istoryworld
Events relating to literature
Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story, spreads in oral form
Sacrificial hymns of the Aryans, gathered in the Rigveda, become the earliest Sanskrit literature
The Homeric texts, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are written down - probably in Ionia
The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh is known in its complete form from texts in the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh
The poems of the Shi Jing, China's earliest work of literature, are gathered together
K'ung-fu-tzu, or Confucius, teaches a practical philosophy which will profoundly influence Chinese history
Parmenides is the first pure philosopher, using logic as a philosophical tool in his poem Nature
The Chinese philosophy of alternating opposites is expressed as yin and yang
Aeschylus wins the prize for tragedy at the City Dionysia in Athens
Sophocles wins the prize for tragedy in Athens, defeating Aeschylus in the competition
Herodotus, the 'father of history', writes his account of the Greco-Persian Wars from a vantage point in Asia Minor
Euripides enters the drama contest at the City Dionysia in Athens for the first time
The Sophists, professional philosophers, travel round Greece educating the sons of the rich
The renewal of the Peloponnesian War prompts Thucydides to begin a great work of contemporary history
Aristophanes wins first prize in Athens for his comedy The Acharnians
Socrates is now sufficiently prominent to be satirized in Clouds, a comedy by Aristophanes
Daodejing ('The Way and the Power') is the book of Daoism
Socrates, convicted in Athens of impiety, is sentenced to death and drinks the hemlock
Plato establishes a school in Akademeia, a suburb of Athens
Central to Plato's philosophy is the theory that there are higher Forms of reality, of which our senses perceive only a transient shadow
Aristotle, at the age of seventeen, comes to Athens to join Plato's academy
The Mahabharata, India's great national epic, begins to take shape
Aristotle tackles wide-ranging subjects on a systematic basis, leaving to his successors an encyclopedia of contemporary thought
The Indian epic of romance and adventure, the Ramayana, is probably the work of a single author at about this time
