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Chapter Four
Greece
Aegean Civilization
(1) Minoan Culture
-- Crete
(2) Mycenaean Greece
-- Mycenae: home of King
Agmemnon
Basic Greek Timeline
~ 2500 BCE
Minoans (lived on Crete)
Mycenaeans (mainland)
Dorians – invaders (dark age)
338 BCE
Ionians – “the Greeks”
(brought back Mycenaean
elements)
Minoan Civilization
• 2000-1400 B.C.E.
• King Minos’s “sea empire”
• The palace at Knossos
• Daedalus, in Greek mythology, the
Athenian craftsman, architect and
inventor who designed for King Minos
of Crete the labyrinth in which was
imprisoned the Minotaur, a maneating monster that was half man and
half bull. The labyrinth was so skilfully
designed that no one could escape
from the maze or the Minotaur.
• http://www.daedalus.gr/DAEI/THEME/Knossos.htm
Illustration of the Palace of Knossos
http://arapahoe.littletonpublicschools.net/Portals/7/Social%20Studies/Crosby/WesternCiv/
Unit1/Unit%201.8%20Palace%20PPT.ppt
Palace at Knossos
http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Mino/minos.jpg
The Queen's megaron, Palace of Minos, Knossos, c. 1600-1400
B.C.E. Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
View of the "throne room," palace of Minos, Knossos, Crete, with a heavily
restored fresco depicted griffins. Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Mino/blueladies.gif
Minoan Fresco : bull leaping
http://faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art105/img/minos_toreador.jpg
Boxing Children,
from Akrotiri, Thera,
c. 1650-1500 B.C.E.
Fresco, 9' x 3' 1"
high. National
Archaeological
Museum, Athens.
Nimatallah/Art
Resource, NY.
Crocus Gatherer,
from Thera, pre1500 B.C.E. Fresco,
appox. 35" x 32".
National
Archaeological
Museum, Athens.
Archaeological
Society at Athens.
Blue Bird. Fresco
from Knossos. Late
Minoan IA, 1550 BC.
http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/minoanpainting3.html
Octopus Vase, from
Palaikastro, Crete, c.
1500 B.C.E. 11" high.
Archaeological
Museum, Herakleion,
Crete. Scala/Art
Resource, NY.
• “The Minoans seem to have been the first ancient
culture to produce art for its beauty rather than its
function. . . . Art in Mesopotamia and Persia served
political and religious purposes; while compelling
and aesthetically very sophisticated, the art served a
larger purpose. The Minoans, however, not only
decorated their palaces, they decorated them with
art; they used art for pleasure. . . . Minoan art
frequently involves unimportant, trivial details of
everyday life . . . (rather than battles, or political
events and leaders, and so on).”
• http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOA.HTM
• “This, perhaps, is the greatest Minoan
legacy on the Greek world, for the great
revolution in Greek art involves precisely
this idea of producing art for pleasure only,
that is, a purely aesthetic purpose for art:
‘art for art's sake.’ ”
• http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOA.HTM
The Mycenaeans
• 1600-1200 B.C.E.
• Time of Homer’s epics
• Home of Agamemnon
(conqueror of Troy)
"Goddess," from the
citadel of Mycenae, c.
1200 B.C.E. Fresco.
National
Archaeological
Museum, Athens.
Scala/Art Resource,
NY.
http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/mycptg1.html
The so-called Orpheus fresco from
the Throne Room. Palace of Nestor
at Pylos, 1300-1250 BC.
http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/mycptg3.html
The Mask of Agamemnon
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/worldhis/figure11.jpg
Rhyton in the
shape of a lion's
head, from
Mycenae, c.
1550 B.C.E.
Gold, height 8".
National
Museum, Athens.
Nimatallah/Art
Resource, NY.
Lion Gate,
1300-1250 BC
http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/framesetmycenaen.html
• A fortified citadel
http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/framesetmycenaen.html
Ancient Greece
–The Heroic (Homeric) Age
(1200-750 B.C.E.)
–Archaic Greece
(750-480 B.C.E.)
• 750-650 BC Oligarchical
• 650-480 BC Tyrants
–Athenian Democracy
(480-430 B.C.E.)
The Heroic Age
(ca. 1200-750 BCE)
Homer
• Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
• Depicted the emergence of
aristocrats.
• Competition between aristocratic
households led to hero cults, such
as Achilles and Odysseus.
