Transcript Ancient Greece - Fleming College

Ancient Greece
Culture and Society
Foundations of the
Modern World
Overview
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Greek Society
Literature
Philosophy
Religion and Mythology
The Rise of Humanism
• "Man is the Measure of all Things"- Protagoras of Abdera (c. 480 410 B.C.)
• Importance of the individual
– Early communities were based on family
– Colonists were rugged individuals
• Humanism: individual’s
– Uniqueness
– Potential
– Prerogatives (rights)
• Athenian Democracy
developed around the
fifth century BC in the
Greek city-state
(known as a polis) of
Athens, comprising the
city of Athens and the
surrounding territory of
Attica. Athens is one of
the first known
democracies.
Greek Society
• The flaw in Athenian democracy: only for
true citizens
– Adult males, Athenian ancestry (15 %)
• Slaves
– Foreigners, about 30 %
– Worked shops, farms
• Some special skills e.g. sculpture
• Some mining, hard labour
– Provided freedom to owners for politics &
philosophy
• Women
– Sparta - public freedom
– Athens - confinement
Athenian Marriage
• Men absolute household authority
– Families arranged marriages, usually
older man to young woman
– Custom deemed necessary to protect
male property & citizenship rights
• Women no formal education
School boy - kylix 480 BC
– Learned weaving, cooking
• Patterns of the elite
– Records written by upper classes
Woman at home - kylix 480 BC
Separate Lives
• Elite women
– Had female slave attendants
– Were confined to homes except for
• funerals, festivals, visits to female
relatives
• Thesmophoria festival
– 3-day camp
– Mystery & ritual
Daughters of Demeter - krater 440 BC
• Plays
– Antigone, Lysistrata
– About assertive women
• Elite men
– Work, politics by day
– Dined, slept in men’s quarters
Hunting
the lion
The Phylae
• “tribes”: largest political
subgroups in polis
– Athens: 10 phylae
• Kin groups
– All citizens belonged
• Religious
– Own priests, temples
• Military
– Trained and served as hoplite units
• Political
– Own officials, representatives to
Assembly and Council
Symposium
• Means "drinking together"
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Aristocratic social institution
After meal, men only
Private association of individuals
Slaves, musicians, dancers, prostitutes,
young boys
• Role of Conversation
– Aristocratic males expected to
participate
– Debates on political & philosophical
issues, recitations of speeches & poetry
Gymnasium
“School for naked exercise”
– Public institution for training athletes
(opposite of palaestra - private
school for physical training)
– Staff: 10 gymnasiarchs, one from
each tribe
• Maintained gymnasium, paid
athletes in training, held athletic
festivals, supervised training staff
– Facilities
• dressing rooms, baths, training
quarters, stadium, covered
porticos for exercise & lectures in
philosophy, literature, and music
– Athens: three great public gymnasia:
Academy, Lyceum and Cynosarges
Greek Literature
• Lyric poetry: celebrating the
individual
– e.g. Sappho
• Pre-Socratic Thinkers
Sappho &
Alcaeus
– Questions about nature
– Air, earth, fire, & water
– Atomic theory
• History
– Logographers: wrote historia, accounts of
Herodotus of
geography, cities, families
Halicarnassus
– Herodotus 485 - 425 BC
• First modern historian
• Greek war with Persia, analyzed causes
Greek Thinkers
• Sophists (“wise men”)
– Traveling teachers
– Taught logic, public speaking
– Rhetoric: constructing
persuasive arguments
• Belief in Reason
– phusis (nature): amoral,
inhuman, often lethal
– nomos (culture): custom,
power of mind to order &
control
Socrates
• 470 - 399 BC
– Sculptor by trade
• Life
– Teacher, thinker
– Company of young men
• Deflated pretensions, challenged people to think
• Socratic method: asking probing questions
• Death
– Charged with
• Corrupting youth
• Not believing in gods
– Condemned to death by drinking hemlock
• Young men withdrew from public life
Plato
• 428 - 347 BC
• First truly literate generation
• Founded school for young men
– The Academy
– Higher education, especially philosophy
and mathematics
• Wrote Dialogues
– Socrates uses question and answer
method
– Meaning of justice, excellence, freedom
– Best known Dialogue: The Republic
• Theory of Forms: particular vs. ideal
• Political Utopia: philosopher kings
Aristotle
• 384 - 322 BC
– Born in Macedon, father physician to king
– Educated at Plato’s Academy in Athens
– Tutored Alexander the Great
• Founded school in Athens, Lyceum
– Peripatetics: walking while lecturing
– History, biology, zoology
• Works: De Anima, Poetics, Metaphysics
– Covered every field of knowledge, established modern
arts & sciences
– Only lecture notes survive: remarkable range,
sophistication, originality, systemization
– Approach is empirical, pragmatic, worldly
Greek Religion
• Eusebia
– Piety, reverence for traditional gods
– Concern for family, clan, polis
– Public display to foster peace, avert
disfavour of the gods
– Rite of animal sacrifice, feasts of music
drama dance sport
• Philosophy
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Cosmology: origin of universe
Theology: gods’ nature & function
Psychology: study of soul
Ethics: man in society
Sacrifice to Vesta - Goya
• Mysteries
– Secret cults of individual gods
– Two Goddesses of Eleusis, Dionysus
Wine for Dionysus
Public Worship
• State-sponsored festivals
Temple of
– Civic pride & personal piety
Athena
– Central ritual: sacrifice of animals
• Temple: gods’ residence in town
– Gifts for favours
• Cake, wine at altar
• Luck, protection
• Oracles
– Sacred sites where gods spoke with
humans about future
– Sought by individuals, city-states
– Oracle of Apollo at Delphi most sought
Temple of
Apollo
Mythology
• Living our myths
– Not our history
– Need for origin story
• Literature is displaced
mythology
– Basic stories of our culture
– Repeated in modern forms
• Anthropomorphic gods
– Looking & acting human
Principal Deities
• Titans
– Cronus & Gaia
• Olympians
– Zeus and Hera
– Apollo & Artemis
– Aphrodite & Athena
– Poseidon & Hades
– Ares & Hermes
Zeus and Titan
• Other Gods
– Dionysus, Eros, Pan, The
Muses
Aphrodite & Adonis (David)