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History of Western Civilisation - Tuesday 7th Period: Lecture 3: Greek Politics and War
All right, class. You know how the syllabus says that this week is early Greece and next week is Classical Greece? It lies. When I started writing the lecture, it seemed easier to divide things between cultural and political than on arbitrary dates.
Now, we barrelled through Sumeria, Egypt and Crete to get to Greece for a specific reason. While Greece was very heavily influenced by the cultures around it, it itself became a hugely influencial culture. To this day, something cast in the image of ancient Greece has an automatic dignity and authority.
Part of this is from the fact that Rome, which spread its influence around the modern boundries of Western Civilisation, idolized Greece. Part of this, as I mentioned in my introductory lecture, is that the Islamic and Byzantine cultures also venerated and -- more importantly -- preserved Greek culture.
The eight hundred year period following the fall of Crete is best known for the reign of King Agamemnon and the wars against Troy that are narrated in the epics of Homer -- not the most reliable historical source. It is considered a "dark age" -- largely because we have no primary texts surviving from this time. That will also be the reigning definition of the later Medieval period known as the Dark Ages -- not that nothing happened or that life was nasty, brutish and short, but that later historians don't have materials to work from.
Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities -- a pattern dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges. The population quickly grew beyond the capacity of its limited arable land, and from about 750 BCE the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions -- from Asia Minor to Egypt to southern Italy and even parts of France and Spain. By the 6th century BCE Hellas had become a cultural and linguistic area much larger than the geographical area of Greece.
By the 6th century BCE several cities had emerged as dominant in Greek affairs: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. Each of them had brought the surrounding rural areas and smaller towns under their control, and Athens and Corinth had become major maritime and mercantile powers as well. Athens and Sparta developed a rivalry that dominated Greek politics for generations. All of them banded together against the Persians for a long war that we're not going to cover, but after the external threat was removed, they fell back into old habits.
Athens established the world's first democracy (500 BCE), with power being held by an assembly of all the citizens -- by which they meant that minority of residents who were free Athenian men, excluding women, slaves, freedmen, and anyone foreign-born. Because of the pro-Athenian slant of the aforementioned records, it's easy to think that Athens is ancient Greece. Resist the impulse.
In Sparta, by contrast, the landed aristocracy retained their power, and the city operated under a permanent militarist regime with a dual monarchy. Sparta dominated the other cities of the Peloponnese, with the sole exceptions of Argus and Achaia.
The wealth of Athens attracted talented people from all over Greece, and also created a wealthy leisured class who became patrons of the arts. The Athenian state itself also sponsored learning and the arts, particularly architecture. Athens became the centre of Greek literature, philosophy, and the arts, and most of the names you may recognize from Greek history -- Euripides, Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Herodotus, and Pheidias -- come from Athens of this period.
However, with the Persians no longer a threat, and Athenian power rising, other Greek cities started to want more independence. Athens responded by becoming more and more of a controlling empire. Throught the late 5th century BCE there were near-constant wars between the various city-states, often centered on the longstanding conflict between Athens and Sparta. Sparta, which had built up its military in the meantime ultimately prevaled and lorded over Athens and the rest of Greece... until Thebes beat them and took over some fifty years later.
Thebes didn't fare so well, however, and in an attempt to keep power, eventually contacted Philip II of Macedon for help, thus drawing Macedonia into Greek affairs for the first time. Philip was an ambitious guy, and between dividing war spoils with the Thebans, and bribing politicians in every Greek city, he was soon on his way to annexing Greece as part of his empire. The Greek cities banded together to stop him, but Philip struck first and conquered the area, effectively ending the era of the independent Greek city-state.
Trying to win over the Greeks, Philip announced that he would lead an invasion of Persia to liberate the Greek cities that had been invaded a century before. But before he could do so he was assassinated. His 20-year-old son Alexander, soon called "The Great", immediately set out to carry out his father's plans. (Taking time out to stop a revolt back in Greece by capturing Thebes and razing the city to the ground as a warning to others.)
