Chapter Four

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Chapter Four

• Greece

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Aegean Civilization

• Minoan Culture
• -- Crete
• (2) Mycenaean Greece
• -- Mycenae home of King
• Agmemnon

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Basic Greek Timeline

• 2500 BCE

Minoans (lived on Crete)
Mycenaeans (mainland)
Dorians invaders (dark age)
Ionians the Greeks
(brought back Mycenaean
elements)
338 BCE
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Minoan Civilization

• 2000-1400 B.C.E.
• King Minoss sea empire
• The palace at Knossos

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• Daedalus, in Greek mythology, the Athenian
  craftsman, architect and inventor who designed
  for King Minos of Crete the labyrinth in which
  was imprisoned the Minotaur, a man-eating monster
  that was half man and half bull. The labyrinth
  was so skilfully designed that no one could
  escape from the maze or the Minotaur.
• http//www.daedalus.gr/DAEI/THEME/Knossos.htm

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• Illustration of the Palace of Knossos

http//arapahoe.littletonpublicschools.net/Portals
/7/Social20Studies/Crosby/WesternCiv/Unit1/Unit2
01.820Palace20PPT.ppt
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Palace at Knossos
http//jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Mino/m
inos.jpg
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The Queen's megaron, Palace of Minos, Knossos, c.
1600-1400 B.C.E. Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
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View of the "throne room," palace of Minos,
Knossos, Crete, with a heavily restored fresco
depicted griffins. Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
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http//jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Mino/b
lueladies.gif
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Minoan Fresco bull leaping
http//faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art105/img/mino
s_toreador.jpg
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Boxing Children, from Akrotiri, Thera, c.
1650-1500 B.C.E. Fresco, 9' x 3' 1" high.
National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY.
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Crocus Gatherer, from Thera, pre-1500 B.C.E.
Fresco, appox. 35" x 32". National Archaeological
Museum, Athens. Archaeological Society at Athens.
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Blue Bird. Fresco from Knossos. Late Minoan IA,
1550 BC.
http//www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/
minoanpainting3.html
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Octopus Vase, from Palaikastro, Crete, c. 1500
B.C.E. 11" high. Archaeological Museum,
Herakleion, Crete. Scala/Art Resource, NY.
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• The Minoans seem to have been the first ancient
  culture to produce art for its beauty rather than
  its function. . . . Art in Mesopotamia and Persia
  served political and religious purposes while
  compelling and aesthetically very sophisticated,
  the art served a larger purpose. The Minoans,
  however, not only decorated their palaces, they
  decorated them with art they used art for
  pleasure. . . . Minoan art frequently involves
  unimportant, trivial details of everyday life . .
  . (rather than battles, or political events and
  leaders, and so on).
• http//www.wsu.edu8080/dee/MINOA/MINOA.HTM

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• This, perhaps, is the greatest Minoan legacy on
  the Greek world, for the great revolution in
  Greek art involves precisely this idea of
  producing art for pleasure only, that is, a
  purely aesthetic purpose for art art for art's
  sake.
• http//www.wsu.edu8080/dee/MINOA/MINOA.HTM

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The Mycenaeans

• 1600-1200 B.C.E.
• Time of Homers epics
• Home of Agamemnon
• (conqueror of Troy)

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"Goddess," from the citadel of Mycenae, c. 1200
B.C.E. Fresco. National Archaeological Museum,
Athens. Scala/Art Resource, NY.
http//www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/
mycptg1.html
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The so-called Orpheus fresco from the Throne
Room. Palace of Nestor at Pylos, 1300-1250 BC.
http//www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/
mycptg3.html
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The Mask of Agamemnon
http//xenohistorian.faithweb.com/worldhis/figure1
1.jpg
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Rhyton in the shape of a lion's head, from
Mycenae, c. 1550 B.C.E. Gold, height 8". National
Museum, Athens. Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY.
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Lion Gate,1300-1250 BC
http//www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/
framesetmycenaen.html
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• A fortified citadel

http//www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/
framesetmycenaen.html
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• Ancient Greece

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• The Heroic (Homeric) Age
• (1200-750 B.C.E.)
• Archaic Greece
• (750-480 B.C.E.)
• 750-650 BC Oligarchical
• 650-480 BC Tyrants
• Athenian Democracy
• (480-430 B.C.E.)

