The Greeks
Ancient Greece
• Minoan Civilization (c. 20001400 BCE)
–Crete
• Mycenaean Civilization (c.
1600-1200 BCE)
–Greek mainland
Minoan Civilization
• Knossos: Palace of Minos
• Minotaur: half-man and half-bull, born of
bull & Minos’ queen
• Minotaur lived in labyrinth designed by
Daedalus
Myth of Daedalus & Icarus
• Daedalus locked in tower by King Minos
• Escapes by making wax wings for himself
and his son Icarus
• Icarus departs from father and flies too high
• The wax melts and Icarus falls to his death
• Daedalus reaches Sicily in safety
Brueghel,
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1558
Myth of Theseus &Ariadne
• Greek hero Theseus kills the Minotaur with
the help of Ariadne, daughter of King
Minos
• Ariadne gives Theseus a sword and thread
to find his way out
• After killing Minotaur, Theseus escapes
with Ariadne
Myth of Theseus &Ariadne
• On the way back to Athens, Theseus &
Ariadne stop on island of Naxos
• Ariadne falls asleep and Theseus abandons
her
Vanderlyn, Ariadne Abandoned,
1814
Mycenaean Civilization
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At Mycenae
“militant and aggressive” (72)
C.1400 BCE: Mycenaeans absorb Crete
c. 1200 BCE, Mycenaeans attack Troy in
Asia Minor: 10 year war
• Soon after, Dorians destroy Mycenaean
civilization Dark Ages
Homer
• Legendary blind poet, author of Iliad and
Odyssey, Greek epics
• “Homer” represents oral tradition that was
eventually written down in 9th century BCE
Iliad
• Wrath of Achilles
• Focuses on arete: heroic action to prove
virtue—even if the consequence is death,
and even in the face of the gods
Simile & Epithet
• Simile: See Book 18.113-116, 133-139
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• Epithets: “swift Antilochus” (18.2); “the
great Achilles” (18.33); “man-killing hands”
of Priam (24.7); “great godlike Achilles”
(24.186); “old and noble Priam” (24.263);
“brilliant Achilles” (24.316)
David, The Funeral of Petroclus,
1778
Twombly, Achilles Mourning the
Death of Petroclus, 1962
Hesiod, Theogony (700 B.C.E.)
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Zeus, Hera, etc., live on Mount Olympus
meddle in human affairs
no clear moral or religious system
no guarantee of afterlife—focus is on being
remembered for one’s actions in this life
• Thus, Greek culture celebrates individual
glory and individual responsibility
Greek Politics and Society
• During the Homeric Age, heroes are
celebrated: it is an aristocratic age
• Ca. 750 BCE: the rise of the polis: Greek
city-state
– Athens, Thebes, Marathon, Corinth, Sparta, etc.
– About 200 of them
City-states
• City-states are self-governing, selfdefending
• Take their own colonies
• Compete with one another
Persian Wars, 499-480 BCE
• Greek city-states unite to defend themselves
against Persia
• Battle of Marathon, 490 BCE, Greeks
defeat an army of Persians 2X bigger
• After Persian Wars, Athens becomes
predominant Greek polis
Greek Golden Age: 480-430 BCE
• Oligarchy (elite minority) 
Democracy (gov. by the people, demos)
• Solon (ca.638-558 BCE): spread
democracy: involved lower classes in gov.
• Ca.550 BCE: Popular Assembly
• 508 BCE: Popular Assembly can make laws
Greek Government Structure
• Board of Ten Generals
• Council of Five Hundred
(aristocratic bureaucracy)
• Popular Assembly of
Citizens
Democracy?