Alexander crossed into Asia, and defeated the Persians in the former Greek colonies. Then he headed south through the middle east and into Egypt, taking over the Persian Empire piece by piece. Although the Persian emperor was willing to sue for peace and come to a mutually beneficial settlement by this point, Alexander was determined to conquer Persia and make himself the "ruler of the world". He headed north-east through Syria and Mesopotamia and suceeded in conquering the entire Persian Empire, then continued through what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan and into India. At this point his army, worn out from years of fighting and convinced they were at the end of the world, refused to go any further. Alexander reluctantly turned back, and died of a fever in Babylon in 323 BCE.
Alexander's empire broke up soon after his death, but his conquests permanently changed the Greek world. Thousands of Greeks travelled with him or after him to settle in the new Greek cities he had founded as he advanced, the most important being Alexandria in Egypt. Greek-speaking kingdoms in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Bactria were established.
Back in Greece proper, Alexander's conquests greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BCE seem petty and unimportant. It also led to a steady emigration, particularly of the young and ambitious, to the new Greek empires in the east.
The defeat of the Greek cities by Philip and Alexander also taught the Greeks that their city-states could never again be powers in their own right, unless they united and fought together. Unfortunately the Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence. The Hellenistic period in Greece itself became a series of battles and shifting power between these short-lived federations of city-states and individual rulers who attempted to control all of Greece themselves, until it was annexed by the Roman empire in the mid-second century BCE.
All right, next time we're going to focus on the cultural developments.
Your homework from last week is due today here. Please turn it in if you have not already done so.
[[OOC: As always, much lint to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aka_vala, who prepped this even though she hates the Greeks. (Sources here, here, and here.)]]
[[OMG wait for OCD threads are up! Post away!]]
Now, we barrelled through Sumeria, Egypt and Crete to get to Greece for a specific reason. While Greece was very heavily influenced by the cultures around it, it itself became a hugely influencial culture. To this day, something cast in the image of ancient Greece has an automatic dignity and authority.
Part of this is from the fact that Rome, which spread its influence around the modern boundries of Western Civilisation, idolized Greece. Part of this, as I mentioned in my introductory lecture, is that the Islamic and Byzantine cultures also venerated and -- more importantly -- preserved Greek culture.
The eight hundred year period following the fall of Crete is best known for the reign of King Agamemnon and the wars against Troy that are narrated in the epics of Homer -- not the most reliable historical source. It is considered a "dark age" -- largely because we have no primary texts surviving from this time. That will also be the reigning definition of the later Medieval period known as the Dark Ages -- not that nothing happened or that life was nasty, brutish and short, but that later historians don't have materials to work from.
Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities -- a pattern dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges. The population quickly grew beyond the capacity of its limited arable land, and from about 750 BCE the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions -- from Asia Minor to Egypt to southern Italy and even parts of France and Spain. By the 6th century BCE Hellas had become a cultural and linguistic area much larger than the geographical area of Greece.
By the 6th century BCE several cities had emerged as dominant in Greek affairs: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. Each of them had brought the surrounding rural areas and smaller towns under their control, and Athens and Corinth had become major maritime and mercantile powers as well. Athens and Sparta developed a rivalry that dominated Greek politics for generations. All of them banded together against the Persians for a long war that we're not going to cover, but after the external threat was removed, they fell back into old habits.
Athens established the world's first democracy (500 BCE), with power being held by an assembly of all the citizens -- by which they meant that minority of residents who were free Athenian men, excluding women, slaves, freedmen, and anyone foreign-born. Because of the pro-Athenian slant of the aforementioned records, it's easy to think that Athens is ancient Greece. Resist the impulse.
In Sparta, by contrast, the landed aristocracy retained their power, and the city operated under a permanent militarist regime with a dual monarchy. Sparta dominated the other cities of the Peloponnese, with the sole exceptions of Argus and Achaia.
The wealth of Athens attracted talented people from all over Greece, and also created a wealthy leisured class who became patrons of the arts. The Athenian state itself also sponsored learning and the arts, particularly architecture. Athens became the centre of Greek literature, philosophy, and the arts, and most of the names you may recognize from Greek history -- Euripides, Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Herodotus, and Pheidias -- come from Athens of this period.
