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The Contest for Excellence
Greece, 2000-338 B.C.E.
The Contest for Excellence
The Big Picture
Archaic Age Classical Age
Mycenaeans
Minoans
2000 B.C.E.
Colonization
Trojan War
1000 B.C.E.
Peloponnesian War
Persian War
400 B.C.E.
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The Contest for Excellence
The Big Question
How and why did the Greeks develop a
politics and culture so distinctly different
from the ones that evolved in the Ancient
Middle East?
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
The Greek Peninsula
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PENINSULA—MOUNTAINOUS WITH
NO LARGE RIVERS—TENDED TO MAKE COMMUNITIES
DEVELOP IN ISOLATION. GREEKS WERE OFTEN ORIENTED
TOWARD THE SEA.
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
The Minoans, 2000-1450 B.C.E.
– Wealthy and powerful civilization emerges on the island of Crete ca.
2000 B.C.E.
– Not Greek, but a Semitic people.
– Great city of Knossos is best known to us, which probably had roughly
40,000 living there at its height.
– Traded with Fertile Crescent, learned to make Bronze from Sumerians,
and built the best ships.
– Minoan Palaces: Mazes of storerooms, leading to the legend of the
labyrinth and Minotaur . Not symmetrical like most Mesopotamian and
Egyptian architecture.
– Myth of Theseus: The half-man, half-bull may have been the King of
Knossos wearing a bull headress killed by a Greek.
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
The Minoans, 2000-1450 B.C.E.
Greek representation (ca. 550 B.C.E. of Theseus and the Minotaur):
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
The Minoans, 2000-1450 B.C.E.
– Developed a pictographic script like Sumerian cuneiform etched in clay
tablets that we call “Linear A,” which scholars have yet to translate, but
appears to have been used for accounting.
– Palaces decorated with brilliantly colored frescoes.
– Religion focused on a fertility goddess depicted holding snakes.
– Religious ritual involved leaping over bulls; may have been an early
precursor to bullfighting, ending with sacrifice.
– Volcanic explosion on Thera (Santorini) may have ended Minoan
civilization around 1450 B.C.E., but scholars debate the timing.
– Whatever happened, the center of Aegean civilization passed to the
Greeks.
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
The Minoans, 2000-1450 B.C.E.
Fresco of Minoan bull-leaper, ca. 17th to 15th
century B.C.E.; statue of Minoan Snake Goddess,
ca, 1600 B.C.E.
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
• Mycenaean Civilization: The First
Greeks, 2000-1100 B.C.E.
– Indo-European Greek-speaking people invaded the Greek
peninsula sometime after 2000 B.C.E.
– Excavation of shaft-graves have uncovered crowns and
masks in the Indo-European style.
– Middle Eastern writer referred to these people as the “warmad Greeks” during this period.
– Imitated Minoan art and writing system, creating their own
that we call “Linear B.”
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
• Mycenaean Civilization: The First
Greeks, 2000-1100 B.C.E.
Gold Mycenaean Death
Mask
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Extent of Mycenaean Culture
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
Mycenaean Civilization: The First Greeks,
2000-1100 B.C.E.
– Arose to commercial dominance in the Mediterranean after the fall of the Minoans, ca.
1450 B.C.E.
– Built large palaces that had considerable fortifications—unlike those of the Minoans—
suggested constant warfare
– Mycenaean pottery found across the Mediterranean, as had Minoan.
– Mycenaeans definitely were involved in raids and movements of people around 1200
B.C.E. that disrupted trade and brought on the Iron Age in Mesopotamian cultures.
– According to Greek legend, the Mycenaean invasion of Troy took place around 1250
B.C.E., creating the basis for Homer’s epic poem, The Illiad, which details the heroics of
the Trojan War.
– Greek legend attributes the ten-year absence of Mycenaean warriors during the war to
the fall of Mycenaean civilization.
– More likely caused by drought, famine, and invaders from the north known as Doric
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Greeks
The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
From “Dark Ages” to Colonies
• The “Dark Ages,” the period from 1100 to 750 B.C.E., is called such
because of a lack of written record (scholars have translated Mycenaean
“Linear B,” unlike Minoan “Linear A”).
• Around 800 B.C.E., the blind poet Homer supposedly recorded some of the
oral traditions that had passed down through the Dark Ages.
• Renewed trade in olive oil, wine, and other goods seemed to help bring an
end to the Greek isolation of the Dark Ages.
• Greeks colonize places around the Mediterranean rim to escape famine and
political turmoil on the Greek peninsula, and later may have done so to
escape overcrowding.
