1. Chap 5 – The Height of Greek Civilization
Section 1: Quest for Beauty and Meaning

2. Building for the Gods
The Parthenon – the temple to Athena built on the summit of the Acropolis in Athens – best exemplifies classical Greek architecture.
The Parthenon’s graceful proportions perfectly balance width, height, length, exemplifying the Greek ideal of the “golden mean.”

3. Greek Arts
In both painting and sculpture, the Greeks excelled at portraying the human form.
Greek sculpture, like Greek architecture, reached its height in Athens during the time of Pericles.
The great sculpture Phidias was in charge of the Parthenon’s sculptures and carved the towering statue of Athena that was placed inside.

4. Drama and Theatre
The Greeks were the first people to write and perform plays, presented twice a year to honor Dionysus.
The earliest Greek plays were tragedies, in which the lead character struggles against fate only to be doomed to an unhappy ending.

5. Drama and Theatre (cont.)
Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy shows how the consequences of one’s deeds are carried down generation to generation; its moral is that the law of the community, not personal revenge, should decide punishment.
Sophocles, the next great tragedian, accepted human suffering as unavoidable but stressed human courage and compassion; his Oedipus Rex depicts the plight of Oedipus, a king doomed to kill his father and marry his mother.

6. Drama and Theatre (cont.)
Euripides, the last great Greek tragedian, focused on the human characteristics that bring disaster upon them.
Eventually the Greeks also wrote comedies, plays with humorous themes and happy endings; Aristophanes, the most famous writer of comedies, created imaginative social satire.

7. The Olympic Games
Believing that healthy bodies made the best use of nature’s gifts, the ancient Greeks stressed athleticism in their school curriculum.
The ancient Greeks held the Olympic Games in Olympia every four years to honor Zeus; trade and war stopped while the Games were going on.

8. The Olympic Games (cont.)
Male athletes came from all over the Greek-speaking world to compete in the Olympics; women were allowed to participate in Games that honored the goddess Hera.
In keeping with the Greek emphasis on the individual, Olympic competition took the form of individual rather than team events.

9. Section 2: The Greek Mind

10. The Sophists
Sophists, professional teachers who provided higher education in the 400s B.C., rejected the belief that gods and goddesses influenced human behavior
They asserted that “man is the measure of all things” and that truth is different for each individual.

11. Socrates
Unlike the Sophists, Socrates believed in absolute rather than relative truth; he was interested mainly in the process by which people learned how to think for themselves.
To encourage his students to clear away mistaken ideas and discover the truth, Socrates would ask his students pointed questions and then oppose the students’ answers with clear logical arguments; this teaching technique became known as the Socratic method.

12. Plato
Plato wrote the earliest book on political science, The Republic, in which he presented his plan for the ideal society and government.
Plato disliked Athenian democracy, believing that giving lower classes too much freedom resulted in social disorder; he wanted only the most intelligent and best educated citizens to participate in government.

13. Aristotle
Aristotle taught the golden mean, an ethical principle that affirmed living moderately.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle stressed the value of knowledge gained through the senses; Aristotle’s method of inquiry dominated European science for centuries.

14. Aristotle (cont.)
Many of Aristotle’s writings examined the advantages and disadvantages of political structures
His own ideal was a balance of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

15. Writers of History
Herodotus, who was the first historian to separate fact from legend, is still considered the “father of history.”
He traveled throughout the Persian Empire and Greek colonies, asking questions, recording answers, and checking the reliability of his sources.

16. Writers of History (cont.)
Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian War, is regarded as the first scientific historian because he completely rejected the idea that the deities played a part in human history.

17. The First Scientists
The ancient Greeks believed that the world is ruled by natural laws and that human beings can discover these laws by using reason.
The Greeks also believed that they could find absolutely certain and eternal knowledge through the study of math.

18. The First Scientists
Among the prominent scientists were Thales, who studies astronomy and math, and Pythagoras, who explored the nature of numbers and founded the theorem about the relationship of sides of right-angled triangles.
Hippocrates, often called “the father of medicine,” was the first healer to view medicine as a science.

19. Section 3: Alexander’s Empire

20. Rise of Macedonia
Crowned king in 359 B.C., Philip II of Macedonia pledged to create a strong standing army, unify the quarreling Greek city-states under his rule, and destroy the Persian Empire.
The Greek city-states, weakened by the Peloponnesian War, could not cooperate in resisting Philip.

21. Rise of Macedonia (cont.)
By 338 B.C. Philip had conquered all of Greece except Sparta.
In 336 B.C., just as he was ready to carry out his plans to lead the Greeks and Macedonians in a war against Persia, Philip was murdered; his son, Alexander the Great, became king.

22. Alexander’s Conquests
Experienced as a commander in the Macedonian army, the 20-year-old Alexander won victories over the Persians in western Asia Minor and Syria.
Next, Alexander’s troops invaded Egypt and Mesopotamia; they went on to capture the key cities of the Persian Empire.

23. Alexander’s Conquests (cont.)
Before his death in 323 B.C., Alexander’s empire extended to the Indus River Valley.
Alexander’s vision was to create an empire the would combine the best of Greek and Persian cultures.

24. Divided Domain
Following Alexander’s death, three of his generals eventually divided his empire into separate domains.

25. Hellenistic Culture
The Greek language and culture spread in the lands Alexander had conquered; there, the Hellenic ways mixed with elements of Middle Eastern culture to form the Hellenistic culture.
Hellenistic culture was concentrated in cities, particularly Alexandria, which was laid out logically and whose big harbor and highly visible lighthouse gave it a strong trade position.

26. Hellenistic Culture (cont.)
In Hellenistic society, professional Greek soldiers and bureaucrats – rather than being loyal to their king or kingdom – moved from place to place.
Upper-class Greek women could move about freely, learn how to read and write, and enter professional occupations.

27. Hellenistic Culture (cont.)
Hellenistic philosophers focused on personal behavior, especially the question of how to achieve piece of mind.
Hellenistic sculptures showed people in the grip of powerful emotions; Hellenistic playwrights usually wrote comedies rather than tragedies.
Hellenistic scientists performed many experiments and developed new theories in astronomy, anatomy, math, and physics.