Download Ancient Greece

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Ancient Greece
Directions: Read the following article on the
Ancient Egypt. Answer the questions which
follow in one or more complete sentences that
restate the question. Then construct a
timeline from what you have read. You
should find ten events within the text for your
timeline.
Civilization got its start in Greece
around 2000 BCE. At that time, the so-called
Aegean civilizations of Minos and Mycenae
sprang up in small towns and cities on the
coast and islands of the Aegean Sea. The
Minoans began their civilization on the
island of Crete. They traded with the
cultures that thrived on the coasts of the
Mediterranean Sea. The Minoan civilization
collapsed after a few hundred years. This
island people probably fell victim to the
earthquakes and tsunamis unleashed by a
volcanic eruption. The Mycenaeans started
their culture on the Balkan Peninsula,
mainland Greece. This people developed
writing and the arts. Still, the tribes of this
nation constantly fought amongst
themselves. This left them weak and ripe for
conquest.
Around 1150 BCE, a group of Greekspeaking people called the Dorians invaded
Greece from the north. They destroyed the
Mycenaean civilization, ending reading and
writing in Greece for a time. This period,
known as the Greek Dark Ages, lasted for
about 350 years.
Around 800 BCE, the Doric tribes
began to organize themselves into city-states
built on top of rocky hilltops in Greece. Built
on these mountaintops, they were safe from
attack from their neighbors. The
mountainous terrain of Greece isolated these
cities, making it hard for them to
communicate with each other. As a result,
each of these cities developed its own unique
character. The people of Athens, for
example, became known for their freethinking approach to life. As a result, the
Athenians produced some of the greatest
minds in ancient times, like Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle.
Assignment 5B1 Updated 2011
The people of Sparta, on the other
hand, created a police state ruled by a
council of warriors. They conquered the
people around them and enslaved them. The
Spartans knew these slaves as the helots and
controlled them through brute force and
humiliation. For example, they forced the
helots to get drunk to show their young
warriors about how foolishly drunkards
behave. Additionally, each Spartan boy had
to strangle a helot as a rite of passage before
he was viewed as a man. As one might
guess, the helots revolted against their
Spartan masters from time to time, lashing
out over their mistreatment. One such revolt
was put down brutally by the Spartan army
in 650 BCE.
While the Spartans created their
military regime, other city states in Greece
created their own governments. Some set up
governments ruled by kings called
monarchies, like the city of Corinth. In
others, small groups of people ruled instead.
These governments were called oligarchies.
Others were ruled by dictators called tyrants.
The city of Athens overthrew the tyranny of
Cleisthenes in 508 BCE and set up a
democracy in its place. Under this new
government, the citizens of Athens (i.e., free
adult males who were born in Athens) ruled
themselves by popular vote.
Around that time, a great empire
began to form in the East. There, the
Persians swept out of their rugged
mountainous homeland in modern-day Iran
on horseback to conquer the Middle East.
Under the leadership of Cyrus the Great,
they took over the fertile lands of
Mesopotamia and Palestine. After he died,
his son Darius I launched a campaign to
conquer Egypt and then Asia Minor. His
conquests included many Greek cities in Asia
Minor in a region called Ionia.
Around 500 BCE, the Greek city-states
of Ionia rebelled against the Persians. The
cities on the Greek mainland sent aid to their
brethren across the Aegean Sea, hoping to
weaken the growing power of Persia. This
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enraged Darius, and he sent an army of
20,000 soldiers to punish Greece. At first,
the Persian army seemed unstoppable.
In 490 BCE, the Athenians
nevertheless sent their smaller army of
10,000 out to meet the Persian host at
Marathon. Outnumbered two-to-one, they
thought they were marching to their deaths.
The Greeks nevertheless won the battle and
forced the Persians to return home. To bring
word of the victory back to Athens, the
Greeks sent a runner. He ran the entire 26
miles back to the city, dying of exhaustion
shortly after he delivered word of the Greek
victory. This is the origin of marathon races
that athletes run to this day.
The Persians seethed over their defeat
for a decade. After Darius died, the duty to
punish the Greeks fell to hiss son, Xerxes.
The new king assembled a massive army of
over a 100,000 soldiers and a fleet of more
than 1,200 ships to invade Greece. Seeing
the danger, King Leonidas of Sparta marched
a small force of 300 of his personal guard
north to oppose the invasion at a mountain
pass called Thermopylae in 480 BCE. Joined
by 8,000 Greek soldiers from other citystates, these Spartans held up the Persian
army for days. In the end, the Persians
found a way to encircle the Greek army.
King Leonidas, his 300 Spartans, and a
thousand other Greeks died to keep the
Persians busy while their fellow Greeks
slipped away to fight another day.
Eventually, the Greeks assembled an
army large enough to fight the Persians. At
the Battle of Salamis the Persian fleet was
destroyed by the Athenian navy. Their army
was likewise destroyed at the Battle of Platea
by a combined force of Spartans and
Athenians the following year. The Persians
returned home in defeat, and never returned.
But the Greeks worried that the
Persians might return someday. Athens
created the Delian League, an alliance of
Greek city-states that banded together for
mutual protection if the Persians ever
returned. The Spartans also formed a
similar alliance, the Peloponnesian League.
For nearly 50 years, the two leagues bickered
over many issues.
Assignment 5B1 Updated 2011
In 432 BCE, open fighting erupted
between the two leagues in a series of
conflicts known as the Peloponnesian Wars.
In the end, Sparta and her allies won the war
after nearly 30 years of conflict. But the
Greek city-states had spilled so much blood
and spent so much treasure fighting each
other that they had nothing left to defend
themselves from outsiders.
One king, Philip of Macedon, found
that the once proud city-states fell easily one
after another to his armies. By 338 BCE, he
had conquered all of them. He then planned
to invade the Persian Empire. He was
murdered before his ambitious plan could be
launched. It fell to his son, Alexander, to
launch the invasion when he was only 20.
Twelve years later, he had conquered an
empire that stretched from the mountains of
Greece to the Indus Valley in India. In time,
Alexander would be known as “the Great,”
having conquered the largest empire in
history to that date.
1. What brought the Minoan
civilization to an end?
2. What caused the Mycenaean
civilization to end?
3. Where did the Doric tribes build
their cities in Greece?
4. Who were some of the great thinker
that Athens produce?
5. Who were the helots?
6. What is a monarchy?
7. What ruler created the Persian
Empire?
8. Why did Darius send an army to
punish the Greeks?
9. Why do we run marathons to this
day?
10. Where did Leonidas confront the
army of Xerxes with his band of
300 Spartans?
11. Where did the Athenian fleet
destroy the Persian fleet?
12. What leagues did the Spartans and
Athenians form after the Persians
left?
13. What did the Peloponnesian wars
do to the Greek city-states?
14. How old was Alexander the Great
when he launched his invasion of
the Persian Empire?
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