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The Greek Colonies in About 500 B.C.E.
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The Rise and Fall of
Ancient Heroes
From “Dark Ages” to Colonies
• Values of the “Heroic Society”—one that values individual honor,
reputation, and prowess—from Mycenaean culture were preserved through
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
• Arête – the highest value in Homeric literature, meaning manliness,
courage, and excellence. Competitive contests were the best proving
ground for this trait, with it be warfare or athletic events. The Greeks
thought this competitive quality separated them from the barbaroi.
• Kouros and Kore: Male and female sculpted figures that increasingly
became realistic and glorified individual human perfection.
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Emerging from the Dark:
Heroic Beliefs and Values
Kouros and Kore
figures, both ca. 530
B.C.E.
How do these compare
to similar Egyptian
figures?
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Emerging from the Dark:
Heroic Beliefs and Values
The Family of the Gods
– Greek historian Herodotus (482 – 425 B.C.E.) claims that poets Homer
(ca. 800 B.C.E.) and Hesiod (ca. 750 B.C.E.) had enormous influence
on the future development of Greek religion.
– Hesiod’s Works and Days describes daily life emerging from the Greek
Dark Ages; his Theogony provides stories of the origins of the Greek
gods, as well as mankind.
– Primary Gods: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, and Demeter, who lived
on Mount Olympus and behaved as poorly as regular humans: they
were jealous, committed adultery, stole, and deceived.
– Religious rituals were not somber affairs, but had the air of celebration.
– Religious institutions did not become the center of Greek society, as
they had in Sumer, Egypt, etc.
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Emerging from the Dark:
Heroic Beliefs and Values
The Family of the Gods
– Oracles were the religious class in ancient Greece, with the Delphic oracle of
Apollo being foremost; they went into trances possibly brought upon by ethane
gas that would allow visions that often had very ambiguous interpretations.
– King Croesus of Lydia asked the Delphic oracle around 546 B.C.E. about
Persian King Cyrus, and was told that a might empire would fall if he went to
war with the Persians, not realizing the oracle had meant his own.
– Later Greeks added Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility, to the list of
Homer’s Olympians, acknowledging the role of irrationality in human life.
– Hubris: While their gods had human qualities, Greeks warned humans of being
so arrogant as to think themselves god-like. Those who acted with this
quality—called hubris—were setting themselves up for a big downfall, a theme
that emerges frequently in Greek drama.
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Emerging from the Dark:
Heroic Beliefs and Values
Studying the Material World
– Love of rational search for wisdom: philosophy
– Greek faith in human reason to figure out the natural world
– Thales (ca. 624 – 548 B.C.E.): Studied Mesopotamian and
Egyptian astronomy and predicted and eclipse; he though
everything was fundamentally derived from water.
– Democritus (ca. 460 – 370 B.C.E.): Came up with the idea
of infinite universe composed of tiny particles he called
atoms; he was seen as wrong until early twentieth-century
physicists proved him at least generally correct.
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Emerging from the Dark:
Heroic Beliefs and Values
Studying the Material World
– Pythagoras (ca. 582 – 507 B.C.E.): Developed the Pythagorean
Theorem, demonstrating the relationship of angle widths within a
triangle; also was the first to propose that the earth and other heavenly
bodies were spherical and rotated on their axes.
– Practical Applications: Sixth-century engineer Eupalinus constructed a
3,000-foot tunnel through a mountain using geometric insights.
– Fears of “Impiety”: 432 B.C.E. Athenian law made it illegal to study
the material world at the expense of denying the gods; the law was
precipitated by philosopher Anaxagoras’s idea that the sun was a whitehot stone rather than a god.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
– Post Dark Ages: An emerging urban middle class of
merchants and artisans has no loyalties to aristocratic
landowners.
– Hoplite Armies: Intense trade makes metal weapons,
armor, and shields more affordable and in reach of
citizen-soldiers. City dwellers are no longer reliant on
aristocratic warriors for protection. They fight in
phalanx formations, with long spears jutting out from
tightly packed shields.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
The Invention of Politics
– Tyrants: Between 650 and 550 B.C.E., many civil wars break out
as lower classes overthrow the aristocrats. New rulers called
tyrants emerged who ruled by force rather than hereditary or
constitutional right.
– Middle classes who controlled trade and fought as hoplites began
to take charge of politics in city-states (poleis).
– Poleis frequently had a fortified high ground called an acropolis
and a market/gathering place called an agora.
