The Ancient Greek Culture

Greece at the time of the Trial and Execution of Socrates was “undergoing a shift in their [Greek’s] world views and along with that a change in their values, their ethical orientation and conceptual frameworks” [CITE]. This culture clash was a direct result from the some trying to move away from the Homeric traditions, the developing ideas of the philosophers, and impact of events that shifted the culture during these times.

A powerful social force that shaped the views of the Greeks concerning human nature and the cosmos was their religion. The Gods of their religion were depicted and expressed through the stories or mythology in ancient Greece. These myths shaped traditions and the lifestyle of the Greeks, yet additionally myths established morals for the Greeks to follow so as to please or avoid punishment by their Gods. The Greeks learned their socially correct way to behave, treat others, enforce laws, and how to fight battles through tales of mishaps or triumphs in the stories of great heroes, such as Achilles or the stories of their Gods. In the Homeric period the two Greeks poets that influenced and created early Greek myths or religion were Homer and Hesiod. The poems of Hesiod and Homer offered explanations for how humans came to exist as well as who controls and maintains order in the universe. Homer (fl. c. 750 BCE) took down oral poems, as well as created some, and wrote them for all to read, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Hesiod (fl. c. 700 BCE) was the author of the Theogony, this is the story of the origins of the Greek Gods and the beginning of the world. A characteristic of these two poets, as well with the culture and society at the time, is that they relied on supernatural explanations to explain the nat...

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...rameworks” {CITE}. This change in culture and values offset the majority of the public who still held the Homeric views and beliefs, leading to an outcry to blame philosophers, mainly Socrates, who were seen as impious and illegally explicitly outspoken against the Gods of Greece.

Due to the changing and developing ideas of the philosophers, along with the implicit, and sometimes very explicit, strive to move away from and disagreement with the traditional Homeric beliefs and culture, as well as the influence of warfare, trade, and outside travel from and to Greece, all contributed to the major cultural clash that resulted the Execution of Socrates. Though with some philosophers, like Socrates, their contributions to philosophy were, for the most part, not fully appreciated, all of their contributions changed their culture, and way of thinking and still do today.