The Greeks

Ancient Greece

• Minoan Civilization (c. 2000-1400 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• 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.)

•  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, self-defending

• 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?• 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 MiletusLeucippus of Miletus: atoms

• DemocritusDemocritus: 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 self-interest

• 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 self-sufficing; 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.