Intellectual Discussions About Language, Literature and Society in Athenian Culture 5th Century BC[Интеллектуальные дискуссии о языке, литературе и обществе в афинской культуре v в. до н.э]

The paper provides a review of the views on the nature of language and literature in the writings of philosophers, orators and historians of the 5th century BC: the Sophists, Democritus and Herodotus. An attempt has been made to prove that many of the theoretical positions expressed by these authors are both aesthetic, philosophical, religious and socio-political are originally based on comments on poetic (primarily Homeric) texts. At the same time, the main task of the paper was to demonstrate the internal consistency of the text and the sequence of the author's arguments. In particular, it turns out that the views of Democritus on the relationship between the soul and the mind can be based on the unknown reading of one Homeric line, and the concept of "law" in the "History" of Herodotus - on his original interpretation of Pindar's ode.