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In the first lecture for this week, we discussed early Greek civilizations, including the Minoans and the Mycenaeans. If you remember, both of these early civilizations were eventually destroyed, leading to a dark age full of civil war and anarchy. However, eventually the Greeks got it together and laid the foundation for a new civilization. This new civilization was made up of independent city-states that shared quite a few commonalities. They all included a polis that gave people a political identity and helped to organize the layout of cities. The city-states also tended to have the same categories of citizen and non-citizens for their residents. All of the city-states also participated in the Olympic games and even shared a similar military organization in the form of hoplite warfare. But despite their commonalities, two Greek city-states eventually developed as the most important and most powerful out of all of these city-states. These city-states were Sparta and Athens. The goal of the Spartans was to maintain stability and conformity above all else. And as a result, they emphasized political and social order, which was maintained through an emphasis on the military. The lives of Spartans was rigidly organized. At birth, all children were examined by state officials who decided whether they were fit to live. Those judged unfit were left outside to die. At the age of seven, boys and girls were placed under the control of the state to be educated. This education was mostly physical and focused on exercise, gymnastics, and other physical drills and competitions. At the age of 25, girls were returned-- or excuse me-- at the age of 12, girls were returned to their homes to focus on their domestic education, while boys were placed in barracks to continue their military education. In the barracks, boys were subjected to harsh discipline to make them tough and given an education that stressed military training and obedience to authority. At age 18, Spartan males were enrolled in the army for regular military service. And although they were allowed to marry, Spartan men continued to live in the barracks and ate their meals in public dining halls with their fellow soldiers. The meals were very simple. One of the most famous recipes was for the Spartan black broth, which consisted of a piece of pork broiled in blood, salt, and vinegar. Upon tasting this broth, one visitor to Sparta wrote that he now understood why Spartan men were not afraid to die. At the age of 30, Spartan males were recognized as citizens and were allowed to vote and live at home. They remained in the army, however, until the age of 60. The political system in Sparta was known as an oligarchy, which means that a small group of Spartans held control of the government. This is different from a democracy in that a democracy expects all citizens with political rights to actively participate in the governance of their state. In Sparta, all male citizens over the age of 30 were members of a citizen's assembly known as the Apella. They were allowed to vote on laws and policies created by the elite political officials and elect some of the officials, but that was the extent of their political activity. The much smaller group of elite political officials who did most of the governing fell into two groups. There were two kings who inherited their power in the sense that they became kings because their fathers were kings before them. But these kings didn't have unlimited power. They made decisions in collaboration with a group of 28 elders over the age of 60. Together, these 28 elders and the two kings made up the Gerousia. The 28 elders were elected by members of the Apella and served for life. But only upper-class Spartans could become elders. The Gerousia helped to create laws and policies, and they also served as the top judicial court for Spartans and could hand down severe sentences like death or exile. In addition to the Gerousia were the five Ephors. The Ephors, like the elders of the Gerousia, were elected and also only came from the upper elite class. But unlike the Gerousia, Ephors were only elected for one year and could not hold that position again afterwards. Ephors were responsible for supervising the educational system of Spartan youths and acted as guardians of Spartan tradition. If we look at the Spartan government altogether, we see that even though elections and voting occurred in Sparta, only the small number of Spartan elite could run the government. This is what made it an oligarchy rather than a democracy. I want to talk briefly about Spartan women. Spartan male citizens focus most of their time and energy on the military. Spartan men could marry at the age of 18, but they had to remain in the military barracks until age 30, as I just mentioned a few minutes ago. And even after that, they were expected to devote themselves to Spartan brotherhood. Spartan men were so focused on the military that most didn't even farm their own lands. Instead, they relied heavily on the enslaved helots to do it. Due to the fact that Spartan men were so devoted to their military duties and fellow soldiers, Spartan women had greater freedom than women in other Greek city-states. The fact that their husbands were away allowed Spartan women primary control over their households and young children. They were allowed to own