Greco-Latin cultural age

The Greco-Latin or Greco-Roman age is the fourth and middle cultural age in the Current Postatlantean epoch, and lasted between -747 BC to 1413 AD. The Greek culture was already instilled by the teachers of humanity in the previous third cultural age (see or Orpheus, and Migrations), but Greek culture rose to its heights between the 7th century BC and the 1st century AD. In a transition period of various wars, the Roman empire reach its heights around the 1th century AD and lasted to the final fall of Rome in 476 AD. After that period the empire was fragmented into many smaller states and new structures formed such as the Ostrogothic and Visigothic kingdoms.

The fourth cultural age is characterized as the age of the intellectual soul, by the teachings of Buddha see also Wotan impulse. In this age Man developed thinking and philosophy, see Schema FMC00.490 below.

Aspects

• main event: Mystery of Golgotha
• characteristics
  • age of the development of Man's intellectual soul (see Development of the I), brought by the teachings of Buddha see also Wotan impulse
  • age characterized by Man's special relationship with sense perception and the physical world
  • no 'remembrance' of other ages as this age is central in the epoch (see Recapitulation and remembrance)
• the meeting of Two streams of development, the Northern and Southern, in around 869
• Transition between 4th and 14th century, with the loss of the Logos and the handover of the Archai to the SoF (see Schema FMC00.167)
• important personalities in this age (not specific to greek or roman era)
  • Philo of Alexandria (ca 15 BE - 50, see KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities#KRI 53: Spinoza - Fichte), Paul of Tarsus (5-67) and Dionysus Areopagite (see White Lodge), John the Apostle (6-100) - Individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz (see White Lodge)
  • see Sources of spiritual science

Seeding of Greek culture before fourth cultural age

• adepts migrated already in the third cultural age, the leaders of mankind are known in myths, eg Orpheus, Theseus, Cadmus, Cecrops, Pelops - more info see Aspects on Three classes of Buddhas (and eg Migrations#1904-09-08-GA091)

Greek culture

• arising of philosophy in Greek thought - thought perception, see Schema FMC00.490 on Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs
• Greek mythology
• education (1923-08-06-GA307, and 1923-08-06-GA307)
• architecture - the Greek temples (eg Acropolis, Parthenon, ..)
• Greek Mysteries (see Mystery School tradition)
  • Ephesian, Eleusian, Chthonic, Samothracian mysteries
  • Oracles (Delphi)
• important personalities (see Sources of spiritual science)
  • Pherecydes of Syros (ca 580-520 BC, teacher of Pythagoras), Heraclitus (ca 540-ca 480 BC), Pythagoras (570-495 BC),
  • Parmenides (515-450 BC), Empedocles (490-430 BC),
  • Socrates (470-399 BC), Plato (ca 428-348 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Alexander the Great (356-323 BC)
  • Apollonius of Tyana (15-100), Plotinus (204-270), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500)
  • scientists: Archimedes (287 – ca. 212 BC), Hipparchus of Nicaea (ca. 190 – ca. 120 BC): known oa from trigonometry & precession of the equinoxes

Roman culture

• important personalities (see Sources of spiritual science
  • Julian the Apostate (Flavious Claudius Julianus) (330-363), Augustinus of Hippo (354 – 430)

Roman catholic - middle ages

• continuation of the Latin culture after the fall of the Roman empire
• development of art (painting, with Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, etc)
• important personalities - see Sources of spiritual science
  • John Scotus Eriugena (815-877)
  • Christian mystics

Other peoples and cultures

• The Persian Achaemenid Empire (approx. 550 to 330 BC) from the Achaemenid dynasty was the largest empire the world had ever seen at its time, as it stretched from Egypt and the Balkans in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. By 330 BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.047 below gives a tabular overview of the cultural ages for the current Postatlantean or Aryan epoch.

Schema FMC00.239 shows the archangelic rulers of approx 354 periods for the current cultural age (plus and minus a cultural age). See also Spiritual hierarchies and their eigenperiods for more info on the 354 period. Rudolf Steiner uses this period to describe the nature of current Michael age and the future Oriphiel age.

Schema FMC00.490 shows how the human thought about Man and the cosmos, or philosophy, evolves in periods of approx. 800 years related to the sun laws. Note everything in light grey - the extensions after 2400 and the time periods before 800 BC were added by extrapolation and are not covered in the lecture. Compare with Schema FMC00.376 and variants on Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs

Schema FMC00.533 positions some important personalities in the first four centuries after Christ, a period of persecution of Christians, but also where Christianity was established by the roman empire, and with major debates between various streams due to influences from pagan and gnostic streams, as well as scepticism about the divinity of Jesus, the trinity, etc. The schema is not intended to be complete, but can be used as a mind map to position some important names that occur in the storyline of the Michaelic stream in the lectures of Rudolf Steiner.

Above with rectangles in grey are three main church fathers, blue rectangles show important Individualities of special high stature, as explained by Rudolf Steiner (and see also White Lodge and Three classes of Buddhas). Brown rectangles below relate to the christianization of central europe preparing for the age of the consciousness soul, see 1921-05-15-GA325 and Central European cultural basin, also Schema FMC00.438)

The blue KRI numbers are the Karmic Relationship Individualities, see more on Karma research case studies and KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities. For example: Origen and Spyridon are incarnations of Daskalos, part of the stream of John the Evangelist. Augustinus was a carrier of a copy of the etheric body of Christ, see Principle of spiritual economy and (- also on that topic page) the I of Master Jesus (KRI90) lived again in Lucian of Antioch, the teacher of Arius (1909-02-19-GA109 notes to lecture).

