Ancient Greece Outline

Objectives

• from archaic to classical Greece
• from revelation to investigation
• change
• causes of democracy >> athens
• connect democracy to sophists to philosophers
• class conflict
• citizenship v. subjects
• why Greece?

Hellenes =

• Greek view:
  • four tribes:
    • Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Achaeans)
• three linguistic groups:
  • Ionian, Dorian, and Aeolian dialects

Early Greece

Crete & Minoans

• >> Minoan Outline article to do

• historical Crete v. Greek mythology
  • founding myth of Greece
    • tribue paid to Minoan king of young men and women who were thrown into the Labrynth
    • later adopted by Athens in order to create a mythological origin for Classical Age Athenian naval power
• Minoan
• Knossos
  • Labrynth
    • Greeks credited architrecture to Daedalus
  • labyrinth possible origins
    • labrynth-like caves in Crete, although none discovered near Knossos
    • Knossos huge construction with many rooms, perhaps labyrinth-like
• sources
  • The Labyrinth at Knsossos from unmuseum.org

Archaic Period

• Athens: from Plutarch Parallel Lives, "Theseus," 24, p. 29-30: "After Aegeus's [the king of the are where Athens was built] death Theseus conceived a wonderful and far-reaching plan, which was nothing less than to concentrate the inhabitants of Attica into a capital. In this way he transformed them into one people belonging to one city, whereas until then they had lived in widely scattered communities... The common people and the poor responded at once to his appeal, while to the more influential classes he proposed a constitution without a king: there was to be a democracy... [He built] a single town-hall and senate house for the whole community on the site of the present Acropolis, and he named the city Athens." (from http://www.freewalt.com/socialstudies/history/world/grecoroman/greeks/archaic.htm)

City State

• "city states" = cities that are autonomous and sovereign political units (governed by themselves)
  • a state being an independent political unit
    • as in, "United States" = originally a union of independent political units that ceded portions of sovereignty to the federal government
• in Greece, generally urban centers that controlled nearby surrounding lands

Polis

• "polis" = "cities" or "citizenship
• polis is characterized by self-governed indepedent city-states
• polis is characterized by citizens not subjects
  • citizenship = rights, protections, and responsibilities
• ancient sources on the rise of the Polis:
  • Aristotle, "This is the polis. It has come into being in order, simply, that life can go on; but now it exists so as to make that life a good life." (from http://www.freewalt.com/socialstudies/history/world/grecoroman/greeks/archaic.htm)
  • Homer Odyssey, 6, p. 103-5. Homer describes the mythical country of the Phaeacians (because of the phrase "spinning yarn stained with sea-purple" these people could represent the Phoenicians), offering a glimpse of how a city-state may have looked. Homer writes, "In due course they reached the noble river with its never-failing pools, in which there was enough clear water always bubbling up and swirling by to clean the dirtiest clothes." (from http://www.freewalt.com/socialstudies/history/world/grecoroman/greeks/archaic.htm)

Small but sovereign political unit (not originally a democracy)

• • Plato Republic, 2.369b-c, p. 46. Plato writes an account of Socrates' view of the political foundations of a hypothetical city. Socrates says that "each of us isn't self-sufficient but is in need of much." He then says, "So, then, when one man takes on another for one need and another for another need, and, since many things are needed, many men gather in one settlement as partners and helpers, to this common settlement we give the name city."

• links for Archaic Age

http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/ArchaicPeriod/

consent, dissent and ostracism

• the polis was built on consent
• ostracism

population of Greek city states

• links to track on population of Athens/ Sparta city states

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/kapparis/AOC/ATHENS.htm (good)

• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_population_in_ancient_Athens
• http://ancientgreekbattles.net/Pages/47932_Population.htm

Athens

government

• thetes = laborers, lower-classes

navy

• "Paralos" = the state trireme (official boat of Athens)
  • called by a politician, "the People's Big Stick" (sourec: "Lords of the Sea" p. 266)

Athenian democracy

• wider distribution of power
• political expression:
  • theatre as political and social expression
  • perhaps 1st political cartoon created by Athenian artist of Timotheus fishing for Athenian allies (source: "Lords of the Sea" p. 261)

