Archaic Greece Research Articles

Connecting Communities in Archaic Greece: Exploring Economic and Political Networks through Data Modelling

Connecting Communities in Archaic Greece: Exploring Economic and Political Networks through Data Modelling

‘Princely seats’ and Thessalian hillforts: pre-urban Greece and the diffusion of urbanism in Early Iron Age Europe

The origins of Iron Age urbanism in temperate Europe were long assumed to lie in Archaic Greece. Recent studies, however, argue for an independent development of Hallstatt mega-sites. This article focuses on developments in Western Thessaly in mainland Greece. The author characterises the Archaic settlement system of the region as one of lowland villages and fortified hilltop sites, the latter identified not as settlements but refuges. It is argued that cities were rare in Greece prior to the Hellenistic period so its settlements could not have served as the model for urban temperate Europe. Consequently, the social and political development of Greece and temperate Europe followed different trajectories.

The Lessons We Still Have to Learn from Nomima

The two volumes of Nomima, published in 1994–5, were of great scientific importance. With a total of 211 inscription, they enabled new questions to be raised. This valuable work illuminates a range of themes from the archaic Greek world, including: civic identity, interactions with the gods in sanctuaries, Greek laws and also relations between cities. Nomima’s methodology is also innovative because it tries to understand archaic Greece through the historical perspective of the inscriptions. Thus, it offers a history of this period through the words of the inhabitants of Greek cities, evoking the problems of their daily lives that got inscribed. This article treats about Nomima’s organization, detailing their contribution volume by volume. Although now dated, there is still much to learn from Nomima.

Trans-philosophy: Translating Philosophy on and beyond the Boundaries

ABSTRACT Translating archaic Greek philosophies presents a complex of opportunities and challenges for translators, several of which are regularly overlooked. Among these figure prominently the culture and thematics of oralcy and the predisciplinarity in which early Greek thinking took shape. Additionally, translators engaged with early Greek thinking face layers of interpretive history and expectations that can determine the scope of possible translation, which, in turn, limits the range of interpretive possibilities. Yet their predisciplinary or at least hybrid modes summon a broad attention to contexts of language, forms, and meanings that may challenge, or even disrupt, the predominant lines of inquiry and interpretation. How can translation motivated by the oralcy and predisciplinarity of archaic Greece open new directions for interpretation of the early Greek thinkers? Ranging through Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and others, this article articulates some possibilities for translating on and beyond the boundaries of philosophy.

General

Two splendid Oxford Handbooks deserve the opening slot of my review. The Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography contains forty chapters, each of which closes with a helpful section on recommended further reading. The editors have organized the material in five very well-conceived parts. The first section, ‘Mythography from Archaic Greece to the Empire’, naturally wrestles with the question: When does mythography start? Two initial chapters provide their answers, and the rest of the contributions in this section offer an overview of mythography in Greek (Hellenistic and Imperial period) and Latin. The second section aims to provide an overview of individual mythographers: the stars of this section are Apollodorus, Antoninus Liberalis, Parthenius, Conon, and Hyginus. The eighteen chapters provide informative and concise introductions to authors who specialized in mythography, but also to the mythographic tendencies in authors such as Pausanias or Ovid, as well as in the scholia and even mythographical papyri. The third section is on the typical genres or interpretative models with which mythography tends to intersect: rationalizing historical approaches, philosophical allegoresis, etymologizing, catasterism, local historiography, paradoxography, creative approaches to mythography in ancient education, the role of mythography in political discourse, geography, and, finally, an investigation of the ancient terms used to designate the activity and the writings of a mythographer. The fourth section, ‘Mythography and the visual arts’, is a provocative and highly interesting experiment in viewing visual representations of myth as a mythography of sorts: can vases, frescoes, and sarcophagi be seen as visual pendants to literary mythography? These three contributions are all highly rewarding and thought-provoking. The closing, fifth, section offers richly rewarding discussions of the role of mythography in the age of Christianity, starting with the way early Christian writers draw on Greek and Latin mythographers, followed by chapters on mythography in the Byzantine Empire, the Latin West, and in the Renaissance.