– City-states simultaneously began to develop varying
representational styles of government, from an early form of
democracy in Athens to an oligarchy (“rule of the few”) in
Corinth.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
The Heart of the Polis
– Economy: Oliver Harvesting, Craftsmanship, and Trade
– Gymnasium: Physical prowess need to be cultivated as well
as intellectual – the hoplite or “citizen-soldier”
– Women’s Role: Upper-class women were expected to stay
indoors; public life was for men alone (Spartan women
were an exception)
– Greek society depended heavily on slave labor; slaves’
situation ranged from skilled work in which they could
retain some of their pay to harsh labor in mines
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Fears and Attachments in Greek Emotional Life
– Bisexual Relations: Extreme separation of men and women
created some anxiety in gender relations and made
bisexuality common; Greeks often thought male-male love
could be the purest form of love
– Sappho of Lesbos: Sixth-century B.C.E. female poet from
the isle of Lesbos who wrote about her passion for women;
the word lesbian derives from her.
– Courtesans: Prostitutes were accepted and even registered
and taxed by many Greek city-states; they drank and
mingled with powerful men while “respectable” women
stayed home.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Athens: City of Democracy
– Oligarchy: By 700 B.C.E., Athenian aristocrats had developed a form of
government that put the day-to-day businesses in the hands of a administrators
called archons who were elected by an assembly of all male citizens called the
Ecclesia. The archons were overseen by a council of senior and powerful men
called the Areopagus, which eventually numbered 300, and wielded real power.
– Solon’s Economic Reforms: Around 600 B.C.E., Athenian society was
becoming weakened by food shortages and economic woes. An Athenian
aristocrat, Solon, was elected sole archon in 594. He instituted a wide array of
economic reforms: he canceled or limited debts, stopped exportation of
agricultural goods, and standardized weights and measures.
– Solon’s Political Reforms: Paved the way for men gaining wealth through trade
to access political power. He did not challenge the old aristocratic families, but
opened up ways for the newly wealthy to be elected to the highest offices. He
created a people’s court to check abuses by the archons. He weakened the
power of the Areopagus by creating a rival Council of the 400.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Athens: City of Democracy
– Tyranny: Solon’s reforms were ultimately unsuccessful since each group started asking
for more privileges, creating civil strife. Athens turned to tyranny—rule by force—to
deal with this chaos, bringing Peisistratus to power in 560 B.C.E. He ruled until 527
B.C.E. and was Athens last tyrant.
– Cleisthenes: The nobleman Cleisthenes who stood for popular interests proposed a
Constitution in 508 B.C.E. which refined Solon’s reforms and brought an unprecedented
level of direct democracy to the city. He redistricted the city so that the old alliances
based on clan and geography could no longer control city offices. He made Solon’s
Council of 400 to become the Council of 500, so that every clan affiliation could have
equal representation (50 per lot).
– Assessing Democracy: Athens was not a perfect democracy. Who was excluded from the
political system? Women, slaves, and foreigners called metics who lived and worked
within Athens and accounted for one-third of the city’s free population. The Council set
the agenda for the Ecclesia to vote on; the later was composed of all free male citizens
over thirty.
– Ostracism: Yearly mechanism by which someone perceived as a threat to Athenian
democracy could be banished for ten years if 6,000 people voted to do so. The names 26
were written on clay pottery shards.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Sparta: Model Military State
– Helots: Rather than negotiating and trading with surrounding peoples,
Sparta conquered and enslaved them, calling them helots.
– Strict Control through Might: Since the Spartans were outnumbered by
the helots, they maintained control by imposing strict military rule.
– Oligarchy: Authority was kept in the hands of the elders; Spartans had
no use for Athenian democracy
– Training of Boys: Sickly infants were left to die on the mountainside.
Seven-year-olds taken away from families to train until they were 20
and lived in the barracks eating plain food until they were 30.
– Spartan Women: Since men led an isolated soldierly existence, women
conducted the affairs of the household and had unusual independence.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Olympic Games
– First pan-Hellenic Games held in honor in 776 B.C.E.
– Greeks had different city-states, but they shared culture and religion:
called themselves collectively Hellenes.
– Started as a footrace, but events expanded to boxing, wrestling, chariot
racing, and a pentathlon: long-jump, javelin, discus, wrestling, and a
200-meter sprint.
– Spectators flocked to the games, which also included a celebration in
honor of Zeus and performance of dramas.
– The Games were a safe way for the city-states to compete.
