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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