Download Minoans Established an expansive and distinctive civilization on the

Minoans
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Established an expansive and distinctive civilization on the Mediterranean island of Crete.
Pleasure loving people that were into fine arts
Archeologists named the island civilization after King Mino’s, who’s queen bore the feared
monster, the minotaur.
o Minotaur
 Half human / Half Bull
The bull was an important part of Minoan religious ceremony, which featured the spectacular
sport of bull leaping.
o Male and Female athletes grasped the horns of charging bull and performed
somersaults over its back.
Mycenaeans
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A Warrior civilization that inhabited fortified palace-cities in the Greek Mainland.
Excavations inside the Mycenaean palaces reveal a civilization of fantastic wealth that
was fascinated by death and the afterlife.
Archaic Art
 650-490 B.C, The Greeks Developed a distinctive style of art called Archaic.
 Geometric Technique was used because it demonstrated the Greek’s interest in
intricate, rationalized patterns.
 Black figure painting: achieved by incising the glaze (which turns black when fired) with
details of facial features and dresses.
 Red Figure Painting: the background of a scene was entirely painted (appearing as black)
and the figures were left unpainted (appearing as red) except for fine details in the
anatomy.
Athens in the Golden Age
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Athens was the glory of classical Greece, a vibrant center that spawned geniuses of the arts and
ideas.
After its military defeat in the Peloponnesian wars in 404 BC, Athens Enjoyed prosperities and
accomplishments known as the Golden Age.
The Heart of Athens was its polis
o *City State
o Meant that the citizens themselves, including their civic values and aspirations.
o Greek philosophers Plato assumed that a properly organized polis would produce
perfectly happy citizens.
o Memberships was limited to adult male citizens excluding all women, slaves, and non
native residents.
o The Polis may have been made up of ten to twenty thousand men.
Sophists
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Professional teachers who embodied the humanist spirit of skepticism and self reliance.
The sophists debated with their students about such practical matters as love, justice,
truth, and beauty.
They sometimes employed themselves as teachers to the sons of wealthy families and
taught public speaking and debate, the skills of Athenian democracies.
Protogorist: a well known sophist.
o Pronounced man “is the measure of all things” meaning that truth was always
relative to the individual person’s knowledge and perceptions.
While Protogorist gave voice to the new humanist spirit, other sophists fostered
cynicism. They taught their pupils to gain advantage through verbal trickery, a technique
still called “Sophistry”.
Socrates:
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469-399 BC
The Athenian who founded classical Greek philosophy without writing a word.
Examined human affairs and taught through questioning.
Socratic Method: based on question and answer in which the careful definition of terms (love,
justice, the good) produced insights to the truth.
Believed firmly that absolute truths could be known and taught although he denied that he
himself possessed correct knowledge.
399 BC: Became bitterly and fatally entangled into the affairs of the State.
o In the turmoil following the military defeat of Athens, Socrates was tried for religious
and moral offenses and sentenced to die.
o His trial was apparently motivated by anti intellectual resentment and enmity toward
his anti-democratic associates.
Future philosophers would view Socarates life and death as a model of principled integrity, of
arete, or virtue in action.
He refused to take payment for teaching or to flee from the city whose laws he had respected all
of his life.
Plato
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Student of Socrates
His writings made him history’s most important philosophers.
Spent ten years composing his ideas for philosophical dialogues.
o These includes the “Apology” and the “Crito” which described Socrates’ last days.
Plato drew a line across creation, dividing all things known through the sense experience from
things known through rational contemplation.
For Plato, philosophical inquiry let the virtuous soul across the “divided line” from opinion and
doubt toward certain knowledge of the forms
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Wrote “The Republic” and “allegory of the cave.”
Aristotle:
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The Academy’s most renowned student
Challenged Plato’s teachings and became, alongside Plato, a towering figure in world
philosophy.
His works form an encyclopedia of Greek Knowledge about the world, including treatises in
science, ethics, logic, politics, and literature, among other disciplines.
Assembled a library of maps and manuscripts and a museum of natural specimens.
His teaching had an direct impact. He briefly tutored the young Macedonian prince Alexander
(the Great) who would soon conquer the Mediterranean world.
Wrote Metaphysics , Nichomachean, Eudaimonia