Chapter 3.1 - Early Greece

• Much of Greece consists of small plains and river valleys surrounded by mountain ranges 8,000 to 10,000 feet high.

  • The mountainous terrain had the effect of isolating Greeks from one another. Consequently, Greek communities tended to follow their own separate paths and develop their own way of life.

  • Over a period of time, these communities became attached to their independence and were only too willing to fight one another to gain an advantage.

• No doubt the small size of these independent Greek communities fostered participation in political affairs and unique cultural expressions, but the rivalry among these communities also led to the bitter warfare that ultimately devastated Greek society.

• The sea also influenced the evolution of Greek society. Greece had a long seacoast, dotted by bays and inlets that provided numerous harbors.

• The Greeks also inhabited a number of islands to the west, the south, and particularly the east of the Greek mainland.

• It is no accident that the Greeks became seafarers who sailed out into the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, first to make contact with the outside world and later to establish colonies that would spread Greek civilization throughout the Mediterranean region.

• Topography helped determine the major territories into which Greece was ultimately divided. South of the Gulf of Corinth was the Peloponnesus, which was virtually an island. , when a Macedonian king, Philip II, conquered the Greeks.

• Minoan Crete The earliest civilization in the Aegean region emerged on the large island of Crete, southeast of the Greek mainland.

  • A Bronze Age civilization that used metals, especially bronze, in making weapons had been established there by 2800 B. Evans’s excavations on Crete led to the discovery of an enormous palace complex at Knossos, near modern Heraklion, that was most likely the center of a far-ranging ‘‘sea empire,’’ probably largely commercial.

  • We know from archaeological remains that the people of Minoan Crete were accustomed to sea travel and had made contact with the more advanced civilization of Egypt. Egyptian products have been found in Crete and Cretan products in Egypt.

• Minoan Cretans also made contact with and exerted influence on the Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Greek mainland.

• The Minoan civilization reached its height between 2000 and 1450 B.

• The palace at Knossos, the royal seat of the kings, demonstrates the prosperity and power of this civilization.

Chapter 3.2 - The Greeks in a Dark Age (c. 1100–c. 750 B.C.E.)

• After the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, Greece entered a difficult period in which population declined and food production dropped.

  • Because of the difficult conditions and our lack of knowledge about the period, historians refer to it as the Dark Age.

  • At the same time, some new developments were forming the basis for a revived Greece.

  • During the Dark Age, large numbers of Greeks left the mainland and migrated across the Aegean Sea to various islands and especially to the southwestern shore of Asia Minor, a strip of territory that came to be called Ionia.

• Based on their dialect, the Greeks who resided there were called Ionians.

  • Two other major groups of Greeks settled in established parts of Greece.

  • The Aeolian Greeks, located in northern and central Greece, colonized the large island of Lesbos and the adjacent territory on the northwestern coast of Asia Minor.

  • The Dorians established themselves in southwestern Greece, especially in the Peloponnesus, as well as on some of the southern Aegean islands, including Crete and Rhodes.

• Other important activities occurred in this Dark Age as well.

  • Greece saw a revival of some trade and some economic activity besides agriculture.

  • The Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet to give themselves a new system of writing.

  • By reducing all words to a combination of twenty-four letters, the Greeks made learning to read and write simpler.

• Finally, near the end of this Dark Age appeared the work of Homer, who has come to be viewed as one of the great poets of all time.

• Homer and Homeric Greece The Iliad and the Odyssey, the first great epic poems of early Greece, were based on stories that had been passed on from generation to generation.

• Homer made use of these oral traditions to compose the Iliad, his epic of the Trojan War. By kidnap-ping Helen, wife of the king of the Greek state of Sparta, he outraged all the Greeks.

• Under the leadership of the Spartan king’s brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, the Greeks attacked Troy.

• Ten years later, the Greeks finally won and sacked the city. ’’ 1 The Odyssey, Homer’s other masterpiece, is an epic romance that recounts the journeys of one of the Greek heroes, Odysseus, after the fall of Troy, and his ultimate return to his wife.

• Under the leadership of the Spartan king’s brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, the Greeks attacked Troy.

• Ten years later, the Greeks finally won and sacked the city. ’’ 1 The Odyssey, Homer’s other masterpiece, is an epic romance that recounts the journeys of one of the Greek heroes, Odysseus, after the fall of Troy, and his ultimate return to his wife.

• Under the leadership of the Spartan king’s brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, the Greeks attacked Troy.

Chapter 3.4 - The World of the Greek City-States (c. 750–c. 500 B.C.E.)

• The Greek polis developed slowly during the Dark Age, but by the eighth century had emerged a unique and fundamental institution in Greek society. In a physical sense, the polis encompassed a town or city or even a village and its surrounding countryside.

• But each had a central place where the citizens of the polis could assemble for political, social, and religious activities.

• In some poleis, this central meeting point was a hill, which could serve as a place of refuge during an attack, and later in some locales came to be the religious center where temples and public monuments were erected.

• Below this acropolis would be a Angora , an open space that served both as a place where citizens could assemble and as a marketplace.

  • Poleis varied greatly in size, from a few square miles to a few hundred square miles.