Сравнительное изучение антропологических аспектов греческой вазописи и этрусской живописи

Introduction. The fine arts of archaic Greece and Etruria experienced a noticeable influence of the East. The transition from archaic to classical time influenced the forms of depicting the morphological features of a person in antique art. Comparative study of the anthropological features of the antique population of the Mediterranean on the greek painted pottery and etruscan murals of the archaic and classical times was the purpose of our study. Materials and methods. The material was collected in the online-collections of ancient collections of museums. We used the method of a composite portrait in a digital version, the calculation of the frequency of features in our study. Studied features was – beard growth, hair color and nature of the hair. Results and discussion. On the etruscan murals of the archaic period, the frequency of depicting straight nature of the hair in women is the highest (7,7 %) in all samples; for different groups of painted pottery, it does not exceed 7 %. The degree of beard growth according to vase painting and etruscan murals is characterized by a strong and very strong growth. A greater manifestation of hair pigmentation polymorphism according to painted pottery is noted in the images of the classical period. Dark hair predominates in all groups, grey-haired was depicted only in male characters. Hair depigmentation on painted pottery is observed in images of the classical and late classical periods and did not exceed 6 % in the total sample. Pigmentation on etruscan murals indicates a lightening of the hair in the group towards reddish-red shades, depigmentation does not exceed 8%. Features of the depiction of pigmentation in to vase painting and murals, despite the different technique and coloring, reveal common tendencies of variability characteristic of the Mediterranean groups. Composite portraits based on painted pottery reflect the historical transformation of the anthropo-aesthetic ideas of the greeks through the fine arts of the archaic and classical times. Conclusion. Color in greek painted pottery performs not only a decorative function, but is also an artistic means of conveying morphological variability. Involvement of antique written sources of the description of population and the philosophy of color in antique culture can help in the anthropological reading of vase painting and further study of pigmentation polymorphism. @ 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Jessica M. Romney. Lyric Poetry and Social Identity in Archaic Greece

Jessica M. Romney. <i>Lyric Poetry and Social Identity in Archaic Greece</i>

Religion in the Art of Archaic and Classical Greece By Tyler Jo Smith. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2021. Pp. 476. $89.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-5281-1 (cloth).

<i>Religion in the Art of Archaic and Classical Greece</i> By Tyler Jo Smith. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2021. Pp. 476. $89.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-5281-1 (cloth).

Миф, боги, человек: "спекулятивная теология" как культурный и религиозный феномен древнеегипетской мысли XV-XIII вв. до н.э.

This paper studies the features of the so-called “speculative theology” of Amun-Re, the most prominent trend of ancient Egyptian religious and theological thought of the XV-XIII centuries BC on the example of two of its most significant texts, Cairo (Pap. Boulaq 17 Pap. Kairo CG 58038) and Leiden (Pap. Leiden I 350) hymns to Amun. Unlike earlier forms of Egyptian spiritual culture, for the first time in the history of ancient Egyptian religion, it creates the image of a transcendent deity, the connection of the believer with whom is now carried out through direct personal contact, and not through traditional forms of worship for the Egyptian religion. At the same time, many features of the image of Amun in the Theban “speculative theology” of the New Kingdom can already be considered as an attempt at a fundamentally new reflection of traditional categories of ancient Egyptian culture, such as, for example, “Maat” (world-order, justice, truth), both based on traditional values and departing from them. The reason for this was the crisis of traditional ideas about Maat after the Amarna era, which fundamentally changed the nature of popular piety and at the same time the basic principles of Egyptian religious and political ethics. From the point of view of the mythogenic conception of the genesis of philosophy, “speculative theology” - both in Egypt of the New Kingdom and somewhat later in archaic Greece – is of exceptional interest as the most important "transitional form" on the path of transformation of primitive myth into philosophical discourse and at the same time an interesting example of the interpenetration and joint evolution of mythological, religious and emerging philosophical worldview. Not always turning into a full-fledged philosophical tradition (this is exactly what happens, in particular, with the Theban “speculative theology” of Amun-Re), it nevertheless demonstrates the complex ways of transforming the spiritual world of the ancient man of the Eastern Mediterranean, thanks to which the spiritual transformation of the "axial time" became possible in many ways. By the example of the image of Amun, the transformation of ideas about religious experience in the Egyptian culture of the era of the New Kingdom is also studied.