and inherit, land and they often supervised large estates. As with men, physical health was very important for women. They were encouraged to exercise and remain fit in order to bear and raise healthy children. Spartan women upheld the strict military values of their city-states. They expected their husbands and sons to be brave in war. There was actually one famous Spartan story in which a Spartan mother told her son, who's going off to war, that he should come back either carrying his shield victorious or on it. To make their military state secure, the Spartans deliberately turned their back on the outside world. Foreigners who might bring in new ideas were discouraged from visiting Sparta. And except for military reasons, Spartans were discouraged from traveling abroad where they might pick up new threatening ideas and practices. Spartan citizens were discouraged from pursuing philosophy, literature, the arts, or any other subject that might encourage new ideas that could undermine the stability and conformity of the state. Raised from early childhood to believe that total loyalty to the Spartan state was the basic reason for existence, Spartans viewed their military as the foundation of their society. As we'll see, this was very different from the Athenians, who emphasized individual differences and stressed freedom. Let's turn now to look at Athens. Unlike the Spartans, the Athenians emphasized political and social individuality and freedom. By 594 BCE, Athens began developing a democracy under the leadership of a man named Solon. A democracy is a form of government in which the people share equally in the governing of their communities. They created their own political institutions and selected their own leaders. Unlike Sparta where a small group of elite men made most government decisions, the Athenians expected all male citizens to participate in the government of their city-state. The Athenian government included a citizen assembly called the Ekklesia. All male citizens over the age of 18 belonged to the Ekklesia and could vote for officials. Sound familiar? While the US government isn't a true democracy, it's actually a Democratic Republic. But some of our political practices and traditions come from the Athenian democracy. This includes the practice of allowing all citizens over the age of 18 to vote and participate in politics. But in order to make the Athenian government more democratic, they also had a boule, which was made up of 400 to 500 citizens, 100 from each class. Boule members voted on issues of war, peace, and public policy, and other citizens could come before the boule to voice their complaints and ideas. This organization made it possible for all male citizens in Athens to hold office and participate in government, and many did at least once in their lives. The archons were elected officials who held executive power over the government and presided over the boule. These archons were originally only members of the wealthy elite. But over time, this position also opened up so that men from all classes could be elected archon. During the archaic age of Greek civilization, the Greeks began to expand outside of the mainland to other regions of the Mediterranean, primarily for economic reasons. This made a lot of Greeks very wealthy, but it also meant that they bumped into other aggressive civilizations and empires. In my lectures for last week, we discussed the Persians. If you remember, the Persians took over the area of Mesopotamia after the Syrians and the Chaldeans fell. And around 490 BCE, at that point, the Persians had created the largest empire the world had seen up to then. Now, after the archaic age of Greek civilization came the classical age. This age represents the years 500 to 338 BCE. And during the classical age, the Greeks began to butt heads with the Persians. When writing about the Persians, the Greeks compared their different forms of government. They recognized that, whereas the Greek city-states had citizens who controlled their different governments, the Persians were ruled exclusively by kings, and their subjects didn't have a say in what happened to them. The Greeks tended to look down on this as inferior to their way of doing things, and they saw the Persians as a threat to their forms of government and way of life. In short, the Greeks and the Persians did not like each other at all. Just to give you an example of this, in one Greek text from the time, the author records a conversation between a Greek and a Persian. The Persian expresses surprise that the Greeks would raise spears against his emperor. The Greek responds that the Persians, quote, "understand how to be slaves, but they know nothing of freedom." He goes on to tell the Persian, quote, "Have you tasted freedom, you would advise us to fight not only with spears but with axes," end quote. In the years leading up to the Persian Wars, the Greeks created colonies on the edges of the Persian empire and alliances that threatened the Persian king. Finally, in 490 BCE, the Persian King Darius had enough of the Greeks, and he sailed across the Aegean Sea and attacked the Athenians. And if you want to look at my screen here, I was talking about those Greek colonies being set up along the Persian empire. This yellow is what I'm talking about here. And when King Darius is going to attack, this is the Athenian sea he's going to be