GREECEUnit 4

Ancient Greece

Picture on pg. 129

Homer• His works date back

to 700 BCE• He created some of

the earliest Greek writings

• His poems tell of people who lived 500 years before his time

• The stories were past down from generation to generation before Homer recorded them

The Iliad• One of Homer’s great epics, inspired by the Greek

people telling them of great deeds in their history, and by praising historic values – courage,

glory, and valour• Homer writes about the legendary Trojan War in

which, Achilles, one of the Greek heroes, fought a great duel with Hector, the son of the king of Troy• Not only do these poems represent some of the

great literature of the period, but they also give us a fascinating glimpse into ancient Greek

society

Land & Sea• Greece has nearly 3200km of coastline, which meant

for many harbours• Greeks sailed from Island to Island across the Aegean

Sea and around the whole rim of the Mediterranean Sea sharing products and ideas

• Mainland Greece actually had no major rivers, and only a few of the minor rivers flowed all year round• The rugged mainland was marked by mountains,

which acted as a natural partitions for each of the City-States

• Due to all of these mountains the Greek’s could not cultivate even 1/5 of its territory, and prized the

small amount of fertile land highly

Land & Sea• In ancient times cedar, cypress, and pine covered

the mountains of Greece, but the people cut most of the trees down to get timber for shipbuilding

and charcoal for fuel• This deforestation led to erosion, which swept away precious soil, making it even more difficult

to produce enough wheat for a growing population

• Except for iron and silver (Spartan Laconia & Laurium) Greece also had few mineral deposits

• With limited farmland and few natural resources, many Greek city-states relied on foreign trade

Homework

Answer questions 1-3 on page 130

The Minoans• Were the earliest civilization associated with Ancient Greece

• It was located on the Island of Crete

• It was named after a legendary ruler, King

Minos• King Minos dominated

a large part of the Augean Sea with his

powerful Navy

The Minoans• Tales of King Minos and his Navy had been Greek legends for centuries before Greek historian Thucydides

recorded them in 5th century BCE• In 1900, Archaeologist Arthur Evans found actual evidence of this Ancient Kingdom. His discovery of the palace of King Minos at Knossos was one of the most

important archaeological finds of the century• The palace he uncovered was like a huge maze, with

over 800 interconnecting rooms grouped around the large central courtyard

• Rooms seemed to have had various purposes, suggesting that the palace served as a gov’t center,

royal residence, temple, and storehouse

The Minoans• The west side housed the official quarters or state rooms,

including a throne room and large storerooms• The huge jars found in these storerooms, originally for olive

oil, wine, and grain may represent taxes paid by the people to the King

• The east side, which extends beyond a large courtyard, housed the domestic or living quarters

• The palace also had several architectural innovations- Light-wells or shafts to create a brighter more open

atmosphere- They piped water into the palace- Had flush toilets and baths

- Constructed an advanced drainage system (Indoor plumbing did not become common again for 3,600 years)

The Palace Ruins

The Ruins Today

Digital Reconstruction

The Minoans• On the interior walls of the main rooms there were wall

paintings depicting nature and Minoan life• One room had an entire mural of dolphins

• Other paintings show crowds watching lively dances or sports such as bull-leaping

• In some images young men and women are shown grabbing the horns or a charging bull and vaulting over its back

• The bull seems to have been sacred to the Minoans• Other evidence suggests these people worshipped a Mother

goddess of fertility who often appear with snakes• As no battle scenes appear on the walls and few weapons

were found in the excavations, historians believe the Minoans were more peaceful, more preoccupied with nature

and life than with war

The Minoans• Archaeologists also discovered 2 clay tablets at

Knossos with different scripts, they were named Linear A and Linear B

• The script called Linear B was finally decoded in 1952, and probably replaced the earlier script,

Linear A, which remains a mystery• Texts written in Linear B have also been found at

many mainland locations in Greece• Their discovery suggests that Greeks from the

mainland – possibly from the Mycenaean civilization that emerged in 1,600 BCE dominated

Knossos in its final years

The Minoans• Knossos was not only the Minoan center on the Island of

Crete, but it was the most important• Sometime around 1,450 BCE, most of the palace-

centers were destroyed, although historians are not certain why

• One theory (1939) suggested that a massive eruption of a volcano on the island of Thera destroyed the palaces

• This theory also linked the sudden destruction of the Minoan civilization with the legend of the lost continent

of Atlantis• Recently, however, historians have found flaws in this

theory and now believe that invaders from the Greek mainland probably destroyed the palace-centers on the

Island

The Mycenaeans• While the Minoan palace-centres were flourishing on

Crete, people on the Greek mainland were living in small, simple farming communities.

