Download chapter 2: “the hellenic unfolding,”

A SOARING SPIRIT: TimeFrame 600—400 B.C.
Chapter 1: “Persia At the Crest,” pp. 9—38.
Chapter 2: “The Hellenic Unfolding,” pp. 39—95.
Chapter 3: “Dawn Of the Romans,” pp. 96—141.
Chapter 4: “Enlightenment In the East,” pp. 142—167.
CHAPTER 1: “PERSIA AT THE CREST”
1. The Persian empire reached its maximum extent soon after 522 B.C. under the rule of
this leader. ______________________
2. This transportation route stretched nearly 1700 miles from Susa to Sardis in Lydia,
and helped to hold together the Persian Empire. _________________________
3.
According to Herodotus, when this future Persian King’s grandfather heard a
prophecy that his daughter’s son would grow up to threaten his empire he ordered his
chief steward to carry the newborn into the wilderness and slay him — when the steward
Harpagus failed to follow through on the assigned task the Median monarch served up the
steward’s own son for dinner. ___________
4—5. This city’s seven storied ziggurat was described in the Bible as the Tower of
Babel. _______________ This, rather than the ziggurat, was regarded by the Greeks as
one of the world’s seven wonders. __________________________
6. The Lydian monarch and rival of Cyrus’s Persia, he was told by the sibyl at Delphi
that if he should go to war he would destroy a great empire — the empire he ultimately
destroyed was his own. __________________
7. The twelve signs of the zodiac, which divide the heavens into thirty-degree segments,
were a concept developed by this civilization. ________________________
8. The death of this king in 562 B.C. after a four-decade reign was one factor in
Babylonian decline. ______________________________
9. The chief god in the Babylonian pantheon. _______________
10. The ceremonial Persian capital established by Darius I. _____________________
11. The kingdom in which gold coins of uniform size and value were first struck.
_______________
12. The Persian prophet who helped to transform Ahuramazda from but one of several
important nature gods into the Wise Lord, creator of heaven and earth, the all-seeing and
all-powerful supreme deity. _______________________
13. The elite corps of the Persian military. ________________________________
14. True or False: The Persian royal messenger service was so efficient that two and a
half millennia later, the U.S. Post Office would base its motto on Herodotus’s words
about the Persian messengers — “Nothing stops these couriers from covering their
allotted stage in the quickest possible time — neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness.”
__________
CHAPTER 2: “THE HELLENIC UNFOLDING,”
A SOARING SPIRIT, TIMEFRAME 600-400 B.C.
1-2. The Greek battle formation, in which infantrymen marched and fought as one.
_____________ The individual Greek infantryman. ___________________
3.
The
long
Greek
struggles
between
Athenian
and
Spartan.
_______________________________________
4.
The narrow Greek plain on which a Greek force led by Miltiades defeated the
invading Persians in 490 B.C. — according to Herodotus 6,400 Persians were killed at a
loss of only 192 Athenians. ________________________
5.
The decisive naval battle of the Persian Wars, the Greek admiral Themistocles
inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Persian Xerxes. _____________________
6. The individual Greek city state, each was independent. _________________
7-8. The twelve main gods of the Greek pantheon were thought to reside atop this
Macedonian mountain. ___________________________ The supreme deity, king of the
gods and defender of human liberty. ___________________
9. Goddess of wisdom and the legendary founder of Athens. _________________
10. Founded in 776 B.C. at Elis on the Peloponnesian peninsula, these games were the
most famous religious festival of the Hellenic world — they brought together Greeks
every four years for twelve centuries. __________________________
11. A form of Greek government in which power was vested in a single, absolute ruler.
_______________________
12.
The
state
celebration
from
which
tragic
drama
emerged.
___________________________________________
13. The process by which the Athenian assembly could vote those who had betrayed the
public trust into exile for ten years by writing the name of the accused on clay tablets, or
ostraca. ___________________________
14. The Greek patron saint of metalworking. ________________________________
15. According to Herodotus, this Persian leader ordered the Hellespont chastised with
300 lashes and branded with hot irons after a storm destroyed the pontoon bridges over
the famous channel as he prepared to move his army from Asia into Europe in order to
invade Greece in 480 B.C. __________________
16. The high hilltop in Athens, in the fifth century B.C. it would become the site for the
Parthenon, the magnificent temple to the city’s protecting deity. _________________
17.
Spread beneath the Parthenon, it was the civic center of ancient Athens.
