History & Sophocles, Plato, Marcus Aurelius & Capellanus

Review of the great works of Sophocles, Plato, Marcus Aurelius and Andreas Capellanus suggest that each of these men were shaped by their respective eras. Curiously, the classical writings of Sophocles and Plato appear not only to codify the age in which they lived but to challenge it to aspire to new heights. In The Oedipus Cycle Sophocles presents Oedipus the King as an Everyman who struggles to do good and avoid evil. Yet the drama heightens when the audience understands that despite his well established objectives, Oedipus commits the horrendous crimes of murdering his father and marrying his mother. Sophoclean drama appears to argue that unless societies can learn to deal with its deviances as well as its norms, they are destined to self-destruct. Sophocles adopts a stance of exhortation shared even more intensely by Socrates. As Plato records in The Last Days of Socrates the great philosopher thinker Socrates willingly embraces his own politically-induced death in order to demonstrate that virtue rather than superstition be a civilization's guiding principle. In the later works of Marcus Aurelius and Andreas Capellanus, two highly skilled social observers labor to show society how it actually is being lived. In The Meditations Marcus Aurelius suggests that a life guided by reason will produce the best results. Yet the latent despondency of his Stoic philosophy indicates that the Emperor was attempting to accommodate rather

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es were to serve as guideposts for citizens deciding how to best lead their lives. Socrates believed that individuals could regulate their lives according to a formulation of objective standards derived from rational reflection rather than from directives of a transcendental God (Perry 73). In Euthyphro Plato records Socrates' thoughts about piety. As a thinker antagonistic to extremes of individualism and suspicious regarding the stability of democracy, Socrates asserted that to develop piety and to discern the just from the unjust was to edge closer to a pure morality. Socrates indicates that when has one reverence then fear will also be present (Plato 35). In the Apology Socrates answers the case brought before him by his accusers. In attempting to reform Athenian society, Socrates was opposed by both the poets and the politicians whom he had attacked. Socrates observed that how a city honors its art and artists indicates how it will structure its politics (Clegg 155). After the Pelponnesian War, Athens was scarred by both the assaults against it and its defeat. Although the Greeks shared a common language, they were fiercely divided by their local loyalties. Ancient Greece was dedicated to preserving its loose conf
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Approximate Word count = 2776
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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