Homère itself, which most probably exerted the function of aède on the Ionian coast of Asia Mineure, in second half of the VIII E front century J. - C., is the heir to centuries of experiment in the technique of the improvisation. One owes him Iliade and the Odyssey, two masterpieces of the art of the oral composition, which, by their perfection even, explain the later decline of this form of narrative poetry. Indeed, the authors of the following centuries will be able only to imitate one style, forgetting, often, the essential foundations of the technique of improvisation. This one consists of a set of processes of poetic composition - stereotyped formulas, for example - which were transmitted and grown rich with time. However, the oral literature will lose ground with the introduction, at the time of the Homeric epopees, the alphabet and the writing. One is unaware of if Homère itself knew the writing, and if this knowledge could have an influence on its work.  

The two Homeric poems will also be used as handbooks of morals for the later centuries. The intrigue of Iliade covers a few days only in the tenth year of the head office of Troy by the Greeks; centered around the anger of Achilles, it very homogeneous and is already introduced the tragic topic of the hubris, i.e. of the blind pride which leads a hero to his loss, and calls the revenge on the gods. Achilles, wounded in his pride by his Agamemnon chief, withdraws combat and requests so that its enemies gain the victory. Its prayer is granted, but his/her best friend, Patrocle, are killed in the battle; the life of Achilles loses all his direction then, and even the revenge which it takes on noble Trojan Hector (fatal of Patrocle) will not be able to repurchase this loss.  

The ingeniousness and the skill of Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey, are worthy of the constancy with which the hero resists the seductions and the dangers of the imaginary world that it crosses during his tour to return to reality and to find his hearth, his wife and her family.  

There exist also several tens of “Homeric” anthems, that the tradition allotted to Homère, but which were actually composed by different and posterior authors (to the VII E and the VI E front century J. - C.), in hexameters dactylic. These anthems, variable length and of unequal interest, are generally addressed to gods, and in particular Dionysos, Apollon, Hermes, Déméter and to Aphrodite, paying homage to their qualities and, sometimes, telling their exploits. The epic Cycle, which dates about from the same time, but is lost today, revived episodes of the Trojan War other than those treated in Iliade and the Odyssey.  

The didactic poems of Hésiode (beginning of the VII E front century J. - C.) also belong to the declining tradition of oral poetry. Hésiode is distinguished from Homère by giving itself the mission of presenting “the truth and not the fiction”. Work and the Days are an anthem with the rustic life and give councils on the manner of carrying out a hard and virtuous life, in particular thanks to the agricultural work; Théogonie, that one allots to him traditionally but who is undoubtedly apocryphal book, is a genealogy of the Olympian divinities, placed under the authority of Zeus, the guarantor about the world.  

Lyric poetry

Between the VII E century and the O C front century J. - C., the royal and feudal company of the Mycenaean time evolves to the age of the city-State (polishes), which is characterized in particular by strong tensions between the aristocracy and the people, the dêmos. In much of cities, the working classes find leaders who defend them, using sometimes of dictatorial methods but granting to the lower classes privileges than they had never had up to now. This humanization of the political life gives a new importance to the individual and to the personal experience: thus, in literature, epic and narrative poetry yields it the place to the lyric poetry, which expresses more intimate feelings all while lending itself to cérémoniaux uses. In the same way, the anthems and the songs of the popular culture will take more personalized artistic form.  

Lyric poetry can be monodic or choral society. The monodic odes, sung in solo, are accompanied with the quadrant; they are personal scholiums (songs of table) or homages to gods or friends; Sappho and Alcée de Lesbos (towards 600 av. J. - C.) occupy a particular place in the development of this poetic kind. Two other large representatives of the monodic ode are Simonide (death in 468 av. J. - C.) and Anacréon (VI E front century J. - C.), which belonged one and the other in a cosmopolitan medium and moved court in court. Of these authors, who wrote for choruses as well as for soloists, it remains us only of rare poems.  

Most lyric poems were, as their name indicates it, accompanied with the quadrant, while the elegiac verse was known as on a music of flute, adding a meditative dimension and melancholic person. The Athenian legislator Solon (beginning of the VI E front century J. - C.) uses the poetic kind to express his political reflections, and the elegy will take a very characteristic orientation with the maxims and epigrams allotted to Théognis (VI E front century J. - C.). As for the iambic poetry of the satire and invective - another form of personal lyricism -, it would have occurred with Archiloque to the VII E front century J. - C.

The ode choral society was sung by a chorus (literally “group of dance”) made up either young girls, or boys or men, and was accompanied by music and dances. Accompanying by the religious demonstrations, it gradually develops a rigid and complex structure of stanzas, antistrophes (which correspond to the stanzas syllable by syllable) and of épodes (at the different rhythm). The panegyric (canticle devoted to Dionysos) and the péan (anthem with Apollon), them also, were particularly appreciated. Largest representing poetry choral society is undoubtedly Pindare (death in 438 av. J. - C.), of which there remain to us four books of épinicies, made up triumphal odes in honor of winners of the athletic plays.
 
Presocratic philosophy

In its attempt to find the origin of the things and to outline an order of the universe, Hésiode is the precursor of science and philosophy Greek. To the VI E front century J. - C., Thalès de Milet, in Ionie, is the first Greek philosopher to pose the problem of the One and the Multiple. Which is the arch, the element first which is behind multiple fluctuating appearances (“phenomena”) that we apprehend by our directions? The answers of the Millet school are of order materialist: for Thalès, indeed, this element is “water”; for its Anaximandre disciple, it is “the infinite one” (an unspecified substance which, by the play of the opposites, becomes the world such as we know it); for Anaximène, disciple of Anaximandre, it is “the air”. Meanwhile, in the south of Italy, Pythagore and its disciples answer: “no material substance, but of the numbers and the relations between the numbers”. Towards 500 av. J. - C., in Ephèse (in Ionie), Héraclite seeks apparently a compromise by explaining why the paramount element is fire, but that behind that is a rational principle, the “logos”, which is present in each human heart.  

The concept of fire héraclitéen underlines the character constantly changing of the phenomenal world. For the Eleatic school, with the O C front century J. - C., represented by Parménide and Zénon, this world of the phenomena is not real; it is only one world of appearances. Eléates speak to be it and of the non-being, but they always do not make the distinction, it seems, between two modes of “non-being”: “not to be the thing in question” (i.e. “to be different”) and “not to exist”. Some their contemporaries develop the materialism of the Millet school in the direction of a plurality of the principles first: Empédocle postulates four of them - fire, air, ground and water - while Leucippe and Démocrite explain why the sensitive objects are invisible combinations of particles called atoms, term which means “indivisible”.  

The idea is spread however that the phusis, or “nature”, perhaps i.e. the total sum of the things known by the sensory experiment, does not represent all reality. About the middle of the O C century, Anaxagore postulates the concept “of spirit” us like ultimate principle. And one starts to oppose the phusis such as it appears at the man - i.e. the human nature - and the nomos, which indicates the law, the habit, convention.  

At the end of the O C century, the sophists, denomination which in the beginning did not comprise a pejorative nuance, will discuss ad infinitum all these questions and will become, in their extreme form, of the skepticals hair-splitters, followers of a moral relativism, who - intellectual of trade - profess an opportunism supported by a surface eloquence. Perhaps is necessary it however to distinguish from the batch of the sophists like Protagoras, for which “the man is the measurement of any thing”, and Gorgias, the founder of rhetoric.