Download Greece and Iran 1000 B.C.E. – 30 B.C.E.

Greece and Iran
1000 B.C.E. – 30 B.C.E.
I.
Ancient Iran
A. Geography and Resources
1. Iran is bounded by the Zagros Mountains to
the west, the Caucasus Mountains and Caspian
Sea to the northwest and north, the mountains
of Afghanistan and the desert of Baluchistan to
the east and southeast, and the Persian Gulf to
the southwest.
2. The northeast is less protected by natural
boundaries.
Iran
3. Unlike the River valley civilizations of
the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Ganges, and
Yellow Rivers, ancient Iran never had a
dense population due to water issues.
4. The best-watered and most populous
parts lie to the north and west.
5. In the 1st millennium B.C.E.,
underground irrigation allowed them to
open the plains for agriculture.
B. The Rise of the Persian Empire
1. The word “Iranians” has been used by
historians to denote a group of peoples who spoke
a related language and shared similar cultural
values.
2. The first group to achieve a level of political
organization was the Medes.
3. The Medes played a major role in the
destruction of the Assyrian Empire in the late 7th
century B.C.E.
4. The Medes established an empire for
themselves that extended westward across Assyria
into Anatolia and southeast toward the Persian
Gulf, a region occupied by another Iranian people,
the Persians.
5. The Persian rulers at this time were called
Achaemenids and they cemented their relationship
with the Median court through marriage.
6. Cyrus, son of a Persian chieftain, married a
Median princess and soon overthrew the Median
monarch around 550 B.C.E.
Median Empire
7. The male head of the household in ancient
Persia had nearly absolute power over family
members.
8. Society was divided in three social classes:
Warriors, Priests, and Peasants.
9. Over the course of two decades (550 B.C.E.
to 530 B.C.E., Cyrus redrew the map of western
Asia.
10. Cyrus defeated all of Anatolia, including
the Greek city-states of the western coast as well
as the Neo-Babylonian dynasty of Mesopotamia.
Persian Empire under Cyrus
11. Cyrus was eventually killed in battle in 530
B.C.E. and was succeeded by this son Cambyses.
12. Cambyses set his sights on Egypt and was
able to defeat them in a series of bloody battles.
13. The Greeks depicted Cambyses as a cruel
and impious madman but Egyptian sources write
of him favorably as someone who respected native
traditions.
14. Cambyses died in 522 B.C.E. and a
new monarch by the name of Darius I
seized the throne.
15. Darius extended Persian control as
far east as the Indus valley and west into
Europe.
16. Darius promoted maritime routes
exploring the Indus Delta and completing a
canal from the Red Sea to the Nile.
C. Imperial Organization and Ideology
1. Darius’ empire was the largest ever
seen by the world. It stretched from
eastern Europe to Pakistan and from
southern Russia to Sudan.
2. It is sometimes referred that Darius
was the 2nd founder of the Persian Empire,
after Cyrus.
3. Darius divided his empire into twenty
provinces, each one under the supervision
of a Persian satrap, or governor.
4. The satraps were likely to be related
or connected by marriage to the royal
family.
5. The further from the empire the
satrap was located the more autonomy it
possessed.
6. The most important duty of the satrap was
to collect tribute and send it to the king.
7. Darius prescribed how much precious metal
was to be contributed to him and the satrap was
responsible for making that happen.
8. The administrative capital of Persia was
Susa in southwestern Iran.
9. Sometimes it took a whole year for foreign
diplomats to make the journey there and back.
Daric
10. Darius built a huge fortress-city at
Persepolis which became the ceremonial
capital of Persia.
11. The ancient Persian religion was
called Zoroastrianism.
12. Zoroastrianism was a monotheistic
religion that preached about the dualistic
nature of the universe.
13. Zoroaster, the founder of the
religion, revealed that the world had been
created by Ahuramazda, “the wise lord”, and
it was threatened by Angra Mainya, “the
hostile spirit”, backed by a host of demons.
14. This struggle plays out for 12,000
years and ends when good finally triumphs
over evil.
The Rise of the Greeks
A. Geography and Resources
1. Greek civilization arose in the lands
bordering the Aegean Sea: the Greek mainland,
the islands of the Aegean, and the western
coast of Anatolia.
