Chapter Four

Greece

Aegean Civilization

(1) Minoan Culture

-- Crete(2) Mycenaean Greece

-- Mycenae: home of King

Agmemnon

Basic Greek Timeline

~ 2500 BCE

338 BCE

Minoans (lived on Crete)

Mycenaeans (mainland)

Dorians – invaders (dark age)

Ionians – “the Greeks”

elements)(brought back Mycenaean

Minoan Civilization

• 2000-1400 B.C.E.

• King Minos’s “sea empire”

• The palace at Knossos

• 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.

• http://www.daedalus.gr/DAEI/THEME/Knossos.htm

Illustration of the Palace of Knossos

http://arapahoe.littletonpublicschools.net/Portals/7/Social%20Studies/Crosby/WesternCiv/Unit1/Unit%201.8%20Palace%20PPT.ppt

http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Mino/minos.jpg

Palace at Knossos

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

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

http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Mino/blueladies.gif

http://faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art105/img/minos_toreador.jpg

Minoan Fresco : bull leaping

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

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

http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/minoanpainting3.html

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

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

• “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).”

• http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOA.HTM

• “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.’ ”

• http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOA.HTM

The Mycenaeans

• 1600-1200 B.C.E.

• Time of Homer’s epics

• Home of Agamemnon

(conqueror of Troy)

http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/mycptg1.html

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

http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/mycptg3.html

The so-called Orpheus fresco from the Throne Room. Palace of Nestor at Pylos, 1300-1250 BC.

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/worldhis/figure11.jpg

The Mask of Agamemnon

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

Lion Gate,1300-1250 BC

http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/framesetmycenaen.html

• A fortified citadel

http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/framesetmycenaen.html

Ancient Greece

–The Heroic (Homeric) Age (1200-750 B.C.E.)

–Archaic Greece

(750-480 B.C.E.)• 750-650 BC Oligarchical

• 650-480 BC Tyrants

–Athenian Democracy (480-430 B.C.E.)

The Heroic Age

(ca. 1200-750 BCE)

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.

Archaic Greece(ca.750-480

BCE)

Rise of the Polis

• 750 BCE

• Each polis (city-state) was organized around a political and social urban center.

Colonization

• Expansion of the Greek world

–Magna Graecia • Hellenism (Hellenes = Greeks)

• Panhellenism (all + Greeks)

–Oracle of Delphi

–Games at Olympia (776 B.C.E.)

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 (480-479 BCE)– Athens rises to the forefront of Greek

culture because of victory over Xerxes (Persia)

The Golden Age

(ca. 480-430 BCE)

AthensAcropolis

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.

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

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.

http://www.sikyon.com/Athens/Parthenon/parthenon_eg.html

Parthenon

Agora

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

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.

• 431- 404 BCE—27 years

• Sparta defeated Athens.

Aftermath• 30 tyrants in Athens

• War brought demoralization and a questioning of former certainties

• Shows the limitation of the polis system?

• The Hellenic Age

(800 BCE - 323 BCE)

• The Hellenistic Age

(323 BCE - 30 BCE)

• The Greco-Roman Age

(30 BCE - 476 CE)

•Greek Drama

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.

Masters• Tragedy: Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)

Sophocles (496-406 BCE)

Euripides (485-406 BCE)

• Comedy: Aristophanes

(ca. 448-382 BCE)

Format• 2-3 actors (male) wearing

masks, with a chorus of 12-15 members changing commentary on the action.

MASKShttp://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.

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

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.”

Catharsis• Purgation, or purification

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

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.

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.

Elements of Plot• Anagnorisis: discovery of facts

previously unknown to the hero

• Peripeteia: a reversal of fortune from happiness to disaster

• Catastrophe

•Philosophy

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

•The Pre-socratics

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”

Cosmologists

• Moving from myth to reason

• Materialists or matter philosophers

• Thales (624-548 BCE): Water

• Anaximander (611-547 BCE) and Anaximenes (586-525 BCE): the Boundless 混沌 ( 氣 ?)

Cosmologists• Pythagoras (580-507 BCE)

• Lived in Magna Graecia in southern Italy

• Believed that the essence of things was not matter but number.

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

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

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

Protagoras(485-410 BCE)

James Harmon Hoose Library of Philosophy, USC

http://www.publicartinla.com/USCArt/Hoose/protagoras.html

Consequences• The Sophists’ doctrines

encouraged disobedience to law, neglect of civic duty, and selfish individualism.

Socrates• (470-399 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.”

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.

Socrates

• Questioning received truth—examine everything

• The dialectical method: a dialogue

http://www.pima.gov/publicdefender/socrates.htm

Plato vs. Aristotle

Plato • ca.428-347 BCE

• School: the Academy (in Athens)

The School of Athens, by Raphael

http://home.lbcc.cc.ca.us/~mlawrence/Phil%206/cave.htm

http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/gnl2/cave.htm

Plato:Theory of Ideas• A two-level reality• Ideas // sense experience

mind // body

eternal forms // copies, shadows

intangible // tangible

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.

Plato: the Just State• Book: The Republic

• An elitist state

• Rule by the wisest: Philosopher-kings

Plato and the Poets

•Plato would ban poets from his republic. Why?

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

Aristotle• 384-322 B.C.E.

• Universal Ideas could not be determined without examination of particular things.

Aristotle• Through human experience

with things themselves, the essence (Form, or universals) of these things can be discovered through reason.

Aristotle: Ethics• Happiness comes from

exercising reason in practical affairs.

• Virtue → “Nothing in excess”→pursuing the golden mean between two extremes

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”

Aristotle• Limitations:

1. Barbarians = slaves

2. Women were excluded from the polis.

3. Aims to maintain the existing social hierarchy.

•The End