Ancient Greece

I. Early Greek civilizations

A. Minoan (mih-NO-un)

Located on the Island of Crete, the Minoan civilization appeared about 2000 B.C.; it emerged through trading rather than conquest. They seemed to be a very wealthy civilization; they had few weapons so they enjoyed a relative degree of peace; their women dressed elegantly with extensive jewelry and seemed to enjoy a status in society equal to men. The Ancient Greeks learned trade from the Minoans. The mathematics and technology of Egypt and Mesopotamia also made their way to Greece through the Minoans

This civilization was destroyed after about 500 years by natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes.

B. The Mycenaeans (my-suh-NEE-un)

A civilization on the mainland. They were responsible for destroying the Minoan civilization in about 1550 B.C. They took over the trade routes of their predecessors. They were more warlike than the Minoan civilization.

At the height of their power, some unknown threat caused them to fortify all their cities. The idea of the city state, an important idea in early Greece, came from the Mycenaeans. Homer’s famous books, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were based on events from this era.

C. The Trojan War

Troy was a rich trading city in present day Turkey; it controlled the straits into the Black Sea. According to legend, the Trojans kidnapped Helen, the beautiful wife of a Greek king. The Greeks went to war with Troy for 10 years before finally laying waste the city of Troy. (The Trojan Horse)

D. The Greek Dark Ages (1100-725 B.C.)
As the Mycenaean civilization collapsed, Greece was invaded and inhabited by people from the North called Dorians. The Dorian invasions destroyed the prosperity and cohesion of Greece. There was a sharp drop in agricultural production and in population. Greek cities became villages, and writing declined and was lost. Large numbers of people left the mainland and sailed to various lands to begin new settlements. Trade between Greece and elsewhere disappeared as the Dorian Greeks had no desire for contact with foreign peoples, believing that beyond them lived only strange people and monsters.

II. The Impact of Greek Geography

A. Greece is a peninsula.

It is surrounded by water and has a great deal of coastland. This gives the Greeks access to the sea. They will be great traders in the Mediterranean world.

B. The land is divided up by mountains.

It was difficult to travel across Greece. Communication between regions was also difficult. The made it hard for ancient Greece to unit politically into a large state or empire. As a result, Greece would remain divided up into city-states.

C. The soil was poor and rocky.

Agriculture was difficult. In fact, the only two things that grew well were grapes and olives. That meant they made a lot of wine and olive oil, but had to look elsewhere for grain. Greece also could not support a large population because of its inability to grow grain. When the population grew too large, they sent people away to start colonies. These colonies bought olive oil and wine from Greece and sold them grain in return.

III. Life of the Polis

A. The Polis

The polis became the center of Greek life after about 750 B.C. A polis was a city and the surrounding countryside that it controlled. On the highest part was a place called the acropolis, a fortified area that served as a place of refuge during attack and as a center of social, political, and religious life. The Greeks thought that life outside the polis did not allow human beings to flourish, or reach their full potential. Their word for people outside the polis, barbarian, came from their word for a baby’s sound (this is what they said other languages sounded like.)

B. Athens and Sparta

Athens evolved through many forms of government, trying each one out and learning the benefits and limitations of each. With Pericles, they finally settled on a democracy, or a “rule by the people.” (Note: the limitation of Athen’s democracy is that only males over 30 could be citizens; woman and slaves could not vote.) They developed a system in which people thought to be dangerous would be ostracized (kicked out) from the city. This process required the vote of 6000 Athenian citizens.

Athens was a culture of trade, wealth, and leisure. Its citizens were free and celebrated life.

As Athens’ economy improved, it began to grow in trade. It began to put together a navy for protection.

Sparta emerged on the Peloponnesus. Rather than colonize and trade over long distances, they simply attacked and enslaved the people around them. This behavior required them to create a strong military state for protection and stability.

The military was the center of Spartan life, and all males were required to serve in the army from age 20 to 60. The men lived and ate together in the barracks; their wives raised the children at home to be soldiers. At age 7 they were taken from the mothers and raised by the government. Children unfit for military service were not allowed to live. As a result, the Spartan men were tough and mean; they were known as the best soldiers in all of Greece.

Spartan society is known for it conformity and rigid discipline. The military and society were so interwoven as to be indistinguishable. Spartans were ont allowed to travel abroad and foreign visitors were not welcome. They believed they had nothing to learn from anyone else and did not want disruptive influences coming into their polis. Anything than might encourage new thoughts—philosophy, literature, and the arts—were forbidden. Spartan society was a disciplined war making machine.

C. The Persian War

To the east of Greece, the Persian empire began to grow. The Ionian coast was conqueror by the Persians. When they revolted against Persian, the Athenian navy assisted them. Persians, under Darius I, retaliated against Athens. They landed on the shore at Marathon and were defeated by the Greeks. (One man ran all the way to Athens to report the victory—hence the modern Marathon.)

