Ch. 4 continued

Important Dates:

1600-1100 B.C. – the Bronze Age, which was a time when people started using Bronze and copper for weapons.

1200 B.C. – Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey

1150-750 B.C. - This time period was known as the Dark Ages, because Greek Culture died down and writing fell out of use.

776 B.C. – this is when the first “Olympic Games” were held.

750-700 B.C. – Greek colonies were formed as well as the invention of the Greek alphabet

621 B.C. – Draco established the Draconian Code,

600-371 B.C. –

594 B.C. –

508 B.C. – The first time in recorded history that a civilization rebelled against their leader.

490-371 B.C. –

490 B.C. –

480 B.C. –

480-430 B.C. –

461-429 B.C. –

447-432 B.C. –

431-404 B.C. –

339 B.C. –

336 B.C. –

Important People/Immortals:

Homer: He was a Greek poet who wrote the Odyssey and the Allied.

Odysseus: A Greek hero who fought in the Trojan War and got lost on his way home, according to the Odyssey, and fought/encountered various monsters.

 

Zeus: the King of the gods, he is the son of Kronos, Titan lord of time. He is the god of the sky and lightning.

Athena: She is said to have been born straight from Zeus’s brain. She is goddess of wisdom and battle strategy, as well as the patron goddess of Athens.

 

Draco: introduced the Council of 500 and made unforgiving laws. He was also the first legislator in Athens.

 

Solon: He was an Athenian lawmaker, who successfully abolished many of Draco’s laws. Solon is credited for laying Athens’s foundation for democracy.

 

Pisistratus: He was a tyrant who ceased power by telling the people that he was accompanied by the goddess Athena. He also got the support of common folks by making them more important than they ever were. This triggered democracy and made Athens a rich and powerful city-state.

 

 

 Cleisthenes: Another politician that ruled during the Aristocracy, hover instead of continuing the tradition of the Aristocrats, he invented democracy and gave the common people a voice in government and let the people rule themselves.

Darius (the Great): Ruled the Persian Empire at its peak, and divided the empire into provinces. He also appointed governors, called satraps, to govern each individual province.

 

Xerxes: A great Persian king who built an army of 2,000,000 troops (the largest the ancient world had ever seen) to conquer Greece

 

Pheidippides: A Greek courier, who ran from Marathon to Athens, He died shortly after his arrival after speaking the message “Joy to you, we’ve won! Joy to you!” His story inspired the marathon.

 

Themistocles: An Athenian war hero, he convinced the Greeks to build a fleet of triremes in order to save Athens from the Persian Army. He was able to defeat the Persians by tricking the Persians into fighting them in the Straits of Salamis.

 

 Pericles: elected after the Persian wars. He planned to rebuild the Parthenon and conquer Sparta. Also he treated his second wife as an equal, which was astonishing to many Greek citizens. 

 

Socrates: A Greek philosopher, accused of corrupting the youth of Athens. He invented the Socratic Method, which was based around asking why an individual thinks the way they do. He cared nothing for appearance. He was sentenced to death by being forced to drink hemlock. His most famous quote was “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” He was known for trying to get people to examine their life and question authority.

 

Plato: Plato was taught by Socrates and took up the thoughts of his teacher. He founded the most influential intellectual center in the ancient world, the Academy.

Aristotle: A student of Plato, who taught that each individual creature and organ was designed to carry out a specific function and that virtue came through fulfilling this function. His interests were biology, poetry, politics, and ethics.

 

Alexander the Great: A great general in the Greek army. He conquered many territories and even conquered the great Persian Empire

Places: be able to map the following

 

Athens, Sparta, the Ionian and Aegean Seas, Peloponnesus, Persian Empire, and Ionia

Government:

 

Monarchy- ruled by a single ruler, most often a king or queen

 

Democracy- all adult citizens get to have a say in politics. In Greece this applied only to males. It was introduced by Cleisthenes.

 

Oligarchy- Minority rules over the majority. One example of this is Sparta.

 

Aristocracy- A society in which the rich landowners, called aristocrats, dominate over the majority of common folk. The commoners were forced to do all of the manual labor and nobody could do anything that would have caused them to move up the social hierarchy.

 

Pericles’s three goals for Athens:

1.       Strengthen the Athenian democracy

2.       Build Athens an Empire

3.       Glorify Athens

 

Greek Art:

Sculpture: A piece of art made by carving rock in a particular pattern to make it look like something.

Architecture: Parthenon- most famous, grandest temple to the goddess Athena

 

Drama:

Comedy: A play that has a humorous aspect to it.

Tragedy: A play that is usually as shocking as a modern horror movie. It often contains a character falling from great heights.