Greek History

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Greek History

• Complex and sophisticated
• motto all things in moderation
• they did nothing in moderation

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Ancient Greece

• importance to Western culture
• fundamental ideas and categories
• Individualism and Humanism
• the rise of Reason
• decline of superstition/religion

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Important Precursors

• Minoan Crete
• Mycenaean Greece

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The eastern Mediterranean area
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Minoan Crete

• ca. 2900 B.C. to 1450 B.C.
• contemporary with Egypt
• major, non-river valley culture
• highly sophisticated
• literate
• Linear A and Linear B

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Minoan Crete, cont

• surplus agriculture
• industry
• over-seas commercial trade

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Minoan Culture

• elaborate towns and villages
• complex religious ideas
• sophisticated art
• sports and leisure
• high status for women

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an artists rendering of the main building of the
Palace of Minos at Knossos
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Another idea of Knossos
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North entrance of the Palace of Knossos Iraklion
Museum, Crete
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Decorated storage jars Knossos
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Storage cellars palace of Knossos
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Palace of Knossos Room of the Double Axes
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Palace of Knossos the Throne Room of Minos
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Palace, north entrance the famous Bull fresco
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Great Propylaea at the south entrance of the
palace
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A fresco with partridges from the Caravan
seraglio of Knossos.
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From the Palace of Knossos The famous "bull
leaping" fresco from the East wing of the palace
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The Throne of King Minos
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The Queens rooms, with blue dolphins
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Rython bulls head from Knossos
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Poppy Goddess
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Snake goddess -goddess? -priestess? -worshipper
?
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The Blue Ladies
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Minoan Priestess
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Religious procession
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Labrys double axe Labyrinth the House of
the Double Axe
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Temple entrance to a cave shrine
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Minoan Culture, cont

• unwalled cities
• no foreign invasions
• few weapons
• no civil conflict

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Interpretation?

• King Minos?
• utopia?
• matriarchy?
• thalassocracy?

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Contributions to Greeks

• linguistic
• olives, grapes, figs
• place names
• overseas movement

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Mycenaeans

• Bonze Age Greeks
• 2000-1100 B.C.
• small, warrior states
• war, trade, piracy
• literate (Linear B)

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Mycenaeans, cont

• the Heroic Age
• the Age of Myth
• the development of Greek Religion
• beginnings of a common culture

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Mycenae, ca.1450 B.C.
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The great megaron at Mycenae
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The death mask of King Agamemnon Mycenae
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The Dark Ages

• the Dorian Invasion ?
• loss of literacy
• loss of political sophistication

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The Archaic Period

• ca. 850 B.C.
• beginning of classical Greek history
• foundations of Western culture

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The Polis

• the city-state
• city and dependent territory
• independence of each city
• warfare and rivalry

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The Ethnos

• Greek tribal structures
• villages
• common cult centers
• fringes of the Greek world

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Rise of Literacy

• the alphabet
• Homer
• the Iliad, the Odyssey
• Hesiod
• Works and Days, the Theogony
• Lyric poetry
• Sappho

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Age of Colonization

• ca. 750-650 B.C.
• Spain to Russia
• spread of Greek culture
• contact with foreign peoples

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Greek cities and colonies, 750-650 B.C.
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Varieties of Constitutions

• Plato, Aristotle, Polybius
• based on observation of types in Greece
• thought of organically
• three Good types, three Bad types
• the anacyclosis

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The Good Ones

• monarchy (rule by one)
• aristocracy (rule by the best)
• constitutional government (rule by a body of law)

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The Bad Ones

• tyranny (extra-legal rule by one man)
• oligarchy (rule by a faction)
• democracy (rule by the people, without law)

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Other forms

• you name it
• socialism, communism, utopianism
• egalitarian between genders
• etc.

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Athens and Sparta

• most available evidence
• both are exceptions to the norm
• both dominate the Greek world

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Sparta

• no colonization, conquest of neighbors
• the constitution of Lycurgus
• a perpetual military state
• all citizens are subordinated to the state
• no private property

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Rise of Tyrants

• many states moved from monarchy to tyranny
• rise of disenfranchised classes ?
• rise of a new military form
• the Hoplite soldier

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Athens

• evolution from monarchy to democracy
• aristocracy, with elected rulers
• Cylon and Draco
• Solon reform and timocracy
• Peisistratus a tyranny
• Cleisthenes the rise of democracy

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Cylon

• attempted tyranny
• faction struggle
• blood-feuds
• need for written law

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Draco

• first to write and post the laws
• the homicide courts
• did not solve social problems
• threat of violent revolution
• redistribute the land, cancel all debts

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Enter Solon

• chosen by all to avoid revolution
• new constitution
• beginnings of democracy
• opened political offices
• created protections for the people

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Solon of Athens
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Peisistratus

• three attempts a tyranny
• the Golden Age of Athens
• used his own wealth
• not a modern tyrant

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Cleisthenes

• defeated in faction fighting
• became a democrat
• reorganization of all citizens
• breakdown of hereditary kinship groups
• democracy

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Persian Empire
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The Persian Wars, 490-479 B.C.

