Introduction to Ancient Greek History
This is an introductory course in Greek history tracing the development of Greek civilization as manifested in political, intellectual, and creative achievements from the Bronze Age to the end of the classical period. Students read original sources in translation as well as the works of modern scholars.
Introduction
- Greeks represent the sharpest break from how civilizations normally operated
- Greeks invented the polis (city-state)
- Republic where citizens fought their own wars and had political participation
- Political comes from polis
- Speculative philosophy based on on reason, observation, science emerges
- After the fall of Rome it was too difficult for any one conqueror to build a vast empire
- Cities became self-governing, eventually city-states emerge
- "Freedom" grew in the cracks of the broken system
The Dark Ages
- Bronze age
- Civilization
- Establishment of cities
- Cities contain people who don't provide their own support
- ~1600 - 1100 Mycenaean period
- Civilization
- We have not deciphered the language (Linear A) of Minoans
- Someone is Greek if their native language was Greek
- Talking about a culture, not a race
- Greeks came down to the Aegean sea ~2000 B.C.
- Mycenae settlements were not right on the sea (safety and security)
- Citadel surrounded by farmland
- Lots of evidence of regular trade
- There is a unity between religion and state, led my a monarchy
- This is the norm for humans
- "Palace economy", the Oriental model
- The culture during this time is a lot different than the Greeks we'll see in the rest of the lectures
- There were no laws or standards outside the king's authority
- ~1200 B.C large attacks sweep the regions
- Civil unrest? Climate change?
- Dorians invaded?
- Whatever caused the fall of Mycenae, it happened quickly and was devastating
- The collapse of the Mycenaean period brings us a clean slate
- Greeks are totally illiterate from ~1100-750 B.C.