Greek autobiography examples

Biography in antiquity was not a rigidly defined genre.

Greek autobiography examples

Bios, ‘life’, or bioi, ‘lives’, spanned a range of types of writing. So the boundaries with neighbouring genres—the encomium, the biographical novel on the model of Xenophon's Cyropaedia, the historical monograph on the deeds of a great man like Alexander (2) the Great—are blurred.

The impulse to celebrate the individual finds early expression in the dirge and the funeral speech (see epitaphios); composing a literary work around an individual's experiences is as old as the Odyssey (see homer).

In the 5th cent. biographical interest was pursued in various ways.

Greek autobiography examples for kids

Ion of Chios gossiped about contemporary figures in his ‘Visits’, while Stesimbrotus of Thasos wrote colourfully on Themistocles, Thucydides (1) son of Melesias, and Pericles. Thucydides (2) included selective sketches of several figures, notably Pausanias (1) and Themistocles.

In the 4th cent. appeared two influential encomia, Isocrates' Evagoras (E