Perception of Winter in Ancient Greek Poetry and Fables
Karpyuk Sergey G.
Greek poetry and fables can be considered as an important, though auxiliary, source for the reconstruction of the climatic situation of the ancient Greek civilization. A gradual decrease of «winter» scenes and descriptions of cold weather from the archaic to the Hellenistic time can be seen (if compared, of course, with other data) as an indicator of some rise in temperature and of ever less influence of cold winters over the development of the Greek civilization. Fables, on the contrary, because of the conditions of their circulation and of their manuscript tradition, reflected the climatic situation of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, i.e. the period of «Roman time’s temperature rise».
Keywords: Greek literature, poetry, winter, ancient climate