A+ Club Lesson Planner & Study Guide

Ancient Greece Outline

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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

  • 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

Mycanean

Dorian Invasion

Dark Ages Greece

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:

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


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)

Athens

background & geography

social organization

government

  • thetes = laborers, lower-classes

army

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

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:


Religion & Mythology

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

Aristotle

Stoicism

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

Peloponnesian War

Thucydides and "The History of the Peloponnesian War"

Civil war at Corcyra

Culture

Art

Greek realism

Sculpture

Painting

  • see Protogenes v. Apelles
Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, relates the story of a contest between Apelles and Protogenes: 'Apelles sailed [to Rhodes], eager to see the works of a man known to him only by reputation, and on his arrival immediately repaired to the studio. Protogenes was not at home, but a solitary old woman was keeping watch over a large panel placed on the easel. In answer to the questions of Apelles, she said that Protogenes was out and asked the name of the visitor. "Here it is," said Apelles, and snatching up a brush he drew a line of extreme delicacy across the board. On the return of Protogenes, the old woman told him what had happened. When he had considered the delicate precision of the line he at once declared that his visitor had been Apelles, for no one else could have drawn anything so perfect. Then in another colour he drew a second still finer line upon the first, and went away, bidding her show it to Apelles if he came again, and add that this was the man he was seeking. It fell out as he expected; Apelles did return, and, ashamed to be beaten, drew a third line of another colour cutting the two first down their length and leaving no room for any further refinement. Protogenes owned himself beaten and hurried down to the harbour to find his visitor; they agreed to hand down the painting just as it was to posterity, a marvel to all, but especially to artists.' This panel was seen by Pliny (N.H. xxxv. 83) in Rome, where it was much admired, and where it perished by fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protogenes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apelles

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
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