EPANDING THE CONTENT OF AN OUTLINE using notes.pptx
The Greek Adventure
1. THE GREEK ADVENTURE
“The function of the ruler is to use his best
endeavors to make his subjects happier.”
- Isocrates
2. INTRODUCTION
The small, rocky peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea now called
Greece proved to be the single most important source of later Western
civilization.
The history of the ancient Greeks can be divided into three epochs:
The Mycenaean Age lasted from about 2000 B.C. to the conquest of the
Greek peninsula by invaders in the 1100s.
The Hellenistic Period extended from the time of Homer to the conquest of
the Greek city-states by the Macedonians in the mid-300s.
The Hellenistic Age was the final period of Greek predominance, lasting from
about 300 B.C. to the first century A.D.
3.
4. THE MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION
More than most societies, Greece was shaped by its geography.
Greece has very little suitable land for large-scale farming, no broad river
valleys, and no level plains.
Dozens of harbors and bays can be found all along the coast.
The mountains of the peninsula make overland travel very difficult and it has
almost always been easier to travel and trade by sea than by land.
Greek geography encouraged political fragmentation as the people in
each valley and river basin developed their own sense of patriotism and
identity.
Greeks grew up thinking of themselves first as residents of a given place or
town and only secondarily as Greeks sharing a common culture and
language with the other inhabitants of the peninsula.
5.
6. THE MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION
The first Greeks to enter the peninsula came about 2000 B.C. as
wandering nomads from the eastern European plains.
By about 1600 they had become semi-civilized and some lived in fair-sized
towns, notably Mycenae on the eastern side of the Peloponnesus.
The people are known as the Mycenaeans and the few hundred years
of Greek civilization are called the Mycenaean Age.
Our knowledge of this period comes largely from archaeological
excavations and from the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epics of ancient
Greece written by the magnificent poet Homer.
The Iliad deals with the Mycenaeans’ war against the powerful city-state of
Troy and the Odyssey tells of the adventures of the hero Odysseus after the
war.
7. HOMER
INTERESTING FACTS
• Homer is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek
epic poets; yet, he was a Babylonian named
Tigranes, who took the name Homer when taken
hostage by the Greeks.
• Although it is unknown when he lived, modern
scholars estimate that Homer lived in the 7th and 8th
centuries B.C.
8. THE MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION
For a long time, historians believed that the Trojan War was simply a
fiction created by a great poet about his ancestors.
But thanks to archaeology, we know that there actually was a Troy and that
it was destroyed about the time that Homer indicates – about 1300 B.C.
The Mycenaean civilization was inspired by the model of one of its
trading partners and rivals: Crete.
Minos, the mythical king of Crete, established a wide-ranging trade empire,
which included Greece, by about 1600 and had much to do with the
civilizing of the Greeks.
The Minoans, named for Minos, taught their pupils too well in most ways.
9. MINOS
INTERESTING FACTS
• Minos was the author of the Cretan constitution and
the founder of its naval supremacy.
• On the Athenian stage, Minos was a cruel tyrant –
the heartless exactor of the tribute of Athenian
youths to feed to the Minotaur every nine years.
• After his death, he became the judge of the dead in
the underworld.
10. THE MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION
About 1400 B.C., the warlike Mycenaeans turned on their teachers and
destroyed much of the island settlements, aided by volcanic explosions
and earthquakes.
By 1300, the high Minoan civilization was in ashes and the island of Crete
ceased to play an important role in Mediterranean affairs.
From about 1100 B.C. to about 800, the Greek peninsula declined, so
much so that this period is called the Dark Age.
Not only did the arts decline but even the ability to write seems to have been
largely lost during these centuries.
During this time, the achievements of the Mycenaeans were forgotten and
the formerly urban civilization reverted to a rural, much less sophisticated one
during the Dark Age.
11. EARLY HELLENIC CIVILIZATION
Starting about 800 B.C., the Greek mainland slowly recovered the civilization
that it had created during the Mycenaean Age.
