Aim: What was the greatest achievement of the Athenian Golden Age?

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Aim What was the greatest achievement of the
Athenian Golden Age?

• Do Now Does truth exist, or is there only
  opinion?

NY State Standards 2, 3 Common Core RS 7, 9
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I What led to the Athenian Golden Age?

1. Recall that in 479 BCE Athens, with the help of
   Sparta, won the Persian Wars. Athens emerged as
   the most powerful polis (Greek city-state) in
   Greece, and became head of the Delian League.
2. Pericles, a powerful Athenian ruler, used the
   money from the Delian League treasury to fund the
   arts and sciences in Athens, leading to the
   Athenian Golden Age.

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II The Greek Philosophers

1. Philosophers are lovers of wisdom. They ask
   questions about humanity, reality, and existence.
   They then try to answer these questions with
   logic and reason.
2. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the most
   influential Greek philosophers.

Have you ever asked yourself why life exists? Or,
is war ever good? If you have, you were
philosophizing!
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Greek Philosophers Continued

• Socrates 470 399 BCE
• a) Born in Athens, he lived during the time of
  Pericles and fought in the Peloponnesian War. In
  his 40s, he began to ask questions about the
  world around him, such as What is wisdom?. He
  lead open discussions to try and answer these
  difficult questions. He soon had a following of
  young men, including his most famous student
  Plato.

Through these open discussions, Socrates
developed the Socratic Method you teach by
asking questions, and having the students find
the answer themselves.
Socrates never wrote down his own dialogues.
Thankfully, Plato did.
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Greek Philosophers Continued

• b) Socrates strongly disagreed with the Sophists.
  The Sophists charged money for their teaching,
  and believed that you can argue anything.
  Socrates never charged money for his teachings,
  and he believed that TRUTH does exist therefore,
  not all arguments are correct.

Can you argue that it is moral to kill an
innocent child, just because you feel like it?
What would Socrates say? What would a sophist say?
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Greek Philosophers Continued

• c) 399 BCE Socrates was arrested for corrupting
  the youth of Athens. He had a trial in front of
  501 jurors. He refused to defend himself, and was
  found guilty. Many historians believe he had the
  opportunity to flee (and remain forever in
  exile). However, Socrates remained in Athens, and
  carried out his own sentence by drinking poison
  hemlock.

Why do you think that Socrates was willing to
die, rather than to flee Athens?
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Greek Philosophers Continued

• 2. Plato 427 347 BCE
• Recall that Plato was the most famous student of
  Socrates, and wrote down the dialogues of his
  teacher.
• Plato believed in a higher reality than the world
  in which we live in. He believed that ideas are
  always more ideal than physical objects.
• - The ideal form of a man is his soul, not his
  body.
• c) Plato wrote The Republic in it he described
  his ideal society, ruled by philosopher-kings
  (the most intelligent of the population).
• d) Plato founded The Academy, a school for the
  study of philosophy. It also was the first known
  university in human history!

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Greek Philosophers Continued

• e) One of Platos most important dialogues was
  the Allegory of the Cave.
• A group of people have lived in a deep cave since
  birth, never seeing the light of day. These
  people are bound tied up so that they cannot
  look to either side or behind them, but only
  straight ahead. Behind them is a fire, and behind
  the fire is a partial wall. On top of the wall
  are various statues, which are being manipulated
  by another group of people, lying out of sight
  behind the partial wall. Because of the fire, the
  statues cast shadows across the wall that the
  prisoners are facing. The prisoners watch these
  shadows, and because these shadows are all they
  ever get to see, they believe them to be the most
  real things in the world. A prisoner is freed
  from his bonds and ventures outside of the cave
  for the first time. He sees trees, flowers and
  other people. He realizes that what he had though
  was real were only shadows of reality. He looks
  to the heavens and sees the sun, realizing that
  the sun is the cause of everything he sees around
  him. The prisoner returns to the cave and
  excitedly tells the prisoners what he had seen.
  They laugh at him, thinking it ridiculous that
  anything more real lies beyond their cave.

What is the lesson of this story?
An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can
be interpreted to reveal a deeper meaning.
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Greek Philosophers Continued

• 3. Aristotle 384 322 BCE
• Aristotle was not born in Athens, but he attended
  Platos Academy in 350 BCE.
• Aristotle was very interested in science. He
  wanted to use Socrates methods of questioning to
  understand how the world works. This is why
  Aristotle is often called the father of the
  scientific method.
• Aristotle believed that to be moral is to follow
  the Golden Mean at one end is excess, and on the
  other end is deficiency. One should strive for
  somewhere in-between.
• Aristotle was the tutor of a future ruler of the
  world, Alexander the Great.

Bob is 100 pounds overweight. According to
Aristotles Golden Mean, how should Bob go about
trying to lose weight? What should he not do?
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III Greek Architecture

• A) The Egyptians were the first to invent
  columns, but the idea soon spread to Greece. The
  Greeks created 3 new types of columns, which are
  still used today!