Sparta =

background & geography

• Laconia: large valley at southern end of Peloponnesus
• Sparta: inland, land-based economy and identity, especially military
• arose during Archaic period and seized control of lower Peloponnesiaus from >>>
  • Lacedaemonians
• Sparta never built a wall around the city (unlike many other city-states)

social organization

• • "Spartiates" or "Homoioi" for "equals" or "peers"
    • Spartiates provided the hoplites (citizen=soldiers)
    • forbidden to learn other trades
    • received land grants for military service
  • Perioeci ("dwellers nearby"): non-citizens, merchants, craftsmen
    • served as infantry when needed
  • Helots: state-owned serfs from surrounding farmland

government

• • >>todo: council of ephos, etc.
  • Spartan constitution
    • see>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_Constitution

military

• military training
  • age seven boys sent to training camps
    • treated harshly, given few supplies or clothes
    • would be punished not for stealing but for being caught ("metis")
  • education for fighting, such as literacy for map reading not general learning
  • age twelve, boys given over to a mentor who trained them until age 18
    • mentoring process important part of gaining full Spartan citizenship as member of the elite Spartan society
    • "Spartan pederasty" here, although not necessarily sexual
  • military training was constant:
    • from Plutarch "The Life of Lycurgus, 22.2" "they were the only men in the world with whom war brought a respite in the training for war"
• military identity: Spartan quotations:
  • "Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie" - from burial mound at Thermopylae
  • "Return with your shield or on it!" -- saying of Spartan mothers to sons(from Plutarch)
  • from Plutarch, "The Life of Agesilaus, 26":
    • "...the allies of the Lacedaemonians were offended at Agesilaus, because [...] they themselves [provided] so many [soldiers], and the Lacedaemonians, whom they followed, so few. [...] Agesilaus, wishing to refute their argument with numbers [...] ordered all the allies to sit down by themselves promiscuously, the Lacedaemonians apart by themselves. Then his herald called upon the potters to stand up first, and after them the smiths, next, the carpenters in their turn, and the builders, and so on through all the handicrafts. In response, almost all the allies rose up, but not a man of the Lacedaemonians; for they were forbidden to learn or practice a manual art. Then Agesilaus said with a laugh: 'You see, O men, how many more soldiers than you we are sending out.'"
• sources:
  • wikipedia entry Spartan Army

Philosophy

Socrates

• family & social status
  • father a sculptor, mother a midwife
  • member of Athenian hoplite class (citizen)
  • fought at the Battle of Potidaea (an opening battle of the Peloponnesian War)
  • friends with Alcibiades, an Athenian aristocrat and member of Pericles' clan
  • Plato's dialogues has Alicibiades describing Socrates' "extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue," his ability to endure cold and hunger, and his power of concentration, as well as having saved the life of Alcibiades in battle (Plato's "Dialogues" here from Project Gutenberg)

Plato

• associated with Athenian elite, mostly land-based wealth and knights
• his uncle Critias was one of the "Thirty Tyrants" who ran the brief oligarchical rule over Athens instituded by Sparta
• on a visit to Sicily to investigate Mt. Etna, Plato was seized by Spartans and sent to the Aeginaen slave markets
  • friends bought him from slavery
  • source: "Lords of the Sea" p. 25
• Atlantis legend and Plato's dislike of Athenian Navy
  • Plato wrote that the mythological father of the Athenian navy, Theseus, should not have challenged the tributes (payment) of seven young men and women to King Minos (at Knossos in Minoan Crete):
    • "It would have been better for them to lose seven youths over and over again rather than get into bad habits by forming themselves into a navy" ("Lords of the Sea" p. 269)
  • of Athenian navy heros such as Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles, Plato wrote:
    • "Yes, they say these men made our city great. They never realize that is now swollen an infected because of these statesmen of former days, who paid no heed to discipline and justice. Instead, they filled our city with harbors and navy yards and walls and tribute and such-like trash" ("Lords of the Sea" p. 269)
• Academy
  • from the word "Akademos," an ancient hero, and "Hekademeia," the place of the legend that lay outside the walls of Athens. Hekademeia had revealed where Theseus had hidden Helen of Troy;
  • Plato's assocation with Akedemos, therefore, relates to his distaste for the Athenian navy and the legends of Theseus

Stoicism

• from "Stoa" the Athenian art museum where pictures of Athenian victories in Persian wars were displayed
• "Stoics" gathered and talked at the Stoa

Lesson Plans

Arts Integration from the Kennedy Center:

• • This lesson is designed to help students shape a frame of reference for examining specific areas of ancient Greek influence on Western thought and culture. The lesson addresses some general questions about the shaping of culture and reacquaints students with the range and some specifics of the enormously rich heritage of ancient Greece.
• "300" Movie notes: truth v. fiction: see Persian Wars outline