Greek History

1
Greek History

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

2
Ancient Greece

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

3
Important Precursors

• Minoan Crete
• Mycenaean Greece

4
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

5
Minoan Crete, cont

• surplus agriculture
• industry
• over-seas commercial trade

6
Minoan Culture

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

7
Minoan Culture, cont

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

8
Interpretation?

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

9
Contributions to Greeks

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

10
Mycenaeans

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

11
Mycenaeans, cont

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

12
The Dark Ages

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

13
The Archaic Period

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

14
The Polis

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

15
The Ethnos

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

16
Rise of Literacy

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

17
Age of Colonization

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

18
Varieties of Constitutions

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

19
The Good Ones

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

20
The Bad Ones

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

21
Other forms

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

22
Athens and Sparta

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

23
Sparta

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

24
Rise of Tyrants

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

25
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

26
Cylon

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

27
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

28
Enter Solon

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

29
Peisistratus

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

30
Cleisthenes

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

31
The Persian Wars, 490-479 B.C.

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

32
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

33
The Peloponnesian War

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

34
The Fourth Century

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

35
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

36
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

37
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

38
Greek Religion

• Homer
• Hesiod
• polytheistic
• civic
• tolerant

39
Greek Religion, cont

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

40
Greek Religion, cont

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

41
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

42
Philosophy

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

43
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..

44
The Sophists

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

45
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

46
Plato

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

47
Aristotle

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

48
Stoics

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

49
Other Important Schools

• Cynics
• Skeptics
• Epicureans