__________________
18. The fraternal Greek get-togethers that typically lasted long into the night, with the
wine and the conversation both flowing freely. ___________________
19. “Man,” he claimed, “is the measure of all things,” eloquently highlighting the
skeptical humanism he shared with fellow Sophists. ________________________
20. The Sicilian city where the Athenians suffered crushing defeat in 413 B.C.; it would
be the decisive battle of the Peloponnesian Wars. ____________________
Name That Greek
Match the famous Greeks listed below with the appropriate lettered identifications that
follow.
21. Homer
______________
22. Pythagoras
______________
23. Thales of Miletus ______________
24. Heraclitus
______________
25. Sappho
______________
26. Solon
______________
27. Dracon
______________
28. King Leonidas
______________
29. Pericles
______________
30. Thucydides
______________
31. Hippocrates
______________
32. Herodotus
33. Phidias
______________
______________
34. Aeschylus
______________
35. Sophocles
______________
36. Euripides
______________
37. Aristophanes
______________
38. Democritus of Abdera
______________
39. Lysander
______________
40. Pindar
______________
a. The Spartan monarch who defended Greece from Persian invasion in 480 B.C. at the
narrow pass of Thermopylae.
b. The most famous historian of the Peloponnesian War, he served Athens as a general
during that conflict.
c. The legendary, blind Ionian eighth-century poet, he was the author of both the Iliad
and Odyssey.
d. The poetess of love from the island of Lesbos.
e. Often referred to as the “Father Of History,” he portrayed the war between the
Persians and the Greeks in epic terms.
f. Early philosopher who theorized that nothing existed but particles of matter, particles
that he referred to as atoms, and that all else was illusion.
g. The supreme practitioner of fifth-century B.C. Attic comedy.
h. He suggested that the world was in continuous flux, that one could not step in the
same river twice because the waters were ever flowing past him.
i. The youngest of the great tragedians, he moved away from a focus on the gods to the
exploration of character.
j. A pioneer of medical science from the island of Kos, his oath to honor the profession is
still intoned by doctors today.
k. The Spartan commander to which the Athenians surrendered in 404 B.C.
l. Poet who celebrated in his odes the Greeks’ victories in the Persian Wars and the
victories of athletes at Olympia.
m. The first known Greek philosopher, he contended that the basic substance of the
universe was water, from which all life sprang.
n. As an early Athenian magistrate, he laid down a civil code with penalties so extreme
that his very name entered the language as an eponym for harsh punishment.
o. The famous sculptor of fifty-century Greece, amongst his creations was the 40-foothigh statue of Athena displayed in the Parthenon.
p. Born on the island of Samos, he developed a famous geometric theorem and held that
all creation was locked into a system of numbers comparable to the tones of a musical
scale, the music of the spheres.
q. The most traditional of the three Athenian tragic playwrights, he had fought as a
soldier at both Marathon and Salamis, and chose to highlight this, rather than his success
as a dramatist, on his tombstone.
r. His celebrated eulogy for Athenians slain in the Peloponnesian war became the most
famous fifth-century statement of civic faith.
s. Greek dramatist with 123 plays to his credit, his crowning artistic achievement was
probably the Theban trilogy: Oedipus the King, Oedipus At Colonus, and Antigone.
t. As chief archon, the state’s highest official, this Athenian had drawn up a new
constitution and launched a program of social reform.
CHAPTER 3: “DAWN OF THE ROMANS,”
A SOARING SPIRIT, TIMEFRAME 600-400 B.C.
1. Rising to increased importance midway through the first millennium B.C., they
inhabited a great many small, rural enclaves strewn over territory stretching 1600 miles
from central Europe to the Iberian Peninsula.
2. The most important of the seven hills that surrounded Rome. _________________
3-5. The legendary founders of Rome, these twins were said to have been sired by Mars,
the god of war, and suckled by a she-wolf. ________________ and ___________. The
traditional founding date of Rome. _____________________________
6. Early Rome would be profoundly influenced by this civilization just across the Tiber
River, the most advanced and powerful of its day in Italy. _______________________
7. The divining practice, still utilized by the Romans much later in the period of the
empire, of attempting to foretell the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificed
animals. ______________
8. The character trait that the Romans admired most, it called for a sober, dignified, and
well-grounded approach to life. _____________________
9. According to tradition, in 509 B.C. Roman patricians revolted, deposed this king, and
along with him the entire institution of the monarchy, and the Etruscan families that had
dominated
life
—
a
special
form
____________________________________
of
republic
became
the
replacement.
10. The fifth-century B.C. battle between the plebeians and the patricians, in which the
former fought for political equality and economic justice against their wealthier rivals.
__________________________________
11-13. In the revamped government, plebeian power rested most clearly in this new
representative body. ____________________________________ The officers elected
annually by this assembly, who by their veto power could block any act of the patrician
consuls. ________________ The way in which the assembly measured public opinion.
