1. Chapter Four
Greece

2. Aegean Civilization Minoan Culture -- Crete (2) Mycenaean Greece
-- Mycenae: home of King
Agmemnon

4. Basic Greek Timeline ~ 2500 BCE 338 BCE Minoans (lived on Crete)
Mycenaeans (mainland)
Dorians – invaders (dark age)
Ionians – “the Greeks”
(brought back Mycenaean
elements)
338 BCE

5. Minoan Civilization 2000-1400 B.C.E. King Minos’s “sea empire”
The palace at Knossos

6. 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 man-eating 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.

7. Illustration of the Palace of Knossos

8. Palace at Knossos

9. The Queen's megaron, Palace of Minos, Knossos, c. 1600-1400 B. C. E
The Queen's megaron, Palace of Minos, Knossos, c B.C.E. Vanni/Art Resource, NY.

10. View of the "throne room," palace of Minos, Knossos, Crete, with a heavily restored fresco depicted griffins. Vanni/Art Resource, NY.

12. Minoan Fresco : bull leaping

13. Boxing Children, from Akrotiri, Thera, c. 1650-1500 B. C. E
Boxing Children, from Akrotiri, Thera, c B.C.E. Fresco, 9' x 3' 1" high. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY.

14. Crocus Gatherer, from Thera, pre-1500 B.C.E. Fresco, appox. 35" x 32". National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Archaeological Society at Athens.

15. Blue Bird. Fresco from Knossos. Late Minoan IA, 1550 BC.

16. Octopus Vase, from Palaikastro, Crete, c. 1500 B. C. E. 11" high
Octopus Vase, from Palaikastro, Crete, c B.C.E. 11" high. Archaeological Museum, Herakleion, Crete. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

17. “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).”

18. “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.’ ”

19. The Mycenaeans 1600-1200 B.C.E. Time of Homer’s epics
Home of Agamemnon
(conqueror of Troy)

20. "Goddess," from the citadel of Mycenae, c. 1200 B. C. E. Fresco
"Goddess," from the citadel of Mycenae, c B.C.E. Fresco. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

21. The so-called Orpheus fresco from the Throne Room
The so-called Orpheus fresco from the Throne Room. Palace of Nestor at Pylos, BC.

22. The Mask of Agamemnon

23. Rhyton in the shape of a lion's head, from Mycenae, c. 1550 B. C. E
Rhyton in the shape of a lion's head, from Mycenae, c B.C.E. Gold, height 8". National Museum, Athens. Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY.

24. Lion Gate, BC

25. A fortified citadel

26. Ancient Greece

27. The Heroic (Homeric) Age Archaic Greece
( B.C.E.)
Archaic Greece
( B.C.E.)
BC Oligarchical
BC Tyrants
Athenian Democracy
( B.C.E.)

28. The Heroic Age
(ca BCE)

29. 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.

30. Archaic Greece
(ca BCE)

31. Rise of the Polis
750 BCE
Each polis (city-state) was organized around a political and social urban center.

32. Colonization Expansion of the Greek world Magna Graecia
Hellenism (Hellenes = Greeks)
Panhellenism (all + Greeks)
Oracle of Delphi
Games at Olympia (776 B.C.E.)

34. 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 ( BCE)– Athens rises to the forefront of Greek culture because of victory over Xerxes (Persia)

37. The Golden Age
(ca BCE)

38. Athens
Acropolis

39. 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.

40. 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

41. 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.

42. Parthenon

43. Agora

44. 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

46. 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.
BCE—27 years
Sparta defeated Athens.

48. Aftermath 30 tyrants in Athens
War brought demoralization and a questioning of former certainties
Shows the limitation of the polis system?

49. The Hellenic Age
(800 BCE BCE)
The Hellenistic Age
(323 BCE - 30 BCE)
The Greco-Roman Age
(30 BCE CE)

50. Greek Drama

52. 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.

53. Masters Tragedy: Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) Sophocles (496-406 BCE)
Euripides ( BCE)
Comedy: Aristophanes
(ca BCE)

54. Format
2-3 actors (male) wearing masks, with a chorus of members changing commentary on the action.

55. 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.

56. From M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
Key Terms
From M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms

57. 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.”

58. Catharsis Purgation, or purification
Many tragic representations of suffering and defeat leave an audience feeling not depressed, but relieved, or even exalted.

59. 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.

60. Hamartia Literally, “error of judgment,” or tragic flaw.
One common form of harmatia in Greek tragedies was hubris, that “pride” or overweening self-confidence which leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law.

61. Elements of Plot
Anagnorisis: discovery of facts previously unknown to the hero
Peripeteia: a reversal of fortune from happiness to disaster
Catastrophe

62. Philosophy

63. The Greek philosophers made the speculative leap from myth to logos, from supernatural to natural explanations of the unknown. (94)

64. The Pre-socratics

66. 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”

67. Cosmologists Moving from myth to reason
Materialists or matter philosophers
Thales ( BCE): Water
Anaximander ( BCE) and Anaximenes ( BCE): the Boundless 混沌 (氣?)

68. Cosmologists Pythagoras (580-507 BCE)
Lived in Magna Graecia in southern Italy
Believed that the essence of things was not matter but number.

69. 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

70. 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

71. 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

72. Protagoras (485-410 BCE) James Harmon Hoose Library of Philosophy, USC

73. Consequences
The Sophists’ doctrines encouraged disobedience to law, neglect of civic duty, and selfish individualism.

74. Socrates
( 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.”

75. 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.

76. Socrates Questioning received truth—examine everything
The dialectical method: a dialogue

78. Plato vs. Aristotle

79. Plato
ca BCE
School: the Academy (in Athens)

80. The School of Athens, by Raphael

84. Plato:Theory of Ideas A two-level reality Ideas // sense experience
mind // body
eternal forms // copies, shadows
intangible // tangible

85. 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.

86. Plato: the Just State Book: The Republic An elitist state
Rule by the wisest: Philosopher-kings

87. Plato and the Poets
Plato would ban poets from his republic. Why?

88. 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

92. Aristotle
B.C.E.
Universal Ideas could not be determined without examination of particular things.

93. Aristotle
Through human experience with things themselves, the essence (Form, or universals) of these things can be discovered through reason.

94. Aristotle: Ethics
Happiness comes from exercising reason in practical affairs.
Virtue → “Nothing in excess”→pursuing the golden mean between two extremes

95. 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”

96. Aristotle Limitations: 1. Barbarians = slaves
2. Women were excluded from the polis.
3. Aims to maintain the existing social hierarchy.

97. The End