• Ionian Revolt
• invasion of Greece
• Marathon
• Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea
• the defining moment for Western culture

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Themistocles
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Leonidas
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Hoplite phalanx classical Greece
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The Rise of Athens

• war of liberation and revenge against Persia
• The Delian League
• transformation into the Athenian Empire
• burden of fighting Athens
• burden of cost the Allies
• the Periclean Age

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Pericles of Athens
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The Peloponnesian War

• Sparta and her Allies
• Athens and her Allies
• devastated Classical Greece
• devastated both Sparta and Athens

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Athens and Sparta the Peloponnesian War
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Thucydides
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The Fourth Century

• power vacuums, struggle for hegemony
• Thebes
• Federal leagues
• military monarchies
• Thessaly
• Macedonia

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The Rise of Macedonia

• Philip of Macedon
• Alexander the Great
• the turning point of both Ancient and World
  history
• no Alexander, then its a very different world

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Alexander the Great
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Conquests of Alexander

• the Persian Empire, plus a little extra
• rapid spread of Hellenism
• the Successor Kingdoms
• establishment of a permanent link
• The West to China
• never closed

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Empire of Alexander the Great
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Successor Kingdoms
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Greek Culture and Civilization

• foundations of Western thought
• asked the important questions for the first time
• gave the answers--that made sense--for the first
  time

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Aeschylus
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Greek Religion

• Homer
• Hesiod
• polytheistic
• civic
• tolerant

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Greek Religion, cont

• fully humanized gods
• deorum pax
• not concerned with morality
• no regular priests or clergy
• no church and state

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Greek Religion, cont

• civic cults
• private cults
• mystery cults
• oracles
• atheists

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Philosophy

• some people were not satisfied by religion
• but were not inclined to turn to non-civic cults
• answers the Big Questions
• deals with areas not covered by religion

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Philosophy

• love of wisdom
• search for causes
• search for why things happen
• application of reason and demonstration

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The Pre-Socratics Natural Sciences

• Thales founder of philosophy
• Xenophanes the One
• Empedocles transmigration of souls
• Heraclitus the dialectic
• Leucippus and Democritus biological evolution
  and atomic theory
• and so forth..

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The Sophists

• Man is the measure of all things.
• interest in human activities

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Socrates

• the turning point
• movement toward ethics, metaphysics, etc.
• away from natural sciences
• What is necessary to live the virtuous life?
• Goodness innate in the human mind

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Socrates The unexamined life is not worth
living.
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Plato

• taught in the dialogue form
• concerned with how one acquires knowledge
• chief concern ethics
• important for early Christian theology

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Plato
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Aristotle

• primary concern everything
• organization of human knowledge
• division of learn into fields and subfields
• important for medieval Christianity

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Aristotle
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Stoics

• concern with ethics, logic, and physics
• cyclic universe
• important for early Christianity

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Other Important Schools

• Cynics
• Skeptics
• Epicureans

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Books for you to read

• Barry Strauss. The Trojan War
• Paul Cartledge. Thermopylae
• E. Bradford. Thermopylae The Battle for the
  West
• A.R. Burns. Persia and the Greeks
• D. Kagan. The Peloponnesian War
• N.G. L. Hammond. A History of Greece
• R. Sealy. The Greek Polis
• Leonard Cottrell. The Bull of Minos

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More Books

• E. Gruen. The Hellenistic World
• E. Gruen. The Hellenistic World and the Coming
  of Rome
• W.W. Tarn. The Hellenistic World
• W.W. Tarn. Alexander the Great
• Ulrich Wilken. Alexander the Great
• N.G.L. Hammond. Alexander of Macedon
• Mark Munn. The School of Hellas

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And More books

• V. Ehrenberg. From Solon to Socrates
• Christian Meier. Athens
• J. Morris and B.B. Powell. The Greeks
• O. Murray. Early Greece
• J.K. Davies. Democracy and Classical Greece
• W.F. Walbank. The Hellenistic World
• R. Osbourne. The Making of Greece
• A.H.M. Jones. Sparta