    • Most poles were much smaller, consisting of only a few hundred to several thousand people.

    • Although our word politics is derived from the Greek term polis, the polis itself was much more than just a political institution.

• It was, above all, a community of citizens in which all political, economic, social, cultural, and religious activities were focused.

  • As a community, the polis consisted of citizens with political rights, citizens with no political rights, and noncitizens.

    • All citizens of a polis possessed rights, but these rights were coupled with responsibilities. ’’

    • The unity of citizens was important and often meant that states would take an active role in directing the patterns of life.

• Nevertheless, the loyalty that citizens had to their poleis also had a negative side.

• Poleis distrusted one another, and the division of Greece into fiercely patriotic sovereign units helped bring about its ruin.

• These aristocrats, who were large landowners, also dominated the political life of their poleis.

• Hoplites advanced into battle as a unit, shoulder to shoulder, forming a phalanx in tight order, usually eight ranks deep.

• The phalanx was easily routed, however, if it broke its order. The safety of the phalanx thus depended on the solidarity and discipline of its members.

• The hoplite force, which apparently developed first in the Peloponnesus, had political as well as military repercussions.

• Since each hoplite provided his own armor, men of property, both aristocrats and small farmers made up the new phalanx.

• The Greek philosopher Plato described war as ‘‘always existing by nature between every Greek city-state. All of these features of Greek warfare remained part of Western warfare for centuries.

• But each had a central place where the citizens of the polis could assemble for political, social, and religious activities.

Chapter 3.5 - The High Point of Greek Civilization: Classical Greece

• Classical Greece is the name given to the period of Greek history from around 500 B.

  • The Greek plan, as it evolved, was to fight a holding action at the pass of Thermopylae along the main road from Thessaly into Boeotia, probably to give the Greek fleet of three hundred ships at Artemisia, off northern Euboea, the chance to fight the Persian fleet.

  • The Greeks knew that the Persian army depended on the fleet for supplies.

  • A Greek force numbering close to nine thousand, under the leadership of the Spartan king Leonidas and his contingent of three hundred Spartans, held off the Persian army at Thermopylae for two days.

  • When told that Persian arrows would darken the sky in battle, one Spartan warrior supposedly responded, ‘‘That is good news.

• We will fight in the shade!’’ Unfortunately for the Greeks, a traitor told the Persians of a mountain path they could use to outflank the Greek force.

  • Meanwhile, the Greek fleet remained in the straits of Salamis while the Persians sacked Athens.

  • The Peloponnesians wanted the Greeks to retreat to the Peloponnesus and the Greek ships to move to the isthmus as well.

  • Although the Greeks were outnumbered, they managed to outmaneuver the Persian fleet and decisively defeated it.

• The Persians still had their army and much of their fleet intact, but Xerxes, frightened at the prospect of another Ionian revolt, returned to Asia but left a Persian force in Thessaly.

• The next seventy years witnessed continuing warfare among the Greeks, with the leading roles shifting among Sparta, Athens, and new Greek power, the city-state of Thebes.

• To maintain its new leadership in Greek affairs, Sparta encouraged a Panhellenic crusade against the Persians as a common enemy.

• The Persians had taken advantage of the Greeks’ internal struggle to reimpose their control over the Greek states in western Asia Minor.

• But the Persians had learned the lessons of Greek politics.

• They now offered financial support to Athens, Thebes, and other Greek states to oppose Spartan power within Greece itself, thus beginning a new war, the Corinthian War.

• The war ended when the Greek states, weary of the struggles, accepted the King’s Peace, dictated by the Great King of Persia.

Chapter 3.6 - Culture and Society of Classical Greece

• The central theme of Herodotus’s work is the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, which he viewed as a struggle between Greek freedom and Persian despotism.

• The first Greek dramas were tragedies, plays based on the suffering of a hero and usually ending in disaster.

• Aeschylus is the first tragedian whose plays are known to us.

• Although he wrote ninety tragedies, only seven have survived.

• As was customary in Greek tragedy, his plots are simple. The only complete trilogy we possess, called the Oresteia, was composed by Aeschylus.

• The theme of this trilogy is derived from Homer. Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, returns a hero after the defeat of Troy.

• His wife, Clytemnestra, avenges the sacrificial death of her daughter Iphigenia by murdering Agamemnon, who had been responsible for Iphigenia’s death.

• In the second play of the trilogy, Agamemnon’s son Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother. Orestes is now pursued by the avenging Furies, who torment him for killing his mother.

• Evil acts breed evil acts, and suffering is one’s lot, suggests Aeschylus.

• Sophocles - The most successful writer of Greek tragedies was the Athenian playwright Sophocles, whose background included holding some important public offices in Athens.

• His most famous play is Oedipus the King.

• The oracle of Apollo foretells that a man will kill his own father and marry his mother. ’’ 15 In Sophocles' play Antigone, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, is caught in a terrible dilemma.

• Her brother Polynices has died in an attempt to seize the throne of Thebes, and now the king of Thebes, Antigone’s uncle Cleon, has forbidden his burial as a traitor to the state.

• In the confrontation between Cleon and Antigone, Sophocles bears witness to the complexity of human existence.