The Greek Adventure SSWH3:a-c.

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The Greek AdventureSSWH3a-c.
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Time and Geography
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POLITICAL
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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

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ECONOMIC
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MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATIONS

• Trojan War probably caused by Mycenaeans 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 Mycenaeans trade
rivalry with Troy
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POLITICAL
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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
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Early Hellenic Civilization

• Not everybody was a citizen
• Women excluded
• Many resident were aliens
• Many slaves
• Included only free males over age 20

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ECONOMIC
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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
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POLITICAL
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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
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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

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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
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Athenian Democracy

• Ekklesia town meeting
• All free male Athenians, met on ad hoc basis
• All could speak freely
• All could be elected
• Boule
• 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

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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
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Athenian Democracy

• Democracy
• 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.
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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
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Spartan Militarism

• Spartans held arts in contempt, rejected
  individualism
• Public life meant total obedience
• Government headed by ephors (elected officers)

A Spartan soldier
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Spartan Militarism

• Most Greeks admired Spartan way of life
• Self-discipline, courage, rigid obedience,
  physical vigor
• Single-minded patriotism

A Spartan soldier
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Spartan Militarism

• Sparta was conservative, non-aggressive state
• Army was large and feared, thus rarely used
• Became peaceable polis

Spartan soldiers
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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
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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
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Peloponnesian War431-404 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

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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
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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
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A Mixed Culture

• Alexander the Greats 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 Greco-Macedonian 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

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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 Indias 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

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REVIEW
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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?

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