_______________________
14. The newly-codified Roman laws of 450 B.C. _________________________
15. The legendary Roman warrior who halted an Etruscan invasion at the Tiber in about
500 B.C. and then, mission completed and bridge destroyed behind him, leapt into the
river and died a martyr. ____________________________
16. The name given by Romans to Celts. _______________
17. This metal, new to western Europe, became the key to Celtic culture. __________
18.
The powerful Celtic priests, their name may be derived from roots meaning
“knowledge of the oak.” _______________
19. The modern name for the Greek trading post established around 600 B.C. on the
French Mediterranean coast; it led to commercial contacts between the Greeks and Celts
throughout the Rhone Valley. ________________________
20. Here, thought Celts, was the dwelling place of the soul. _________________
21.
The mythic Greek sculptor who learned to breathe life into stone.
________________________
22. The Pythian games were held at this sacred Greek site. ________________
CHAPTER 4: “ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE EAST,”
A SOARING SPIRIT: TIMEFRAME 600-400 B.C.
1. This Chinese dynasty had wrested power from the Shang around 1100 B.C.; by the
eighth century it had declined to such an extent that China disintegrated into hundreds of
competing states. ____________
2. Learning from the nomads of the Eurasian steppes to the north and west, the Chinese
introduced this to their battlefields in the fifth century B.C. ______________
3. Born in 552 B.C. in Lu, a small central state, he was from an aristocratic family
imbued with nostalgic reverence for the golden age of the Zhou — far from counseling
his disciples to adapt themselves to the needs of rulers, however, he asked them to look
critically at their society and those who commanded it. _________________________
4.
This great anthology of Chinese ballads dated back to the tenth century B.C.
___________________________
5. Historical works brought together in the fifth century B.C., they covered a period
stretching from 722 B.C. to 481 B.C. — some disciples would later claim that Confucius
himself was the compiler. ___________________________________________
6. Statements attributed to Confucius are collected in this volume. ______________
7. The answer given by Confucius when asked to state the single principle that should
govern
one’s
conduct
in
life.
_______________________________________
______________________________________________________________________.
8-9. Literally “Followers of the Way,” these Chines mystics called for a retreat to nature
and to the primitive state of society, pictured as an idyllic rural community where there
was no place for envy or exploitation. ______________________
The legendary
founder of this movement, he was said to have been a contemporary of Confucius who
abandoned the pursuit of power for a life of meditation. __________________
10. The alluvial plain of the upper Indus River. __________________________
11. By 600 B.C., this plain was the acknowledged heartland of Indian civilization.
_______________
12. The sacred verses that stretched back to the heroic, tribal days of the Aryans, they
offered religious sanction for the division of Indian society into hierarchical castes.
_____________
13. Meditative scriptures that pondered the riddles of human existence, they taught that
each person’s soul harbored a spark of the divine, a spark that sought union with the
universal essence, or brahman — they were disseminated by ascetic holy men and
injected a strong ethical strain into Indian religion, if not the subversive potential to
challenge the caste system. ___________________________
14. Born into the Brahman caste around 560 B.C. in the kingdom of Kosala, he would
become one of the most influential individuals in the history of world religion.
_________________________________
15. According to legend, the number of signs seen by Buddha before he recognized that
he must understand human suffering. ________________
16. Literally the “Tree Of Wisdom,” it was the great pipal tree at Gaya under which
Siddhartha vowed to remain sitting in his thirty-sixth year until he was able to solve the
riddle of suffering.
17. The literal translation of the “Buddha.” ____________________________
18. The sanctuary near the modern city of Varanasi where Buddha met the five fellow
ascetics who had earlier spurned him and preached his first sermon. ________________
19-23. The Four Noble Truths Of Buddhism:
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
24-31. The Eightfold Way of Buddhism suggested that to eliminate suffering, one had to
adhere to 8 strictures. List these:
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
32. Those who followed the Eightfold Way hoped to achieve this, literally meaning the
“blowing out,” as of a candle — the escape from the whole sorrowful cycle of human
existence into oblivion. _________________________
33-34.
By articulating his ideas, Buddha set in motion the Wheel of the Law, or
_____________. The five ascetics to whom he preached his first sermon made up his
original monastic order, or __________________.
35.
The founder of Jainism, he was born around 540 B.C. and, like the Buddha,
renounced his privileged status as a young man to search for spiritual enlightenment.
______________________
36. Jains taught that the soul was present in all living things in the form of these tiny
particles; the only way to free one’s soul and achieve salvation was to renounce
destruction of any kind, because even seemingly innocent actions might harm these
particles that resided all around. _______________