Archaic Greece
(ca.750-480 BCE)
Rise of the Polis
• 750 BCE
• Each polis (city-state) was
organized around a political
and social urban center.
Colonization
• Expansion of the Greek world
–Magna Graecia
• Hellenism (Hellenes = Greeks)
• Panhellenism (all + Greeks)
–Oracle of Delphi
–Games at Olympia (776 B.C.E.)
The Persian Wars
• The Ionian Revolt (499-494 BCE)
• The Battle of Marathon (490
BCE)--the Athenians won without Spartans’ help
• The Battle of Salamis (480-479
BCE)– Athens rises to the forefront of Greek
culture because of victory over Xerxes (Persia)
The Golden Age
(ca. 480-430 BCE)
Athens
Acropolis
Solon’s Reform
• c. 640-559 B.C.E.
• Set up courts with citizen juries
• Eligibility for political office based
on property not birth
• citizen assembly: landowning
males over 18 would participate.
Pericles
(ca. 495-429 BCE)
• Democratic reforms
The Assembly: central power of the state,
consisting of all the free-born (no freed
slaves) male citizens
• Public buildings—public confidence
• Glorified Athens’ democracy in his famous
Funeral Speech
Pericles
• The Athenian Empire: taking control
of the Delian League
• Anti-Spartan foreign policy
• Advocated territorial expansion, a
policy that eventually led to the
Peloponnesian Wars.
Parthenon
http://www.sikyon.com/Athens/Parthenon/parthenon_eg.html
Agora
Sparta
• A society organized for war
• Dual monarchy + an oligarchy of
five officials
• Relied on helots (enslaved
Messenians) for food and manual
labor
– Population: helots : Spartiate = 10 : 1
– 640 BC revolt of helots
The Peloponnesian War
• Trigger: Athenian control of the Delian
League
– 454 BCE Athens moved the treasury from
Delos to Athens and began to keep 1/6 of
all the revenue
– The Delian League became the Athenian
Empire.
• 431- 404 BCE—27 years
• Sparta defeated Athens.
Aftermath
• 30 tyrants in Athens
• War brought demoralization
and a questioning of former
certainties
• Shows the limitation of the polis
system?
• The Hellenic Age
(800 BCE - 323 BCE)
• The Hellenistic Age
(323 BCE - 30 BCE)
• The Greco-Roman Age
(30 BCE - 476 CE)
•Greek Drama
The Origin of Greek Tragedies
http://www.watson.org/~leigh/drama.html
• The great dramatic festival of Athens was
held in the spring in the theatre of
Dionysus, to the south-east of the
Acropolis. The theatre in Athens never
became an everyday amusement, as it is
today, but was always directly connected
with the worship of Dionysus, and the
performances were always preceded by a
sacrifice. The festival was only held once a
year, and whilst it lasted the whole city
kept holiday.
Masters
• Tragedy: Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)
Sophocles (496-406 BCE)
Euripides (485-406 BCE)
• Comedy: Aristophanes
(ca. 448-382 BCE)
Format
• 2-3 actors (male) wearing
masks, with a chorus of 1215 members changing
commentary on the action.
MASKS
http://www.arlymasks.com/tragedy.htm
• None of the original
masks survive from
the days of the Greek
theatre, however,
marble masks like this
are found as part of
sculptural decoration
of buildings, giving us
a good idea of what
the Greek masks
looked like.
•Key Terms
• From M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
Tragedy
• In Poetics, Aristotle defined tragedy as
“the imitation of an action that is
serious and also, as having magnitude,
complete in itself,” in the medium of
poetic language and in the manner of
dramatic rather than of narrative
presentation, involving “incidents
arousing pity and fear, wherewith to
accomplish the catharsis of such
emotions.”
Catharsis
• Purgation, or purification
• Many tragic representations of
suffering and defeat leave an
audience feeling not depressed,
but relieved, or even exalted.
Tragic Hero
• Able to evoke pity and fear
• Neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly
bad, but “better than we are.”
• Such a man is exhibited as suffering a
change in fortune from happiness to
misery because of his mistaken choice of
an action, to which he is led by his
harmatia.
Hamartia
• Literally, “error of judgment,” or tragic
flaw.
• One common form of harmatia in
Greek tragedies was hubris, that
“pride” or overweening selfconfidence which leads a protagonist
to disregard a divine warning or to
violate an important moral law.
