Ancient Greece Notes

Day 1:

Background:

  • Mountainous

  • Poor is resources (20% farmland)

  • Sea trade (very important)

  • Minoans lived on crete (powerful sea traders)

  • Myceneans were indo-europeans who migrated to mainland greece, built fortified cities which were ruled by kings

  • Myceneans invaded minoans, embraced culture

  • Sea trade, minoan writing, language, art, legends = greek religion, politics, literature

Day 2: Sparta vs Athens

Sparta:

  • On the Peloponesian Penninsula

  • FOunded by conquering Mesinia in 725 BCE

  • Messinians became Spartan Helots (slaves?)

Education:

Warrior supremacy society

  • Boys taken at age 7

  • Stealth wa encouraged

  • Age 30, ability to go home

  • Age 60, retirement

Government:

  • Oligarchy (group of people govern the society)

  • Assembly (made of citizens 30 and over and elected officials, and elected council of elders)

  • Council of Elders (citizens 60 and over to make laws, 28 members

  • 5 elected ephors for education and law enforcement

  • 2 kings to govern military society

Social Structure:

  • 3 classes - 1st class were ruling landowners, 2nd class was free non-citizens in commerce and industry, and 3rd class were the helots who were enslaved from war)

  • Women lived without men until they turned 30, so they had more property, marriage, and business freedom

  • Beauty standard were for stronger, stockier women because they were believed to create stronger babies

  • Outsiders and art weren’t welcome

  • Serve sparta over everything else!

Athens:

  • located on the penninsula Athaca

  • Government progression: MATD

Monarchy:

  • replaced by aristocracy in 700 BCE

Aristocracy:

  • Land owners lended land to farmers. Farmers had to “sell” themselves to the landowners in case of a bad harvest.

  • Assembly had little power

  • Growing unrest is normal citizens, growing wealth gap

  • CYLON tries to become tyrant, is unsuccessful

Tyranny:

  • Draco wrote the 1st law code for Athens

  • By 600 BCE, Athens was at the brink of a civil war

  • Aristocrats chose Solon to become the head of the new government

    • Outlawed slaves selling themselves

    • Anyone could press legal charges against anyone

    • Opened up overseas trade

    • Failed to redistribute rightful land to peasants

  • Pisistratus becomes the first tyrant

    • Land was redistributed to patients

    • Supported artisans and merchants

    • Helped extend Athenian influence to the Mediterannean

    • Aristocrats kicked his son out and tried to re-establish Aristocracy

  • Cleisthenes blocked this Oligarchy, reformed Athens

Democracy:

  • First democracy established by Cleisthenes

  • 500 people chosen at random by lot, responsible for foreign, finance, trade, and laws

  • Assembly comprised of all free male citizens who could debate and pass laws

Day 3: Persian Wars

Causes:

  • Ionia - Greek settlement under Persian control

  • Ionians revolt with Athenians against Persia

  • Persian King Darius vowed to crush Greece

  • Persians ultimately win

Battle at Marathon:

  • 1st battle

  • King Darius sends men to Athenian Marathon Plain

  • Persians retreated as many Athenians were waiting to fight

  • Athens won but their city was destroyed

  • Pheddipides raced back from marathon to Athens, delivered message (to fight) and died

Battle at Thermopylae:

  • Xerxes (King Darius’s son) wanted to also destroy Greece

  • Persians met no resistance (internal cold war within Greece)

  • Narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae help Greeks (SPARTANS led by King Leonidas)

  • Spartans held their ground as the rest of the Greeks fled

  • Persians burned Athens to the ground

Battle at Salamis:

  • Greeks used battering rams to sink Persian ships

  • Greek battleships were called tiremes

Consuqeuences:

  • Greece’s Golden Age

    • Athenians persuaded 140 polises to form Delian League

    • League members paid to strengthen and protect all polises, removed Persians from surrounding areas, led by Athens

    • Pericles led Athens to Golden Age, otherwise known as the Age of Pericles

    • Goals:

      • Strengthen Athenian Democracy

      • Strengthen Athenian Empire

      • Glorify Athens

    • Used Delian League money for navy, protecting sea trade, beautifying Athens through gold and ivory

Golden Age Part 1:

  • Western culture strongly impacted by Greeks

  • Pericles reelected 15 times to Athenian 10 official board called Strategoi

  • Tremendous influence on Athens’s politics and culture

  • Expanded Athenian Democracy → officeholders were paid

  • Rebuilt Athens using Delian League money

Parthenon:

  • Rebuilt during the Golden Age

  • Built to honor Athena

  • Sculpted by Phidias

  • Set standards and globally influenced with pillars

  • Statue of Athena

    • 38 feet tall

    • Gold + Ivory

    • Inside Parthenon

    • Built by Phidias

Phidias:

  • Worked on the Statue of Athena and the Parthenon

  • Commissioned by Pericles

Classical Art:

  • Greeks valued order, balance, proportion

  • Faces were peaceful

  • Sculptors tried to capture scenes without emotion

  • Columns

    • Docic

      • Simplest

      • Plain Capital

      • No base

    • Ionic

      • More decorative

      • Scrolled Capital

      • Base like stepped rings

    • Corinthian (complex name, complex pillar)

      • Most decorative

      • Capital had flowers and decor

      • Base like stepped rings

Day 4: Greek Golden Age and Accomplishments

Drama:

  • Greeks invented drama and built 1st theaters in the west

  • Expressed civic pride and paid tribute to the gods

Tragedies:

