Ancient Greek Culture: Philosophy and Arts

• Hellenic culture represents a high point in the world's history.
• The Classical Age produced remarkable achievements in fine arts and philosophy.
• The Greeks built on foundations laid by others, including the Egyptians and Phoenicians.
• The Greeks were pioneers in drama and lyric poetry.
• Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle defined most of the questions about the universe.
• Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides played a pathbreaking role in drama.
• Sappho and Pindar were poets.
• Phidias sculpted.
• Classical Age architects created enduring monuments.
• The Greeks displayed intellectual fearlessness and valued reason.
• They believed "Man is the measure."
• Legacies in intellectual and artistic activities rank with predecessors, the Hebrews, in religion and with successors, the Romans, in government and law.

Philosophy: The Love of Wisdom

• Greek philosophy included examination of human knowledge, not just logic.
• The ancient Greeks originated philosophy.
• Greek philosophy began in the sixth century BCE.
• Greek philosophy consists of the Pre-Socratic period and the Classical Age.
• The Pre-Socratic period extended from 600 BCE to the life of Socrates (470-399 BCE).
• The Classical Age extended from Socrates through about 300 BCE.

Pre-Socratic Philosophy

• Pre-Socratic philosophers investigated the origin and nature of the physical world.
• They focused less on truth or distinguishing between good and evil.
• Thales of Miletus, who lived in about 600, is the first philosopher whose writings have survived.
• In the 500s, thinkers analyzed the physical nature of the world.
• Democritus envisioned the atom as the fundamental building block of nature.
• The concept of law in the universe was the greatest contribution of the Pre-Socratics.
• Greeks believed the cosmos resulted from laws of causation, making it understandable and predictable.
• They conceived natural law to explain phenomena.
• Anaximander theorized natural evolution of species and a limitless, expanding universe.
• Hippocrates founded of scientific medicine for intellectual interests.
• He wished to teach people to observe life and was the first great empiricist in the natural sciences.
• He weighed and measured aspects of the world and arrived at general theories.

The Classical Age: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

• Socrates (470-399 BCE) focused on ethical and epistemological questions.
• He concentrated on human rationality rather than physical nature.
• The Socratic method emphasizes systematic questioning.
• Socrates believed intellectual excellence could be acquired.
• Plato (427-347 BCE) was Socrates' pupil and admirer.
• He joined his master in Athens a few years before Socrates's suicide.
• Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, and chose suicide over exile, a true Greek.
• Plato defended Socrates but had different views.
• Plato sought how the mind can experience and recognize Truth and ultimate reality.
• Plato concluded it could not beyond superficial point and ventured into politics.
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was a student of Plato but differed sharply in political views.
• Aristotle had interest in science and analysis of thought known as philosophy.
• Aristotle wrote Politics, Physics, and Metaphysics, and was also a first-rate mathematician, astronomer, founder of botany, and medical student.
• He was simply known as “the Master".
• He was a pagan saint and the greatest natural philosopher.
• Greek philosophy showed self-confidence, believing humans could understand the cosmos using reason and observation.
• The Greeks were the world's first scientists and were not overawed by the gods.
• They created gods in their own image.
• They sought to explain law through reason.

Greek Religion

• Most Greeks were not exposed to philosophy, and they turned to religion.
• Like other ancient peoples, the Greeks were polytheistic.
• Important Greek gods included Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, and Demeter.
• Greek gods were less threatening than others.
• The Greeks did not create a priestly class.
• After 500 BCE, priests and gods became symbolic.
• Even Zeus was treated casually.
• The gods of the classical Greeks were creatures molded in their own image.
• Greek religion was not revealed or from a holy book, and Greeks never had centralized authority.
• Greek religion was a series of rituals, like the American Fourth of July.
• Participating in rituals was an act of polis patriotism, not ethics.
• The educated focused on this world and defined good and evil.
• By the Classical Era, most no longer believed in immortality.
• Philosophy increasingly displaced religion.
• Mythic acts of the gods served a moral purpose by educating people on duties.
• Each polis had its own local deities and civic celebrations involving everyone.
• The gods did not control human destiny.
• Fate, an impersonal force, was above the gods.
• Classical philosophy prized the golden mean, avoiding extremes.
• Greeks distrusted radical measures and sought the good without claiming perfection.
• Hubris, false overconfidence, was dangerous.
• The gods were "setting him up."
• Disaster followed those who defied Fate or the gods.
• The tragedies by Sophocles dramatically express this expectation, particularly his trilogy about Oedipus Rex.

Arts and Culture: Oedipus Rex

• Greek classical tragedy was based on the conviction that Fate had the final word.
• Greek classical tragedy was on the belief that Man himself assured the punishments by reason of his fatal moral shortcomings.
• Sophocles' trilogy told the story of Oedipus, whose hubris led him into tragedy.
• Oedipus Rex was the son of King Laius, who tried to kill his baby in order to avoid the prophecy that Oedipus would kill his father and disgrace his mother.
• Wandering through greece, Oedipus killed his father in an argument and inadvertently married his mother, Jocasta.
• As a prize for freeing the city, Oedipus was married to the widowed queen Jocasta, his own mother.
• Oedipus Rex became king and fathered children with her, thus fulfilling the prophecy.
• Jocasta committed suicide after the secret was revealed.
• Oedipus blinded himself and was driven from the palace by public outrage.
• Oedipus at Colonus continues Oedipus' story.
• Colonus relates how the daughter helped her father comprehend and prepare for death.
• The story demonstrates that intelligence and will alone were not sufficient for a good life; compassion was also needed for a good life.
• Antigone, overcame her revulsion and elected to share her fathers misery.