However, with the Persians no longer a threat, and Athenian power rising, other Greek cities started to want more independence. Athens responded by becoming more and more of a controlling empire. Throught the late 5th century BCE there were near-constant wars between the various city-states, often centered on the longstanding conflict between Athens and Sparta. Sparta, which had built up its military in the meantime ultimately prevaled and lorded over Athens and the rest of Greece... until Thebes beat them and took over some fifty years later.
Thebes didn't fare so well, however, and in an attempt to keep power, eventually contacted Philip II of Macedon for help, thus drawing Macedonia into Greek affairs for the first time. Philip was an ambitious guy, and between dividing war spoils with the Thebans, and bribing politicians in every Greek city, he was soon on his way to annexing Greece as part of his empire. The Greek cities banded together to stop him, but Philip struck first and conquered the area, effectively ending the era of the independent Greek city-state.
Trying to win over the Greeks, Philip announced that he would lead an invasion of Persia to liberate the Greek cities that had been invaded a century before. But before he could do so he was assassinated. His 20-year-old son Alexander, soon called "The Great", immediately set out to carry out his father's plans. (Taking time out to stop a revolt back in Greece by capturing Thebes and razing the city to the ground as a warning to others.)
Alexander crossed into Asia, and defeated the Persians in the former Greek colonies. Then he headed south through the middle east and into Egypt, taking over the Persian Empire piece by piece. Although the Persian emperor was willing to sue for peace and come to a mutually beneficial settlement by this point, Alexander was determined to conquer Persia and make himself the "ruler of the world". He headed north-east through Syria and Mesopotamia and suceeded in conquering the entire Persian Empire, then continued through what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan and into India. At this point his army, worn out from years of fighting and convinced they were at the end of the world, refused to go any further. Alexander reluctantly turned back, and died of a fever in Babylon in 323 BCE.
Alexander's empire broke up soon after his death, but his conquests permanently changed the Greek world. Thousands of Greeks travelled with him or after him to settle in the new Greek cities he had founded as he advanced, the most important being Alexandria in Egypt. Greek-speaking kingdoms in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Bactria were established.
Back in Greece proper, Alexander's conquests greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BCE seem petty and unimportant. It also led to a steady emigration, particularly of the young and ambitious, to the new Greek empires in the east.
The defeat of the Greek cities by Philip and Alexander also taught the Greeks that their city-states could never again be powers in their own right, unless they united and fought together. Unfortunately the Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence. The Hellenistic period in Greece itself became a series of battles and shifting power between these short-lived federations of city-states and individual rulers who attempted to control all of Greece themselves, until it was annexed by the Roman empire in the mid-second century BCE.
All right, next time we're going to focus on the cultural developments.
Your homework from last week is due today here. Please turn it in if you have not already done so.
[[OOC: As always, much lint to
aka_vala, who prepped this even though she hates the Greeks. (Sources here, here, and here.)]][[
ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Questions: Western Civ, Lecture 3
TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
AFTER CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
OOC: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: Questions: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Who else could she possibly ask that question of and get a good answer from?
Re: TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Is there anything going on tonight? I'm sick of homework
would happily sell my children on ebayand want to do something fun for a change.Re: TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
OOC: I'm going to be attacked by Darla tonight, along with Vala and your doppelganger. Want in? We'll find a way to work it somehow.
Re: TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Re: TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Janet had totally missed the announcement about trouble in town and was in blissful ignorance.
Re: TALKING IN CLASS: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: OOC: Western Civ, Lecture 3
is zomg a smart-ass suck-upRe: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: Questions: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Isomeone else had a clever idea and it stuck in the collective consciousness until the appropriate person came along to tag the story onto."Re: OOC: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Re: Questions: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Her face was perfectly straight for that whole question too.
Re: ATTENDANCE: Sign In, Western Civ Lecture 3
Re: OOC: Western Civ, Lecture 3
Stupid-ass ancient Greeks! :-p