  • Serious drama (love, hate, war, betrayal)

  • Tragic hero brought down by an Achilles Heel

  • Authors include:

    • Aesychlus - The Oresteia

    • Sophocles - Oedipus the King and Antigone

    • Euripides - More sympathetic to women

Comedies:

  • Slapstick situation & crude humor

  • Made fun of customs, politics, respected people, ideas of the time (satire)

  • Showed freedom and openness in public discussion

    • Aristophanes - The Birds and Lysystrata

Sophocles:

  • Athens’ biggest playwright

  • 1st to use painted background

  • Stories in 1 go

History:

  • Techniques used by western historians developed during golden age of Greece

  • Herodotus recorded the history of the Persian war including cause and effect relationships

  • Included fact and fiction

  • Researched and interviewed to develop understanding of historic events

  • Thucydides was a rival of Herodotus

  • Wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War

Socrates:

  • Socratic Method of Questioning

  • Thought and reason

  • Taught Philosophy to Athenian Youth

  • Taught Plato

Plato:

  • Philosopher and Teacher

  • Student and close friend of Socrates

  • Wrote the Republic

  • Founded the Academy (1st institution of higher learning in the world)

Aristotle:

  • Philosopher and Scientist

  • Student of Plato

  • Founded the Lyceum

  • Wrote the History of Animals

  • Tutored Alex the G

Euclid:

  • Mathematician

  • Wrote The Elements which contained 465 geometry propositions and proofs

  • Used by Muslim and European universities well into the 1900’s

Pythagoras:

  • Mathematician

  • Logic and Philosophies

  • Pythagorean Theorem

Archimedes:

  • Scientist

  • Estimated value of pi

  • Lever, compound pulley

  • Built and catapult

Hippocrates:

  • Father of Medicine

  • Rejected beliefs of divine intervention in human health

  • Hippocratic Oath

Olympic Games!

  • First held in western Peloponnese in 766 BCE

  • Sport part of Greek education (no foreigner rule)

  • Hippodrome (chariot racing)

  • Pentathlon (running, jumping, discus, javelin, wrestling, stadian)

Day 5: Peloponnesian Wars and Macedonia

Peloponnesian War:

  • Athens’ growing strength and dominance (bully) created tensions with neighbors (Sparta)

  • Athens held dominion over sea

  • Sparta always viewed Athens as inherently weaker →Sparta created Peloponnesian League to prevent Athens’ growth

  • 431 BCE: Sparta declared war on Athens after Athens provoked one of Sparta’s allies

  • Began conflicts with Delian League members and Peloponnesian League members

  • Athens = naval advantage, Sparta = land advantage

  • Pericles used military strength to attack Sparta’s allies by sea and prevent a land war

  • Sparta took fight to Athens’ homeland and burned surrounding limited farmland

  • Pericles responded by ordering all people inside the long walls

  • Walls ran from city to ports → allowing people to be protected and have access to the sea port

  • A plague struck via the harbor

    • Plague spread quickly, killed up to 2/3 of the population including Pericles

  • 415 BCE: Athens’ navy tried to attack Syracuse but was destroyed

    • Virtually ended food and supplies

    • Warfare continued, Athens surrendered in 404 BCE

Continuation:

  • Sparta and Peloponnesian League (technically) won

  • Sparta and other polises were destitute

  • Agriculture was destroyed, armies and navies depleted, and trade was non-existant

  • 27 years of war left Greece extremely weak and open to invasion

Macedonia -

Background on Macedonia:

  • Mountainous and cold, villages instead of city states (kings)

  • Macedonians considered themselves to be Greeks but Greeks thought they were savages

Macedonian Army:

  • Very well trained, used phlanxes, 16 men x 16 men

  • Soldiers used 18 ft pikes to break through soldier lines and open lines for cavalry

Macedonia conquers Greece:

  • Demosthenes (famous Greek orator) tried to warn Greece of attack by King Phillip II

  • Athens and Thebes tried to form a defense but were defeated by Macedonia

Alexander the G:

  • Son of King Philip II

  • Educated by Aristotle, great military soldier and leader

  • Left Macedonia for a time but later joined father for the battle of Chaeronea

King Philips Death:

  • Killed at daughters wedding

  • Declared himself king and become known as Alexander the Great

Alexander at Thebes:

  • Unified all of Greece, showed compassion to some citizens and priests

  • Killed 6k other Thebians and sold 20k into slavery

  • Destroyed the entire city

Alexander in Egypt:

  • Egyptians were so “impressed” by his invasion →made him king

  • City of ALexandria was the new hub for learning and commerce

  • Excluded Egyptians

ALexander in Persia:

  • DEfeated Persian Empire

  • Appointed Persian Governors, promoted religious tolerance, respected natives

  • Burned Capital of Persepolis to the ground

ALexander in India:

  • Learned a lot aboiut hinduiam

  • SPent years killing native men and selling women and children to slavery

  • Troops demanded to go home

  • Died 1 year later in Babylon

Division of Empire:

  • Generals fought for control, divided empire

    • Antigonus → Macedonia and Greece

    • Ptolemy → Egypt

    • Seleucus → Persia

Outcomes:

  • Blending of cultures, Hellenistic (combination of Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Indian, Hellenic = greek)

  • Alexandria became #1 center of commerce of Hellenistic civilization

  • Eventually replaced Athens as center of scholarship w/ focus on math, astronomy, philosophy, and art

philip 2 conquered thebes, phidias made parthenon and statue of athena. saq is on alexander the great. 7 matching questions