Early Egyptian columns were not free standing
the Egyptian engineers were afraid that they
would fall. The Greeks did not have that fear
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Greek Architecture Continued

• Greek Doric Columns

As seen in the Parthenon, Athens
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Greek Architecture Continued

• Greek Ionian Columns

As seen in the Apollo Temple, Didyma, Turkey
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Greek Architecture Continued

• Greek Corinthian Columns

As seen in the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens
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Greek Architecture Continued

• B) The Parthenon was built between 447 and 432
  BCE, on top of the Acropolis (the highest hill in
  Athens). It was a temple dedicated to Athena, the
  patron Goddess of Athens. It was made from
  limestone and marble. Inside was a statue of
  Athena. On the outside, it is decorated with
  Doric columns, as well as a frieze of statues,
  depicting a procession in honor of Athena. The
  columns are not all the same size it is an
  optical illusion! The architects wanted to show
  order and symmetry, as they believed the universe
  to be ordered.

A frieze is a broad band of sculpted decoration.
An earlier temple was destroyed by the Persians
during the Persian Wars.
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Greek Architecture Continued

• The Parthenon Interior View

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Greek Architecture Continued

• Lord Elgin of Britain stole the Elgin Marbles
  from the Parthenons frieze in the early 19th
  century. Today they are housed in the British
  Museum, and Greece is fighting to get them back!

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IV Greek Art

1. Greek Sculpture

1. Early Greek sculpture (800 500 BCE) is known
as archaic. It was similar to Egyptian sculpture
stiff, not very detailed or realistic.
EGYPTIAN
ARCHAIC GREEK
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Greek Art Continued

• 2. By 460 BCE Greek sculpture became more
  detailed and realistic. (This is known as the
  Classical Period.) This was due to the belief
  that the human body is beautiful. Many sculptures
  were created to honor the gods.

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Greek Art Continued

• B) Greeks decorated vases and amophorae (a vase
  with two handles). First the potter shaped the
  the vessel on a wheel. They were then decorated
  by
• Painting black figures onto the red vessel.
• Painting a black background, leaving red figures.
  This was a more difficult skill.

Vases and amphorae had a practical purpose! They
were used as storage vessels for liquids such as
yummy Greek wine.
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V Greek Theatre

• Ancient Greek theatre began as festivals to honor
  the gods. The most famous festivals honored
  Dionysus, the god of wine. Originally, the chorus
  was small, but overtime the singing chorus became
  much more important.
• Over time, different genres (types) of theatre
  developed.
• Tragedies A hero suffers misfortune due to his
  own actions.
• Comedies A mockery or satire of society.

Actors would wear masks to convey their emotions.
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VI The Olympics

• The Olympics began in Athens in 776 BCE. The
  games were dedicated to the Gods, and held every
  4 years until 393 CE.
• The male athletes trained in gymnasiums.

Unlike our modern games, the male athletes had to
participate in EVERY event. Women were not
allowed to participate or to even observe, often
with the punishment of death.
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VII Greek Literature

• Recall that Homer wrote the Iliad and The
  Odyssey (circa 800 BCE). Both were epic poems
  about the Trojan War.
• B) Here is an excerpt from Antigone by Sophocles
  There are many wonders, and none is more
  wonderful than man he crosses the stormy, raging
  sea... He turns the dirt with mules, as the plows
  go back and forth through the fields and the
  years. And the birds, and the gangs of savage
  beasts, and the salty sea creatures, he catches
  them all in nets he weaves man is so smart man
  breaks shaggy wild horses, he tames tireless
  bulls and yokes their necks. And man taught
  himself to talk, and to think quicker than the
  wind blows, and all the moods that make a town a
  city. And he figured out how to flee the
  frost-arrows, when it's too cold to stay outside
  under the clear sky, and how to get out of the
  rushing rain yes, he can do anything.

What is Sophocles telling us about human beings?
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VIII Origin of Written History

• In the 5th century BCE Herodotus the father of
  history wrote about the history of Greece,
  Egypt, and other civilizations.

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war,
fathers bury their sons.
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IX Government

• Do not forget Athens was the birthplace of
  democracy!

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HW Questions

1. Draw a chart showing the 3 main Greek
   philosophers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) and
   their main beliefs/achievements.
2. If you were Socrates, would you have drank the
   poison? Why or why not?
3. What is the main idea behind Platos Allegory of
   the Cave? How do you know? Do you agree? Why or
   why not?
4. Describe any two other achievements of the
   Athenian Golden Age and why they are important.

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Key Vocabulary

• Allegory of the Cave
• Amphorae
• Archaic Greek Sculpture
• Aristotle
• Classical Greek Sculpture
• Comedies
• Corinthian Columns
• Delian League
• Democracy
• Doric Columns
• Elgin Marbles
• Frieze
• Golden Mean
• Herodotus
• Homer
• Iliad and the Odyssey
• Ionian Columns
• Olympics
• Parthenon