Ordinary Lydians at Home: The Lydian Trenches of the House of Bronzes and Pactolus Cliff at Sardis. By Andrew Ramage, Nancy H. Ramage, and R. Gül Gürtekin-Demir (SardisRep 8). 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis 2021. Pp. 570. $100. ISBN 9780674248557 (cloth).

<i>Ordinary Lydians at Home: The Lydian Trenches of the House of Bronzes and Pactolus Cliff at Sardis</i>. By Andrew Ramage, Nancy H. Ramage, and R. Gül Gürtekin-Demir (<i>SardisRep</i> 8). 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis 2021. Pp. 570. $100. ISBN 9780674248557 (cloth).

Beauty, Gods, and Early Greek Art: The Dedications of Mantiklos and Nikandre Revisited

Did beauty matter for art in ancient Greece? Detailed analysis of two famous votive statues—the dedications of Mantiklos (ca. 700–675 BCE) and Nikandre (ca. 660–630 BCE)—spotlights beauty’s significance in early Greek art. Examining contemporary Greek texts alongside these statues reveals that notions of beauty were instrumental to both the objects’ manufacture and their social and religious purposes. The ambiguity over whether these statues represent gods or humans—like the many votive kouroi and korai made in Archaic Greece—is integral to their meaning and function as votives: the aspiration to solidarity between human and divine.

A Boeotian Die in Context: Gaming Pieces, Jewellery, Seals, Spindle Whorls and Bird Bowls in a Female Burial of Status

Abstract The present paper presents a die in its archaeological context, which is a rich grave in the region of Boeotia. It attempts to understand with what other items this gaming piece coexisted and why, as well as who was the person who played with it during lifetime. The Boeotian die is a solid cube made of clay that presents a peculiarity in its numbering system, for the face normally bearing six dots features twenty-five instead. The date of the die in the Archaic period and the sex of the deceased can be established from its associated grave-group which comprises 48 Boeotian (mostly bird bowls) and Late Corinthian vases, minor objects, such as spindle whorls, and gaming pieces from raw natural materials (such as pebbles, shells, a terracotta animal in secondary use, etc), as well as jewellery such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, brooches, pins, spiraled tubes, seals and rosettes attached on a -now lost- head cover. The age of the dead is estimated as young from osteological analysis, which situates our die and its gaming assemblage in the cultural context of the “mors immatura” in Archaic Greece. Dice among other gaming pieces are known from antiquity, yet undisturbed (and sexed) contexts of the Archaic period are rare. In the 6th century BC dice occur in sanctuaries; none is known from Boeotia, hence the significance of publishing one here in its assorted grave-group.

Προπεμπτικόν (propemptikon) – żywy gatunek literacki sięgający antyku

The article concerns a little-known and unique literary genre called propempticon, which dates back to the times of archaic Greece and the poetess Sappho. The propempticon flourished in the Hellenistic era, and then it was used wherever Mediterranean culture reached. The definitions of propempticon in different epochs are not the same, the theory of the literary gene applies to its description. Propempticon is also cultivated today in modern languages, albeit with various modifications, and an example of this can be the famous song by Andrea Bocelli under the title „Con te partirò”.