Rudolf Steiner often described the importance of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and the great polarity between Aryanism and Athanasianism, also Daskalos describes this from a perspective of Spyridon. Also the Individuality of Soloviev attended (KRI 49) attended that council (in an incarnation not further named).

For a broader perspective and what followed, see Transition between 4th and 14th century and The Christ Impulse from the 1st to the 20th century (oa covering battle between Constantin and Maxentius in 312).

Lecture coverage and reference

1923-01-26-GA220

sketches the state of soul in the Greek culture, and their very different feeling relation to 'beauty' versus today

.. the consciousness of mankind has changed in the course of time. For instance, we may describe something as beautiful. But if we ask a philosopher of today to explain what beauty is (for he should know something about these things, should he not?), we shall receive the most incredibly abstract explanation. “Beautiful” is a word which we sometimes use rightly, instinctively, out of our feeling. But modern man has not the slightest notion of what, for instance, a Greek imagined when he spoke of the beautiful, in his meaning of the word. We do not even know what the Greek meant by “Cosmos.” For him it was something quite concrete. Take our word “Universe.” What a confused jumble of thoughts it contains! When the Greek spoke of the Cosmos, this word held within it something beautiful, decorative, adorning, artistic. The Greek knew that when he spoke of the whole universe he could not do otherwise than characterise it with the idea of beauty. Cosmos does not only mean Universe — it means Nature's order of laws which has become universal beauty. This lies in the word “Cosmos.”

When the Greek saw before him a beautiful work of art, or when he wished to mould the form of a human being, how did he set to work?

By forming it in beauty. Even in Plato's definitions we can feel what the Greek meant when he wished to form the human being artistically. The expression that Plato used means more or less the following: “Here on earth man is not at all what he should be. He comes from heaven and I have so portrayed his form that men may see in it his heavenly origin.” The Greek imagined man in his beauty, as if he had just descended from heaven, where of course, his exterior form does not resemble that of ordinary human beings. Here on earth human beings do not look as if they had just descended from heaven. Their form shows everywhere the Cain-mark, the mark of man's fall. This is the Greek conception. In our age, when we have forgotten man's connection with a pre-earthly, heavenly existence, we may not even think of such a thing.

Thus we may say that “beautiful” meant for the Greek that which reveals its heavenly meaning. In this way the idea of beauty becomes concrete.

• For us today it is abstract. In fact, there has been an interesting dispute between two authorities on aesthetics — the so-called “V” Vischer (because he spelt his name with a “V”), the Swabian Vischer, a very clever man, who wrote an important book on aesthetics (important, in the meaning of our age), and the formalist Robert Zimmermann, who wrote another book on aesthetics. The former, V-Vischer defines beauty as the manifestation of the idea in sensible form. Zimmermann defines beauty as the concordance of the parts within the whole. He defines it therefore more according to form, Vischer more according to content. These definitions are really all like the famous personage who drew himself up into the air by his own forelock. What is the meaning of the expression “the appearance of the idea in sensible form?” First we must know what is meant by “the idea.” If the thought-corpse that humanity possesses as “idea” were to appear in physical shape, nothing would appear.

But when we ask in the Greek sense: what is a beautiful human being? this does indeed signify something. A beautiful human being is one whose human shape is idealised to such an extent that it resembles a god. This is a beautiful man, in the Greek sense. The Greek definition has a meaning and gives us something concrete.

What really matters is that we should become aware of the change in the content of man's consciousness and in his soul-disposition in the course of time. Modern man believes that the Greek thought just as he thinks now. When people write the history of Greek philosophy — Zeller, for instance, who wrote an excellent history of Greek philosophy (excellent, in the meaning of our present age) — they write of Plato as if he had taught in the 19th century at the Berlin University, like Zeller himself, and not at the Platonic Academy. When we have really grasped this concretely, we see how impossible it is, for obviously Plato could not have taught at the Berlin University in the 19th century. Yet all that tradition relates of Plato is changed into conceptions of the 19th century, and people do not realise that they must transport their whole disposition of soul into an entirely different age, if they really wish to understand Plato.

1923-08-06-GA307

is on the principles of Greek education

1923-08-07-GA307

is on Greek education and the middle ages

1923-12-29-GA233

considers three periods, before Aristotle, after Julian Apostate, and the interim period of some 700 years (lasting from about 356 BC to about 363 AD). For what happens further, see Transition between 4th and 14th century

Of peculiar importance for the understanding of the history of the West in its relation to the East is the period that lies between three or four hundred years before, and three or four hundred years after, the Mystery of Golgotha.

..

At the beginning of the period we are considering, stands the burning of Ephesus; and the day of the burning of Ephesus is also the day on which Alexander the Great was born. At the end of the period, in 363, we have the day of the death — the terrible and significant death — of Julian the Apostate far away in Asia. Midway between these two days stands the Mystery of Golgotha.

..

And now let us examine a little this period of time as it appears in the setting of the whole history of human evolution.

Discussion

[1] - Elements of Greek science and culture

• Antikythera mechanism - astronomical gear based device that predicted orbits and eclipses, only a single such device exists that was found in the 20th century and analyzed with modern technology. Also called the first analog or mechanical computer.

Related pages

• Evolution
• Current Postatlantean epoch
• Greek mythology

Further reading and references

• Roy Wilkinson: 'Teaching history III : the Fourth Cultural Epoch greece and Rome' (1977)
• wikipedia:
  • Ancient Greece
  • Timeline of ancient Greece