The literature and arts of Greece absorbed the same spirit of rational inquiry as philosophy.  This chapter discusses how Greek authors, musicians, visual artists, and architects adopted the themes and methods of humanism and adapted them to their arts.

Lyric poets, musicians, and playwrights developed vocabularies and forms that expressed the emerging rational humanism.  Lyric poetry did so by turning inward to the individual's complicated inner thoughts and feelings.  Sappho's work mainly explores the experience of love, most notably same-sex, in the language of private emotional utterance.  Pindar's odes celebrate aristocratic excellence, often in the form of athletic victory, while reflecting on transitory nature of all achievement.  Music theory grew directly from advances in mathematics, particularly those of Pythagoras, who conceptualized the mathematical basis of pitch and harmony.  Pythagoras and his followers also developed a theory of cosmic harmony and the seven musical modes, each of which had a particular emotional effect and moral value.

Originating in Dionysian ritual, Greek drama combined music, language, and pageantry into a form of public emotional and intellectual experience.  As playwrights added more actors to the original chorus, tragedy in particular came to resemble Socratic dialogue through which the characters and, by extension, the audience achieved insight into human nature and universal truths.  The first famous tragedian, Aeschylus, plumbed individual psychology to explore themes of vengeance, justice, and law.  Sophocles examined character in terms of an explicit theory of proportions: characters such as Oedipus who ignorantly or inappropriately asserted themselves and suffered crushing realizations about their true relationship to fate.  Euripides examined contemporary events while turning a Sophist's logical rigor onto conventional assumptions and values.  His plays display a deep concern for human suffering and a tragic vision of reason succumbing to all-consuming passion.  Aristophanes also wrote plays of social and political commentary, but from a conservative viewpoint.  His comedies attacked Socrates and Euripides for what he viewed as their assault on traditional Athenian values.

Greek historians displayed a similar spirit by searching for the rational causes of notable events.  Examining the Persian Wars, Herodotus discovered universal moral and behavioral principles at work behind this clash of world views.  Like good modern historians, Herodotus asked probing questions of the past, treated his sources critically, and tried to present evidence objectively.  Even so, his mythopoeic turn of mind caused him to place as much value on dreams and omens as on objective evidence.  In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides rejected all mythic explanations.  He brought philosophical rigor to bear on the events of the war, searching for the patterns of human behavior that drove them.  In the process, he developed a systematic theory of government based on the Sophists' idea of human self-interest.

Like the dramatists and historians, Greek visual artists developed techniques to express the humanistic spirit through their works.  During the Formative and Archaic periods, vase painters moved from the fixed shapes and rhythmic patterns of the Geometric Style, through the Egyptian-influenced Oriental Style, to the vigorous depictions of the human form of the Black- and Red-Figure styles.  In contrast to these lively depictions, Archaic statues tended to be stiff and abstract in the manner of Egyptian royal sculpture, their "Archaic smile" the only sign of human depth.  During the Severe Style of the Classical Period, sculptors began applying mathematical principles to the human form, representing it in proportions that made it appear both realistic and ideal.  These sculptors also studied anatomy in order to capture poses that suggested movement or reflective repose.  Among the most revolutionary techniques was contrapposto, developed by Polykleitos, who also wrote a theoretical treatise elaborating on principles the Romans called The Canon.  Later Classical sculptors delved further into realism, exploring a broader range of poses and physical details, and ways to suggest the body beneath clothing.

Like the sculptors, the Greek architects gradually developed techniques for realizing the principles of rhythmos and symmetria.  In the process, they defined the Doric and Ionic orders as mathematically precise patterns with distinct psychological traits.  Some of the most notable examples of both orders appear in the Athenian Acropolis.  The Doric Parthenon achieves the illusion of perfection through structural irregularities that trick the eye.  Further, the temple's sculptural program, designed by Phidias, creates a continuous rhythmic pattern around the frieze.  Other Acropolis buildings, such as the Propylaea, experiment more obviously with asymmetry to accommodate the features of the site.  Still others employ to slenderer Ionic Order and its Corinthian variation, incorporating lighter, more decorative features into the structures.  After the Peloponnesian War, architects devoted most of their creative energy to theaters.

In every area of human endeavor, the Greek achievement was crucial to the course of Western civilization.  Greek art and architecture, both theory and practice, influenced the Romans, as well as European and American artists throughout the nineteenth century.  Greek philosophy shaped the development of later scientific, religious, and philosophical thought, and Greek literature continues to inspire Western authors.  In sum, the fundamental Greek concepts of autonomous reason, political freedom, and self-realization laid the foundation from which Western civilization rose.