crossing, which, as you can see, is not a huge distance. So in 490 BCE, King Darius, he crosses the Aegean Sea. He attacks the Athenians. The Persian and Greek armies were very different during this war. The Persians had lightly armed troops who were more mobile and flexible and relied on attacks from a distance, often through bows and arrows or by throwing things using catapults. The Greek hoplites, on the other hand, as we discussed, were armed with heavy shields and relied on spears and swords used at close range. When the Persians invaded, the Athenian army was outnumbered, but the Athenian hoplites charged the Persian army in their phalanx formation and managed to crush the Persian forces. Now, although the Athenian army won, they knew that the Persians would be back. Consequently, many of the Greek city-states decided to create an alliance known as the Hellenic League under the leadership of Spartan military leaders. I'm sure you can understand why they chose the Spartans to lead this allied defensive league. Sure enough, 10 years later in 480 BCE, the Persians invaded again. Their military forces were massive. Close to about 150,000 troops, 700 naval ships, and hundreds of supply ships invaded Greece. The Greek plan was for an army of 9,000 Spartan troops to hold the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae, which is right here on our screen if you're looking at the map. And this would give the 300 Greek ships a chance to destroy the Persian supply ships that were coming in this area right here. The Greeks knew that the Persian army was depending on these supply ships to keep fighting. The Spartan army of 9,000 soldiers held the Persian army of 150,000 soldiers for three days. In true Spartan form, when they were told that Persian arrows would darken the sky in battle, one Spartan warrior supposedly remarked that, this is good news, we'll fight in the shade. Unfortunately for the Spartan army, a traitor told the Persians about a mountain path that the Persians could use to outflank the Spartan forces right here. The Spartan army fought to their last man. This only left the 300 Greek ships over here to defend the rest of Greece. And although the Greek ships were outnumbered 300 to 700, they managed to outmaneuver the Persian fleet and defeat the Persians. Now, after the defeat of the Persians, the Athenians continued to develop their democracy to make it even more inclusive of all people, regardless of economic class or social position. This was likely in response to the Persian threat. They recognized that, if the Persians had won, they would have taken over and destroyed the Athenian democracy. The Athenians would have had a king. With this possibility in mind, the Athenians tried to make their form of government even stronger, more inclusive, and more widespread. In the 460s BCE, an Athenian named Pericles was elected, and he used his political power to give members of the Ekklesia more say in their government. Instead of just voting yes or no on laws created by other officials, they too could now propose and change laws. In addition to this, Pericles created a policy that reimbursed Athenian citizens for the cost of traveling to and attending assembly meetings. This made it easier for poorer citizens to participate in government. And as a result, thousands of Athenians attended these assembly meetings. But while the emphasis in the Athenian city-state on true democracy made it so that a diverse group of citizens ran the government, which was great, it put Athens and Sparta at odds with each other. After the Persian wars, the Spartans left the defensive league and went back to their old ways of relative seclusion. In contrast, the Athenians forced many of the other Greek city-states in the defensive league to remain. The Athenians began to intervene in their politics and impose taxes on them in the name of spreading democracy. The Athenians believed that their form of government was ideal and made them natural leaders of the Greeks. Eventually, the Spartans took note of the Athenians' growing power and began to feel threatened by it. In 431 BCE, tension between the Athenians and Spartans erupted in the Peloponnesian War. The Peloponnesian War wasn't one continuous battle. Instead, it was a series of battles that took place over a period of about 30 years. These battles divided the Greek city-states, with some city-states allied with Athens, some allied with Sparta, and some who remained neutral. In the end, Sparta defeated Athens and ended the war. But the conflict continued between the Greek city-states for years afterwards. Now, we often see this issue throughout history. The Greek city-states were unified when they were fighting a common enemy-- the Persians. But once they defeated the Persians, they began to bicker with each other. In the short term, this bickering caused the Peloponnesian War that we just discussed. In the long term, it weakened the Greek city-states, making them susceptible to attack. By this time, you may have noticed a bit of a trend. Infighting weakened and ultimately cause the downfall of the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and would ultimately cause the downfall of the Greek city-states. In 338 BCE, King Philip of Macedonia, a region located to the north of the Greek city-states up here, conquered the Greeks. And we'll talk more about him in my next lecture. Before