Download NOTES: War of 1812

Ancient Greece
Early Periods
1. Origins. In Crete, the Minoan Civilization. Stone tablets decoded in the 1940s.
Periods of Greek history. Reasons they settled there include fertile land and fleeing from
others.
2. Dark Ages, 1200-800 B.C. Epic poetry of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, may be a
collective. A society of chieftains with their own armies. Walled palaces. Frequent wars.
3. Ancient Greek religion. Polytheism has a variety of personalities of gods with human
reflections. Concept of after-life emphasizes life on earth.
4. Archaic Period. 800-500 B.C. This is a more familiar society. The city-state is an
walled urban center with agricultural farming area around it. They share ethnicity, language
and religion but there is no Greek unity. Each city-state is independent from each other.
Surplus of city-state population becomes a new city-state, creating colonization around the
Mediterranean.
5. Tyranny. This is a neutral term in these times. The seizing of power is viewed according
to lower class or upper class based orientation.
6. Class. Origins in the Bronze Age and existing throughout history. Athens society is a
clear class situation. Nobles are an inherited class versus the peasants who do the labor,
and tensions arise.
7. Sedition. The threat of revolution from below and ways to put it down or prevent it.
8. Salon's Code, 594 B.C. Three laws: no enslavement for debt, right to trial by jury of
peers, with right for 3rd party in defense, and the right to appeal after conviction. This code
does not end inequality but lessens tensions.
9. Consequences of Salon's Code. Leads to more wars to obtain slaves. Slavery is the
basis of ancient Greek economy, mainly based on mining. Mining is carried out under brutal
conditions with a 7 year life expectancy for miners. Slavery is a given in this society; it's
morality is not questioned. Slaves are also used as household servants. Athens has about
a quarter million population, a large portion are slaves.
Athenian Democracy
10. Practice of democracy. Citizens make the laws. (The U.S. is a republic which elects
people to make the laws.) Athens is a manageable geographic area. There is a public
assembly every 9 days. The lawmakers are all who attend that day. Preparation work for
the assemblies is done by a council of 500 citizens chosen by lot who serve 1 year terms,
with a maximum of 2 terms. This ensures a rapid mix and change. There are also 10
generals permanently chosen. This system assumes citizens are capable of judgments of
minor and major issues.
11. Limitations. Excluded from citizenship are women, minors, slaves, foreign born. There
are actually about 40,000 out of 250,000 population who are eligible to participate in the
public assembly. Also, peasants cannot afford to take off from work. Nobles have leisure
time, are more represented. Oratory is all important in these forums. Nobles are educated
in oratory. The peasants depend on the nobles for this.
12. Cultural outpouring. Arts, sculpture, painting, literature, philosophy emanate from
Athens.
13. Sparta. An extreme contrast with Athens. There are no cultural figures. Sparta is
called the Nazis of Greece. They see culture as a threat to their closed society which is
based on complete obedience to authority and military ability. It is small in size but has
significant influence. Women are considered only as breeders. An unwritten Greek law is
not to enslave fellow Greeks. The exception is Sparta which makes slaves of those
defeated in war in their own land. There are constant slave revolts. Sparta is a very dark
ancient Greek side.
14. Peloponnesian War, 441-421 B.C. Wars are generally limited, brief, consisting of one
decisive battle. An exception is the Peloponnesian War which can be considered the first
world war with the ancient world centered around the Mediterranean. Led by Sparta,
Athens attempts to establish its influence over all Greek city-states. The war drags on, is
ruinous, with revolts, and Athens fails to unify Greece.
15. Macedonia, a different ethnicity, conquers Greece, one city-state at a time. This does
not unify Greece. Greek democracy is possible only in a small city-state, and comes to an
end when Athens is conquered. Democracy reemerges only 2,000 years later in the
American Colonies.
Athenian Science & Philosophy.
16. Socrates. Socrates is not a writer, Plato writes his dialogs. Before philosophy, the gods
govern. Philosophy considers humans are the center of things, humans are rational, must
know themselves. Socratic method is the give-and-take of questioning. This threatens the
authorities He is found guilty of treason and sentenced to death unless he leaves Athens.
He refuses to leave, choosing suicide over execution.
17. Plato. Promotes the basic inequality of humans. He rejects uncertainty, believes that
certainty can be created in one's mind and then applied to the physical world.
18. Aristotle. He creates the empirical method of starting with experience in the outside
world, and then making conclusions in the mind. This has a great influence on science.
19. Democritus conceptualizes that all matter is made of particles of atoms, the origin of
atomic science.
20. Hippocrates fosters systematic observation.
21. Archimedes discovers specific gravity, creates military weaponry.
22. Ptolemy's geocentric theory with the earth as the center of the universe, is a unified
theory accepted for centuries. Later, Copernicus establishes the heliocentric theory, with
the sun as the center.
23. History as a serious discipline. Herodotus and Euripides.
24. Limitations. The lack of practical applications. There is interest in the theory not the
applications. Hero identifies steam power but uses this only to make toys for his friend's
children. There is no concern to reduce the labor of the masses. In general brilliant ideas
rarely resulting in practical applications.
25. The Hellenic Period until the Macedonian conquest. In 10 years Alexander the Great
conquers Greece and eastern territories to create a tremendous empire. He dies at the age
of 33.
26. Contribution of Athens. Combinations of influences are added to the Greeks. Athens
is a shining light but there is a darker side with wars and the institution of slavery. The noble
class has leisure for culture.