It would continue to far greater heights during its Classical Age (500-325 B.C.)
During the Dark Age, the Greek institution of the polis gradually developed.
In Greek, polis means the community of free persons who make up a town or any
inhabited place.
In a modern sense, the word is defined as a “city-state.”
At one time the Greek mainland and inhabitable islands were the home to
more than 200 poleis.
Each thought of itself as a political and cultural unit, independent of every other.
Yet each polis also thought of itself as part of that distinct and superior family of
peoples calling themselves “Greek.”
12. EARLY HELLENIC CIVILIZATION
The polis was much more than a political and governmental unit:
Free males of twenty years of age or more possessed full civil rights while
women, who were considered citizens, were excluded from political life.
This meant that as much as eighty percent of the population was excluded
from political life based on gender, age, or social status.
Each polis had more or less the same economic design:
A town of varying size, surrounded by farmland, pasture and woods supplied
the town with food and other necessities.
In the town lived artisans of all kinds and many others needed to make up a
civilized society.
13. ATHENS AND SPARTA
The two poleis that dominated Greek life and politics in the Classical
Age were Athens and Sparta.
They were poles apart in their conceptions of the “good life” for their
citizens:
Athens was the center of Greek artistic and scientific activity as well as the
birthplace of political democracy.
Sparta was a militaristic, authoritarian society that held the arts and
intellectual life in contempt.
Eventually, the two opposites came into conflict. What was the
outcome?
Interestingly, the artistic, philosophical, and democratic Athenian polis that
provoked the war ultimately ruined Athens.
14. ATHENS AND SPARTA
In general, four types of government were known to the Greeks:
A monarchy is rule by a single person, a king or equivalent (either sex) who
has the final word in law by right.
An aristocracy is rule by those who are born to the leading families, whether
or not they are particularly qualified in other ways.
An oligarchy is rule by a few and almost always the few are the wealthiest
members of society.
A democracy is rule by the people as a whole, almost always by means of
majority vote on disputed issues.
Additionally, the Greek word tyranny originally meant rule by a dictator
who had illegally seized power.
15. EARLY ATHENS
Athens went through all of these forms of government in the period after
750 B.C., when we knew something definite about its history.
The original monarchy was gradually forced aside by the aristocrats,
who ruled the polis in the seventh and early sixth centuries.
The aristocrats gave way in the 500s to oligarchs, some of whom were
nobly born and some of whom were rich commoners.
The most important oligarch was Solon, who was given supreme
power to institute reforms to quell social and economic discontent.
Solon responded by establishing a constitution that struck a balance
between the desires of the wealthy few and the demands of the
impoverished masses.
16. SOLON
INTERESTING FACTS
• Solon put an end to the worst evils of poverty in
Attica and provided his fellow countrymen with a
balanced constitution and a humane code of
laws.
• After completing his numerous works of reform,
Solon surrendered his extraordinary authority and
left the country under his own accord.
17. EARLY ATHENS
Eventually, an aristocratic tyrant named Pisistratus succeeded in making
himself the sole ruler and made certain important concessions to the
common people to gain their support for his plan to start a new
monarchic dynasty with his sons as his successors.
His sons were not nearly as clever as their father and were swept from power
by rebellion in 510 B.C.
The winner of the ensuing free-for-all was Cleisthenes, an aristocrat and
the true founder of the Athenian democracy.
Cleisthenes believed that the people should have the last word in their own
government because he believed it to be just and the best way to keep civil
peace.
18. CLEISTHENES
INTERESTING FACTS
• Cleisthenes introduced the concept of ostracism,
whereby a vote from more than 6,000 of the
citizens would exile a citizen for ten years.
• Ironically, Isagoras, Cleisthenes’ rival, used the
policy of ostracism to exile him under the pretext
of an ancient curse.
19. ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY
Cleisthenes in effect gave away his tyrannical powers to a series of
political bodies that were unprecedentedly democratic in character:
the ekklesia, boule, and deme.
