The document provides an overview of ancient Greek history from the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BCE through the Peloponnesian Wars in the 5th century BCE. It describes the transition from the Mycenaean and Minoan periods to the Greek Dark Ages. Key periods discussed include the Geometric, Orientalizing, and Archaic periods. Major city-states like Athens and Sparta are mentioned. Important sites, artworks, and structures on the Acropolis like the Parthenon are summarized. The document also outlines philosophical thinkers and developments in science during this time period in Greece. It concludes with details about the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta.

1. COLLAPSE OF THE MYCENEAN DOMINANCE 1 1 TH
CENTURY BCE
GEOMETRIC PERIOD 900-600 BCE
ORIENTALIZING PERIOD 700 -600 BCE
ARCHAIC PERIOD 600- 480 BCE

2. Bronze Age

3. Crete: Minoan Civilization
(Palace at Knossos)

4. Mycenaean Civilization

5. Greek Geography after collapse of
mycenaean civilization
 Greece was divided into
small self-governing
communities (city-states
or polis) (9th/10th BCE)
 Why? Geography of the
region: islands and
valleys cut off by the sea
or mountains.
 Warrior aristocracies
developed with main
centers in Athens, Sparta,
Corinth, Delphi, and
Thebes.
 Inter-city rivalry gave way
to war between city-states.

6. Greek “Dark Age” to Archaic
 “Dark Age” (1150 B.C.E.- 700 B.C.E.) –Greek isolation
 Ended when Phoenician ships entered the Aegean and gave
the Greeks a writing system (phonetical) , helped develop
Eastern Mediterranean and SW Asia.
 Much of Greece remained oral culture
 Theatrical drama, philosophical dialogues, and oratory from
interaction of speaking and writing.

7. GEOMETRIC
PERIOD
900 – 750 BCE

8. 8
Geometric Krater,
from the Dipylon
cemetery, Athens,
Greece, ca. 740 BCE.
42” high.
Use of registers
Shows funerary rituals
(cremation)

9. 9
740 BCE
Human emotions
Geometric shapes
How does this differ
from Minoan
predecessors?
How does artist show
sense of loss?
1500 BCE

10. Orientalizing
period
• 700 – 600 BCE
• Began in Corinth (trade
center)
• Black figure technique
emerged in pottery
• Are there any precedents
for these creatures?
• What influences are
there?
Corinthian Olpe

11. Archaic Greece
600 BCE - 480 BCE

12. Greek RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
 Immortal gods on Mt. Olympus, but took
human form with human weaknesses
 Zeus & Hera the power couple
 Sanctuaries dedicated to the gods (before
temples)
 http://youtu.be/eJCm8W5RZes

13. Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi
Literally the center of the earth, per their religion

14. Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi
Karnak
• Advice from Oracle of Delphi
• Site of Pythian Games
• Theatre, Treasury, Temple
• Designed to fit site – very specific unlike Egyptian

15. Homeric age
 Iliad and Odyssey
actually written during
Geometric period
 Heroic tales of
gods and heroes
 Also Aesop’s
Fables, Sappho’s
poetry
 Human supremacy
and responsibility
eventually will be
expressed in art

17. Anavysos Kouros, from Anavysos, Greece, ca.
530 BCE. Marble, 6’ 4” high
What influences?
How did they go from figurines to lifesize
marble or terra cotta?
Archaic Smile
- Kouros=young man, Kore=young
woman
Men were always shown nude (unlike?)
Grave monument to a fallen hero, more
lifelike than earlier Kouros

18. Peplos Kore,
and a painted cast
Wore dress Chiton
and Peplos in style
Marble, 530 BCE
Votive statue to gods
Female statues
believed to be deities,
nymphs, or
priestesses

19. Artist: Euphronios (painter) and Euxitheos (potter)
Title: Death of Sarpedon
Ceramic calyx krater with red-figure decoration, 18"
high
Date: c. 515 BCE, Archaic Period
Source/Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
Euphronius best known red figure artist, illustrating a
story from the Iliad, Sleep & Death carry dead Trojan
warrior from battlefield
Balanced composition, rhythm of decorative bands
echoing the shape of the body and Hermes, guide to
the Underworld
Foreshortening … such as Sarpedon’s left leg
Body beautiful
New red figure technique supplanted black figure-could
paint rather than incise details
Death of Sarpedon

21. The Arts & Sciences (Pre-Socratic)
DRAMA (tragedians):
 Sophocles (496-406 B.C.E.)
 Euripides (480-406 B.C.E.)
THE SCIENCES:
 Pythagoras (580-490 B.C.E.?) - father of mathematics
 Democritus (460-370 B.C.E.)- all matter made up of
small atoms.
 Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.E.) “Father of Medicine”

22. Early Athenian Lawgivers
Draco (7th C B.C.E.)- “draconian”
Solon (6th C B.C.E.) - lawgiver; divided Athens
into four classes based on farm yields; avert civil
war
Cleisthenes (5th C B.C.E.) - created the first
“democracy”
Pericles- Athenian democracy: Assembly, Council of 500,
People’s Court; Parthenon

23. Great Athenian Philosophers
Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.)
 Know thyself !
 question everything; Socratic Method
 only the pursuit of goodness
brings happiness.
Plato (428-347 B.C.E.)
 The Academy
 The world of the FORMS - mimeticism
 The Republic  philosopher-king

24. Great Athenian Philosophers
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)
 The Lyceum
 Collect and categorize a vast array of knowledge: politics, philosophy,
ethics, logic, poetry, rhetoric, physics, astronomy, meteorology, zoology,
and psychology;
 Modern disciplines and the Scientific method.
 Alexander’s Tutor

