1. What do you notice when looking at the map of Ancient Greece?

2. Ancient Greece
The Land of Hellenes
Location
Located in the Southeastern corner of Europe
Dominated by the seas surrounding it
Landscape
Very rugged
Mountains cover almost 75% of the land
30% of the land can be cultivated, and only
20% can be classified as good agricultural land
Mountain ranges make travel difficult
Mountain ranges make Greece difficult to conquer
Isolation
Timber, essential for fuel and construction,
especially for shipbuilding, was plentiful
Greece is not abundant in mineral deposits
no major rivers and a few minor rivers in Greece that flow year round and few lakes, ponds, and springs
Climate
Semi-arid, with long, hot, dry summers, and short, cool, moist winters

4. The Minoans of Crete
Early Minoan – c – 2000BC
Middle Minoan – c – 1550 BC
Late Minoan – c BC
What attracts settlers to island of Crete? Advantages?
Farmers
Economic cycle driven by food surplus
Bronze?
Palace of Knossos
Distinctive Minoan architecture
Administrative, Religious, Residential, Storage
Frescoes
Seismic Activity
Plate tectonics – Earthquakes & Volcanoes
Was Crete the mythical continent of Atlantis?

5. The Labyrinth
Myth or Reality?
Minotaur
King Minos of Knossos
Imprisons son in a labyrinth
Human sacrifice to Minotaur (from Athens)
Theseus – the slayer of the Minotaur
Bull Dancers
Ritual sacrifice?

6. After the Persian Wars
Peloponnesian War ( BC) – (Think: Civil War)
Sparta v. Athens
Peloponnesian League v. Delian League
Basic differences between Sparta and Athens?
What accounts for the divisiveness of the Greeks?
Thucydides?!!
Rise of Athens
Pericles (c BC)
‘Democracy’
“we judge the man who takes no part at all
[in public affairs] a useless, not just a ‘quiet’ person”
Define ‘citizen’ in Athens
The Acropolis of Athens
Parthenon

7. Trade Festivals Life in the Golden Age
olive oil, wine, in exchange for grain and other items
trade brought prosperity, population growth, colonization
Festivals
Sense of being Greek prevailed among all Greeks
Olympic Games – ‘Panhellenic’
Religion
Polytheism
Atheism was treason, illogical
Deities: Zeus, Athena, Apollo, & many others
worship tied to patriotism and civic poleis
Cults – Oracle of Delphi
Arts
Theatre
Architecture
Balance, proportion and rationality of design
Family & Society
Patriarchal
Aristocratic
Slavery
Homosexuality

8. Classical Greece
Philosophers
Emphasized ‘natural laws,’ not gods or goddesses
power of reason (logic), rational thinking, look deeper…
Socrates
question assumptions, always
reject conventional wisdom
emphasize ‘dialogue’
search for universal truth
Plato
writer of philosophical dialogues – The Trial of Socrates
founder of the Academy in Athens
lectured on politics, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology
Themes
best possible for of government
role of heredity & enviro on intelligence & personality
distinction between knowledge and true belief
Aristotle
student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great
wrote book on physics, poetry, politics 7 government, zoology, biology, logic, rhetoric
One of the few in history who studied almost every subject known/ possible at the time