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Name: _____________________________________________ Period: _______ Date: __________ 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 Page 1 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? Page 2