1. Ancient Greece

4. Geography
EGYPT – banks of Nile flooded with silt; dry climate preserved bodies and structures
GREECE – water, mountains led to independent regional cities: fragmented social & cultural life;
fine clay to make pottery: vibrant red and dark
black in classical Greek pottery

6. POLIS – independent city state
Greatest loyalty to polis, not Greece
Center of all political, religious, social, philosophic and artistic life
Origin of word “politics”

7. AGORA – “open space” = market and
political center of polis
Most marble statues & monuments later burned in kilns by conquering Ottomans to make lime needed for cement or plaster (same in Rome later)

8. Mediterranean Diet
Olives & olive oil
Beans and lentils
Wine
Goat milk (lower fat than dairy cheese)
Grains
Fish, especially tuna
Little meat

9. 3 Periods of Early Greece
Heroic Age (1,000 – 750 BCE)
Age of Colonization (750 – 600 BCE)
- Italy & especially Asia
- pottery now with animals & fantastic beasts
Archaic Period (600 – 480 BCE)
- Egyptian influence: life-sized statues

10. Religion
Greek gods differ from other Western religions (Zeus main god)
None represent supreme or ultimate good or evil (Satan in Christianity & Judaism)
Gods used to explain natural phenomena & peoples’ emotions
Human morality problems needed human, not divine, solutions: mainly art and
literature

11. HOMER Not even sure he existed First figure in Western literature
Passed down orally & then written
Iliad & Odyssey
Humans are in control of their own destiny, not the gods
Theme is consequences of action by humans themselves

12. Homer’s epics of Iliad and Odyssey helped shape & establish the Greek identity, rooted in the common ancestry of Mycean ancestors in the works.

14. Art Mainly in Pottery
Early vases with geometric patterns(like woven baskets?) and triangular humans
Later added more realistic humans forms and animals

17. Black figures on red background…

18. ..changed to red figures on black

19. First time in history artists represented human figure true to nature
Life-Size Statues
Earliest were stiff & formal, modeled on Egyptian statues
Soon focused on natural human form, often nude
Relief sculpture on stone slabs
First time in history artists represented human figure true to nature

20. Birth of History Previously, historians had only recorded events.
Herodotus – “Father of History”
Wrote entertaining, lengthy account of the 449 BCE Persian Wars – Greece defeated the much more powerful Persians!
Asked HOW Greeks could possibly have beaten the stronger Persians? (Answer: modest Greek character; Persians had excessive pride & ambition)
Asked WHY there was a war in the first place.
Believed can only write history if personally observed by historian.

21. “historia” in Greek = story
Herodotus also wanted an investigation to explain WHY
We’re doing the same in this course!

22. Greece’s great victory in Persian War led to the greatest period in Greece – the Classical or Golden Age