2. Miletus

3. Miletus

4. Miletus
history of settlements:
neolithic age (3500-)– small settlements, near springs; grazing economy
Bronze age
Minoan pottery (from Crete) c. 1900
Mycenaean c (destroyed)
-- Linear B tablet from Mycenaean Pylos mentions ‘women from Miletus’

5. Miletus
history of settlements:
Dark Age (c ): legends that men came from Athens, killed men at Miletus and ‘married’ their widows (an explanation for long-standing alliance of Miletus and Athens: Miletus was thought to be a colony of Athens)
Archaic Age (c ): Miletus joined with 11 other cities to become the ‘Ionian league’
Thales: c BCE

6. Miletus
history of settlements:
Persian rule at Miletus:
547 BCE Cyrus of Persia defeats Croesus of Lydia -> Miletus under Persian control
499BCE Miletus’ leader Aristagoras leads revolt of Ionian cities vs. Persian king Darius. Darius crushes the revolt, kills men of Miletus and sells women and children into slavery.
Phrynichus’ tragedy; The Capture of Miletus produced at Athens. (Athenians fined him: Herodotus )

7. Miletus
Classical
479 BCE Greeks, led by Athens, defeat Persian invasion -> end of Persian control of Miletus
-> Miletus starts sending colonies of its own, especially around the Black Sea
-> Robust city planning – Hippodamus (c BCE)

8. Thales (source: Diogenes Laertes, Lives of the Philosophers, 1.1)
Phoenician or ‘genuine Milesian family’?
explained the movement of the Ursa minor (Phoenican traders use this constellation for navigation)

9. Thales (source: Diogenes Laertes, Lives of the Philosophers, 1.1)
astronomy in general: eclipses, solstices
immortality of the soul
soul or life exists in objects (magnet, amber)
learned geometry (‘earth measuring’) from Egyptians ->how to use a circle to draw a perfect right triangle -> measured height of pyramids by measuring their shadow

10. Thales (source: Diogenes Laertes, Lives of the Philosophers, 1.1)
overall, does not use ideas about gods to explain the world (vs. Homer, Hesiod).
-- what did the old woman say when he fell in the ditch?

11. Miletus city plan
c. 470 BCE

12. Athens’ port Piraeus, Hippodamian plan