the novel of the Seven Saviand with that of the Agone of Homer and Hesiod completes the picture of culture and production popular.

Siceliot and Italiot culture. Rhetoric. – Of essentially Ionian origin, the movement of thought did not spread over the soil of the motherland if not little by little, with greater slowness. Instead another center of lively irradiation was ignited in the West. As already in poetry, so in the intellectualistic progress from which the scientific spirit and prose are generated, the colonies of the West, mixed of various lineages, especially Dorians and Ionians, are matched by the eastern Ionian-Aeolian colonies. There the philosophical schools that immigrated from Ionia, both that of the Pythagoreans founded in Crotone by Pythagoras of Samo, and that of the Eleatics founded in Elea (Velia) by Xenophanes of Colofone, took very firm roots; and widely permeated the whole civilization of southern Italy: which not only took on its own physiognomy, but it developed very rapidly and intensely. In fact, from the ideal world of myths, of which Stesicoro’s epic-lyric poetry was an expression, minds quickly passed to rational speculation, observation of reality, the science of man and nature. A distinctive feature of the Italiots and Siceliots was the realistic, sophisticated and dialectical spirit. While historical and geographical research took place in Ionia (the ἱστορίη), here discussions and reasoning (the διάλεξις) prevailed: it is not for nothing that the ancient tradition has placed the origins of rhetoric in Sicily. man and nature. A distinctive feature of the Italiots and Siceliots was the realistic, sophisticated and dialectical spirit. While historical and geographical research took place in Ionia (the ἱστορίη), here discussions and reasoning (the διάλεξις) prevailed: it is not for nothing that the ancient tradition has placed the origins of rhetoric in Sicily. man and nature. A distinctive feature of the Italiots and Siceliots was the realistic, sophisticated and dialectical spirit. While historical and geographical research took place in Ionia (the ἱστορίη), here discussions and reasoning (the διάλεξις) prevailed: it is not for nothing that the ancient tradition has placed the origins of rhetoric in Sicily.

The Doric comedy. – This tendency, then, was expressed not only in the strictly logical and scientific forms of philosophical criticism, discussion, discourse, but also in certain forms of art which were based on the spirit of observation and which, although they were in verse, approached much to prose. They could not be epic or lyric or even tragedy: but rather comedy. Such is the so-called Doric Comedy: which preceded the Attic Comedy, and had a more positive character, more pedestrian, more adherent to the study of reality and life; therefore it was more akin to the new Attic Comedy by Menander, etc., than to Aristophanes’s fanciful ancient Attic Comedy. Given the rapid development of the Greek spirit of Sicily, it is perfectly clear how the Sicilian Doric comedy arose, and how no kind of tragedy has arisen alongside it. The idea of ​​such dramatic representations originally belonged to the Dorians of the Peloponnese, from which the Attics will also draw it, creating their two types of dramas; but not among the Dorians of the Peloponnese, but, as usual, in colony it really developed, and had its happy implementation at the end of the century. VI, mainly by Epicarmo: followed by Formides and other minors.

Epicarmo (as is probable) exercised its activity in Megara Iblea and Syracuse, between the end of the century. VI and the principle of V. He occupies a very significant place in literary history, and is considered by Plato as the Homer of comedy, that is, as the prototype of anti-heroic poetry. His was, according to the few fragments, a comedy of environment and character, nourished by popular wisdom and philosophical doctrines, in particular by that Pythagorean culture which was widespread in southern Italy (in fact from the δράματα of Epicarmo florileges of sentences were also obtained); comedy in which the myths of gods and heroes were the object of parody (The wedding of Hebe, Heracles conquering the girdle, Ulysses deserter, Shipwrecked Ulysses, etc.), or they gave way to the common events of ordinary life (The farmer, The spinners, The Megarese, The refined, etc.). Thus the world of humble and bourgeois reality emerged in art.