Foucault's Use of Socrates

Foucault's Use of Socrates Ramona Naddaff (bio) "… ce 'trip' gréco-latin qui a duré plusieurs années." —Michel Foucault, Le courage de la vérité: Le gouvernement de soi et des autres The beginning of Paul Miller's Foucault's Seminars on Antiquity: Learning to Speak the Truth recalls the possible uses of Foucault in the present moment: "Michel Foucault is one of the most radical voices of the twentieth-century. … Foucault's histories uncover a fossil record of our practices of truth, of our desires, pleasures and intensities, which have been, and therefore can be, repurposed and re-elaborated from one struggle to the next" (Miller 2022, 1). One of Foucault's "histories" interests me—the history of Socrates' use of parrēsia, sketched in his fall 1983 lectures at University of California, Berkeley (Foucault 2019). Foucault's use of Socrates here, I hope to suggest, is itself a sign of his own "struggle" to "repurpose" and "re-elaborate" a Socratic practice of truth disentangled from Platonic politics, ethics, and ideology. The Use of Pleasure does indeed put Plato to good use in Foucault's reconceptualization of the history of sexuality—"And now I would like to show how, in classical antiquity, sexual activity and sexual pleasures were problematized through practices of the self, bringing into play the criteria of an 'aesthetics of existence'" (Foucault 1986, 12). So too do Foucault's Berkeley lectures repurpose and use "Socrates" for diverse, but not necessarily disconnected, ends in Foucault's critical project to provide an account of the histories of critique. Plato's "Socrates," the truth-teller, a symptom of a flat epistemology and ontology, is not the object of Foucault's concern as he neared the end of his life. Rather, the particular speech acts, the "dire-vrai," of this singular character, Socrates, whom Plato attempted to entrap, even silence, preoccupies Foucault as he seeks to contend with the problem of the truth-teller and truth-telling. Foucault is less interested in the "aesthetics of existence" than in how a certain form of radical Socratic critique may be resurrected in a culture and politics of protestation. [End Page 413] Miller reminds us that already in his 1970–71 lectures on the will to know at the Collège de France, Foucault was investigating archaic and classical Greece, where, influenced by Marcel Detienne's The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, "he examined how the concept of truth that we recognize today became established during the fifth and fourth centuries," a "discursive event, the product of social and political struggles in archaic Greece" (Miller 2022, 5). Only in the 1980s will Foucault appear to make a radical, decisive break with his earlier work, not only moving from early modern texts and archives to ancient ones but also in terms of his philosophical preoccupations. "While truth had been a central preoccupation from the beginning," Miller argues, "his later work focuses increasingly on the individual as a speaker of truth both to himself and to others." The "ethical turn," the return to subjectivity, marks the return of a figure largely invisible from Foucault's first lectures—namely, Socrates. Miller explains further: "Radical Socratic questioning occupies Foucault for the last five years of his life, not as an antiquarian interest, but as a way of thinking in a sustained manner about how the subject comes to speak the truth, and about the courage needed to speak the truth while risking marginalization, misunderstanding, or even death" (Miller 2022, 4). I offer a hypothesis—perhaps ungrounded, even unfounded, but a necessary condition for Foucault's use of Socrates. Foucault enacts a separation of Socrates from Plato in his 1983 lectures at Berkeley, titled Discourse and Truth. This "Socrates" differs from that of The Use of Pleasure, where Foucault works on and with the dialogues canonically connected with Plato as he emerges as a singular author of Platonism. Foucault invents this 1983 Socrates in order to arrest the domination of Plato over Socrates' representation and his ideological uses of his teacher. Let us recall here Foucault's analysis of the difference between power and domination in the interview "The Ethics of the Concern for the...

Monarchy in the Iron Age Levant and Archaic Greece: the Rulers of Corinth in a Comparative Context

Tyrannies emerging in the Greek poleis during the Archaic period (8.–6. centuries BC), among which the rule of the Kypselid dynasty in Corinth appears as an outstanding example, were in many respects comparable to the city-state monarchies in Ancient Near East, particularly in Iron Age Levant. The rulers performed important governmental functions and were able to legitimate their power for a notable period of time. However, differently from the East, these monarchies were never wholly entrenched and were eventually replaced by republican governments. The article explores the reason for this difference, suggesting that it was caused by the relative egalitarianism of the Greek society precluding an accumulation of sufficient resources for entrenching the power.

Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece ed. by Alain Duplouy and Roger Brock

