Heraclides Criticus and the Problem of Taste

This chapter investigates the early periegetic text of Heraclides Criticus, entitled On the Cities of Greece . It analyzes a range of styles and concerns not previously prominent in Athenian literature. These styles and concerns include a dilettantish concern for good taste, a casual snobbishness that is amusing but is not based on any kind of coherent or developed aesthetic theory or philosophy, an inclination to pass judgment on the manners and mores of others, based on the author’s clear superiority, and a marked preference for contemporary comic literature rather than anything by Homer, the tragedians, or in fact anything philosophical or historical. The chapter explains what the periegetic text says about the little known literary culture of its time, the mid-third century BCE, a moment of profound change, not to say dislocation in Greek society. Keywords:aesthetic theory; Athenian literature; comic literature; Greece; Heraclides Criticus; philosophy

Aesthetics · Art · Casual · Comics · Literature · Mores · Political science · Taste · Classical Antiquity Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology