Ancient Greece and the Formation
of the Western Mind
• The origins of these people (the Greeks…
also called “The Hellenes”) is a mystery
• However they are probably a mix of native
tribes and the Indo-European invaders
• In the second millennium BC, mainland
Greece had centers of wealth and power
that were not even known about until
excavators discovered the gold masks,
buried kings, and clay tablets covered in
strange signs
• The palaces had been destroyed by fire
– Not only were the palaces destroyed, but so were
the arts and skills that had created the wealth
and most importantly the system of writing
• For the next few hundred years after
the fires, the Greeks were illiterate and
so no written evidence survives.
• We call this “The Dark Age of Greece”
• One thing we do know about this time
period is that it produced oral epic
poetry that was the raw material for
Homer’s two poems
• The Iliad
• The Odyssey
• These poems date from the 8th century
BC, which is the same century the
Greeks learned how to write again
• These poems became the basis of
Greek education and of the whole
culture
• The characters served as models of
conduct for later Greek generations
• The Olympian gods retained the shapes
and attributes written about by Homer
The City-States of Greece
• The stories told in Homer’s poems are
set in the age of the Trojan War, which
dates to the 12th century BC
• This was a time of invasion and
migration which caused the growth of
many small independent cities in
Greece
• The cities of Greece never lost sight of
their Hellenic heritage
• BUT they differed from each other in
custom, politics, and even dialect
(accents)
• Their relations with each other were
violent rivals and fierce competitors
• These cities were constantly at war
with one another in an effort to gain
more productive land for growing
populations.
• In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, the
landless Greeks founded new cities all
over the Mediterranean coast
• Many of these new cities experienced a
faster economic and cultural growth
than the older cities of the mainland
• In the cities founded on the Asian
coast, the Greeks adapted to their own
language the Phoenician system of
writing
• This is the language that the Roman alphabet
and also our own was based off of
• As literacy spread all over the Greek
world, literary works were written on
rolls of paper made from the Egyptian
papyrus plant
Athens and Sparta
• By the beginning of the 5th century BC,
the two most prominent city-states
were Athens and Sparta
• Combined, these two city-states
defeated the great Persian Army and
inspired Greeks with a confidence that
knew no bounds
Athens
• During this time, Athens was a direct
democracy
• Athenian democracy provided its citizens
with a cultural and political environment that
could not be matched in the ancient world
• There were limits on democracy:
– Resident aliens, slaves, and women could not vote
– Women could not own property or hold office.
They were expected to stay inside the house
except for funerals and religious festivals.
– Women were rarely seen by men other than their
husbands or male relatives
Sparta
• Much different than Athens
• Rigidly conservative in government
and policy
• Their citizens were reared and trained
by the state for war
• Because of this, the Spartan land army
was superior to any other in Greece
• They ruled a majority of the city-states
Athens and Sparta
• Even though these two cities came together
to defeat the Persians…
• They became bitter enemies afterwards
• They eventually fought a great war against
each other
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The Peloponnesian War
Began in 431 BC
Ended in 404 BC
Resulted in the total defeat of Athens
The Decline of the City-State
• In the last quarter of the 5th century
the traditional basis of individual
conduct was damaged.
• After their defeat by Sparta, Athenians
began to feel more and more
frustration with the man they’d been
listening to for years
• Socrates
• Socrates used questions and answers to
expose the illogicality of his opponents
position, but never provided a
substitute for the belief he had
destroyed
• His ethics were based on an intellectual
basis and his constant questioning of
the old standards in an effort to bring
about new ones irritated people.
• The Athenians eventually got so sick of
him, they sentenced him to death on a
charge of immorality
• In the century following Socrates’ death,
the once powerful city-states of Greece
became politically and economically
bankrupt
• They fell to the power of Macedon in the
north, led by King Phillip
• Greek liberty ended in 338 BC at the battle
of Chaeronea.
• King Phillip’s son, Alexander inherited a
powerful army as well as the political
control of all Greece