Darius’ successor, Xerxes, vowed revenge and launched a major invasion of Greece. This time, the Spartans and Athenians put aside their arguments and joined forces to battle the Persians. The most famous battle was at Thermopylae, where a small band of Spartan soldiers held the Persians briefly to save the Greek retreat. Although Athens fell and was burned, the Greek forces were saved and came back to defeat the Persians.

Classical Greece

A. The Age of Pericles (Greece’s Golden Age)

After the Persian war Spartan turned their troops to civilian life and Athens turned their fleet into merchant ships. The Spartans suffered terrible unemployment and food shortages, while Athens grew wealthy and entered its most flourishing time. Pericles, a general from the war, became the most important figure in Athens. Pericles did some important things:

1) He ushered in a golden age of art, drama and philosophy

2) He brought direct democracy to Athens. Every male citizen was allowed to vote on all issues of the government. The citizens also practiced ostracism: they wrote the name of anyone they considered dangerous to the state on a piece of pottery. If 6000 people chose the same person, that person was banned from the city for 10 years.

3) He ordered the building of the Parthenon. This brought harsh resistance because of the incredible cost.

4) Other important developments and accomplishments

a. The Rise of Drama

Drama arose out of the worship of Dionysius, the twice born (myth of Dionysius). He was the god of reproduction, wine, fertility, Spring. The Dance in Dionysius’ worship was believed to allow Spring to come. The song and dance was a formal. Somewhere along the line, the chorus picked up famous motifs from Greek history (Agamemnon’s argument with Achilles) and began to incorporate these into the song/dance. Individuals would act out great actions. Spectators began to form on the hillsides, not to participate but to observe.

Then Sophocles added the second actor—dialog began. His two most famous plays are Oedipus Rex and Antigone. One deals with human fate, the other with morality.

Sophocles wrote tragedies. In Greek drama a tragedy is not merely a person dying; it is rather a serious play that portrays the downfall of a hero because of some character flaw. (Think of Achilles and his hubris, or anger.) Tragedies are the stories of wasted potential. They deal with the large issues of human existence.

Comedies usually dealt with current event issues. They portrayed human life with all of its inconsistencies and folly. They were usually written to affect public opinion about important issues (Aristophanes’ The Clouds, for example).

b. Other important thinkers

Herodotus The Father of history. Wrote a history of the Persian Wars. For the first time, events of the past were written about with attempted accuracy, not as myth.

Socrates Used Socratic method (asking questions) to lead people to truth. Was forced to drink poison for doubting the Greek gods and corrupting the youth.

Plato Socrates most famous student. Believed that only ideas are true and perfect; material things are imperfect copies of these ideas. Thus experience is not as important to finding truth as wisdom and philosophy (there is an argument against democracy here; the experience of a majority is not beneficial to finding the best way. Plato believed kings should be philosophers.

Aristotle Believed Plato’s “ideas” were not separate from the material world. His belief was the foundation for science. His most famous student was Alexander the Great.

Hippocrates Father of medicine. Looked for the cause of sickness in the body, not in some spiritual force.

c. Greek Architecture. (Internet activity: Greek Architecture)

B. Peloponnesian War

Several Greek city-states began to resent Athens’ domination of Greece. When they appealed to Sparta for help, Sparta when to war. Most of the city-states of Greece were divided into two different camps: one that supported Athens, and the other that supported Sparta.

During the war Sparta surrounded Athens. Pericles knew that the Athenian army could not beat the Spartans, so they remained inside the protected walls of Athens. Plague broke out. Pericles died. After 25 years of war, the Spartans destroyed the Athenian navy and Athens surrendered. The city walls were torn down. The Athenians wondered why they lost and a period of great self-examination began for Athens.

Athens and Sparta, as well of the rest of Greece, were so weakened by these long wars that Greece was vulnerable to foreign invasion. And Macedonia, under a new and powerful king, soon invaded.

The Age of Alexander

Alexander was born in Macedonia. His father wanted the best education for him, so he sent him to Athens to be tutored by Aristotle. This education firmly grounded Aristotle in Greek culture, or Hellenism.

Alexander began to create an empire and easily invaded and took over Greece because the Greek city-states has been weakened by the long Peloponnesian Wars. For the first time, all of Greece was united in an empire rather than separated into independent city-states.

The first civilization outside of Greece that Alexander the Great sought to conquer was the Persians. He wanted revenge for their invasion of Greece in the Persian Wars. He defeated them and then went on to conquer many civilizations until he reached India. At that point his troops refused to fight any longer. They only wanted to return home. Soon after their return, Alexander died. He failed to pick who would lead his empire after him, so his empire was broken up between his generals. Ancient Greek history came to an end.

Perhaps the most important result of the rule of Alexander was his intentional spread of Hellenism. In Persian, he commanded 10,000 of his troops to stay in Persian and marry Persian women in order to bring up children in the culture of the Greeks. Because of this, many aspects of Greek civilization were spread throughout the known world.