Download Greece! 1900-133 BC - Mat

Greece! 1900-133 BC
Because They Were Awesome.
Geography
• Mountains and Islands
▫ 80% Mountains
 Isolating
 Separate Communities
▫ Sea becomes extremely important!
 No part of Greek mainland is more than 60 miles
from the sea.
 Trade, travel, resources.
Minoans: 2700 to 1450 BC
• Sea Empire
▫ Traded pottery, gold, and silver jewelry
▫ Art: Paintings in the palace at Knossos
 Sports
 Nature
▫ Conquered by Mycenaeans.
 Lasted 1250 years!
 Empire of peace, trade, art.
Mycenae: 1600 to 1100 BC
• Warrior People!
• Agamemnon and Troy
▫ Helen (Agamemnon’s sister-in-law) is seduced by
Paris (Prince of Troy) and taken home with him.
 She is the “Face that launched a thousand ships.”
▫ Agamemnon wanted the riches of Troy.
 Uses Helen’s affair as an excuse to launch a war.
 Makes sacrifice to gain the god’s favor for the war.
 His daughter.
 Wife, Clytemnestra will be a little peeved by this.
Mycenae: 1600 to 1100 BC
• Agamemnon and Troy
▫ Troy is ultimately destroyed
 Everybody dies:
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Paris
Helen
Achilles
Hector
It’s all very sad...
• Ultimately Mycenae is weakened by earthquakes
(the gods must be angry…) and invasion from
the north.
The Dark Age: 1100 to 750 BC
• Farming collapses
• Records and Archaeology goes silent.
• Mainland Greeks flee to the islands and Ionia
(Asia Minor/Turkey)
▫ Some flee north and colonize the island of Lesbos
▫ Dorian Greeks flee southwest
 Peloponnese
 Southern Aegean islands
 Crete
The Dark Age: 1100 to 750 BC
• Iron slowly replaces bronze!
▫ Weapons become more affordable
▫ Easier to use
▫ Provides improved farming
The Dark Age: 1100 to 750 BC
• Homer
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Poet
Paints a picture of the past/lost glory of Greece
Gives Greeks a vision of a possible/better future.
Not a record of history as much as a creation of it
and a creation of cultural/shared identity.
▫ Taught: Courage, honor, excellence through
struggle and contest.
Greek Expansion:
• Why?
▫ Desire for good farmland
▫ Overpopulation of home
▫ Trade!
• These lead to the founding of Byzantium
▫ Byzantium will be known as Constantinople at the
height of it’s power and named for it’s greatest citizen
and founder.
▫ Today it is called Istanbul
▫ Controlled the waterway between the Mediterranean
and the Black Sea
 Economic advantage!
Athens
• Economic Capital of the Ancient world
▫ 300,000 people at it’s height
 Larger than Anchorage
▫ Citizens belong to the State
 This leads to a fierce kind of city loyalty.
 Eventually leads to the fall of Greece.
▫ Traded:
 Olive Oil, Salt, Wine, Pottery, Grain, Metals, Fish,
Timber, Slaves
 Traders gain wealth Want a share of power
Leads to a contest between Old Money (Aristocrats
and landowners) vs. New Money (Merchants).
Rule of History:
• The wider the gap between the rich (those that
have) and the poor (those that don’t have), the
more unstable society will be.
Vocabulary
• Polis = City
▫ Metropolis: (metro = mother) Mother-city
▫ Politics: the business of the city.
▫ Policeman: man of the city.
• Greek City State
▫ Center of the city is the Acropolis
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Acro = top, tip, highest, beginning
Highest point of the city
Built on a defensible hill.
Temples placed there (protection of the gods).
▫ The Agora
 The marketplace or assembly area
 Where the people live
Vocabulary
• Oligarchy
▫ Oligos = few
▫ Arch = chief, first, to rule
▫ Rule by a few or by a small group.
• Democracy
▫ Demos = people
▫ Cracy = government
▫ Rule by the people (understood as mob-rule)
Vocabulary
• Tyrant  A ruler that seizes power by force from
aristocrats (old money).
▫ Kept power by using hired thugs—I mean soldiers.
