The Greek Awakening

Around 500 B.C., Greek thinkers, artists and sculptors revolutionized the way we see and represent the world. "The transformation of Greek art during the fifth century BC, when artists pioneered a heightened, idealised naturalism, was so extraordinary and irrevocable" that it has come to be known as the “Greek Miracle” or “Greek Revolution” or "Greek Awakening" . The next century and a half would also see the Greeks invent democracy, philosophy, history, theoretical science and mathematics. In doing so, the Greeks laid the foundations of Western civilization.

E.H. Gombrich in "The Story of Art" puts it this way: "The great revolution of Greek art, the discovery of natural forms and of foreshortening, happened at the time which is altogether the most amazing period of human history. It is the time when people in the Greek cities began to question the old traditions and legends about the gods, and inquired without prejudice into the nature of things. It is the time when science, as we understand the word today, and philosophy first awoke among men, and when the theatre first developed out of ceremonies in honour of Dionysus."

No longer were artists and sculptors content to follow old formulas on how to represent the human body. They created their works based on what they saw rather than on what they knew. The result were realistic depictions of the human body in action (e.g., Discobolus), more expressive human faces (e.g., Charioteer), the use of gestures and actions to represent inner feelings (e.g. Ulysses recognized by his old nurse). In short, statues and painted human forms became more life-like and expressive.

And then the Greeks built the Parthenon. Gombrich writes, "It was at the time when Athenian democracy had reached its highest level that Greek art came to the summit of its development. After Athens had defeated the Persian invasion, the people, under the leadership of Pericles, began to build again what the Persians had destroyed. In 480 BC, the temples on the sacred rock of Athens, the Acropolis, had been burned down and sacked by the Persians. Now they were to be built in marble and with a splendor and nobility never known before." The Parthenon, dedicated to Athens' protectress, the goddess Athene, is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and Western civilization, and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments.

Nobody knows exactly why the Greek Awakening happened when it did and where it did. Various causes have been proposed - new bronze casting techniques, the rise of the Athenian democracy, a novel awareness of the human body - with each interacting with the others to bring about this artistic revolution.

The Essential Humanities website credits humanism, "an outlook that emphasizes human capabilities and concerns", as the "key prerequisite" and "the engine that drove Greek innovation". Two implications of this outlook are: that "people should exercise critical thought...and that secular [i.e. non-religious] subjects...should be given major scholarly attention...Given that critical thought encouraged constant reexamination of the status quo, humanism allowed the Greeks to break free of the staunch conservatism that has characterized most societies throughout history."