The Arts and Literature

• Classical Greeks gave three major art forms to Western civilization: drama, lyric poetry, and classical architecture.
• Drama arose in Athens in the 600s, depicting myths about the gods.
• Lyric poetry originated in the Pre-Classical Era.
• Sappho, a woman from Lesbos, represented lyric poetry best.
• Classical architecture included temples, found around the Mediterranean shores, in Athens, and in many other poleis.
• Besides originating forms, the Greeks excelled in epic poetry (Iliad and Odyssey), sculpture, dance, ceramic wares, and painting.
• Greek art harmonized parts with the whole.
• They depicted ideal human beauty with realism and balanced grace with strength.
• Classical Age models have remained important to Western artists.
• Most Hellenic art was anonymous.
• Artists contributed to the polis, like citizens paying taxes and working on roads.
• Pericles erected the Parthenon as a shrine to Athena.
• Phidias made a massive statue of Athena in the Parthenon.
• Greek literature includes poetry and drama.
• Poetry of all types was highly developed since Homer.
• Dramatists and poets included Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Pindar.

Society and Economy

• Greece was a country of small farmers who labor hard to make a living on poor soil.
• Many pastured goats and sheep.
• Olives, wine grapes, and inshore fishing supplemented grain farming.
• The Greek polis was usually small, with a racially and culturally homogeneous population.
• The polis center was a town of moderate size, with roughly 10,000 to 20,000 people.
• It supported trades and crafts, and urban adults debated civic culture and politics.
• Education among Classical Age urban Greeks was high and was not matched until much later.
• As with politics, education was mainly urban.
• Country people must have been illiterate.
• Educated Greeks considered manual labor beneath the dignity of freedom.
• The majority could not afford slaves and had to work themselves, but the laborers were of primitive technology.
• Most Greeks active in the labor force were free men and women working for themselves or wages.

Slavery

• It has been remarked that Athenian democracy relied on a large population of slaves.
• Slaves may have been 30 percent of the population.
• Both Greeks and foreigners could be enslaved, usually for debt.
• Slaves were normally treated well.
• Many slaves were prized workers and craftsmen who worked for payment.
• They were not free to go off at on there own terms.
• Many who were enslaved were employed by the state, and most were domestic servants.
• Plantation agriculture did not exist in Greece due to terrain.
• The individual slaveholder usually had one or two servants.
• Slaves in polis-owned silver mines near Athens were abused.
• These slaves were normally criminals.
• Slaves had no civil rights or military service.
• The freeman and his family lived simply.
• He made a modest income working or as a shopkeeper.
• His wife worked inside the home.

Gender Relations

• The degree of freedom accorded to women in classical Greek society has been debated.
• Women were excluded from political and economic powers.
• The Greeks originated misogyny.
• Women worked through husbands, fathers, or sons and they did not seek political power.
• Elite women who took political action did so only under closely defined conditions or seemingly male dominated relative terms.
• They and those around them came "to a bad end."
• Tragic heroines like Electra, Antigone, Medea, Cassandra, and Artemis met such fates.
• Men's treatment of women exhibited variations.
• Antifemale prejudice wasn't present in Homeric literature.
• Spartan women were free and equal with menfolk.
• They shared sexual favors due to men being in the field, which was seen as imperative to Sparta's survival
• Information about Sparta comes from non-Spartan sources.
• Athenian women were limited to the home and made excursions under guardianship.
• Their work was domestic: household, children, and servants.
• Their rooms were in the back of the house.
• This was the Greek equivalent of the harem or purdah, securing women as valuable possessions.
• Poor urban women had more freedom to leave home, and rural women performed tasks outdoors.
• Athenian women were excluded from politics, legally inferior, property, children, marriage, and business.
• A freeborn Athenian woman had limited civic rights, mainly citizenship passed to (male) children through her.
• Prostitution was common in classical Greece.
• Upper ranks were equivalent to the geisha of Japan.
• Heterarae were well-educated, well-paid, and amuse clients.
• Homosexuality seems common.

Sport

• The Greeks looked on the nurture of the physique as an important part of human life
• The Greeks organized the first athletic events open to all male citizens.
• The Olympics were the great pan-Hellenic festival.
• According to records, first Olympics were held in 776 BCE, then every four years thereafter in Olympia.
• The games were originally more a religious festival but soon became both.
• The best Greek athletes competed for their hometowns.
• Competions included foot races, chariot drives, discus throw, weightlifting and several other contests.
• Prizes were limited to honors and laurel leaves.
• The games lasted one week.
• The Olympic games served an important function as a patriotic reunion.
• After the Macedonian conquest, the games declined.
• The olympic games ceased for twenty three centuries until they were revived in the late nineteenth century.

The Greek Legacy

• The greek bequest to Western civilization cannot be overemphasized.
• It was retained when the poleis fell to the Macedonians
• The Greco-Macedonian new masters adopted much of the Greek heritage.
• The Greek style; the content of their art philosophy science and government infiltrated much of Europe.
• Parts were lost permanently and some were radically altered.
• The mixture of Greek with non-Greek produced a peculiar form of civilization of the Mediterranean and the Near East.
• The mixture after the macedonian and roman area was different from Hellenic civilization but it never severed all connections from the original Greek model.