y life and city living. Aeschylus wrote aboutthe furies and how they punished man for wrongdoings. Thisshows that he believed that chaos would be punishedbecause order (and law) is the ideal state. Sophocles is bestknown for his plays of Oedipus. Those plays dealt withfamily and civic loyalty. The Greeks emphasized, particularlyin 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 Greekseducated through a series of questions and answers, in orderto better teach about life and the universe. The firstphilosopher was Thales. He believed in absolutism andeternal matter. He said that water was the original matter andthat without it, there would be no life. Parmenides stated thatstability and permanence were the underlying conditions ofthe universe. He believed that change is only an illusion andthat one's senses can only grasp superficial realities ofchange. Heroditus argued with Parmenides saying thatchange was the basic condition of reality. He further claimedthat all permanence was false. Thus he saw things asnaturally being in flux rather than a stable state. Democritusargued with both Parmenides and Heroditus. He insisted thatthere is nothing spiritual and that only matter existed. He thenwent on to say that everything is made of little invisibleparticles, hooked up in different arrangements. He was anatomist. The Greek philosophers went on to question thenature of being and the meaning of life. Pythagoras was thefirst metaphysicist, one who studies beyond physicalexistence. He believed in a separation between spirit andbody, an opposition between good and evil and betweendiscord and harmony. In the 5th century, the Greeks learnedfrom Sophists, who believed that the views of society arestandards and the sole measurement of good, truth, justiceand beauty. Protagoras was a sophist. He said that, "man isthe measure of all ...