we end, I want to talk briefly about culture in the Greek city-states. It was during the classical age that literature, art, drama, and philosophy reached its pinnacle. Writing about Greece was-- or excuse me-- writing about history was a Greek creation. Prior to this, history was more about myths and heroic tales. People simply didn't place as much value as we do today on what we consider to be factual information. This changed with a man named Herodotus who wrote a history about the Persian wars, which is considered to be the first real work of history for Western civilization. Herodotus developed a new approach to studying the past that emphasized the need to collect and interpret multiple sources and focus on why events happened rather than simply making the gods responsible for everything. In his history of the Persian Wars, Herodotus describes the origins of the conflict and the resulting battles between the Greeks and the Persians. Herodotus traveled widely for his information and gathered stories from different people about the wars. In fact, the information I gave you about the war between the Persians and the Greeks came primarily from what Herodotus wrote. In addition to writing about history, the Greeks also created the concept of drama as we know it. The actors of Greek plays were usually two or three male actors who wore masks to act out all the different parts, and a chorus stood in the background and sang a narrative to explain what the actors were doing. Plays were presented in outdoor theaters called amphitheaters, and you can see an image of this on the right side of your screen here. We still use this setup today for plays and different performances like concerts. The most common Greek dramas were tragedies, which were plays based on the suffering of the main character. And they usually ended in disaster. Greek plays were used to educate citizens. And for this reason, it was supported and funded by the government. The audience was supposed to recognize a lesson or moral in the play. Often they were supposed to identify where the main character in a tragedy had gone wrong. These morals included the idea that evil acts breed more evil acts or that everyone suffers or that humans can only operate within the limitations imposed by the gods. One of the most famous Greek playwrights was a guy named Sophocles. His most famous play is Oedipus the King. And in this story, a man named Oedipus accidentally kills his own father and unknowingly marries his own mother. This is a good example of a tragedy. Another type of Greek drama was comedy. Comedic plays tended to deal more openly with current events, including sexual scandals, political corruption, and popular fads. In fact, they just kind of made fun of everything in society. One of the greatest comedic playwrights was the Athenian Aristophanes. Aristophanes made fun of everything from famous philosophers, like Socrates, to politicians and other playwrights. No one was safe from Aristophanes. And as a result, he was regularly dragged into court to defend himself against the people he made fun of. Now, I want to stop here for just a moment to show you a quick video by Dr. Symes about Greek comedies and their connections to our modern forms of satire. Make sure you pay attention, because, as before, this video will be followed by a quiz question. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] - I don't know about you, but I get most of my news from watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. And for the people in ancient Athens in the fifth century BC, pretty much the same thing can be said about going to the theater. In fact, the theater in ancient Athens was pretty much a mirror image of popular culture and entertainment in ancient Athens. The theater was built to be big enough to contain the entire voting population-- male, for the most part-- I mean, obviously, male in ancient Athens. The theater was big enough to contain the entire voting population of Athens. And so that when Athenians went to the theater, what they saw in the theater was essentially their own politics enacted on stage. This was true in the case of tragedy because often tragic poets-- like Euripides, for example-- would use ancient myths to frame a political argument and to defuse any criticism that might come their way, so that rather than talking about the disastrous war with Sparta, they would talk about the disastrous war in Troy. But everybody knew what they were really talking about. However, comic poets like Aristophanes were less concerned about having to hide behind the guise of myth in making their political points. So the comedies of Aristophanes are extraordinarily hard hitting, up to date, cutting edge critiques of not just Athenian public policy and political decisions, but also of satires on the leading figures of Athenian life, like Socrates, for example, who is made fun in a really kind of both hilarious and nasty way in the clouds. So if you watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the version of Socrates that you get there is very much, in many ways, the kind of version of Socrates you get in Aristophanes-- the clouds. So Aristophanes is adopting an older form of comedy that the Greeks called the satyr play and making it into something that was very much of the moment and very, very, very obviously political. And indeed, this word "satyr