▫ Led to a hard choice:
 Tyrant vs. Rule of Law or 
 End of the aristocracy and power the one vs. the rule
of the people.
Back to Athens!
• Had a King  Led an oligarchy of aristocrats 
CRISIS!
▫ A man called Draco (Draconian) passes laws that are
so harsh a new guy named Solon has to take over to
avoid civil war.
▫ Solon helped, but wouldn’t fix the problem of land
ownership so 
▫ Peisistratus takes over and institutes land reforms.
(HE SHARED THE WEALTH: took land from the rich
and redistributed it to folks that didn’t have any.)
▫ The poor REALLY liked him, but didn’t like his son too
much, so they said, “no more tyrants, thank you very
much.”
Athens
• CRISIS!
▫ After the Athenians got rid of the tyrants, a guy
named Cleisthenes came to power.
 He set up something called The Council of 500.
 Supervised foreign affairs.
 Oversaw the city budget.
 Proposed laws.
 He laid the foundation for Athens’ final form of
government: democracy.
Sparta
• They were different from Athens.
• It was a military city-state.
▫ Formed to control the Helots or captured slaves.
• They had:
▫ Two kings.
▫ 28 citizens over the age of 60 that ruled on issues
to be presented at assembly.
▫ Assembly only voted yes or no 
 No debate.
 Only voted on subject of war.
Sparta
• Children were taught military discipline.
▫ State raised children after 7 years.
 Taught to steal, lie, cheat, and intimidate others for food.
▫ 20 years old
 Serve in the military.
 Live in the barracks until 30.
▫ Stayed in the military until they were 60.
▫ Women:
 Be/stay healthy.
 Have lots of babies.
 Words of a Spartan mother to her son:
 “Come home bearing your shield or on it!”
Athens vs. Sparta
• Athens and Sparta did things very differently
from each other.
• They competed with each other for influence,
commerce, and control/power.
• Political differences were aggressively argued
they fought a really long war with each other
with a few breaks to fight with other people like
THE EVIL PERSIANS.
• The fight against Persia leads to:
Classical Greece: 500 to 338 BC
• Ionian Greece fell to the Persians  in 499
Athens tried to liberate them.
▫ It failed, but it made Darius (Persia’s king) mad.
 Every night for 9 years, Darius has a slave declare:
“Sire, remember the Athenians!”
 This is really an unhealthy rage. It ends badly for
Darius.
Classical Greece: 500 to 338 BC
▫ Darius lands with an overwhelming force on the
beach of Marathon (26 miles from Athens).
 Gets his trash kicked.
 Athenian man who is assigned to watch and take
news home, Pheidippides, races to Athens with the
news!
 With his dying breath he cries: “Victory, we win!”
 Victory was really un-hoped for.
▫ It is a minor victory, but it inspires tiny little
Greece.
Classical Greece: 500 to 338 BC
• Inspired Greece:
▫ Builds a fleet of ships to defend against the next
and inevitable attack from the Persian superpower.
▫ The next Persian King Xerxes brings 180,000
soldiers and thousands of warships. *It’s brown
trousers time.*
Classical Greece: 500 to 338 BC
• Thermopylae “The Hot Gates.”
▫ At a place called Thermopylae 7,000 Greek soldiers
hold off the hoard for 2 days.
▫ This is the fight made famous by the movie 300.
 Sparta played an inspirational part, but they weren’t
the only ones there. *I’m not sorry to burst any
bubbles here.*
 When told, “The sky will be black with arrows!”
Dieneces of Sparta said, “That is good news. We will
fight in the shade!”
 They LOSE. But Greece is inspired! Persia can be
defeated.
Classical Greece: 500 to 338 BC
• 479 BC: Athens gets sacked and destroyed, but
Persia loses the war.
▫ Athens comes out with naval control of the Aegean
Sea!
• 478 BC: Athens forms the Delian League 
headquartered on the island of Delos.
▫ All officials were Athenian.
▫ Defended from the Persians at first and then
pursued them!
▫ Liberated most of the Greek states in the Aegean.
Classical Greece: 500 to 338 BC
• 454 BC: The Delian treasury was moved from
Delos to Athens.
