Archaic Period

1
Archaic Period

• 800-479 BCE
• (479 BCE Final defeat of the Persian at Plataea)

2
The Rise of the Polis

• Polis A well-defined city-state, emerging in
  about 800 B.C.E
• Acropolis and agora
• Rule by oligarchy (government by the few), with
  slow opening to democratization (p. 38)
• Rise of the notion of Citizenship (p. 39)
• Athens
• Sparta

3
Sparta

• A military society
• A genuine oligarchy a constitutional government
  operated by five officials elected annually by a
  small body of citizens
• Sparta was famous for its loyal soldiers, its
  stable social order, its anti-immigration laws,
  and laws limiting material possessions.

4
The Persian Wars

• Cleistheness reforms as well as the Persian Wars
  are the two events that heralded the end of the
  Archaic Age.
• The Persian Wars started in the late 6th century
  and ended in 479 B.C.E.
• Kings of the Persians Darius, Xerxes
• Three major wars with Persia Marathon in 490,
  Salamis, and Plataea in 479.

5
Religion

• Two categories of Greek gods Olympian and
  Chthonian
• A pantheon of Olympian deities (42)
• Zeus
• Hades
• Hermes
• Poseidon
• Apollo
• Chthonian deities
• Demeter and Dionysus
• So polytheistic, anthropomorphic

6
Epic Poetry Homer

• Iliad story of the Trojan War (the battle of
  Ilium) and of Achilless valor

• Odyssey the story of Odysseus (after the Greek
  defeated the Trojans) and his wanderings and
  cunningness before returning home

7
Natural Philosophy Pre-Socratic Philosophy

• Ionian Philosophers
• The Pythagorean Society
• Heraclitus
• The Eleatics
• Anaxagoras
• A search for basic orders and rules of nature.
• A combination of science and philosophy
• An preoccupation with the external, material
  world, the object, the not-self.
• A search for the essence (Urstoff) of things

8
Ionian Philosophers Thales I

• Thales of Miletus
• He is said to have predicted the eclipse of the
  sun mentioned by Herodotus as occurring at the
  close of the war between the Lydians and the
  Medes.
• In the Metaphysics Aristotle asserts that
  according to Thales the earth is superimposed
  upon water.

9
Ionian Philosophers Thales II

• Thales declared the primary stuff (Urstoff) of
  all things to be water.
• He is the first to raise the question of the One,
  Unity in Diversity, Identity in Difference

10
Ionian Philosophers Anaximander

• Anaximander of Miletus
• An associate of Thales
• According to him the Urstoff, or the primary
  element, is indeterminate.
• He called the Urstoff the Indeterminate
  Boundless.

11
Ionian Philosophers Anaximenes

• Anaximenes of Miletus
• An associate of Anaximander
• According to Diogenes Laërtius he wrote in the
  pure unmixed Ionian dialect.
• According to him the Urstoff is air

12
The Pythagorean Society, I

• The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul
• Common grounds between Orphicism and
  Pythagoreanism
• A promotion of soul-culture, achieved through the
  practice of silence, the influence of music and
  the study of mathematics
• According to them the Urstoff is number. They
  argued that things are numbers (and not simply
  numerable).