Transcript Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece
Chapter 4
First Greek Civilizations
 The first Greek state
was called Mycenae.
 The Mycenaean were
above all warriors.
Pages from
book 8 of the Iliad
Achilles v. Hector
 The most famous
battles and adventures
were captured in epic
poems written by
Homer. His Iliad and
Odyssey were the most
famous epic poems to
come from this period.
 Achilles 
 The values Homer
taught were courage
and honor which the
Greeks called arête
(ahR-ah-TEE).
Marvel Comics mini-series Iliad #1-8
Greek City-States
 By 750 B.C., the polis, or
city-state, became the
central focus of Greek life.
 At the top of the hill inside
the city was an acropolis, or
fortified area (city within the
city).
 Below the acropolis was the
agora or temples for the
gods.
 Athens & Sparta were two of
the most powerful city-states
of this time.
 The government of Sparta
was an oligarchy, which
means that it was ruled by
the few. It was more
militaristic.
 The government of Athens
after Cleisthenes became
the foundation for Athenian
democracy. It based its rule
on voting.
Classical Greece
 The Persians and the
Greeks fought in the
Persian Wars for 20
years between 499 –
479 BC.
 At Thermopylae, a
Greek force of 7,000
held off the Persian
army of 180,000 for two
days.
Why doesn’t Leonidas pull all his troops rather than
Stay & fight with his elite 300?
 At Thermopylae Pass, the
Spartan troops were
especially brave, even
though the Greek army was
vastly outnumbered.
 Although the Spartan 300
lost at Thermopylae Pass,
the Greeks won the war and
Athens, under Pericles,
became the center of the
New Greek Empire.
 This era became known as
the Age of Pericles.
Culture of Classic Greece
 According to Greek religion,
the gods lived on Mount
Olympus.
 Zeus was the main god.
 Others included:
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Apollo (sun)
Hades (underworld)
Aphrodite (love)
Ares (war)
Athena (wisdom)
Poseidon (sea & earth).
 Gods were emotional and
could play favorites and
involved making judgments
on mortals based on emotion
such as jealously, greed,
envy, fear, anger, or
happiness.
 The Greeks also created
drama. The first Greek
dramas were tragedies. One
such tragedy was Oedipus
Rex, written by the Greek
playwright Sophocles.
 Philosophy refers to an
organized system of thought.
 Sophists stressed the
importance of rhetoric or
persuasive speaking.
 Socrates said that “the
unexamined life is not worth
living”.
 According to Plato,
individuals could not achieve
a good life unless they lived
in a just and rational state.
 Aristotle wrote Politics,
and gathered that the
best form of
government was a
constitutional
government by the
people.
 Herodotus wrote the
History of the Persian
Wars, a work commonly
regarded as the first
real history in Western
civilization.
 Thucydides is
considered by many
historians today to be
the greatest historian of
the ancient world
because he examined
history from different
perspectives and wrote
more objective reports
than Herodotus.
Alexander and the Hellenistic Age
 The conquests of
Alexander the Great
created the Hellenistic
Era, an age that saw the
expansion of the Greek
language and Greek
ideas to the non-Greek
world.
 The results of
Alexander the Great’s
conquests were that
Greek language, art,
architecture, and
literature spread
throughout Southeast
Asia.