Our Sea

Part 4 - Art, Science and Engineering

Attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed in the forms of epic poems in the 8th or 7th century BCE. They were first published in English in 1488 and remain one of the oldest works of literature still popular with readers. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) canvassed experts around the world in 2018 and discovered that the Odyssey was most enduring story in literature.

Between 600 BCE and 100 CE, hundred of Greeks revolutionized art, science, mathematics, medicine, engineering, history, literature, law and philosophy and laid the foundations for modern civilization. A few of these are listed below.

Draco (7th century BCE) was the first democratic legislator on record. In 622 or 621 BCE, he replaced the old oral law and blood feuds with the first written constitution of Athens, a code enforced by a law court. The laws were unusual severe (hence the expression 'draconian'). A debtor could be forced into slavery and the penalty for even minor offenses, such as stealing a vegetable, was death.

With the exception of the homicide law, which left punishment up to the victim's relatives, all of these draconian laws were repealed by Solon early in the 6th century BCE.

In 409 BCE, the Athenians made intentional homicide punishable death while the sentence for unintentional homicide was exile.

Pythagoras of Samos (570 - 495 BCE). Many mathematical and scientific discoveries were attributed to Pythagoras, including his theorem, (In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides). He is also credited with discoveries in music and medicine and astronomy, including the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus. But the Pythagorean theorem was used by the Babylonians and in India centuries before Pythagoras and the Egyptians constructed the pyramids using a triangle with the sides 3, 4 and 5 units which contained a 90 degree angle. (3x3 =9, 4x4 =16, 9+16 =25 = 5x5).

Sophocles (497 - 406 BCE) wrote more than 120 plays. Unfortunately only seven have survived in a complete form including Antigone and Oedipus Rex. He is one of three renowned Greek tragedians and over 50 years, Sophocles won 13 competitions. Although he was sometimes defeated by Euripides and Aeschylus, he was never judged lower than second place.

Plato (428 - 348 BCE) was a philosopher and founder of the first institution of higher learning in the Western world, the Academy in Athens.  Almost all of his work has survived for more than 2400 years including the dialogues, Republic, and Laws which provide some of the oldest discussion of politics, religion and philosophy.

Socrates (470 - 399 BCE) a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher. Socrates has become renowned for his contributions to the fields of ethics and epistemology. the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method. Socrates exerted a strong influence on later philosophers. 

Phidias or Pheidias (480 - 430 BCE). One of the greatest of all ancient Greek sculptors. His colossal chryselephantine (ivory and gold on a wooden frame) Statue of Zeus (about 432 BCE), at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. He also designed the Athena Parthenos, a sculpture of the Greek virgin goddess Athena, which was housed in the Parthenon in Athens.

Leucippus and Democritus ( 460 - 370 BCE) were the first Greek philosophers to suggest that everything is composed of indestructible, indivisible elements called atoms.