Reviewed by: Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece ed. by Alain Duplouy and Roger Brock Naomi T. Campa Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece. Edited by Alain Duplouy and Roger Brock. Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 370. Hardback, $120.00. ISBN: 978-0-1988-1719-2. The edited volume under review began as two conferences in 2009 and 2010.1 The contributors are all respected scholars in the field who represent an array of methodological approaches to citizenship. The uniting factor is the recognition of the archaic period as a valuable era of study in its own right, rather than solely a precursor to the classical age, and an overt rejection of the traditional view of citizenship based on Aristotle's standard of holding office and administering justice.2 Looking beyond an institutional definition of citizenship that privileges political office, the volume showcases what it meant for the Greeks of the archaic period to be citizens from the standpoint of descent and participation. An examination of the table of contents reveals the impressive range of contributions. The chapters explore the role of military obligations, commensality, religion, athletics, associations, luxury and other community delimiting activities. The volume serves both as a compilation of the current state of scholarship on archaic Greek citizenship and as a call to action, with some chapters laying the groundwork for future developments in the field. Rather than produce the most cursory summaries of all the chapters within the constraints of this review, I will instead highlight representative chapters, in particular those that gesture towards new directions for the field. Thus, exclusion by no means indicates a lack of quality or appeal. The book opens with Duplouy's wide-ranging survey that lays out traditional approaches to citizenship and the general response to them of the past couple of decades. Announcing from the outset that his survey will not be comprehensive, he manages to dip into controversies without getting bogged down. Despite his caveat, the chapter is a useful outline of the main currents of scholarship for those wishing to situate the chapters that follow. In "State Formation in Early Iron Age Greece: The Operative Forces," Davies [End Page 366] presents a model of six forces that lead to the development of the polis and so citizenship (namely, the exceptional individual, population, the environment, the supernatural, convertible resources and the combination of memory, imagination and identity). His self-proclaimed experimental approach is intended to lessen the gap between Classics and the social sciences and between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. Davies suggests that his chapter is preparatory to future analysis since the work is incomplete without an account of the interaction of those forces. Blok's following chapter, "Retracing Steps: Finding Ways into Archaic Greek Citizenship," develops what a citizenship that decenters office holding was like in practice. She brings a keen eye to the study of terminology for "citizens" and participation in the polis in order to present a view of citizenship rooted in cult activity that is capacious enough to include women. While less detailed than her monograph, Blok's methodology reveals what careful philology coupled with historical method can accomplish.3 In line with the revisionist stance of the book, in "Citizenship and Civic Subdivisions: The Case of Sparta," Lupi makes the novel argument that obai were not in fact the five villages that predated Laconia's synoikism, but that they were the Spartan-variety of phratry (a subdivision of phylai). The contemporary evidence for archaic Sparta, including an inscription and fragments of Tyrtaeus, makes it a good case study for demonstrating the link between civic subdivisions and archaic citizenship. Whitley's chapter "Citizenship and Commensality in Archaic Crete: Searching for the Andreion" combines literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence, which are at times at odds with each other, to show the role of dining groups in citizenship. He frames the activity in these groups as "diacritical feasting" that delineated citizens from non-citizens in Crete. Whitely does not attempt to answer every question he raises, but encourages greater incorporation of archaeology in historical argument. Duplouy puts his introductory comments into action...

Confl icting Threads. Technological Innovation and the Socio-technical Ensemble of Weaving

This paper refers to two new approaches to conceive the relationship between technological innovation and society as one of anchoring: The TASC concept (Technologies as Anchors for Societal Conflicts) aims to show how societal conflicts are anchored in technologies that, as such, are not responsible for the conflict. The ‘Anchoring Innovation’ research program of the Dutch Research School in Classical Studies (OIKOS) aims to explain how technological in- novations were anchored in ancient society. Our paper trials these concepts along the threads that connect the social and the technical in the weaving of contemporary India and archaic Greece. The first part of the paper examines the Indian government’s efforts to provide technological upgradation to a community of weavers who insist on their loin loom that is embedded in their local ecology, making them appear backward and ignorant of innovation. In the second part, we examine how innovation in ancient Greece was anchored in the socially ubiquitous technology of weaving. In both cases, the social turns out to be an essential part of (the technology of) weaving. Conflicts arise where technology claims to be ahead of a society that must constantly adapt to it.

Education, Religion, and Literary Culture in the 4th Century CE. A Study of the Underworld Topos in Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae by Gabriela Ryser

