PERICLES AND CLASSICAL GREECE

Week Three

tri = three

tricycle

trio

triangle

mis = bad/wrong/ill

misspell

mistake

re = again/back

recycle

retro

reminder

I. Pericles and the Parthenon

The goddess Athena

West metopes of the Parthenon

The Parthenon

Paradox of Pericles and the Parthenon

The Athenian Empire, designed to keep Greek cities free, began to enslave those very cities. Athens, the most assertive democracy in the ancient world, was effectively ruled by a single man who held no elected office.

II. Persian Wars

A. Battle of Marathon After a stunning victory over the Persians,

Athenians are convinced of their invincibility, superior culture, and efficiency of democratic government

B. Battle of Thermopylae Ten years later, Greek city-states ally and fend off

Persian invasion led by Xerxes

C. Delian League An alliance of equal city-states meant to free

Aegean territory from Persians Gradually turns into an Athenian Empire

III. Pericles

A. Extender of democracy An aristocrat, but extended

political participation to all free citizens, abolished property requirements, and paid juries.

B. Builder of public works Helped fund construction

of the Lyceum, statue of Athena, Parthenon

sym/syn = together/same

synonym

symphony symmetry

hypo = under/below/less

hypodermic hypotension hypothermia

hyper = over/beyond/high

hyperventilate hyperactive hypersensitive

III. Pericles

C. Promoter of Greek Culture

1. The Examined Life Sophists: Protagoras

instructs skills of rhetoric and logic

Socrates: condemns the Sophists for failure to engage issues of morality; Socratic method; “know thyself”; executed for corrupting the morals of youth

The Death of Socrates (1787)

III. Pericles

2. Understanding the Past Herodotus: the first

historian Analysis: of the

Persian Wars Philosophy of

history Context

Herodotus, The Histories, Book III

For if it were proposed to all nations to choose which seemed best of all customs, each, after examination, would place its own first; so well is each convinced that its own are by far the best. It is not therefore to be supposed that anyone, except a madman, would turn such things to ridicule. I will give this one proof among many from which it may be inferred that all men hold this belief about their customs. When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers' dead bodies. They answered that there was no price for which they would do it. Then Darius summoned those Indians who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar's poem that custom is lord of all.

III. Pericles

3. Athenian drama Roots: Indebted to Homer

and early Greek material Sophocles: Analyzes the

competing allegiances of the family and the state in Antigone

Aristophanes: comedic sympathy with common people

Human condition

4. The human image Less stylized; more natural

Narcissus

III. Pericles

5. Architecture Acropolis: melding of idealism and realism;

but the grandeur is something of an illusion

“Secrets of the Parthenon”

D. Aggressor in Foreign Policy End of Delian

League (431) Peloponnesian War

First phase: inconclusive

Second phase: Athens defeated by a Spartan-Persian alliance

IV. Pericles’ Demise

Destruction: Of Pericles and the economic, political, and civic foundations on which the Parthenon had been built.

Philosophy and the Polis: philosophers respond to political disruptions by elaborating new theories

IV. Pericles’ Demise

A. Platonic forms Distrusted Athenian democracy; the best

government should rest in the hands of philosophers

Cave allegory: ignorance (darkness) and truth (light)

B. Aristotelian empiricism Realism and systematic observation

C. Hellenistic philosophies Cynics: freedom through renunciation of material

objects Epicureans: freedom from pain Stoics: freedom from disorder

“Seinfeld”

“Friends”

“West Wing”

IV. Pericles’ Legacy

Funeral Oration: “Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty.”

Epilogue

Epilogue

Pieces of the Parthenon at the British Museum, the Louvre, Copenhagen, and elsewhere.