Ancient Greece - Cradle of Western Civilization

Ancient Greece “The Cradle of Western Civilization” (500-323 BCE) for a brief 150 years in/around a single city, Athens, our modern society was anticipated/influenced by ancient Greeks.
• Grouping (polis) of city states around the Mediterranean – Turkey – Italy
• Each city state had a government and an army
• Most of our ideas started from Ancient Greece
• BCE = Before Common Era
• After the 150 years  all this knowledge & advancement wouldn’t show up again for another 2000 years.
• City states shared 3 things:
o Language
o Money
o Religion (Greek mythology)
• Around 500 BCE  Persian army invades Ancient Greece
o 2 city states, Sparta & Athens join forces and defeat the large Persians @ the Battle of Marathon (Socrates fought at this Battle)
o After this victory begins the 150 years and Athens now becomes the 1st democracy in the western world – Remember: only lasted 150 years
Major developments by the Greeks
1. Politics
a. Every citizen counts as 1  Egalitarianism (Democracy was about citizen’s (men) rights, not humans (women)
b. Athens was a pure democracy meaning no representatives of any kind. (we have a representative democracy) If a law was proposed, the citizens vote on it directly with each having one vote a piece.
i. As a result, there were no judges/juries  citizens could come and watch proceedings and vote
c. “King for a day” – Once a year, one person got to be kind of Athens. They could let people out of prison or pass laws they liked, and this reminded people how good a democracy was and showed how too much power from one person or king would be.
2. Literature (Greeks held these books like the bible)
a. Homer (Iliad & Odyssey)
i. Iliad  Trojan War fought over Helen of Troy. The Greeks won by tricking them with the Trojan Horse
ii. Odyssey  Odyssey (Greek hero) & his travels around the Mediterranean Sea. It included Cyclops that Odysseus fought. The Sirens were women who sang & seduced sailors.
b. Hesiod
i. Theogony  Series of creation stories  Zeus’ father – Kronos created universe (polytheism  many gods/goddesses)
Side Note: Plutarch’s Lives & King James Bible used to teach European & US kids how to read.
3. Drama
a. Aeschylus (play writer)
i. Usually, characters wearing masks & chorus (choir)- The chorus “spoke” the lines through the singing, but Aeschylus was the first to have characters that actually spoke to each other without the Greek chorus.
4. Genres
a. Greeks were the first to distinguish genres of Tragedy & Comedy
5. Math & Science (Note: Father means the first to put ideas into writing)
a. Father of Math was Pythagoras
i. Pythagorean theorem
ii. ∏ = 3.14…. infinite # he created  suggested infinity (now it is called “irrational” number)
iii. Pythagoras believed that numbers were divine because only infinite things are divine so he began a “Math religion” – He thought working out math problems was like praying or meditating & the more you worked out a problem, the closer you got to the divine.
iv. His symbol is the pentagram which was worn for the “Math religion”
b. Father of Geometry was Euclid
i. His books are the only ones that have survived
c. Father of Medicine was Hippocrates
i. Hippocratic Oath
ii. Theurgy  movement of the gods/divine
1. Idea that medicine & religion were mixed
2. They never sought a natural cure, they always looked for a supernatural cure EX: Pretty woman who had a stomach ache was because Athena was jealous
iii. Hippocrates was the 1st to DENY theurgy and 1st to suggest natural cures rather than supernatural
iv. He invented the open-air hospital  he put the hospitals on a hill with lots of sunshine. The people got better, but NOT because of their knowledge of germs
v. As a result of open-air hospital, the life expectancy rose from mid 30s  80s, but only for this brief period of 150 years. The Roman empire came around for approximately 1000 years and the life expectancy went back down to 50s