Download Chapter 7 The Greek Adventure

Chapter 7
The Greek Adventure
Three Epochs of Ancient Greek History
Minoan-Mycenaean Age
Hellenic period
Hellenistic Age
Geography and
Political Development
• Greece is shaped by its geography
– many small islands and mountainous southern tip
– Little suitable land for large scale farming
• No place within Greece was 80 miles from the sea
• Greeks expert sailors with ships, shipping was livelihood
• Travel and trade by sea easier
• Geography encouraged political fragmentation
– Own sense of community and identity
– Only secondarily shared common culture and
language
THE MINOAN CIVILIZATIONS
• Origins of Greek civilization traced to Crete
• Found urbanized civilization around 2000 BCE
• Cretan culture called Minoan (Minos, mythical king of
Crete)
• Not known if Minoans were Greeks but part of the
formation of Greek civilization
• Islanders established a seaborne commercial network
• Became wealthy through their mastery of the sea
• Wealth produced a socially complex society (tiny states
with kings)
MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATIONS
• Mycenaeans, mainland Indo-European people
– invaded Crete
– destroyed island settlements
– took over trading network
• Our knowledge comes from archaeological excavations
and epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey
• Trojan War – probably caused by Mycenaean’s trade
rivalry with Troy
• Mycenaeans engaged in extensive internal warfare
– Fell to the Dorians
– Dark Ages began as culture declined
Map 7.1
Early Hellenic Civilization
The Polis (pl poleis)
• Community of free persons making up a
town
• Could be any size: Athens 300,000 people
• Each polis a political and cultural unit, but
also as part of distinct “Greek” culture
• Polis, frame of reference for all public life
Early Hellenic Civilization
• Not everybody was a citizen
–
–
–
–
Women excluded
Many resident were aliens
Many slaves
Included only free males over age 20
• Each polis had same economic and
demographic design
– Town of varying size, surrounded by farms, pasture,
woods
– Artisans, traders, import-export merchants,
intellectuals, artists etc.
– Most Greeks were peasants, workers
Athens and Sparta
• Two poleis dominated Greek life and
politics
• They came into conflict
• Four types of government known to the
Greeks
– Monarchy
– Aristocracy
– Oligarchy
– Democracy
Early Athens
• Original monarchy forced aside by aristocrats
• Aristocrats gave way to oligarchs
– Most important oligarch was Solon
– Oligarchs gave him supreme power to deal with
discontent
– He established a constitution
• Pisistratus made himself sole ruler, gave
concessions to common people
• Cleisthenes
– True founder of Athenian democracy
– Believed the people should have the last word in their
government
Athenian Democracy
• Ekklesia – town meeting
– All free male Athenians, met on ad hoc basis
– All could speak freely
– All could be elected
• Boule
–
–
–
–
Council of 500 citizens, served 1-year terms
Day-to-day legislature, executive
Supervised civil and military affairs
All male citizens would serve at least one term
• Deme
– Territorial unit
– Could select certain number of boule members
Athenian Democracy
• Ostracism
– “Pushing out” of citizen who did not conform to will of
others
– Person had to go into exile, lost all rights of
citizenship
• Democracy
–
–
–
–
–
An abnormal system of government
Daring when introduced
Not used again until 18th century
Some poleis adopted similar governments
Resistance even within such poleis
Spartan Militarism
• Sparta differed from Athens in almost every way
• Messenian Wars: Sparta fought with nearest
neighbors and won
• Defeated people became near-slaves – helotry
• Sparta became nation of soldiers and helpers
• Economic needs largely met by captive helots
– Worked the fields, did all crafts, commerce
– Spartans devoted all their energies to military arts
Spartan Militarism
• Spartans held arts in contempt, rejected
individualism
– Public life meant total obedience
– Government headed by ephors (elected officers)
• Most Greeks admired Spartan way of life
– Self-discipline, courage, rigid obedience, physical
vigor
– Single-minded patriotism
• Sparta was conservative, non-aggressive state
– Army was large and feared, thus rarely used
– Became peaceable polis
Persian Wars
• Athens and Sparta concerned with
keeping independent of foreign threat
(Persia)
• First Persian War
– Athenian victory
– Athens went to aid rebellious Persian colonies
– Persian emperor Darius sent army to Greece
– Persians defeated at Marathon in 490 BCE
Persian Wars
• Second Persian War
– Even more decisive Greek victory
– Other poleis helped Athens
– Spartan troops defeated Persians at
Thermopylae in 480
– Athenian navy defeated Persians at Salamis
• Greece had turned back Persia
• Crucial turning point for Western
civilization
Peloponnesian War
431-404 BCE
• No harmony among Greeks after Persian Wars
• Athenians under Pericles in conflict with Corinth,
a Spartan ally
• Sparta defended Corinth, Pericles responded
with war
• Athens thought they could defend against Sparta
indefinitely
• War was an intermittently fought deadlock
• In 404 Spartans defeated Athenian navy with
Persian help
• War was a loss for all concerned
Final Act in Classical Greece
• Greeks continued to fight for two generations
• Macedonians took over from north
– Philip of Macedonia turned it into effective, aggressive
state
– Took over most of mainland
• City states became provinces of Macedonian
Empire
• From then on, Greece was almost always under
foreign rule
ALEXANDER AND THE CREATION
OF A WORLD EMPIRE
• Alexander reigned for 13 years conquering the
world:
– an unresisting Egypt
– the mightiest empire the world had yet seen, the
empire of Darius III of Persia
– tribal kingdoms of the Indus basin and the highlands
to its north (present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan
• The Army exhausted, Alexander led his men
back to Persia where he died a year later in
Babylon at age 33
Map 7.2
A Mixed Culture
• Alexander the Great’s empire disintegrated the day he died
• Territories split into kingdoms (Hellenistic kingdoms), each
ruled by one of his generals
• Intermarriage was encouraged
• Ten-of thousands of Greeks left overcrowded, resource-poor
Greece to make their names and fortunes under GrecoMacedonian control
• Greek values/ideas were imposed on Asiatics and Egyptians
• Greek rulers failed to duplicate the polis of shared
government and interdependent community
• Accepted the monarchy and became subjects
• Indian Hindu/Buddhist world introduced to the Western world
• Direct trade contacts between India and the Mediterranean
Greeks and Easterners in the
Hellenistic Kingdoms
THREE MAJOR KINGDOMS:
• Ptolemaic, Kingdom of Egypt
– General Ptolemy captured Egypt and ruled as a divine king, like the
pharaohs
– By 100s BCE, Egypt became a hybrid society - Greeks and Egyptians
intermixed
• Seleucid, Kingdom of Persia
– General Seleucus ruled from India’s borders to the Mediterranean
– Kingdom began to lose pieces to rebels because of its large expanse
– Immigrant Greeks mixed with locals especially in Syria and Turkey
– When Romans invaded the western areas, most of the east was lost
• Antigonid Kingdom
– General claimed the Macedonian homeland and part of Greece
– Rest of Greece divided into city-states vying for political and economic
supremacy
– Both fell to the Romans in the middle 100s BCE
Discussion Questions
1. The polis was the organizational unit of Greek
civilization. What commonalities exist between
the polis and the modern city? What does the
modern city have that the polis did not? Are
there advantages to living in the polis; what are
they?
2. The rule of the people was one of Athens’ most
enduring developments, yet it differed from
modern ideas of democracy. What comparisons
can you make between Greek and modern
democracy? Are there advantages of the
Athenian model over the modern one?