The Age of Pericles: 461 to 429 BC
• Pericles expanded the Athenian Empire and
nurtured democracy at home.
• Every Male citizen had to participate in the
democracy.
▫ 300,000 Athenians
 60,000 Adult males with political rights
 10,000 Adult male foreigners under the protection
of the law
 Subject to responsibilities, taxes, military service, etc.
 Most were NOT citizens.
 100,000 slaves.
The Age of Pericles: 461 to 429 BC
• Athenian democracy:
▫ Every 10 days the assembly met.
▫ Anyone in attendance could speak, but usually
only respected leaders did.
▫ Poor could participate because Pericles paid the
office holders.
▫ The practice of Ostracism protected the
democracy from overly ambitious politicians.
 Anyone named by @ least 6,000 votes was banned
from Athens for 10 years.
The Age of Pericles: 461 to 429 BC
• Athens becomes the center of Greek culture.
• Massive rebuilding projects.
• Imported 50 to 80% of their grain.
▫ They didn’t have enough land for farming.
▫ This is a BIG PROBLEM.
• Raised sheep and goats.
• Grew grapes and olive trees.
• Women could participate in religious festivals, but
very little else.
▫ Only traveled under escort.
▫ Father of the house owned the women of the house.
The Peloponnesian War: 431 BC
• Athens vs. Sparta!
• The Persians were defeated.
• The Delian League was split into the Athens
faction and the Spartan faction.
▫ Athens  Navy.
▫ Sparta  Army.
• Sparta besieged Athens.
▫ In the second year 1/3 of Athens (including
Pericles) are killed by Typhus.
The Peloponnesian War: 431 BC
• The Siege:
▫ Lasted 25 years.
▫ 405 BC: Athenian navy is destroyed at
Aegospotami on the Hellespont.
 With no navy, Athens is beaten and the empire
destroyed.
 It was a very sad day.
• 67 more years of fighting continues to weaken
Greece.
▫ Athens, Sparta, and Thebes fight for control.
▫ They ignore Macedonia to the north. THIS IS
BAD.
Macedonia and the Hellenistic Era
• Hellenistic = To imitate the Greeks.
• 359 BC: Philip II
▫ Builds an army, ends the independence of the
Greek city-states in the south.
 Decides to celebrate his triumph by finishing off
Persia.
 Killed before he can invade.
 By a former male lover that had been humiliated by
him—possibly paid by Alexander’s mother?
Macedonia and the Hellenistic Era
• Alexander the Great
▫ Prepared for rule.
 Schooled in warfare and academics.
 His tutor was ARISTOTLE.
▫ Motivated by a desire for glory and empire.
 Wasn’t above using revenge to justify his actions.
For example the burning of Athens by Persia in
480BC.
▫ 334 BC: 37,000 men to capture Western Asia
Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt!
Macedonia and the Hellenistic Era
• Alexander the Great
▫ Builds Alexandria to be the Greek capitol of Egypt
and to serve as the shipping hub for Egyptian
wheat for the rest of his empire.
▫ Turned East and looked to conquer India  his
soldiers finally refused to go farther.
Macedonia and the Hellenistic Era
• Alexander the Great:
▫ His Legacy:
 Political  Monarchies
 Cultural  Greek language, architecture, literature,
art, and religious diversity spread throughout Asia,
India, and North Africa.
 The launching of the Hellenistic Era.
 ALEXANDRIA: the academic capital of the
ancient world.
Macedonia and the Hellenistic Era
• Alexandria: academic capital of the ancient
world.
▫ Home to poets, writers, scholars, philosophers,
scientists
▫ Pharos  The Great Lighthouse of Alexandria
▫ The Great Library and the Museums of Alexandria
 Think of it as the Library of Congress, the
Smithsonian, and the internet all in one for the
ancient world.
 500,000 scrolls!
Macedonia and the Hellenistic Era
• When Alexander the Great dies:
▫ Generals fight over the pieces of his empire.
▫ Four kingdoms emerge  All ruled by Greek
administrators.
 Macedonia
 Syria
 Pergamum (Western Asia Minor/Modern Day
Turkey)
 Egypt (the greatest of the four)