Captive Greece

¶ … Greeks in Western Civilization. There are five references used for this paper.

It is felt that 'Captive Greece made Rome captive'. It is important to examine what is meant by this belief in terms of literature, art and philosophy.

Two Captive Countries

When Rome conquered the Levant at the end of the Hellenistic era, and "ruled the civilized world, conquered Greece took captive her rude conqueror (Gutzman, 2004)." The poet Horace noted that "the Romans conquered Greece only themselves to be enslaved by the superior culture of their captives (Morris, 2002)."

During the era of the "poets Homer and Hesiod, the ancient Greeks associated their polytheistic, anthropomorphic deities with their cities, states, and regions (Matthews, 2000)." The Greeks often symbolized cities on coins with a god or goddess on one side, and their representation on the other. An example of this was the representation of Athens with Athena and her owl. "As the Romans conquered their neighbors and rival tribes, minor deities merged with local images to symbolize a recently proclaimed province or newly conquered land. Roman coins usually carried portraits of the reigning emperor on the obverse, but regional symbols became common on the reverse of such coins, especially if minted in the provinces. Personifications of places become more common as the natural and specific images replaced the ideal forms (Matthews, 2000)."

There is little left of the "ritualistic songs and the native poetry of the Romans and Latins before the rise of a literature. The history of the Roman Empire is fundamental to the fabric of this literature: in the first three centuries of its development, the influence of captive Greece was all-pervasive (unknown, 2004)."