The ekklesia was the general “town meeting” of all free male Athenians, who
had an equal voice in the great decisions of the polis.
All could speak freely in an attempt to win over the others; all could be
elected to any office; all could vote at the meetings of the ekklesia in the
center plaza of Athens below the Acropolis hill.
The boule was a council of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot for one-
year terms.
It served as a day-to-day legislature and executive, making and
implementing policy under the general supervision of the ekklesia.
The boule supervised the civil and military affairs of the polis and carried out
many of the functions of a modern city council – all male citizens could
expect to serve at least one term.
20. ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY
The deme was the basic political subdivision of the polis.
It was a territorial unit but smaller in population.
Each deme was entitled to select a certain number of boule members and
was represented more or less equally in the offices of the polis.
To enforce the will of the majority, Cleisthenes introduced the idea of
ostracism, or the “pushing out” of a citizen who would not conform to
the will of the majority.
An ostracized person lost all rights of citizenship for a certain length of time,
normally for ten years.
So attached were the Greeks to their poleis that many preferred to kill
themselves rather than submit to ostracism.
21. ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY
The idea that the ordinary man was capable of governing himself wisely
and efficiently was quite daring when it was introduced.
But even within Athens, there was a strong resistance to the democratic idea
that did not cease until democracy had been abandoned and condemned
as “the rule of the mob.”
Eventually democracy did fail in Athens and was discredited after the
fourth century B.C.; however, it would be resurrected in the eighteenth
century A.D.
Ultimately it was the democratic leadership in Athens that created the
conditions that allowed the opponents of democracy to win out.
22. SPARTAN MILITARISM
By about 500 B.C., Sparta differed from Athens in almost every possible
way, although the two were originally similar.
The Spartan polis, located in the southern Peloponnesus about eighty miles
from Athens, was a small city surrounded by pastoral villages.
As the population grew in the 700s, the Spartans engaged in a bloody
territorial war, the Messenian Wars, with their Greek neighbor, Messenia,
and won.
The defeated Messenians were reduced to a state of slavery to the Spartans,
who from this point on became culturally different from most other Greeks.
During the 600s, the Messenians rebelled again and again, and as a
result the Spartans made themselves into a nation of soldiers and helpers
of soldiers so that they could maintain their privileged position.
23. SPARTAN MILITARISM
Unlike other Greeks, the Spartans held the arts in contempt and rejected
individualism as being unworthy of them.
Public life was expressed in total obedience to the state.
Sparta’s economic needs were largely met by the captive Messenians,
who worked the fields and conducted the necessary crafts and
commerce under close supervision.
The Spartans themselves devoted their energies to the military arts.
Male children entered a barracks at the age of seven and were allowed only
sufficient free time thereafter to ensure that another generation of Spartan
warriors would be born of Spartan mothers.
24. SPARTAN MILITARISM
What did the other Greeks think of Sparta?
Most Greeks admired the Spartan way of life, especially its self-discipline,
sacrifice, rigid obedience, and physical vigor.
Even the Athenians thought the Spartan way was superior to their own and
envied the single-minded purpose displayed by the Spartans in all their
public affairs.
Despite its military nature, Sparta was a conservative and nonaggressive
state.
The Spartan army was so large and so feared that after about 600 B.C.,
Sparta rarely had to use it in war.
Sparta actually became a peaceful polis and directed its attention to
keeping the political status quo within its own borders.1
25. THE PERSIAN WARS
Throughout the early fifth century B.C., the foreign policy interests of
Athens and Sparta more or less coincided.
Both were primarily concerned with maintaining their independence in the
face of foreign threats, which mostly originated from Persia.
In 490 B.C., Darius I was faced with a spreading rebellion among his
subjects – the Greeks on the Turkish coast.
When he attempted to subdue them, Athens went to their aid.
Determined to punish the Athenians for their boldness and wising to
expand their domains, Darius sent an army across the Aegean Sea to
the Greek mainland.
The Athenians were waiting and defeated the Persian expedition at the
Battle of Marathon in the First Persian War.