26. Greek
Temples
Temple
Temples
Plans
Temples

27. Peripteral Greek Temple
Plan of a typical peripteral Greek temple.

28. Compare Doric and Ionic Orders

29. FRIEZE
ARCHITRAVE
STYLOBATE
PEDIMENT
RAKING CORNICE
CORNICE

30. Temple of Hera at Paestum, Italy. Doric temple
from Archaic period. Well preserved example.

31. West pediment from the
Temple of Artemis, Corfu,
Greece, ca. 600–580 BCE.
Limestone, greatest height 9’
4”.

33. Sumerian piece from Lyre – 3200 BCE

34. Dying warrior, from the west pediment of the Temple of
Aphaia, Aegina, Greece, ca. 500–490 BCE. Marble, 5’ 2 ½“
East Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia, Aegina, Greece, ca.
480 BCE. Marble, 6’ 1” long.

36. Kritios Boy, from
the Acropolis,
Athens, Greece,
ca. 480 BCE.
Marble, 2’ 10”
high.

38. Kritios Boy (Athens),
c. 480 BCE, marble
contrapposto

40. Canon of
proportions…
POLYKLEITOS,
Doryphoros (Spear
Bearer). Roman
marble copy
from Pompeii,
Italy, after a
bronze original
of ca. 450–440
BCE, 6’ 11”
high.

41. Polykleitos. Doryphoros
(Spear Bearer), Roman
copy from a bronze
original of c. 450-440
BCE, marble
Canon of Polykleitos/
harmony of opposites
(rhythmos and
symmetria)/ four stages
of man in Greek life/
education of an ephebe
(or ephebos)

42. “Persian Wars”: 499 BCE–480 BCE

43. Persian Wars: Battles
Marathon (490 BCE)
26+ miles from Athens
Thermopylae (480 BCE)
300 Spartans at the mountain pass
Salamis (480 BCE)
Athenian navy victorious

44. 44
KRESILAS,
Pericles. Roman
marble copy of a
bronze original of
ca. 429 BCE.
Full herm 6’ high;
detail 4’ 6 1/2”
high.

45. Golden “Age of Pericles”:
460 BCE – 429 BCE

46. Acropolis

47. The Acropolis Today

48. The Parthenon
Watch
video on
your own
and answer
questions.
Perikles?

49. Plan of the Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, with diagram
of sculptural program (after Andrew Stewart), 447–432 BCE.

50. destruction in 1687/ Phidias/ x=2y + 1/ illusion
of uniformity and stability (concept of architecture
as an arrangement of masses in space)

51. Agora- “Gathering Place”

54. Inner Ionic frieze of the Parthenon,
447-438 BCE
use of the Ionic order in the cella/
Panathenaic procession/ Arrephorion

59. French color drawing
of the Parthenon
Below: View of a
corner frieze of the
Parthenon

60. Parthenos, model
of the lost statue
created for the
cella of the
Parthenon
(Athens) c. 438
BCE
statue of Athena
with the Python
(representing the
“logos”)/ aegis

61. PHIDIAS,
Athena Parthenos,
in the cella of the
Parthenon, Acropolis,
Athens, Greece,
ca. 438 BCE.
Model of the lost
chryselephantine
statue.

62. east pediment: the birth of Athena

63. West pediment: contest of Poseidon
and Athena

65. Below: Dionysos (or Herakles?) from
the east pediment of the Parthenon, c.
438-432 BCE

66. Three Goddesses from the east
pediment of the Parthenon, c. 438-432
BCE
creation of relaxed, organic forms/
use of drapery to suggest movement

67. Left and Right: Metopes depicting
struggle between a Lapith and a
centaur, from the Parthenon
(Athens)lapiths and centaurs

70. gods viewed as spectators/ interest in
creating weight

72. use of repetition to mimic
architectural elements

74. Erechtheion
(Athenian
acropolis),
c. 421-405
BCE
contest
between
Athena and
Poseidon

75. 75
Plan of the
Erechtheion,
Acropolis,
Athens,
Greece, ca.
421–405
BCE.

76. Erechtheion (looking northwest), Acropolis,
Athens, Greece, ca. 421–405 BCE.

78. 78
Caryatid from the south porch
of the Erechtheion, Acropolis,
Athens, Greece, ca. 421–405
BCE. Marble, 7’ 7” high.

79. KALLIKRATES, Temple of Athena Nike,
Acropolis, Athens, Greece, ca. 427–424 BCE.

80. Nike Adjusting her
Sandal ,
from the south side of the
parapet of the Temple of
Athena Nike, Acropolis,
Athens, Greece, ca. 410
BCE. Marble, 3’ 6” high.

81. 81
Grave stele of Hegeso,
from the Dipylon
cemetery, Athens,
Greece, ca. 400
BCE. Marble, 5’ 2”
high.

82. Peloponnesian Wars- 431 B.C.E.

83. The Peloponnesian Wars
 The emergence of Athens as an imperial power after the
Persian Wars led to open hostilities with former allies.
 Mainly between the Spartans (financed by the Persians) and
the Athenians, lasted three decades with a Spartan victory.
 Persia regained much of its control and because of uprisings
in Egypt, Cyprus, and Phoenicia, it did not return to attack
Greece.
 In northern Greece, Macedonians, Philip II and his son,
Alexander, would reshape the eastern Mediterranean and
western Asia in this vacuum.

84. Macedonia Under Philip II