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The Directions:

A big part of studying history is taking the overly fancy words that scholars use and

breaking them down so that complex and stuffy sounding articles (like the one below) are easy

to understand. Once you master this skill, you can unlock the wisdom and foolishness that

experts hide in their work. As a class, read through each paragraph together, identifying the

underlined words and looking its meaning. Your teacher can help you figure out meaning ifyou cant understand it, but pass the dictionary around so that you can look up each word.

Record in your journal the 16 words and their definition (in common terms).

The Reading:

From the National Archaeological Museum of Athens

The Classical period of Ancient Greece produced some of the most exquisite sculptures the world has

ever seen. The art of the Classical Greek style is characterized by a joyous freedom of movement, freedom of

expression, and it celebrates mankind as an independent entity (atomo). During this period, artists begin to

expand the formal aestheticboundaries while they worked in expressing the human figure in a more

naturalistic manner. They were able to replace the strict asymmetryof the figure with a free flowing form more

true to life, while they approached an ideal aesthetic vision through stone and bronze.

The form of classical sculpture became fluid and natural and the stylization of the archaic art gave way

to realistic figures which emanatedthe illusion of moving through space. For the first time in human history,

human anatomy was deemed worthy of being immortalized in stone or bronze, and the humble and laborious

forward step of the kouros statues was replaced by poses that commanded their space with effortless

movement. During the classical period the Greek artists replaced the stiff vertical figures of the archaic periodwith three-dimensional snap shots of figures in action. While the archaic sculptures appeared static the

classical statues held dynamic poses bursting with potential energy. The overall patterns of immobile muscles

were developed into a complex universe of tension and relaxation. The ancient Greek sculptors had finally

achieved balance through the opposing action of the human muscle groups.

It was the first time in human history that the human body was studied for its aesthetic values, and was

treated as an autonomousuniverse. The object of art became the human itself as the focus of the artist

revolved around ordinary subjects like the weight shift during the forward step at the moment before the

release of the thunder, the tying of a ribbon around ones head, or just the shift of the pelvis when one leg

supports the man's weight.

The classical Greek sculptor was more of a magician than an artist. He transcendedordinary subjects

into extraordinary universal signs. And in the process, he reversed thousands of years of artistic tradition when

he shifted the focus from the supernatural and unknown, to more earthly matters. Throughout history the

human figure had been used by many civilizations as a mere object which signified metaphysical

preoccupation. On the other hand, in classical Greek sculpture the figures often depict deities but clearly the

human body becomes the subject of study. The gods were depicted as a mere excuse to study humans.

In ancient Greece, a long intellectual evolution reached its logical conclusion during the classical era

when man as a living organism on this planet acquired the importance it deserved, and gods became human

through marble and bronze. The golden age of classical Greece dictatedthat this earthly world can be

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