• Waves of invaders from the North hindered their development

• Indo-European peoples penetrated the Greek mainland as early as 2500BCE

• Within 500 years, they had penetrated southern Greece, building fortress settlements on the fertile

plains• Some of the early invaders spoke Achaean, which

became the basis of modern Greek

The Mycenaeans

• The invaders seized Mycenae, the main centre on the Greek mainland at the time

• They built a wealthy and powerful civilization, known as the Mycenaean, that flourished for about 500 years• Mycenaean culture dominated the Mediterranean

between 1600 and 1100 BCE

The Legend of Minotaur

• A favorite legend of the Athenian Greeks told of Theseus and

the Minotaur• The story linked King

Minos of Crete with Theseus, one of the earliest and greatest

kings of Athens

Read story aloud…

• Mycenaean kings ruled over their territories from fortified palaces and gained much of their wealth

from trade and piracy• In the most famous of their expeditions they attacked the city of Troy on the northwest corner

of Asia Minor• Mycenaeans passed down treasured songs and

stories about a great Trojan War and other adventures from generation to generation

• Each Mycenaean city had its own King, but the King of Mycenae itself, Agamemnon, was the

most important

The Mycenaeans

• Around 1876 a German Archaelogist conducted excavations and discovered the following:

• Agamemnon’s royal residence was built around a central hall accessed from a court yard

• There were domestic quarters, workshops, and storage rooms inside the residence

• The interior walls were decorated with frescoes, many of which depicted scenes of war or hunting• There were vertical burial shafts

• The grave shafts looked that they had been used more then once

• Inside the graves he found gold, silver, ivory, and pottery

The Mycenaeans

• There were artifacts found which showed a strong influence of the earlier Minoan civilization

• The Mycenaeans adopted the Minoans art of wall painting, their vase designs, style of dress, and form

of writing• The eventually abandoned the shaft graves, and started to use thalos tombs, which were massive

chambers cut into hillsides with walls constructed of fine stone blocks carefully laid in rows, each row

narrower then the other one below it• Why did they make this change?

The Mycenaeans

• By the beginning of 12th century BCE, many of the Mycenaean fortresses were destroyed and

settlements were abandoned• This may have been due to several factors:- Civil Wars among the Mycenaen cities

- Outside invasion- Drought and Famine

- Disease• All of the Mycenaen centres, except for Athens, fell

• By 1100 BCE all of Mycenae was destroyed

The Mycenaeans

Homework• Pg. 138

• Questions 1-3

• Do question #4 or explain the difference between the drawings found in the Minoan and Mycenae buildings.

The Trojan War• Two epic poems by Homer “Iliad” and “Odyssey” describe

the Trojan War

• Approximately 1194-1184 BCE

• Greeks vs Troy

• The story of the Trojan War and the Greek hero Achilles

• Troy – The movie that was release in 2004 is based around Homer’s writings

• The film has some definite Hollywood exaggeration

The Iliad & Troy• The story of the Trojan War and the Greek hero

Achilles

• Troy – The movie that was release in 2004 is based around Homer’s writings

• The film has some definite Hollywood exaggeration

The Dark Ages• Following the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization,

Greece entered a bleak period that lasted for 300 years• This period has been named by historians the Dark Ages,

because we know so little about these years• It was a time when new raiding parties arrived from the

