Honors World Studies Mrs. Steinke

 The history of the classical world. Which lasted roughly from 800 B.C. to A.D. 450, centers and the rise and flourishing of the city-state and its eventual defeat and replacement by large scale kingdoms and empires.

 In the early period Greece had the good fortune to be on the fringe of the older, developed kingdoms of the near east from which it learned much.

 Both practical skills of life and the fine arts came from the Near East. Things like the alphabet that was borrowed and adapted from Semitic peoples on Phoenicia (present day Lebanon and Israel).

 In their statues and temples, the Greeks were unmistakably influenced by the Egyptians.

 The Greeks lived in a large number of settlements, physically separate and fiercely independent.

 Each town had its own coinage and calendar. The calendar was shaped by the festivals of the city’s gods—there were no weeks with regular recurring days.

 Greek religion, like that of their neighbors, was polytheistic. There were a number of great gods and goddesses, worshipped in all Greek states.

 All these gods and goddesses were headed by the supreme sky father---Zeus. And there were local divinities too.

 There were heroes, nymphs in the woods and wild country, minor deities invoked at sowing and reaping, or at marriage, or at starting a journey.

 These gods all gave color and shape to life, and all celebrations were holy days (in English still “holidays”).

 They were imagined as human in form and emotions, only bigger and stronger; they had love affairs and favorites and enemies.

 They received sacrifice of the slaughter of animals, whose flesh was then feasted on by the worshippers.

 There was no priestly class. This religion is nobly expressed in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

 The sixth and fifth centuries B.C. were a time of great restlessness both in intellectual and in political affairs. For the first time, eastern empires began to conquer the Greeks.

 Greeks began to reflect: what was it that made them different than non- Greeks? What were the advantages or disadvantages of monarchy, aristocracy, and that new thing that was appearing— democracy?

 Different people obeyed different laws, prayed to different gods; what did that mean for the truth or validity of any of them?

 Could the old tales of the love affairs of the gods really be true? Were there abstract principles to be found behind the variety of the world, quite different from the stories of Zeus and the other gods?

 What did it mean that the bones of sea creatures came to light on the tops of hills; had they once been underwater?

 This ferment of questioning was excited still further by the attempt of the powerful kings of Persia to conquer Greece.

 It was reasonable to expect their enormous army and fleet to crush the Greek cities. But, the great invasion in ended with Athens and Sparta triumphant and the king in flight.

 Exhilarated by their success, the Athenians felt that it was vindication of their democracy—a new thing in the world, much hated and derided by its enemies, at home and abroad.

 Athens showed an astonishing burst of energy, acquired a much resented “empire” over other Greek states, built the Parthenon and other Greek buildings and statues which have since been regarded as masterpieces.

 It also produced the first scientific historian (Thucydides) and the first works in philosophy and oratory.

 And that is where we are going to start this unit of literature…with the philosophers who questioned so well.