Transcript The Greek Adventure - A Cultural Approach

The Greek Adventure
SSWH3:a-c.
Time and Geography
POLITICAL
Geography and
Political Development
• Greece is shaped by its
geography
– many small islands and
mountainous southern tip
– Little suitable land for large
scale farming
• No place within Greece was
more than 80 miles from the
sea
No place within Greece was more than 80
miles from the sea
Geography and
Political Development
• Greeks expert sailors with
ships, shipping was livelihood
• Travel and trade by sea easier
• Geography encouraged
political fragmentation
– Own sense of community
and identity
– Only secondarily shared
common culture and
language
A Greek ship
THE MINOAN CIVILIZATIONS
• Origins of Greek civilization
traced to Crete
• Found urbanized civilization
around 2000 BCE
• Cretan culture called Minoan
(Minos, mythical king of Crete)
• Not known if Minoans were
Greeks but part of the formation
of Greek civilization
Minoans going about daily work
THE MINOAN CIVILIZATIONS
• Islanders established a seaborne commercial network
• Became wealthy through their mastery of the sea
• Wealth produced a socially complex society (tiny states
with kings)
The Minoans became
wealthy through their
mastery of the sea
MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATIONS
• Mycenaeans, mainland Indo-European people
– invaded Crete
– destroyed island settlements
– took over trading network
• Our knowledge comes from archaeological excavations
and epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey
ECONOMIC
MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATIONS
• Trojan War – probably
caused by Mycenaean’s
trade rivalry with Troy
• Mycenaeans engaged in
extensive internal warfare
– Fell to the Dorians
– Dark Ages began as
culture declined
Trojan War – probably caused by Mycenaean’s
trade rivalry with Troy
POLITICAL
Early Hellenic Civilization
The Polis (pl poleis)
• Community of free persons making up a town
• Could be any size: Athens 300,000 people
• Each polis a political and cultural unit, but also as part of
distinct “Greek” culture
• Polis, frame of reference for all public life
A “Polis” was a Greek city-state
Early Hellenic Civilization
• Not everybody was a citizen
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Women excluded
Many resident were aliens
Many slaves
Included only free males over age 20
ECONOMIC
Early Hellenic Civilization
• Each polis had same economic and
demographic design
– Town of varying size, surrounded by farms, pasture,
woods
– Artisans, traders, import-export merchants,
intellectuals, artists etc.
– Most Greeks were peasants, workers
The Pantheon
POLITICAL
Athens and Sparta
• Two poleis dominated Greek life and
politics
• They came into conflict
• Four types of government known to the
Greeks
– Monarchy
– Aristocracy
– Oligarchy
– Democracy
The Entry of King Otto in Athens, Peter von
Hess, 1839
Early Athens
• Original monarchy forced
aside by aristocrats
• Aristocrats gave way to
oligarchs
– Most important oligarch was
Solon
– Oligarchs gave him supreme
power to deal with discontent
– He established a constitution
Early Athens
• Pisistratus made himself sole
ruler, gave concessions to
common people
• Cleisthenes
– True founder of Athenian
democracy
– Believed the people should
have the last word in their
government
Cleisthenes
Athenian Democracy
• Ekklesia – town meeting
– All free male Athenians, met on ad hoc basis
– All could speak freely
– All could be elected
• Boule
–
–
–
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Council of 500 citizens, served 1-year terms
Day-to-day legislature, executive
Supervised civil and military affairs
All male citizens would serve at least one term
• Deme
– Territorial unit
– Could select certain number of boule members
Athenian Democracy
• Ostracism
– “Pushing out” of citizen who did not conform to will of
others
– Person had to go into exile, lost all rights of
citizenship
Ostracism is the “pushing out” of citizen who did not
conform to will of others
Athenian Democracy
• Democracy
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–
–
–
–
An abnormal system of government
Daring when introduced
Not used again until 18th century
Some poleis adopted similar governments
Resistance even within such poleis
Democracy is a system of
government by the whole
population or all the eligible
members of a state,
typically through elected
representatives.