North, dispersing the Greek-speaking people all around the Aegean Sea

• The achievements of the Mycenaean civilization in construction, art, monument building, and writing were

lost or forgotten• In their trek south, the invaders wiped out farming communities, drastically reducing the food supply, famine

struck, and the Greek population rapidly declined

The Rise of the City-State

• Despite the hardships of the Dark Ages, Greeks gradually developed small, secure, and

independent communities• These communities formed the basis of the Greek

City-State or Polis (community of people)• Even at it’s largest, a polis rarely exceeded 20,000 people, and was more like a town then a

city• There were 2 major exceptions, Athens and

Sparta• Athens and its surrounding villages covered about

2,500km, and Sparta eventually controlled 2/5 of the Peloponnese

The Rise of the City-State

• By the middle of the 8th century BCE, the population of the Greek world was growing once again, and putting a strain on the available food

supply• The Greeks needed to find additional land to grow

more food, and needed to do something about the overcrowded streets

• Colonization became essential and various cities launched a search for apoikai or “away homes”

where their goal was to create self-sufficient colonies which would be only bound to the parent

city by trade

The Rise of the City-State

• The first Greek colony was established in about 750 BCE on the Bay of Naples

• During the next century Greek cities appeared on almost every coastal plain in Sicily, Southern Italy, parts of Northern Africa, Spain, and France

• The greatest of the colonies was Syracuse in Sicily, the population of which grew to over 100,000 people by the 5th century

The Rise of the City-State

• Due to the upsurge in trade, metal currency became common use

• A new middle class emerged, made up of the people who made their living through commerce and industry rather then from

the land• The Greeks adopted an alphabet, which would be passed down

to us by way of the Romans• Some city states began to specialize in certain products, for

example Athens produced a great deal of pottery• During this period the 1st Olympics were held and Homer wrote

his great literary works• Growth exploration, trade, the exchange of ideas, the glorification of past heroes and exploits in Homer’s poems all

played a factor in the development of Greek society, and Ancient Greece was on the verge of its greatest period

The Persian Wars

• At the beginning of the 5th century BCE the growing city-states faced a serious threat – Invasion by the

powerful eastern empire of Persia, the largest of all of the near-eastern empires

The Persian Wars• It was ruled by a powerful general, Cyrus the Great and

was a powerful and unified empire• Greece was a small city-state unit weakened by

fighting one-another and ill prepared to defend themselves

• Would they fall easy prey to a powerful and unified empire?

War @ The Plains of Marathon

The Persian Wars• Realizing the Persians would probably return, the

Athenians, under Themistocles, took defensive precautions

• Most importantly they developed a strong navy, with a fleet of 200 ships

• Sparta and Athens decided to share a leadership role• The concern of the Athenians was well founded, as

Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius (former Persian King), was determined to continue the assault

against the Greek mainland• He took an army of 180,000 people and 1,200 ships to

fight Greece

The Persian Wars• The Greeks chose a defense position at Thermopylae, a

narrow pass through which the Persians had to pass• The Greeks had about 7,000 troops, led by Spartan

King Leonidas, who had brought with him 300 of the finest Spartan soldiers

• This is the story that lead to the Hollywood movie “300”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp29zkbSVQk

Homework

• Answer questions #1, 2, & 4 on page 144

Classical Greece• The end of the Persian Wars marked the liberation of the

Ionian city-states and the dawn of the greatest age in ancient Greek history

• The single century between 480-380 BCE saw a phenomenal rush of achievements, many of these

stemmed from Athens• Metal work, glass making, and other crafts were created• It was a time for great thinkers, artists, poets…It was so

impressive that some call this century “the age of the Greek miracle”

• A “league” was formed in 478BCE uniting the city-states of Greece to protect themselves against further attacks

from the Persians

Classical Greece• Members had to contribute money or ships as a defense

fund• Most city-states chose money, and athens used the

money to build ships• According to the rules of the league, a member could not withdraw without consent from all, and when Naxos and Thasos tried to break away, they were crushed by

Athens and forced to pay a heavy tribute• The other great city-state and rival to Athens was Sparta• It developed very differently from Athens, and was a highly militaristic state, unlike democratic Athens Sparta

ruled by a small group of powerful aristocrats

Classical Greece• Sparta had taken no part in the colonization movement

between 800-550BCE, it had remained agricultural, leaving commercial ventures to other states

• It fought battles to acquire more land and eventually dominated most of the Peloponnese

• Tensions between the 2 rivals increased when Athens tried to expand it’s empire in central Greece,

threatening Sparta’s power base• Athens blocked some cities from trading, and these

cities were opposed…They decided to ask Sparta for help in these issues, and hence the outbreak of the

great Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE

The Peloponnesian War

• This war lasted 27 years, and was costly and bitter!• Athens strength was it powerful navy and wealth, while