– Women were not allowed to compete, but occasionally they held their
own games in honor of Hera, wife of Zeus.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Persian Wars (490 – 479 B.C.E.)
– In 499 B.C.E., a Greek city-state colony in Asia Minor, Miletus, rebelled
against the Persians, and Athens sent 20 ships in its defense: not enough to save
the city, but enough to anger the Persians.
– In 490 B.C.E., Persian King Darius sailed with a fleet across the Aegean and
landed near Athens to punish it for helping Miletus.
– Athenian soldiers met the Persians on the Plain of Marathon and were vastly
outnumbered. However, Athenian general Militiades managed to outflank the
Persians and made a running advance, which surprised the Persians. Texts
claim that 6,400 Persians died compared to 192 Athenians.
– The fast runner Philippides ran 150 miles in two days to request the help of the
Spartans. Legend has it that he ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to deliver
the news of victory and then died; this is probably just a myth.
– The small polis winning a victory over a huge empire gave Athens enormous
prestige in Greece.
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Life in the Greek Poleis
Persian Wars (490 – 479 B.C.E.)
– Ten years after Marathon, Darius’s successor, Xerxes, plotted a full-scale invasion of the Greek
mainland, building a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont and brining 180,000 soldiers to
Greece. His men built a canal in northern Greece so that his troops could be supplied;
archaeological proof of the canal’s existence was recently uncovered.
– Several city-states in the north surrendered to the massive invading army.
– Athenians built up their fleet in attempt to control the Aegean and disrupt Persian supply routes,
and also secured the help of Sparta and its allies.
– Thermopylae: The Greeks forced the huge Persian forces to go through a narrow pass and
seemed to be winning until a Greek traitor led the Persians around the defended pass so that
they could attack the Greeks from behind. The Spartans stayed behind and fought to the death,
totally outnumbered.
– Athenians fled their polis in their ships, and were able to trap the Persian fleet in the narrow
Athenian harbor as the latter sacked and burned the city and attacked the ground forces as well.
– A year later, the Spartans led a coalition that destroyed the last remnants of the Persian Army.
– The historian Herodotus later wrote a 600-page detailed history of the conflict that in many
ways was the first modern work of history. His main theme was Greeks versus the
“barbarians”—the superiority of the Greeks was proven by their capacity to defeat a much
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larger force.
The Persian Wars, 490-479 B.C.E.
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Greece Enters Its Classical Age
• Athens Builds an Empire, 477-431 B.C.E.
– Delian League: In 477 B.C.E., many maritime poleis decide to create a
defensive maritime league to protect trade. Each member contributed
money to maintain a great fleet that patrolled the area around the sacred
island of Delos, the supposed birthplace of Apollo.
– Athens gradually asserts a dominant role in the League, essentially
turning it into an empire with other members regarded as tribute or
vassals to Athens. In 454, Athens moved the fleet’s treasury from Delos
to Athens, which was very offensive to most Greeks.
– Pericles (495-429 B.C.E.) was in many ways the architect of the
Athenian golden age, was elected as strategoi in 443 B.C.E.
– Pericles’ Democracy: Took measures to ensure that even poor citizens
could participate in democratic institutions.
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Greece Enters Its Classical Age
Artistic
Athens
A modern rendering
of the Parthenon,
built 448-432 B.C.E.
after the raid on the
Delian treasury.
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Greece Enters
Its Classical Age
Greek Architecture
– Temples constructed on the post
and lintel form.
– By 600 B.C.E., Greeks had two
different architectural “orders” for
designs of columns: Doric (the
oldest and simplest); the Ionic from
the eastern Mediterranean. Later
came the Corinthian, the most
elaborate that used an acanthus leaf
design (it was not used on the
Acropolis).
– Sculptures and reliefs on temples
featured idealized people, not real
human beings.
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Greece Enters its Classical Age
Greek Theater: Exploring Complex Moral Problems
– Plays staged simply in outdoor theaters, with men playing both
men and woman, and everyone wearing a simple mask.
– Athenian playwright Aeschylus (ca. 525 – 456 B.C.E.) had
fought at the Battle of Marathon, and his earliest play, The
Persians, did not celebrate victory, but studied the Persian loss
and warned against Athenians becoming hubristic.
– Sophocles (ca. 496 – 406 B.C.E.) wrote a cycle called The
Theban Plays around the figure of Oedipus, who moves from
pride in being king of Thebes to humility and shame when he
comes to realize he had killed his father and is sleeping with his
mother. The play warned its viewers not to fall into
complacency.
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Destruction, Disillusion, and a
Search for Meaning
The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.E.