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• The Heroic Age
• (ca. 1200-750 BCE)

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Homer

• Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
• Depicted the emergence of aristocrats.
• Competition between aristocratic households led
  to hero cults, such as Achilles and Odysseus.

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• Archaic Greece
• (ca.750-480 BCE)

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Rise of the Polis

• 750 BCE
• Each polis (city-state) was organized around a
  political and social urban center.

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Colonization

• Expansion of the Greek world
• Magna Graecia
• Hellenism (Hellenes Greeks)
• Panhellenism (all Greeks)
• Oracle of Delphi
• Games at Olympia (776 B.C.E.)

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The Persian Wars

• The Ionian Revolt (499-494 BCE)
• The Battle of Marathon (490 BCE)--the Athenians
  won without Spartans help
• The Battle of Salamis (480-479 BCE) Athens
  rises to the forefront of Greek culture because
  of victory over Xerxes (Persia)

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• The Golden Age
• (ca. 480-430 BCE)

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Athens
Acropolis
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Solons Reform

• c. 640-559 B.C.E.
• Set up courts with citizen juries
• Eligibility for political office based on
  property not birth
• citizen assembly landowning males over 18 would
  participate.

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Pericles

• (ca. 495-429 BCE)
• Democratic reforms
• The Assembly central power of the state,
  consisting of all the free-born (no freed slaves)
  male citizens
• Public buildingspublic confidence
• Glorified Athens democracy in his famous
  Funeral Speech

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Pericles

• The Athenian Empire taking control of the
  Delian League
• Anti-Spartan foreign policy
• Advocated territorial expansion, a policy that
  eventually led to the Peloponnesian Wars.

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Parthenon
http//www.sikyon.com/Athens/Parthenon/parthenon_e
g.html
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Agora
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Sparta

• A society organized for war
• Dual monarchy an oligarchy of five officials
• Relied on helots (enslaved Messenians) for food
  and manual labor
• Population helots Spartiate 10 1
• 640 BC revolt of helots

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The Peloponnesian War

• Trigger Athenian control of the Delian League
• 454 BCE Athens moved the treasury from Delos to
  Athens and began to keep 1/6 of all the revenue
• The Delian League became the Athenian Empire.
• 431- 404 BCE27 years
• Sparta defeated Athens.

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Aftermath

• 30 tyrants in Athens
• War brought demoralization and a questioning of
  former certainties
• Shows the limitation of the polis system?

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• The Hellenic Age
• (800 BCE - 323 BCE)
• The Hellenistic Age
• (323 BCE - 30 BCE)
• The Greco-Roman Age
• (30 BCE - 476 CE)

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• Greek Drama

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The Origin of Greek Tragedies http//www.watson.o
rg/leigh/drama.html

• The great dramatic festival of Athens was held in
  the spring in the theatre of Dionysus, to the
  south-east of the Acropolis. The theatre in
  Athens never became an everyday amusement, as it
  is today, but was always directly connected with
  the worship of Dionysus, and the performances
  were always preceded by a sacrifice. The festival
  was only held once a year, and whilst it lasted
  the whole city kept holiday.

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Masters

• Tragedy Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)
• Sophocles (496-406 BCE)
• Euripides (485-406 BCE)
• Comedy Aristophanes
• (ca. 448-382 BCE)

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Format

• 2-3 actors (male) wearing masks, with a chorus of
  12-15 members changing commentary on the action.

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MASKShttp//www.arlymasks.com/tragedy.htm

• None of the original masks survive from the days
  of the Greek theatre, however, marble masks like
  this are found as part of sculptural decoration
  of buildings, giving us a good idea of what the
  Greek masks looked like.

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• Key Terms
• From M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms

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Tragedy

• In Poetics, Aristotle defined tragedy as the
  imitation of an action that is serious and also,
  as having magnitude, complete in itself, in the
  medium of poetic language and in the manner of
  dramatic rather than of narrative presentation,
  involving incidents arousing pity and fear,
  wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of such
  emotions.

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Catharsis

• Purgation, or purification
• Many tragic representations of suffering and
  defeat leave an audience feeling not depressed,
  but relieved, or even exalted.

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Tragic Hero

• Able to evoke pity and fear
• Neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad, but
  better than we are.
• Such a man is exhibited as suffering a change in
  fortune from happiness to misery because of his
  mistaken choice of an action, to which he is led
  by his harmatia.

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Hamartia

• Literally, error of judgment, or tragic flaw.
• One common form of harmatia in Greek tragedies
  was hubris, that pride or overweening
  self-confidence which leads a protagonist to
  disregard a divine warning or to violate an
  important moral law.