Sparta on the other hand had a formidable land army of disciplined professional soldiers

• The Athenian leader, Pericles, devised a strategy to defend Athens, as he used his forces to guard the long walls that surrounded the city and that stretched as far

as the port of Piraeus• The strategy had a fatal flaw, too many people lived in

confided quarters, and hygiene deteriorated which lead to a terrible plague and 1/3 of the population including

the general dying…Athens had been dealt a severe blow

The Peloponnesian War

• The war dragged on in a seesaw struggle with victories gained by each side, and in 421 BCE the 2 sided actually agreed to a

short-lived truce• The Athenians attacked and captured the Island of Melos, which

wanted to only stay out of the struggle, and for their trouble had all men of military age put to death, and women and

children sold to slavery• The following year the Athenians set out to attack Syracuse on

the Island of Sicily, this was met with mixed feelings from the Athenians back home, and when they struggled time and again

to penetrate the walls of Syracuse the negativity worsened• Eventually the Athenian fleet was defeated in the Syracuse

harbour, the army was surrounded and forced to surrender…The war lasted another 10 years, but Athens could not recover

The Peloponnesian War

• The Spartans had formed an alliance with the Sicilian’s, and also aligned themselves with the Persians which made them even

stronger on land and sea!• The combined Spartan and Persian fleet defeated the Athenians

at Aegospotami in 405 BCE, and the power of Athens crumbled• The following year the Spartan fleet blockaded Athens, which

prevented essential grains from getting into the city, near starvation brought an end to the fighting

• Sparta’s allies wanted to destroy Athens and sell its citizens to slavery, but Sparta blocked the move

• Instead Athens was forced to surrender its empire and all of its fleet

• The Spartans also tore down the cities long walls, but left Athens intact, and free, partly in recognition of its service to the Greek

states during the Persian Wars

The Peloponnesian War

• After the war, during the 1st half of that century Sparta ruled Greece, then for a time it was Thebes, but the

most serious threat to the city-states was on the Northern frontier in Macedonia

• This is where we find the story of “Alexander The Great”

Homework

• Answer questions #1, 2, & 3 on page 148

Alexander The Great• The Macedonians lived in the North of the Greek

peninsula, and spoke a dialect of Greek• They were mostly farmers and shepherds and had not

achieved the same cultural glory as the Greeks to the South

• However, in 4th century BCE several Kings united and transformed the state into a great military power

• The most brilliant king was Philip 11• The discovery of rich gold deposits had provided wealth Philip needed to assemble one of the greatest

fighting forces the world had ever seen

Alexander The Great• At a battle near Thebes Philip 11 crushed the

independent Greek city-states, and made them part of the Macedonian realm…This was Philip’s first conquest,

and only the beginning of his plan to conquer the entire Persian empire

• Philip military strength came from 1) his use of the phalanx formation as the main unit in his military, and

the strong support of a well trained cavalry• The phalanx formation densely packed lines of foot

soldiers armed with long lances (spears) created a formidable obstacle, even to armed cavalry

Alexander The Great• Philip did not have the opportunity to fulfill his

ambitions of conquering the Persian empire, as in 336 BCE, he was assassinated by a member of his own

bodyguard during his daughter’s wedding celebration• His 20 year old son Alexander was proclaimed King…

• And here we have the story of Alexander The Great

Alexander The Great• After Alexander died in 323 BCE, there was no heir

apparent• For 40 years, his generals fought over the spoils of the

empire• Finally a pattern of large states emerged, each ruled by

a king descended from one of Alexander’s men (The Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt

• On the Greek mainland turmoil once again marked the lives of the citizens

• Peace was not restored until Rome conquered Greece in 27 BCE!

Homework

• Answer questions # 1, 2, & 3 on page 151

Review of Ancient Greek Geography

Regions:Asia MinorMacedonia

PeloponneseCrete

ThraceIonia

Bodies of Water:Aegean SeaIonian SeaBlack Sea

Mediterranean Sea

City-States:MycenaeAthensSpartaMiletusKnossos

TroyByzantium

Points of Interest:The HellespontMt. Olympus