Geography

• Mainland is a mountainous peninsula.• Coastline has excellent harbors.• Trade and colonization resulted.• Brought back ideas from other areas (theme

of geography-movement).• Phoenician alphabet, use of coins

City-states

• Terrain made communication and transportation difficult.

• Small, separate communities developed.• Eventually grew into city-states.• Prized their freedom.• At center of each city was an acropolis (hilltop

fortress).• Life centered around this area.

Athens

The Parthenon

Parthenon Today

Greek Government

• City-states first ruled by monarchs.• Eventually replaced by aristocracies, or

government by a small, privileged upper class.• As populations grew other classes demanded

a voice in government.• As ordinary citizens gained rights democracy

developed.

Athenian Democracy

• Athens one of the first to develop a democratic government, or government by the people.

• By 450 B.C. Athens was a direct democracy- all citizens participated in government directly.

• Athenian democracy was greatest under Pericles.• Key points- power rested with individuals.• All citizens equal before the law.• Right and duty to take part in government.

• Limits of Athenian democracy – only citizens, free men born in Athens, could participate.

• Majority of Athenians were slaves, resident foreigners, and women with no political rights.

• Could not vote, own property, or hold public office.

• Still it became the model for future governments.

The Search for Truth

• Three famous Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

• Questioned belief that gods and goddesses controlled forces of nature.

• Used observation and reason to look for natural laws.

• Search influenced many fields.• In medicine led to the study of the human body in

search of symptoms and causes of disease.

• Used reason, experimentation, and observation.

• Led to advances in mathematics, astronomy, biology.

Socrates

• Greatest of all Greek thinkers.• 470 B.C. to 399 B. C.• Code of conduct for human behavior.• Encouraged students to apply reason• Developed question and answer technique known

as the Socratic Method.• Asked one question after another to force students

to examine their beliefs and discard those that could not be proved through reason.

• Socrates was regarded as a troublemaker.• Said he corrupted young people by encouraging

them to question their elders.• Finally arrested for failing to honor the gods and

corrupting the youth.• Jury found him guilty and condemned him to

death.• Could have fled but said a good citizen must obey

the law.

Socrates Death by Poisoning

Plato

• Student of Socrates• Collected his ideas in the Dialogues.• Plato developed his own ideas, particularly about

government.• Wrote about those in The Republic.• Should be based on justice for all.• Rejected democracy• Philosophers would rule as kings, workers would

produce food, soldiers would protect.

Plato

Aristotle

• Student of Plato• Sought truth from experience.• Gather evidence, use reason to determine

truth.• Created logic- a system of reasoning.• Studied everything from medicine to poetry.• Urged moral behavior and moderation in all

things.

• Muslim scholars translated and preserved many of his works.

• During the later Middle Ages crusaders were reintroduced to Aristotles teachings and brought them back to Europe.

• Scholars looked on Aristotle as the authority on almost every field of science.

Aristotle

Arts and Literature

• Emphasis on reason and balance shaped the Arts.• Graceful architecture of temples reflected this.• Statues based on ideal nature of the human form.• Wrote epic poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey.• Homer – interference of gods and godesses in lives

of human heroes.• Two types of drama: tragedy and comedy.• Tragedy ex. Antigone, sufferings of major character,

usually ended in disaster.

• Comedy, ex. Lysistrata, ridiculed people, ideas, and social customs.

• Greek historians treated history not as the deeds of gods but as the study of human actions.

• Thucydides used evidence and impartial information to describe the wars of ancient Greece.

Hellenistic World

• City-states eventually controlled by Philip of Macedonia.

• His son, Alexander the Great, completed the unification of Greece.

• Conquered an empire stretching from Greece and Egypt eastward to the Indus River.

• He studied Aristotle and admired Greek culture.

• Carried to all lands he conquered.• Empire broke up after his death in 323 B.C.• The new culture he created became known as

Hellenistic Culture.• Blended the cultures of the Greeks, Egyptians,

and the Middle East.

Alexandria

• This city in Egypt became the center of Hellenistic Culture.

• Scholars from all over gathered here.• Major advances in medicine, mathematics, and

the sciences.• Egyptians showed Greeks how to use anesthetics

in surgery.• Euclid wrote The Elements, the basis of modern

geometry.