CHAPTER IV
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERIOD (490–399 B. C.): THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAN
An Historical Summary of the Anthropological Period. The Anthropological Period begins with the Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C. After the battle of Marathon there sprang up a distinct impulse toward knowledge all over Greece; and detailed investigations were begun in mathematics, astronomy, biology, medicine, history, and physics. Science, which had up to this time been unorganized and undifferentiated, now became sharply divided into the special sciences. But what makes the Persian Wars of particular importance is that they are the starting-point in the motherland of the movement in the study of man and human relations. The battle of Marathon does not therefore mark the end of the Cosmological movement and the waning of the Greeks’ interest in science; but it marks rather the beginning in Athens of the Anthropological movement. The Cosmological and the Anthropological Periods overlap.
The Anthropological Period easily divides itself into three epochs from the point of view of its political affairs:—
1. The Persian Wars, 490 and 480 B. C.
2. The Age of Pericles, 467–428 B. C.
3. The Peloponnesian Wars, 432–403 B. C.
The first epoch is the birth and the last epoch the decadence of pure Greek civilization, while the thirty-nineyears of the supremacy of Pericles cover the ripest period of Greek life. In this connection it is well to mention Hegel’s thought that nations do not ripen intellectually until they begin to decay politically (“The owl of Minerva does not start upon its flight until the evening twilight has begun to fall”). Plato and Aristotle do not come until after this period, when Greek political life had begun to wane.
The following table is a partial list of the notable men of the period, with the date of their birth:—
Æschylus, 525 (dramatist before Pericles).