tice, morality, wars, peace, the duties of the gods, family life and city living. Aeschylus wrote about the furies and how they punished man for wrongdoings. This shows that he believed that chaos would be punished because order (and law) is the ideal state. Sophocles is best known for his plays of Oedipus. Those plays dealt with family and civic loyalty. The Greeks emphasized, particularly in their plays, the importance of loyalty as a goal to strive for. We learn a lot about Greek views through their philosophy, which literally means the love of knowledge. The Greeks educated through a series of questions and answers, in order to better teach about life and the universe. The first philosopher was Thales. He believed in absolutism and eternal matter. He said that water was the original matter and that without it, there would be no life. Parmenides stated that stability and permanence were the underlying conditions of the universe. He believed that change is only an illusion and that one's senses can only grasp superficial realities of change. Heroditus argued with Parmenides saying that change was the basic condition of reality. He further claimed that all permanence was false. Thus he saw things as naturally being in flux rather than a stable state. Democritus argued with both Parmenides and Heroditus. He insisted that there is nothing spiritual and that only matter existed. He then went on to say that everything is made of little invisible particles, hooked up in different arrangements. He was an atomist. The Greek philosophers went on to question the nature of being and the meaning of life. Pythagoras was the first metaphysicist, one who studies beyond physical existence. He believed in a separation between spirit and body, an opposition between good and evil and between discord and harmony. In the 5th century, the Greeks learned from Sophists, wh...