Reviewed by: Education, Religion, and Literary Culture in the 4th Century CE. A Study of the Underworld Topos in Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae by Gabriela Ryser Alison John Education, Religion, and Literary Culture in the 4th Century ce. A Study of the Underworld Topos in Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae Gabriela Ryser Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020. Pp. 440. ISBN: 978-3-525-57321-1 In the final years of the fourth century Claudian began his De raptu Proserpinae (DRP), leaving it incomplete before his death in 404. Gabriela Ryser's study examines this epic treatment of the Proserpina myth, situating it within the literary, religious, and socio-political contexts of the late fourth century. By exploring Claudian's treatment of the underworld topos, central to both the epic genre and religio-philosophical debates about the afterlife, Ryser provides an important contribution to our understanding of the intersections of religion and literary culture in the late antique West. The first chapter serves as an introduction, situating the study within scholarly debates and outlining its main objectives. Ryser argues that while much of the previous scholarship on the DRP has been concerned with proving or disproving the "militantly pagan" under-tones of the poem on the one hand or dismissing it as a "second-rate" imitation of earlier Latin epic on the other hand, she is interested in examining the DRP in its own right. Arguing for the overall poetic coherence of the DRP, Ryser sees Claudian not just as an imitator but an innovator and considers the influences of both religion and rhetorical education on Claudian's poetic programme. Chapter 2 discusses the function of mythology in the religious and literary landscapes of the ancient world, from archaic Greece to Late Antiquity. Ryser asks to what extent mythological literature carried religious meaning and authority, and ultimately emphasizes the overarching literary quality of poetic representations of the classical gods. While it was not impossible for pagan readers to extract religious meaning from literary texts about the gods, such literary depictions did not necessarily have the same authority as philosophical notions of the gods or ritual practice. Central to Ryser's argument is the fact that classical [End Page 308] literature about the gods, such as epic, formed the basis of Roman literary education. The primary purpose of classical schools of grammar and rhetoric was never to teach polytheism, but rather to teach the literary and rhetorical skills that would prepare young men for public life and socialize them to be members of the Roman cultural and political elite. Crucially, Christians also attended the classical schools of grammar and rhetoric and, by the late fourth century, were just as invested and interested in mythological literature as were pagans. Mythological literature was part and parcel of Roman education, and this education, in turn, defined the Roman social elite. As Ryser argues, "while a mythological epic, for example, might have been theologically interpreted by people like Praetextatus, there was no obligation to do so for every pagan and all the less for Christians, it being foremost a work of poetry" (58). Mythological references and allusions in Claudian's DRP, therefore, should not necessarily be interpreted as carrying pagan religious messages. The third chapter surveys depictions of the underworld in earlier Latin epic, including Vergil's Aeneid (6.236–899), Ovid's Metamorphoses (4.432-80, 10.1–77, 11.1–66), Lucan's Pharsalia (6.507–830, 9.1–14), the Argonautica (1.730–850, 3.377–458) of Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus's Punica (13.395–895), and the Thebaid (2.1–54, 4.406–645, 7.794–8.126) of Statius. Ryser takes a broad approach to what constitutes an "underworld" scene, including not only the familiar heroic catabasis, but also scenes of necromancy and the calling up of spirits. This allows Ryser to consider Claudian's inspiration for his depictions of Pluto's realm and its infernal characters more comprehensively. Chapter 4 turns to the DRP itself. The first section discusses Claudian's use and innovation of earlier depictions of the Proserpina myth, including Ovid's versions in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti, the Homeric Hymn...

Beyond the Polis: Rituals, Rites, and Cults in Early and Archaic Greece (12th–6th Centuries BC)

Beyond the Polis: Rituals, Rites, and Cults in Early and Archaic Greece (12th–6th Centuries BC)

Variations of Influenza: A Review

The seasonal influenza or flu remains a major cause of illness and death all over the world. It is the transmissible viral disease that affects whole of the respiratory tract and its severity ranges from mild to severe. The activity of influenza virus shows great periodic rhythm in different areas of the globe where neither hot nor cold and it is very uncertain in equatorial region where temperature is high throughout the year indicating that climatic components can drives periodic rhythm. Seasonal variability in infectious disease conditions is one of the ancient studies in human bioscience, dating from at least archaic Greece. Each year around the globe despite decade of research and drug development, annual flu viruses constantly cause outbreaks of influenza. Albeit we are starting to recognize the mechanisms that support the emergence of annual flu microorganisms, the onset and character of the evolving recent viruses remains unexpected. The flu pandemic is an important cause of the sickness and death of the elderly. Decreased immune function plays an important role in the worst outcome. Several factors which impact on the severity of annual influenza includes characteristics of the specific virus, use of antiviral drugs, and vaccination of influenza. The population which has high chances of getting this serious illness are: gravid mother, kids below the 5 years of age, the older age group, people with persistent cases (such as long-standing heart disease, lung disease, kidney, digestive, neuropsychiatric, hepatic disease or blood related disorder) with people with low immune status (such as HIV / AIDS, taking chemotherapy or steroids. In cooler climates, occasional outbreaks take place predominantly in the cold climate, while in hot climates, colds can occur year-round, originates the unusual epidemic.