27. THE PERSIAN WARS
Ten years passed before Darius’s successor, Xerxes, could find time to
take up the challenge to conquer Greece.
The Second Persian War would be fought on both land and sea.
This time not only Athens but several other Greek polei assisted in the
defensive effort.
Spartan troops lived up to their fame at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 and
again at the decisive defeat of the Persian force at Platea in 479.
The Athenian navy completely routed the larger Persian fleet at Salamis and
established Athens as the premier naval force in the eastern Mediterranean.
By the end of these Persian Wars, the Greeks had turned back the
attempts of the Asian empire to establish a universal monarchy over the
Mediterranean basin.
29. THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS
Athens used its new prestige and growing wealth to form groups of
unwilling satellites, the Delian League, among the nearby poleis.
The democrats, led by the great orator Pericles, were now in command
and were responsible for bringing Athens into conflict with Corinth, one
of Sparta’s Peloponnesian’s allies.
Corinth asked Sparta for help and when the Spartans warned the Athenians
to back down, Pericles responded with war.
Athens was embarking on an imperial adventure, with the goal of
extending its authority over not only Greece but the surrounding coasts
as well.
The Athenians thought that they had earned this right but it turned out to be
a fatal error – one the Pericles did not live to see.
30. PERICLES
INTERESTING FACTS
• Pericles is credited with the founding of the city of
Athens and with stimulating the so-called
“Golden Age of Greece.”
• Under his supervision, Phidias designed and built
the Parthenon, a Doric-style temple to the Greek
goddess Athena.
31. THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS
With its powerful navy, Athens believed that it could hold off the land-
based Spartans indefinitely while building their alliances.
These allied forces would then be able to challenge the Spartan army on
Sparta’s home territory.
For a long while, the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) was an often
sporadically fought deadlock.
Pericles died in 429, leaving democratic and anti-democratic forces to argue
over the war.
Finally, in 404 the Spartans obtained effective naval aid (from Persia!)
and defeated the Athenians at sea.
After that, it was a simple matter for their large army to lay siege to Athens
and starve it into surrender.
32. THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS
The Peloponnesian War ended with a technical victory for Sparta but
actually this long civil war between the leading Greek cities was a loss
for all concerned.
Sparta was not inclined or equipped to lead the squabbling Greeks into an
effective central government.
Defeated Athens was torn between the discredited democrats and the
conservatives favored by Sparta.
33. THE FINAL ACT IN
CLASSICAL GREECE
After the Peloponnesian War, the Greeks fought amongst themselves for
supremacy for two generations.
Whenever a strong contender emerged to rule over all of Greece, the other
poleis would band together against it.
Once they succeeded in defeating their rival, they would quarrel among
themselves again.
The Greek passion for independence and individuality had
degenerated into endless quarrels and maneuvering for power.
To the north of Greece were the Macedonians, who the Greeks
regarded as savage and barbarian.
Philip of Macedonia, the ruler of this kingdom, had transformed it from a
primitive society into an effectively governed and aggressive state.
34. PHILIP II
INTERESTING FACTS
• Philip was himself a hostage of the Greeks at Thebes
and while in captivity there, he observed their
military techniques – only to strengthen and
reorganize the Macedonian military.
• Philip II was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis, one
of his seven bodyguards, as he entered the capital’s
theater on the second day of his daughter’s
wedding celebration.
35. THE FINAL ACT IN
CLASSICAL GREECE
One by one Philip began to absorb the northern Greek poleis, until by
the 340s he made himself the master of much of the mainland.
After much delay, the Athenians awoke to the impending danger and
convinced Thebes to join with them against the menace from the north.
In the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., however, Philip’s forces defeated
the combined army of Athens and Thebes, which became provinces of
the Macedonian empire.
Chaeronea was the effective end of the era of Greek independence and of
the Classical Age’s great triumph of the spirit and the arts.
From the latter part of the fourth century B.C. onward, the Greeks were
almost always under the rule of foreigners.