2. The Greek interior has no navigable rivers
with which to ease travel or the transport of
goods.
3. Without large rivers, Greek farmers on the
mainland depended entirely on rainfall.
II.
Ancient Greek Cities
4. A look at Greece reveals a deeply
pitted coastline with many natural harbors.
5. The environment and other
circumstances drew the Greeks to the Sea.
6. They obtained timber from the
northern Aegean, gold and iron from
Anatolia, copper from Cyprus, tin from the
western Mediterranean, and grain from the
Black Sea, Egypt, and Sicily.
B. The Emergence of the Polis
1. After the collapse of the Mycenaean
civilization, Greece fell into a “Dark Age” due to
depopulation, poverty, and backwardness.
2. This isolation ended when Phoenician
sailors arrived around 800 B.C.E.
3. Scholars generally refer to this time as the
beginning of the “Archaic” period of Greek history.
4. The most important contribution that came
from the Phoenicians was a writing system.
5. The Phoenicians used a set of twenty-two
symbols to represent sounds of consonants
allowing the reader to infer the sounds of the
vowels. So the Greeks used left over symbols,
from which there was no Greek sound, and made
them into vowels, thus producing the first true
alphabet.
6. An alphabet opens the door for more
widespread literacy.
Early Greek Writing
7. Archaic Greece consisted of hundreds of
independent political entities that were located on
plains separated by mountain barriers.
8. The Greek polis, or city-state, consisted of
an urban center and the rural territory that it
controlled.
9. A hilltop acropolis, top of the city, offered
a place of sanctuary in case of emergency.
10. An agora, gathering place, was an open
area where citizens gathered.
11. By the early 7th century B.C.E. the Greeks
had adopted a new type of warfare raged by
hoplites, heavily armored infantrymen.
12. The principle of this warfare was fight in a
tight and rigid formation.
13. The Greek used certain terms to
distinguish themselves from other peoples.
14. The term Hellenes was used for
themselves, while the term barbaroi was used for
those who were non-Greek.
15. In the mid-7th and 6th centuries an individual called
a tyrant – a person who seized control in violation of
normal traditions – gained control.
16. Eventually, tyrants of this age were part of the
evolutionary pattern that led toward the formation of the
1st democracy – the exercise of power by all free, adult
males.
17. Greek religion encompassed a wide range of cults
and beliefs. It was polytheistic encompassing both male
and female deities.
18. Their gods were portrayed as anthropomorphic –
humanlike in appearance with humanlike emotions.
The Twelve Olympians
C. New Intellectual Currents
1. One distinctive feature of the Archaic period
was a growing emphasis on the individual.
2. This new pattern led to the concept of
humanism – a valuing of the uniqueness, talents,
and rights of the individual.
3. A group known as pre-Socratic thinkers,
philosophers before Socrates, began to question
the kinds of gods that Homer had popularized.
4. They sought rational explanations for the
origin and nature of the world.
5. Another intellectual movement also
developed in Ionia in the 6th century B.C.E., they
were called logographers, writers of prose
accounts.
6. Historia, “investigation/research”, was the
name they gave to the method they used to
collect, sort, and select information.
7. A man by the name of Herodotus sought
out the question “why” which is why we consider
him today to be the father of history.
D. Athens and Sparta
1. The two most preeminent Greek city-states
of the late Archaic and Classical periods were
Athens and Sparta.
2. Unlike most of the Greek city-states, the
Spartans chose a military path of exploitation to
solve its population problems.
3. They crossed the western mountainous
frontier and defeated a group called the
Messenians, who descended to the state of helot,
the most abused and exploited population on the
Greek mainland.
4. In order to prevent a helot uprising,
Spartan citizens spent their lives in military
training.
5. At age seven, boys were taken from
their families and put into barracks.
6. By practicing an extreme life of
military preparedness, they declined to
participate in the economic, political, and
cultural renaissance of the rest of Greece.
7. Athens followed a different path due
to its unusually large population and
suitable land within the region of Attica.
8. In 594 B.C.E., Solon was appointed
lawgiver and given extraordinary powers.
9. He divided the Athenian community
into four classes so as to avert a civil war.
10. By doing this, he broke the power
of the aristocracy.