Spartan Militarism
• Sparta differed from Athens in almost every way
• Messenian Wars: Sparta fought with nearest neighbors
and won
• Defeated people became near-slaves – helotry
• Sparta became nation of soldiers and helpers
• Economic needs largely met by captive helots
– Worked the fields, did all crafts, commerce
– Spartans devoted all their energies to military arts
Leonidas I of Sparta
Spartan Militarism
• Spartans held arts in contempt, rejected
individualism
– Public life meant total obedience
– Government headed by ephors (elected officers)
A Spartan
soldier
Spartan Militarism
• Most Greeks admired
Spartan way of life
– Self-discipline, courage, rigid
obedience, physical vigor
– Single-minded patriotism
A Spartan soldier
Spartan Militarism
• Sparta was conservative,
non-aggressive state
– Army was large and feared,
thus rarely used
– Became peaceable polis
Spartan soldiers
Persian Wars
• Athens and Sparta concerned with
keeping independent of foreign
threat (Persia)
• First Persian War
– Athenian victory
– Athens went to aid rebellious Persian
colonies
– Persian emperor Darius sent army to
Greece
– Persians defeated at Marathon in 490
BCE
Persian soldier (left) and
Greek hoplite (right)
depicted fighting, on an
ancient kylix, 5th century
BC
Persian Wars
• Second Persian War
– Even more decisive Greek victory
– Other poleis helped Athens
– Spartan troops defeated Persians at
Thermopylae in 480
– Athenian navy defeated Persians at
Salamis
• Greece had turned back Persia
• Crucial turning point for Western
civilization
Herodotus, the main
historical source for this
conflict
Peloponnesian War
431-404 BCE
• No harmony among Greeks after Persian Wars
• Athenians under Pericles in conflict with Corinth, a
Spartan ally
• Sparta defended Corinth, Pericles responded with war
• Athens thought they could defend against Sparta
indefinitely
• War was an intermittently fought deadlock
• In 404 Spartans defeated Athenian navy with Persian
help
• War was a loss for all concerned
Final Act in Classical Greece
• Greeks continued to fight for two
generations
• Macedonians took over from north
– Philip of Macedonia turned it into
effective, aggressive state
– Took over most of mainland
• City states became provinces of
Macedonian Empire
• From then on, Greece was almost
always under foreign rule
Philip of Macedonia
ALEXANDER AND THE CREATION
OF A WORLD EMPIRE
• Alexander reigned for 13 years
conquering the world:
– an unresisting Egypt
– the mightiest empire the world had yet
seen, the empire of Darius III of Persia
– tribal kingdoms of the Indus basin and the
highlands to its north (present-day Pakistan
and Afghanistan
• The Army exhausted, Alexander led his
men back to Persia where he died a
year later in Babylon at age 33
Alexander the Great
A Mixed Culture
• Alexander the Great’s empire disintegrated the day he died
• Territories split into kingdoms (Hellenistic kingdoms), each
ruled by one of his generals
• Intermarriage was encouraged
• Ten-of thousands of Greeks left overcrowded, resource-poor
Greece to make their names and fortunes under GrecoMacedonian control
• Greek values/ideas were imposed on Asiatics and Egyptians
• Greek rulers failed to duplicate the polis of shared
government and interdependent community
• Accepted the monarchy and became subjects
• Indian Hindu/Buddhist world introduced to the Western world
• Direct trade contacts between India and the Mediterranean
Greeks and Easterners in the
Hellenistic Kingdoms
THREE MAJOR KINGDOMS:
• Ptolemaic, Kingdom of Egypt
– General Ptolemy captured Egypt and ruled as a divine king, like the
pharaohs
– By 100s BCE, Egypt became a hybrid society - Greeks and Egyptians
intermixed
• Seleucid, Kingdom of Persia
– General Seleucus ruled from India’s borders to the Mediterranean
– Kingdom began to lose pieces to rebels because of its large expanse
– Immigrant Greeks mixed with locals especially in Syria and Turkey
– When Romans invaded the western areas, most of the east was lost
• Antigonid Kingdom
– General claimed the Macedonian homeland and part of Greece
– Rest of Greece divided into city-states vying for political and economic
supremacy
– Both fell to the Romans in the middle 100s BCE
Discussion Questions
1. The polis was the organizational unit of Greek
civilization. What commonalities exist between
the polis and the modern city? What does the
modern city have that the polis did not? Are
there advantages to living in the polis; what are
they?
2. The rule of the people was one of Athens’ most
enduring developments, yet it differed from
modern ideas of democracy. What comparisons
can you make between Greek and modern
democracy? Are there advantages of the
Athenian model over the modern one?