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Citizen = landowning males over 18
Total population: 250,000
Citizens: 40,000
Actually attended Assembly: 5,000
Women, children, resident aliens, slaves:
150,000
Agora= “open air market”
Pericles (ca.495-429 BCE)
• Leading supporter of Athenian
democracy
• Many public offices filled by lottery
• Delian League: defensive alliance
– Pericles moves funds from Delos to
Athens
– Angers Sparta
Peloponnesian Wars (431-404
BCE)
• Athens vs. Sparta
• Sparta not democratic, more militaristic
than Athens
• Athens loses to Sparta
Pericles, Funeral Sermon
• Athenians are interested in public affairs
• Athenians respect written and unwritten
laws
• Athenians value thinking/discussion before
action
• Athenians value the individual Athenian
Aristotle, Poetics
• Unites of action and time
• Tragedy: “imitation of an action” arousing
“pity and fear” leading to catharsis
(purgation)
• Hero “better than the ordinary man”
• His downfall “must not lie in any depravity,
but in some great error on his part”
(94-95)
Pre-Socratic Philosophers
• Scientific thinkers asking what the world is
made of and how it came into existence
• Thales: water
• Heraclitus: flux, change—dictated by Form
or Guiding Force
• Leucippus of Miletus: atoms
• Democritus: atoms make up the mind too
Pre-Socratic Philosophers
• Pythagoras: proportion (numbers)
• Hippocrates: “father of medicine”
– Humours: blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow
bile
Sophists
• Not scientists but metaphysicians:
concerned with how we know
• Traveled around to teach people
• Focused on rhetoric more than truth
– They thrived in a democracy where the ability
to persuade was important
Protagoras (ca. 485-410 BCE)
• A sophist
• “Man is the measure of all things”
Socrates (ca. 470-399 BCE)
• A stonemason who walked around Athens
talking to people: a gadfly
• Opposed the sophistry: the use of clever
argument
• Instead: “Know thyself”
• “the unexamined life is not worth living”
• To know the good is to do the good
Plato (ca. 428-ca. 347 BCE)
• We know Socrates through Plato
• Socrates is a character in Plato’s dialogues
• Through dialectical method (question and
answer method) one moves closer and
closer to the truth
Plato’s Theory of the Forms
• All sense experience is an imperfect copy of
the Forms. A ball, for example, is an
imperfect copy of the Form of the Sphere.
• The Forms derive from the ultimate Form,
the Form of the Good
Plato’s Theory of the Forms
• the psyche, or soul, comes from the world
of the Forms, while the soma, or body, is
trapped in the sensory world.
• Where do we get the idea of the perfect
sphere? Plato would say we get it from our
soul’s connection to the perfect world of
Forms.
Allegory of the Cave
• In the Republic
• Allegory: story with figurative or hidden
meaning story (allos=other + agoreuein=to
speak publicly < agora=marketplace)
• A parable for the movement from sense
experience to the Form of Goodness
Allegory of the Cave
Plato’s Political Views
• Anti-democratic
• Philosopher-kings should rule (could be
women)
• Philosophers are fit to rule, soldiers to fight,
laborers to work (mind, heart, hands)
• The goal of society is not the happiness of
the individual but to bring society as a
whole as close as possible to the good
Plato’s Political Views
• Education for both men and women,
according to their abilities
• No private property
• In Plato’s republic, no poets are allowed
What, no poets?
• That’s right, no poets. Why?
• Plato says poets:
1) lie; they don’t know or tell the truth
2) lead children and youth away from
knowledge
3) they offer not ideas, or images of ideas,
but images of images of ideas
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
• Student of Plato
• Rejected Plato’s Theory of Forms, thought
that mind and matter are connected
• Empirical method: direct experience
• Syllogism
• End of life is happiness, “the good life”
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
• “the object of our inquiry is not to know the
nature of virtue but to become ourselves
virtuous”
• “It is necessary therefore to consider the
right way of performing actions”
• The Golden Mean: the mean between
extremes
Aristotle, Politics
• the best government is constitutional and
ruled by the middle class—those who
would be least likely to govern out of selfinterest
• man (Aristotle does not include or exclude
women here) is a political animal
Aristotle, Politics
• “[The] state is by nature clearly prior to the
family and to the individual, since the
whole is of necessity prior to the part. . . .
The proof that the state is a creation of
nature and prior to the individual is that the
individual, when isolated, is not selfsufficing; and therefore he is like a part in
relation to the whole.”
Aristotle, Politics
• We tend to think of society as a creation of
individuals, but according to Aristotle,
society comes first, and what we call the
individual presupposes the existence of
society. The individual doesn’t exist
without society. The individual does not
create the concept of society; society
creates the concept of the individual.