– Long destructive war between Athens and Sparta triggered by Sparta’s response to
Athens’s aggressive behavior and its control of the Aegean Sea.
– Sparta forms the Peloponnesian League to challenge the power of the Athenian
Empire.
– Athenians’ fortified access to the sea made it impossible for the Spartans to starve
them out in a siege. Sparta had a land-based strategy, while Athens preferred to
attack from the sea. Sparta did burn crops, and plague struck Athens in 430-429
B.C.E., during which time Pericles died.
– Athenian morals declined during the war. The Athenians forced the islanders of
Melos, who wanted to remain neutral, to become allies. Those on Melos refused, so
Athenians slaughtered the men and enslaved the women and children.
– Athens overextended its fleet when intervening in Sicily, and Persians helped the
Peloponnesian League to strengthen its fleet, eventually leading to Athenian defeat
in 404 B.C.E.
– Historian Thucydides (460 – 400 B.C.E.) wrote an unusually unbiased account. 39
The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.E.
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Destruction, Disillusion, and a
Search for Meaning
Philosophical Musings: Athens Contemplates Defeat
– Sophists: At the time of the Peloponnesian War (431-404
B.C.E.), this group of philosophers called for moral relativism,
arguing that “man is the measure of all things,” and thus the
individual needs to act on his or her own desires.
– Socrates (ca. 470 – 399 B.C.E.): Argued against the moral
relativism of the Sophists, using questioning to explore the
nature of “right action.” In the disillusioned time after the war,
Athenian authorities had little tolerance for those who focused
on human inadequacies and moral flaws, so they brought
Socrates up on charges of impiety and corrupting the young
(partly because the traitor Alcibiades had been his student) and
sentenced him to death.
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Destruction, Disillusion, and a
Search for Meaning
Philosophical Musings: Athens Contemplates Defeat
– Plato (427 – 347 B.C.E.): This student of Socrates wrote many dialogues that
preserved his mentor’s ideas and put them alongside his own. He believed that
truth and justice only existed in the ideal world, and that people lived in the
imperfect realm of the senses, only a shadow of true reality. He founded the
Academy to teach young men about the ideal forms that existed outside of the
human world and could only be accessed through philosophical training. He
became disillusioned with the democracy that killed his teacher, and his The
Republic, proposed an ideal state run by “philosopher-kings.”
– Aristotle (384 B.CE. – 322 B.C.E.): He studied at Plato’s Academy but came to
disagree with his teacher’s ideas about “ideal forms,” arguing that ideas cannot
exist outside of their physical manifestations. Knowledge thus can only be
acquired by studying the physical world. He divided up the pursuit of
knowledge into several categories, many of which are still with us today, with
the main ones being ethics, natural history, and metaphysics. He saw any type
of government—monarchy, republic, or aristocracy—as potentially becoming
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corrupt. A small polis with a strong middle-class would prevent extremes.
Destruction, Disillusion, and a
Search for Meaning
Tragedy and Comedy: Innovations in Greek Theater
– Euripides (485 – 406 B.C.E.): His plays grappled with
human anguish during he Peloponnesian War. The Trojan
Women dealt with the grief of captured women, and was an
implicit critique of the Athenian enslavement of the women
of Melos.
– Aristophanes (455 – 385 B.C.E.): Hi comedies used
ridiculous costumes and crude humor to create biting social
and political satire. In 411 B.C.E., he wrote Lysistrata, in
which women go on a sex strike until their men stop
fighting in the war.
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Destruction, Disillusion, and a
Search for Meaning
Hippocrates and Medicine
Hippocrates (ca. 460 – 377 B.C.E.) was a key
figure in developing the western tradition of
medicine, replacing superstition in favor of
careful scientific observation and rejecting the
idea that bad spirits caused human ailments.
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Destruction, Disillusion, and a
Search for Meaning
The Aftermath of War, 404-338 B.C.E.
– Athens agrees to break down its defensive walls, keep a fleet of only
twelve ships in its terms of surrender, and allow a Spartan garrison
within the city.
– Sparta proved a poor diplomatic manager of the alliance against
Athens, particularly when it gave over the Greek states in Asia Minor
to the Persians.
– Greek city-states continued to fight amongst each other—like Corinth
and Thebes—hastening the decline of the poleis.
– In 404 B.C.E., Sparta imposed a brutal thirty-man oligarchy over
Athens, which tried to stamp out the democratic forms.
– Increasing use of Greek mercenaries weakened loyalties to the citystate.
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