Ancient Greece

The civilization of Greece can be divided into three phases:

• Phase 1: Period between 9th century BC and 431 BC. Major events during this
period were:
(a) Birth and evolution of the classical Greek civilization.
(b) Increase in the number of city-states,
(c) The Greco-Persian Wars (499 BC--449 BC)
Delulu league haha
(d) Founding of the Delian League (formed under the leadership of Athens in
478 BC) as defense against aggression from the Persian Empire.
(e) “History of the Peloponnesian War” by Thucydides (460 BC – 400 BC) was
the first work of history written with strict impartiality based on evidence
narrates the conflict between Sparta and Athens.
(f) Thucydides is also called father of the school of political realism, which views
the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations
between states as ultimately mediated by the emotions of fear and self-interest.
He was an Athenian who had fought in the Peloponnesian War.
Pelponnesian War:
a) Continued from 431 BC- 403 BC.
b) Between the Delian League led by Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by
Sparta.
c) Resulted in the fall of Athens.

• Phase 2:
(a) Period between 431 BC to 31 BC.
(b) Between that time frame, the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans and
finally the Macedonians held supreme power.
(c) In 31 BC the Roman emperor Augustus Octavius conquered Greece.

• Phase 3:
(a) Period between 31 BC and 7th century AD.
(b) Characterized by the supremacy of Roman Empire and its final decline.
(c) The periodization is open to debate as it is arbitrarily done by historians
for convenience of discussion.

• Classical Greek Civilization: 5th Century BC

(a) Greek philosophers Socrates, Aristotle and Plato have formed the bedrock of
Western philosophy.
 (b) Western civilization as we know it today was built on the civilizations of
Greece and Rome and is seen as the continuation of what the ancient Greeks have
contributed in science, philosophy, democracy, art and architecture.
(c) Greek civilization is also called Hellenic or
Hellenistic civilization. The word “Hellenistic” comes from the word
Hellazein, which means “to speak Greek or identify with the Greeks.”
(d) The conquests of Alexander the Great (356 BC—323 BC) spread Hellenism
immediately over the Middle East and far into Asia. After his death, the influence
of Greek civilization continued to expand over the Mediterranean world.

• Anecdotes regarding Alexander the Great

(a) Became king of Macedonia at 20 years of age following the assassination of
his father Philip II in 336 BC.
(b) In the next 12 years, he toppled every rival empire including the mighty
Persian empire, conquered Egypt, declared himself Pharaoh, faced mighty
Armies.
(c) Finally, was defeated by the ferocity of the river Jhelum in Punjab which he
reached in 327 BC.
(d) He died in Babylon most likely by Malaria or Typhoid and was buried first in
Memphis, where the Pharaohs were buried, then he was moved to Alexandria, the
city named after him.
(e) Alexander’s tomb, along with the ancient town is lost to tsunamis and
earthquakes.
(f) The Greek archaeologist Papakosta has kept digging for 21 years in Alexandria
in search of Alexander’s lost tomb.
(g) He made 3 death wishes:
1) His coffin be carried only by his physician, so that people see that, when death
comes, no physician can prevent it.
2) To strew the path to his funeral with gold, silver and precious stones to show
that not a single grain of gold accompanies a person after death.
3) Finally, he said, “when you bury my body, do not build any monument, keep
my hands outside of my coffin so that the world knows the person who won the
world had nothing in his hands when dying.”