Elements of Plot
• Anagnorisis: discovery of facts
previously unknown to the hero
• Peripeteia: a reversal of fortune
from happiness to disaster
• Catastrophe
•Philosophy
• The Greek philosophers
made the speculative leap
from myth to logos, from
supernatural to natural
explanations of the
unknown. (94)
•The Pre-socratics
Cosmologists
•
•
•
•
Natural philosophy
The 6th century BCE
In the Greek cities of Ionia in Asia Minor
Believed that “some single, eternal, and
imperishable substance . . . gave rise to all
phenomena in nature” (Perry)
• 老子: “一生二, 二生三, 三生萬物”
Cosmologists
•
•
•
•
Moving from myth to reason
Materialists or matter philosophers
Thales (624-548 BCE): Water
Anaximander (611-547 BCE) and
Anaximenes (586-525 BCE): the Boundless
混沌 (氣?)
Cosmologists
• Pythagoras (580-507 BCE)
• Lived in Magna Graecia in southern Italy
• Believed that the essence of things was
not matter but number.
Cosmologists
• Parmenides (515-450 BCE)
• Lived in southern Italy
• Reality (the ONE) → known only
through the mind (Plato), not
through the senses (Aristotle)
• A precursor of Plato
The Sophists
• 智者 或 詭辯學派
• Around 450 B.C.E.
• Moved from natural philosophy to the
human world
• A group of traveling scholar-teachers
• Primary concern: language
Profession: rhetoric // oratory
The Sophists
• Philosophical relativists
• No truth but opinions: Believed
that perceptions and judgments
are relative and subjective
• Abandoned philosophy’s claim to
truth and gave priority to rhetoric
Protagoras
(485-410 BCE)
James Harmon Hoose
Library of Philosophy,
USC
http://www.publicartinla.
com/USCArt/Hoose/prot
agoras.html
Consequences
• The Sophists’ doctrines
encouraged disobedience to
law, neglect of civic duty, and
selfish individualism.
Socrates
• (470-399 B.C.E.)
• “Know thyself”: The oracle at Delphi is said
to have proclaimed Socrates the wisest
man in Greece, to which Socrates said
that if so, this was because he alone was
aware of his own ignorance.
• “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates
• The rational god = the highest good
Unlike the Sophists, Socrates believed in
certainties. Truth is real. Absolute
standards do exist.
• “Virtue is knowledge.”
As we are all rational, once we know
what’s the highest good, we want to
achieve moral excellence.
Socrates
• Questioning received truth—examine
everything
• The dialectical method: a dialogue
http://www.pima.gov/publicdefender/socrates.htm
Plato vs. Aristotle
Plato
• ca.428-347 BCE
• School: the Academy (in
Athens)
The School of Athens, by Raphael
http://home.lbcc.cc.ca.us/~mlawrence/Phil%206/cave.htm
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/gnl2/cave.htm
Plato:Theory of Ideas
• A two-level reality
• Ideas
mind
eternal forms
intangible
// sense experience
// body
// copies, shadows
// tangible
Plato: Ethics
• The guiding light of all
individual and social action is
the idea of the Good.
• Virtue is a form of knowledge;
no one can act against his
better knowledge.
Plato: the Just State
• Book: The Republic
• An elitist state
• Rule by the wisest:
Philosopher-kings
Plato and the Poets
•Plato would ban poets
from his republic. Why?
Plato and the Poets
• He believed that poets (1) lie,
in other words, neither know
the truth nor disseminate it; (2)
lead children and young
people astray with false
notions; (3) present and copy
not the ideas, but images of
images
Aristotle
• 384-322 B.C.E.
• Universal Ideas could not be
determined without
examination of particular
things.
Aristotle
• Through human experience
with things themselves, the
essence (Form, or
universals) of these things
can be discovered through
reason.
Aristotle: Ethics
• Happiness comes from
exercising reason in practical
affairs.
• Virtue → “Nothing in
excess”→pursuing the golden
mean between two extremes
Aristotle: Politics
• To live the good life, a person
must do so as a member of a
political community.
• “[The] best political community
is formed by citizens of the
middle class”
Aristotle
• Limitations:
1. Barbarians = slaves
2. Women were excluded from
the polis.
3. Aims to maintain the existing
social hierarchy.
•The End