play" is what gives us our word, "satire." So in many ways, comedy, as it developed in ancient Athens, was a vehicle for cultural critique. So the kinds of things that we see every day on Comedy Central and in particular on The Daily Show where we see real news but we see that news filtered through the comic lens of Jon Stewart and his brilliant staff of writers, that effect of that political satire is very much the effect of Aristophanes' political satire in ancient Athens. [END PLAYBACK] Philosophy also came into its own during the classical age. "Philosophy" is a Greek word that literally means "love of wisdom." Much of Greek philosophy was focused on trying to explain the world and the way men should conduct themselves in it. One of the most famous Greek philosophers, who was just mentioned in our video, was named Socrates. And he believed each person, regardless of class or education, was capable of learning and obtaining knowledge. He believed that the only thing necessary for one to find this knowledge was a willingness to critically examine the world around them. One of his most famous sayings was the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates created a method of learning and instruction called the Socratic method. In the Socratic method, the instructor uses questions to lead his students to the answer. In this manner, students learn through their own reasoning and logic. Socrates' stated goal was to help humans better understand and to live according to the ethics of a democratic society. But as you can imagine, his approach of constantly questioning everything could lead to the undermining and lack of confidence in certain traditions and political institutions and laws. Unfortunately, in 399 BCE, the democratically elected courts of Athens condemned Socrates to death for denying the gods, for disloyalty to Athens, and for supposedly corrupting the youth through his ideas. And although his friends tried to help him escape, Socrates insisted on following the laws and remaining in prison, proving himself true to his own principles. He died by the punishment decided by the courts, which was self-administered poison. And it is bitterly paradoxical that Socrates, whose freedom to question the world should have come from Athenian democracy, was put to death by the democratic processes. Frankly, it's a lesson that we should continue to keep in mind for modern Western society, which continues to idealize democracy. Let's talk a little bit about religion in classical Greece. So Greek religion was integrated into every aspect of daily life. And besides the government buildings, temples dedicated to the gods and goddesses were the major buildings of Greek society. The Greeks believed that the goddesses and gods controlled the entire world. And as a result, it was important for Greeks to perform religious rituals and worship the gods correctly, not only for their individual sake but for the sake of the entire community. In other words, if each person didn't worship the gods and goddesses correctly, the entire world might go to hell in a handbasket. Religion and correct worship were necessary for the well-being of everyone. The Greeks believed in 12 chief gods and goddesses who supposedly lived on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. This means that the Greeks were polytheistic. They believed in multiple gods and goddesses. And there were 12 main gods and goddesses, as I just mentioned, that are listed here on your screen. The 12 Olympian gods were common to all Greeks, and each city usually identified one of the 12 as its guardian. For example, Athena was the patron goddess of Athens. The worship of these gods normally included both prayer and gifts. Greeks made ritual sacrifices of animals and place crops and other gifts at shrines dedicated to individual gods and goddesses depending on their present needs. For example, if you were going on a sea voyage, you might make a sacrifice to Poseidon, the god of the sea. The Greeks also constantly wanted to know the will of the gods. The most famous method of finding this out was through the use of an oracle, who was a priest or priestess who was able to communicate with the gods through divination. Divination was a ritual that allowed the oracle to gain understanding of a divine action or to see the future. The most famous oracle was located in Delphi. The priestess there listened to questions and then offered a response that was believed to come from the god Apollo. Local priests then interpreted her response for the person asking the question. All sorts of people traveled to Delphi to consult with the oracle there. For example, a government official might ask whether they should undertake a military expedition, or a wife might go to ask if she'll have a child in the future. What's interesting and perhaps slightly amusing is that modern geologists have found evidence of hallucinogenic gases preserved within the stones of the temple where the Oracle of Delphi was located. These gases likely came from two fault lines that lie near the area, and it seems likely that they were very much affecting the prophecies that the oracle gave. One thing that we can say for sure is that the Greeks were a very interesting group of people, and they would continue to heavily influence later civilizations, including the Hellenic civilization, which we'll discuss next week.