• Legacies from Ancient Greece

(a) Most popular image: The Olympic games.
(b) Popular figure: Helen of Troy
(c) Foundational works of ancient Greek literature: Two epic poems
written in 762 BC, ‘Homer’s Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’
(d) Father of History: The Greek writer Herodotus (because of his scientific
method of recording the events of the Greco-Persian Wars)
 (e) The ancient Greeks achieved excellence in areas of psychology, astronomy,
geometry, biology, physics and medicine. This knowledge was derived from the
ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations.
(f) Two famous scientists: Archimedes and Pythagoras
(g) Ancient Greeks found the value of pi.
(h) They created the world’s first democracy.
(i) Trial by jury was practiced by the Greeks.
(j) The Greeks invented the 24 letter alphabet by improving upon the Phoenician
one.
(k) The word alphabet is derived from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet
‘alpha’ and ‘beta.’
(l) First library of the world: Built by the Greeks in Alexandria, Egypt when
Egypt came under Greek rule in 146 BC.
(m) First lighthouse of the world: Built by the Greeks in Alexandria
(n) Most famous Greek architecture: Parthenon in Athens
(o) The 3 types of columns Greeks used to support their buildings:
Doric- Built by Ancient Greek people known as The Dorians who settled in
Southern Greece
Ionic- Built by the Ionian people who settled the shores and islands of the
Aegean Sea and the ancient city of Attica, which is in Athens.
Corinthian- Corinth is an area halfway between Athens and Sparta.
Ancient Corinth was one of the largest and most important cities of Greece.
The Romans demolished Corinth in 146 BC, built a new city there in 44 BC and
made it the provincial capital of Greece.

• Story of the Caryatids

(a) Another set of world-famous pillars
(b) According to a story related by the 1st-century BC Roman architectural writer
Vitruvius,C aryatids represented the women of Caryae (known as the Caryatid
maidens), who were doomed to hard labour because the town sided with the
Persians in 480 BC during their second
invasion of Greece. Historians do not corroborate tho.

• Stealing of a Caryatid Maiden: In November 1798 the Earl of Elgin was

appointed as Ambassador of Britain to the Ottoman Empire. Between 1801 and
1811, he removed shiploads of marble artifacts from Greece, then under Ottoman
rule, to Britain. He sliced off one of the Caryatid maidens and shipped it to
Britain. It is on display now at the British Museum. Recently George Clooney and
others have teamed up to pressure the British government to return the
artifacts.

• Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine

 (a) Greeks invented a standardized system of diagnosis, prognosis and medical
ethics.
(b) Hippocrates taught that all illnesses had a natural cause at a time when
everyone believed that illness was a punishment from God.
(c) Hippocrates is thus called the Father of Medicine.
(d) Doctors all over the world today take the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ to practice
medical ethics.

• The Great Minds of Ancient Greece

(a) First theater originated in Athens.
(b) First playwrights: Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides
(c) Three apostles of philosophy, ethics and morality: Socrates of Athens
(first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition), Plato and Aristotle
(d) Archimedes laid the foundation for scientific enquiry.

• Voices From Antiquity

Socrates
(a) His students: Plato and Xenophon.
(b) Contributed to the field of rationalism
(c) The humanistic tradition of the Italian Renaissance borrows
heavily from Socrates’ teachings.

Plato and his student Aristotle

(a) Plato was the founder of the Academy, the first institution of higher
learning in the Western world, founded in 387 BC in Athens
(b) Plato is widely considered as the central figure in the history of ancient Greek
and Western philosophy.
(c) Aristotle studied there for twenty years (367–347 BC) before founding his
own school, the Lyceum.
(d) The Platonic Academy was destroyed by the Roman dictator Sulla in 86 BC.
(e) The Republic (380 BC): A treatise recording dialogues with Socrates
regarding justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man.
It is world’s best known work on political theory.
(f) According to Plato, the world contains 3 types of people – producers,
auxiliaries (soldiers), and guardians (the political class, including the ruler).
A just society, according to Socrates and Plato, depends on the harmonious
relationship of these three.
(g) Aristotle’s most famous student: Alexander the Great whom he started
tutoring in in 343 BC

• Archimedes (c. 287 BC-c.212 BC), born in Syracuse, proved the geometrical
theorems concerning the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere,
area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola among other things
• Decline of the Greek Civilization
(a) Greek civilization, according to the pyramid theory, started declining thru
internal strife.
(b) The internecine wars between the powerful city states of Sparta, Athens,
Thebes and Corinth weakened them, falling to Rome as a result.
(c) The ancient Greek civilization began around 1100 BC and
ended when the Romans conquered it in 146 BC.
(d) Romans wholly embraced Greek civilization and made it their own.