11. In the 460s and 450s B.C.E., a man
by the name of Pericles took the last steps
in the evolution of Athenian democracy.
The Struggle of Persia and Greece
A. Early Encounters
1. Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia in 546 B.C.E. led
to the subjugation of the Greek cities on the
Anatolian seacoast.
2. Then in 499 B.C.E. a Greek revolt took
place called the Ionian Revolt.
3. It took the Persians five years and a
massive infusion of troops and resources to
stamp out the insurrection.
III.
Ionian Revolt
3. Because of the support the
Athenians gave in the Ionic Revolts, Darius
attacked Greece twice in 490 B.C.E.
4. Ultimately, Athenian hoplites
defeated Persia at the battle of marathon 26
miles from Athens.
5. Darius’ son Xerxes succeeded his
father in 486 B.C.E. and turned his attention
back on the Greeks.
6. A large land based army and an impressive
navy crossed the Hellespont for an invasion of
Greece.
7. In southern Greece, an alliance of states
bent on resistance was formed under the
leadership of the Spartans.
8. The Hellenic League stalled the Persians at
Thermopylae but the Persians eventually sacked
the city of Athens.
9. The following Spring, the Persian army was
routed at Plataea and the Persian threat receded.
Hellespont
10. In 477 B.C.E., the Delian League
was formed.
11. In less than 20 years, League forces
led by Athenian generals swept the Persians
from the waters of the eastern
Mediterranean freeing all the Greek
communities.
B. The Height of Athenian Power
1. The “Classical” period of Greek
history spans from 480-323 B.C.E. and
begins with successful defense of the Greek
homeland.
2. Athens mastery of naval technology
transformed Greek warfare and politics and
brought power and wealth to Athens itself.
3. With its new naval power in the ready,
Athens did not hesitate to use political power to
promote its commercial interests.
4. Its new commercial profits brought Athens
cultural achievement as well.
5. Traveling teachers called Sophists, or “wise
men”, provided instruction in logic and public
speaking. This discipline was called rhetoric.
6. The most noted intellectual of the day was
a man called Socrates.
7. Socrates was a sculptor by trade who spent most of
his time in the company of young men.
8. Socrates was often found deflating the pretension of
these so called “wise men”.
9. Socrates once said that he only knew one more
thing than everybody else: that he knew nothing.
10. Socrates was eventually tried for corrupting Athens
youth and sentence to die. His disciple Plato left Athens to
start a school called the Academy.
11. Plato wrote later about him suggesting that his
“Socratic Method” of question and answer was important
to reach a deeper understanding of the meaning of values
such as justice, excellence, and wisdom.
The Death of Socrates
C. Failure of the City-States and Triumph of the
Macedonians
1. In the year 432 B.C.E. the Peloponnesian
War broke out between Athens and Sparta.
2. Athens strategy was to not engage Sparta
in a land war since they knew that the hoplites
had to return home to their farms eventually.
3. Because of the back and forth nature of the
war, it dragged on for 3 decades until Athens
eventually fell to the Spartans in 404 B.C.E.
4. The victorious Spartans took over
Athens’s overseas empire until other Greek
city-states became suspicious of them.
5. This skirmishing of Greek city-states
lasted most of the 4th century B.C.E. further
weakening Greek domination.
6. Slowly but surely, the Persians
started to recoup their old losses in the
western Anatolian coast.
7. However, in the northern Greek
states, a new power would emerge.
8. Philip II of Macedonia defeats a
coalition of southern states and establishes
the Confederacy of Corinth with him as its
military commander.
9. Philip had skillfully reengineered the
hoplite formations with larger spears and
new implementations of cavalry use.
Macedonian Phalanx
10. Philip planned on invading Persia
and actually started construction of a
bridgehead at the Hellespont.
11. However, he was assassinated in
336 B.C.E.
12. His son, Alexander the Great,
succeeded him and soon began the invasion
of Asia and the destruction of the Persians.
13. Alexander defeated the Persians in
three pitched battles at the Granicus River,
Issus, and finally at Gaugamela.
14. Historians call the epoch ushered in
by the conquests of Alexander as the
“Hellenistic Age” (323-30 B.C.E.).
15. This means the spreading of Greek
culture.
Alexander’s Empire