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Elements of Plot

• Anagnorisis discovery of facts previously
  unknown to the hero
• Peripeteia a reversal of fortune from happiness
  to disaster
• Catastrophe

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• Philosophy

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• The Greek philosophers made the speculative leap
  from myth to logos, from supernatural to natural
  explanations of the unknown. (94)

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• The Pre-socratics

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Cosmologists

• Natural philosophy
• The 6th century BCE
• In the Greek cities of Ionia in Asia Minor
• Believed that some single, eternal, and
  imperishable substance . . . gave rise to all
  phenomena in nature (Perry)
• ?? ???, ???, ????

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Cosmologists

• Moving from myth to reason
• Materialists or matter philosophers
• Thales (624-548 BCE) Water
• Anaximander (611-547 BCE) and Anaximenes (586-525
  BCE) the Boundless ?? (??)

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Cosmologists

• Pythagoras (580-507 BCE)
• Lived in Magna Graecia in southern Italy
• Believed that the essence of things was not
  matter but number.

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Cosmologists

• Parmenides (515-450 BCE)
• Lived in southern Italy
• Reality (the ONE) ? known only through the mind
  (Plato), not through the senses (Aristotle)
• A precursor of Plato

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The Sophists

• ?? ? ????
• Around 450 B.C.E.
• Moved from natural philosophy to the human world
• A group of traveling scholar-teachers
• Primary concern language
• Profession rhetoric // oratory

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The Sophists

• Philosophical relativists
• No truth but opinions Believed that perceptions
  and judgments are relative and subjective
• Abandoned philosophys claim to truth and gave
  priority to rhetoric

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Protagoras (485-410 BCE) James Harmon Hoose
Library of Philosophy, USC http//www.publicartin
la.com/USCArt/Hoose/protagoras.html
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Consequences

• The Sophists doctrines encouraged disobedience
  to law, neglect of civic duty, and selfish
  individualism.

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Socrates

• (470-399 B.C.E.)
• Know thyself The oracle at Delphi is said to
  have proclaimed Socrates the wisest man in
  Greece, to which Socrates said that if so, this
  was because he alone was aware of his own
  ignorance.
• The unexamined life is not worth living.

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Socrates

• The rational god the highest good
• Unlike the Sophists, Socrates believed in
  certainties. Truth is real. Absolute standards do
  exist.
• Virtue is knowledge.
• As we are all rational, once we know whats
  the highest good, we want to achieve moral
  excellence.

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Socrates

• Questioning received truthexamine everything
• The dialectical method a dialogue

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http//www.pima.gov/publicdefender/socrates.htm
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• Plato vs. Aristotle

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Plato

• ca.428-347 BCE
• School the Academy (in Athens)

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The School of Athens, by Raphael
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http//home.lbcc.cc.ca.us/mlawrence/Phil206/cave
.htm
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http//www.people.cornell.edu/pages/gnl2/cave.htm
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PlatoTheory of Ideas

• A two-level reality
• Ideas // sense experience
• mind // body
• eternal forms // copies, shadows
• intangible // tangible

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Plato Ethics

• The guiding light of all individual and social
  action is the idea of the Good.
• Virtue is a form of knowledge no one can act
  against his better knowledge.

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Plato the Just State

• Book The Republic
• An elitist state
• Rule by the wisest Philosopher-kings

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Plato and the Poets

• Plato would ban poets from his republic. Why?

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Plato and the Poets

• He believed that poets (1) lie, in other words,
  neither know the truth nor disseminate it (2)
  lead children and young people astray with false
  notions (3) present and copy not the ideas, but
  images of images

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Aristotle

• 384-322 B.C.E.
• Universal Ideas could not be determined without
  examination of particular things.

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Aristotle

• Through human experience with things themselves,
  the essence (Form, or universals) of these things
  can be discovered through reason.

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Aristotle Ethics

• Happiness comes from exercising reason in
  practical affairs.
• Virtue ? Nothing in excess?pursuing the golden
  mean between two extremes

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Aristotle Politics

• To live the good life, a person must do so as a
  member of a political community.
• The best political community is formed by
  citizens of the middle class

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Aristotle

• Limitations
• 1. Barbarians slaves
• 2. Women were excluded from the polis.
• 3. Aims to maintain the existing social
  hierarchy.

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• The End