Dr. Vess's World Civilization Virtual Library

The Golden Age of Greece: Athens and Sparta

OBJECTIVES

 


1.  Be able to discuss the political structure of ancient Athens

and Sparta.



2.  Be able to discuss the Persia Wars, their cause, progress,

resolution and impact on Greek unity and Athenian leadership.



3.  Be able to discuss the role of Athens after the Persian Wars

and the conflict with Sparta.



4.  Be able to discuss the origins, progress and resolution of the

Peloponnesian War.



5.  Be able to discuss ancient Greece after the Spartan victory in

the Peloponnesian War.



6.  Be able to discuss the most important features of archaic

culture.



7.  Be able to assess the democratic structure of ancient Athens in

comparison with other models of democracy.





FOOD FOR THOUGHT



Define democracy.  Can democracies limit the voting population by

race, gender or social standing and still call themselves

democracies?



Are the fundamental beliefs of democracy consistent with imperial

behavior?



     The society of ancient Greece is the foundation of the western

world.  It was here that democracy took root and flourished; here

that reason and rationality emerged from the myth-making outlook of

antiquity; here that humanity threatened to approach the gods in

sheer beauty and grandeur.  The Greek hero of Homer's epics was

something very akin to the gods.  The hero Achilles was vulnerable

only in a tiny spot on his heel; in all other ways he was immortal.

So too, the Greek citizen ruled himself, asserted his voice in

politics, and was portrayed in statuary as the realization of

mathematical perfection.  Man was the microcosm of a rational,

harmonious universe.  It was in such a world the Plato, Aristotle,

Aeschylus and Sophocles produced some of the world's greatest

philosophy and literature.  The philosophy of Plato called men to

greater contemplative heights; the practicality of Aristotle called

men to greater awareness of the world around.  The inquiring mind

of Sophocles pondered the human will at the mercy of fate; the

historian Thucydides pondered the science of human nature.  To

these musings we owe much of our cultural assumptions -- our love

of the rational, the beautiful and our belief in the value of

humanity.  Yet there is a lesson to be learned from the Greeks, for

it was ultimately their fierce independence and individuality which

led to their downfall.  Although we speak of ancient Greece, there

was never a united Greek empire or kingdom.  The Greeks rose and

fell as a series of independent city states.  Ironically, one of

their greatest legacies was also their greatest weakness.  Might

this not be said of modern humanity?





     Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of the arts

          and eloquence.

                    Milton, Paradise Regained, l.  240



     Athens, nurse of men.

                    Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 701.



     Earth proudly wears the Parthenon as the best gem upon her

               zone.

                    Emerson, The Problem, stanza 3.



     Turn the pages of your Greek models night and day.

                    Horace, Ars Poetica, 268.



     I think that a knowledge of Greek thought and life, and of the

     arts in which the Greeks expressed their thought and

     sentiment, is essential to high culture.  A man may know

     everything else, but without this knowledge he remains

     ignorant of the best intellectual and moral achievements of

     his own race.

                    Charles Elliot Norton, Letter to F.A.  Tupper



     Democracy passes into despotism.

          Plato, The Republic, VIII, 562-A.



                          Outline

I.  The Great City States of Classical Greece: Sparta (explore the 
Peloponnese)

     A.  Spartan Society:

          i.  etymology of "Sparta"

          ii.  name in antiquity -- Lacedaemon

          iii.  military society:

               a) kleros

               b) helots

                    i) etymology

               c) the Spartan krypteia

               d) peroicoi

               e) hoplites

          iv.  Spartan education: the agoge

               a)the pheiditia

               b) etymology



     B.  Spartan Politics

          i.  
          
Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus

          ii.  Two Kings, their powers and election

          iii.  the ephors, their powers and election

          iv.  the exchange of oaths

          v.  the Council of 30

               a) Aristotle's opinion of the Council

               b) the rhetra and democracy in Sparta?

               c) Tyrtaeus and the power of kings

          vi. later appraisals of the Spartans:

                    a) Plato 

                    b) Rousseau 

                    c) Hitler

                    

II.  The Great City States of Greece: 


Athens

     A.  The significance of Athens in history

     B.  Early Athenian government:

          i.  the king and archons

          ii.  their class and their election

          iii.  the Areopagus (Council)

          iv.  the Assembly

          v.  widespread participation

          vi.  sophisticated concept of justice:

                    a) the Draconian Laws

     C.  The Classical Age

          i. the financial crisis of the 6th century b.c.

          ii. Solon -- 594 b.c.

               a.  Trader, General and Poet

               b.  his reforms

                    1)  no exports of wheat

                    2)  export olive oil

                    3)  citizenship to foreign artisans

                    4)  abolished debts

                    5)  land could not be used for collateral

                    6)  freed those sold into slavery for debts

                    7)  his definition of citizenship

               c.  the moderate character of Solon's reforms:

                    did he intend to wipe out the aristocracy?

               d.  Solon's restructuring of the government: 

                    i) the Council of 400

                    ii) the Assembly

                         a) their powers

          iii.  Cleisthenes 510 b.c.

                    a) Council of 500

                         i) method of selection and their term of

                         office

                    b) The Assembly

                    c) Ostracism

                    d) the popular courts



     D.  Was Athens a true democracy?

          i.  definition of democracy

          ii.  women in Athens

          iii.  slaves in Athens

          iv.  the Athenian ideal: Pericles's Funeral Oration

           v.  
           a comparison of American and Athenian citizenship

III.  Athens, Sparta and the Persians

     A.  The problem of Greek unity

     B.  The Persian Wars

               i. Cyrus and the Persians

               ii. Ionia

               iii. Spartan reluctance vs.  Athenian heroism

                         a) Herodotus: the Father of History and 
                         
The Histories

               iv. The Battle of Marathon -- 490 b.c.

                    a) The Persian Immortals and Persian hubris

               v. Thermopylae

               vi. Salamis and Plataea

     C.  Greek unity under the leadership of Athens

          i.  the Delian League and 
          
Pericles

     D.  The Peloponessian War

          i. 
chronicled by Thucydides (The Father of Scientific History)

               a) his methodology

               b) The Revolt of Mitylene:

                    i) the conflict between imperial aims and

                         democracy

               c) The Melian Debate and Athenian Democracy?

     E.  The Defeat of Athens and the end of the Golden Age of

                    Greek Antiquity