Geography

1. Geography • Mainland is a mountainous peninsula. • Coastline has excellent harbors. • Trade and colonization resulted. • Brought back ideas from other areas (theme of geography-movement). • Phoenician alphabet, use of coins

2. City-states • Terrain made communication and transportation difficult. • Small, separate communities developed. • Eventually grew into city-states. • Prized their freedom. • At center of each city was an acropolis (hilltop fortress). • Life centered around this area.

3. Athens

4. The Parthenon

5. Parthenon Today

6. Greek Government • City-states first ruled by monarchs. • Eventually replaced by aristocracies, or government by a small, privileged upper class. • As populations grew other classes demanded a voice in government. • As ordinary citizens gained rights democracy developed.

7. Athenian Democracy • Athens one of the first to develop a democratic government, or government by the people. • By 450 B.C. Athens was a direct democracy- all citizens participated in government directly. • Athenian democracy was greatest under Pericles. • Key points- power rested with individuals. • All citizens equal before the law. • Right and duty to take part in government.

8. Limits of Athenian democracy – only citizens, free men born in Athens, could participate. • Majority of Athenians were slaves, resident foreigners, and women with no political rights. • Could not vote, own property, or hold public office. • Still it became the model for future governments.

9. The Search for Truth • Three famous Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. • Questioned belief that gods and goddesses controlled forces of nature. • Used observation and reason to look for natural laws. • Search influenced many fields. • In medicine led to the study of the human body in search of symptoms and causes of disease.

10. Used reason, experimentation, and observation. • Led to advances in mathematics, astronomy, biology.

11. Socrates • Greatest of all Greek thinkers. • 470 B.C. to 399 B. C. • Code of conduct for human behavior. • Encouraged students to apply reason • Developed question and answer technique known as the Socratic Method. • Asked one question after another to force students to examine their beliefs and discard those that could not be proved through reason.

12. Socrates was regarded as a troublemaker. • Said he corrupted young people by encouraging them to question their elders. • Finally arrested for failing to honor the gods and corrupting the youth. • Jury found him guilty and condemned him to death. • Could have fled but said a good citizen must obey the law.

13. Socrates Death by Poisoning

14. Plato • Student of Socrates • Collected his ideas in the Dialogues. • Plato developed his own ideas, particularly about government. • Wrote about those in The Republic. • Should be based on justice for all. • Rejected democracy • Philosophers would rule as kings, workers would produce food, soldiers would protect.

15. Plato

16. Aristotle • Student of Plato • Sought truth from experience. • Gather evidence, use reason to determine truth. • Created logic- a system of reasoning. • Studied everything from medicine to poetry. • Urged moral behavior and moderation in all things.

17. Muslim scholars translated and preserved many of his works. • During the later Middle Ages crusaders were reintroduced to Aristotles teachings and brought them back to Europe. • Scholars looked on Aristotle as the authority on almost every field of science.

18. Aristotle

19. Arts and Literature • Emphasis on reason and balance shaped the Arts. • Graceful architecture of temples reflected this. • Statues based on ideal nature of the human form. • Wrote epic poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey. • Homer – interference of gods and godesses in lives of human heroes. • Two types of drama: tragedy and comedy. • Tragedy ex. Antigone, sufferings of major character, usually ended in disaster.

20. Comedy, ex. Lysistrata,ridiculed people, ideas, and social customs. • Greek historians treated history not as the deeds of gods but as the study of human actions. • Thucydides used evidence and impartial information to describe the wars of ancient Greece.

21. Hellenistic World • City-states eventually controlled by Philip of Macedonia. • His son, Alexander the Great, completed the unification of Greece. • Conquered an empire stretching from Greece and Egypt eastward to the Indus River. • He studied Aristotle and admired Greek culture.

22. Carried to all lands he conquered. • Empire broke up after his death in 323 B.C. • The new culture he created became known as Hellenistic Culture. • Blended the cultures of the Greeks, Egyptians, and the Middle East.

23. Alexandria • This city in Egypt became the center of Hellenistic Culture. • Scholars from all over gathered here. • Major advances in medicine, mathematics, and the sciences. • Egyptians showed Greeks how to use anesthetics in surgery. • Euclid wrote The Elements, the basis of modern geometry.