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Chapter Two, Lecture One

Chapter Two, Lecture One. The Cultural Context of Classical Myth To Greek Society. Cultural Context of Classical Myth.

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Chapter Two, Lecture One

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  1. Chapter Two, Lecture One The Cultural Context of Classical Myth To Greek Society

  2. Cultural Context of Classical Myth • “Myths reflect the society that produces them. In turn, they determine the nature of that society. They cannot be separated from the physical, social, and spiritual worlds in which a people lives or from a people’s history.”

  3. Greek Geography • Greece not rich in minerals or tillable land • mountainous • Principal Areas: • Thessaly, Macedonia, Boeotia, Attica, Peloponnesus, Argolis, Laconia, Elis • Maps of Greece • Horses were scarce

  4. Greek Geography • Some areas rich in limestone, marble, and clay • the basis for Greek material culture • temples and pottery tell us much about their gods and myths • The Aegean Sea the greatest natural resource • Maps of Greece

  5. Greek Geography • Cycladic Islands and the Sporades • Importance of trade and colonization • Mountainous terrain encourage political independence of cities and spawned myths of city founders

  6. Greek History

  7. Greek History

  8. Greek History

  9. Early/Middle Bronze Age3000–1600 BC • Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC) peoples in the Greek area not Greek • Agricultural peoples mainly • Worshipped goddesses of fertility

  10. Early/Middle Bronze Age3000–1600 • Minoans (on Crete) • Started building elaborate palaces toward the end of the Early Bronze Age and beyond (2200–1450 BC) • Knossos Reconstruction and other images

  11. The Origin of the Greeks2100 BC? • Migration of a people, whom we call the Indo-Europeans – first around 2100 BC? • Were no doubt speaking an early form of Greek • Their language the basis for many world languages today • Language of the people they replaced still in many place names and names for plants and animals

  12. The Origin of the Greeks2100 BC? • Appear to be more warlike that aboriginal peoples • Society divided into • (1) kings and priests • (2) warriors • (3) food producers

  13. The Late Bronze Age1600-1150 BC • Known also as the Mycenaean Age • People called “Mycenaean” because that is one of their main sites • They may have called themselves “Achaean” • Mycenae taken over by Indo-Europeans in 1650 BC • Other Mycenaean sites: Thebes, Athens, Orchomenus, Pylos

  14. The Late Bronze Age1600–1150 BC • Ruled by powerful and rich warrior kings • Perhaps the Mycenaean destroyed the Minoan sites on Crete in 1450 • Ruled on Crete until 1400 • Impressed by Minoan art and culture • Their writing system: Linear B • Translated in 1952; proved to be an early form of Greek

  15. The Late Bronze Age1600–1150 BC • Great heroic legends of classical myth set in this period • Historically related to a conflict with Troy in about 1230? • Perhaps the Trojans were Mycenaean Greeks themselves?

  16. The Dark Age:1150–800 BC • Great Mycenaean palaces destroyed around 1180–1150 BC • The Dorian Invasion (a.k.a. the Heraclidae) • Athens survived • Period of migration of Mycenaean Greeks across the Aegean • Ionia and Aeolis on the western coast of modern-day Turkey

  17. The Dark Age:1150–800 BC • Social disorganization, depopulation and impoverishment • Petty kings and small dominions • Families and small villages • The island of Euboea a possible exception • Continued contacts with the Near East • Greek alphabet first appears on Euboea, allowing Homer and Hesiod to be written down

  18. The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC • Invention of the Greek alphabet • Includes symbols for vowels, not just consonants • Colonization from Euboea to southern Italy and Sicily • A cultural revival

  19. The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC • The Greek polis • People identified themselves geographically and not just by family ties • “Citizenship” • Competitiveness encouraged, not so much cooperation

  20. The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC • Rebirth of commerce depended on the sea • Greek economy thus decentralized and competitive, not like landed/river monarchies such as Egypt and Mesopotamia • 6th century innovation of coined money spurned economic growth even more

  21. The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC • The “new” economy strains old social orders • Period of conflict between the old, landed aristocracy (the aristoi) and the entrepreneurial class (the kakoi) • Period of tyrants (650–600) • Perhaps can be thought of as populists • Negative connotation of the word tyrant from the hostility of the literate aristoi

  22. The Archaic Period: 800–490 BC • Toward the end of the Archaic Period and series of conflicts with Persia • Persia conquers the Greek cities on the western coast of Turkey • Mainland Greeks drawn into the conflict

  23. The Classical Period490–323 • A democracy in Athens (508 BC) • Cleisthenes • All free men had a stake in the city and a role to play in its administration • Persians first repelled by Athenian citizen army at Marathon in 490 • “What a noble thing freedom is” • Persians finally defeated in 480 by Athens and other Greek cities

  24. The Classical Period490–323 • Classical floruit of Athens and Greece inspired by their national pride and their military prowess • Greek cities fought with one another but they recognized that they were all Hellenes, different from the barbaroi around them • The great “civil” war of the Greeks in the Peloponnesian War (431-404) fatally weakened them all

  25. The Classical Period490–323 • Myth reworked and re-presented in new forms to reflect the political and social realities of the day • Tragedy above all • Philosophy and science developed in the late Classical Period as a counterpoint to myth

  26. The Classical Period490–323 • The Macedonian king Philip II overran the southern Greeks in 338 and changed the political landscape • Greece cities yoked in a kingdom; their freedom limited • Alexander the Great follows; leads campaign against Persia • Death in 323 the conventional date for the end of the Classical Period

  27. The Hellenistic Period: 323–30 BC • Greek culture the “global” culture in the Mediterranean area • Center moved from the “old” Greece to the new cities of Alexandria • 146 BC, Greek mainland conquered by Rome, followed by another 100 years of conflict • Finally pacified in 30 BC with the conquest of Egypt, by then a Greek dynasty

  28. Beginning of the Roman Period • 30 BC the beginning of the Roman period and the end of Greek “independence”

  29. Next Lecture Greek Society

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