Starting Ancient Greece

In Western Civ today we started our first unit, which was Ancient Greece. We had to take notes on the powerpoint we saw, but we didn't have to write down everything because we already read and took notes on this last class. Here is what I wrote down:

Ancient Greece
the world's great civilizations, all located on water (usually rivers)

Mesopotamia/Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
Egypt/Nile River
India/Indus River
China/Huang He River

Greece's Geography

• surrounded by water 
• mostly mountains (describing this is topography) 
• separated by cultures, geography, and more 

Mediterranean Sea 

• Adriatic Sea- west 
• Agien Sea- east 
• ionic sea- south 

Geography

• mountainous peninsula, mountains cover 3/4 of the area 
• sailors, ships builders, farmers live there 
• difficult to unite because of terrain 
• formed city states 
• fertile alleys cover 1/4 of the land 
• diet of the people consist of grains, grapes, and olives 
• lack of resources led to Greek colonizations 
• temperatures usually ranged from mid 40s in winter to low 80s in summer , usually nice year round 

Early Peoples 

• influence began around 2000 BCE 
• Mycenae located on rocky ridge and protected by 20 foot thick wall 
• they Mycenaean kings dominated greece 
• then the sea people, or dorians move int 
• invaded greece and dominated the land, this period was called the "dark ages" they were far less advance, economy collapsed, and writing disappeared for 1400 years 

Homer 

• greek oral tradition, homer lived at the end of greek dark ages, composed stories of Trojan war 
• the Iliad- thousands of lines long, written in verse
• gods were involved in his stories 
• the odyssey about odysseus and Poseidon, was 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter 
• Homeric question- was he real? was he just a mythical creation himself? 
• he was blond, a wandering minstrel, a heroic figure 
• Iliad and Odyssey may be just a culminations of generations of storytelling, or he did really exist and was just plain awesome 

Then for our homework, we have to read and take notes on pages 127-131: 

Warring City-States 

Rule and Order in Greek City-States 

• polis- city-state, fundamental political unit in ancient Greece, made up of a city and surrounding countryside 
• most city states were home to fewer than 10,000 residents 
• they had many different forms of government
• monarchy- single person such as a king ruled 
• aristocracy- ruled by small group of noble landowning families 
• oligarchy- ruled by a few powerful people 
• there were many fights and clashes between nations, so tyrants ( rulers who seized control by force) took control of city states sometimes 

Athens Builds a Limited Democracy

• a representative government was an idea in some city states 
• Athenian reformers liked the idea of a democracy ( rule by the people )
• first step of this was when nobleman Draco took power, he developed a new legal code based on idea that everyone rich and poor was equal under the law 
• upheld practices such as debt slavery 
• more reforms were reached by Solon, stating that no citizen should own another citizen 
• he outlawed debt slavery 
• organized social classes
• then  athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced further reforms 
• broke power of nobility 
• allowed all citizens to submit laws 
• created Council of Five Hundred 
• he allowed citizens to participate in a limited democracy even though citizen ship was only give to a limited amount of people 
• for education, only sons of the rich were allowed to attend school 
• they studied reading, grammar, poetry, history, music, and math , logic and public speaking 
• greeks believed an athletic body was important, everyone did athletics everyday 
• girls did not attend school , instead learned about the household and how to run it 

Sparta Builds A Military State 

• located in the southern part of Greece known as the Peloponnesus 
• Sparta was nearly cut off from the rest of Greece by the Gulf of Corinth 
• built a military state instead of democracy 
• he conquered the neighboring region of Messenia and took the land 
• the people became helots (peasants forced to stay on the land they worked) and had to give their crops to the spartans
• they tried to revolt, Spartans surprisingly barely put down the revolt, so the helots worked hard to make Sparta a city state 
• Spartan gov had several branches 
• an assembly elected officials and voted on major issues 
• The Council of Elders proposed laws 
• five elected officials carried out the laws, controlled education and the courts 
• two kings ruled over Sparta 
• also many social groups ranging from original inhabitants of the region to the helots, who were just barely better than slaves 
• had the most powerful army in Greece from around 600-371 BCE 
• mens whole lives were mainly focused on military training and military life
• girls received some military training as well, both were taught to put Sparta above everything else 
• women had a lot of freedom which surprised surrounding states 

The Persian Wars 

• danger of a helot revolt made Sparta to be a military state 
• struggles between rich and poor made Athens a democracy 
• Persian armies began to invade 
• in the Dorian Age, only the rich could afford army materials, so only they served in the armies 
• iron replaced bronze in materials because of money 
• phalanx became the most powerful fighting force in the ancient world 
• Persian wars- between Greece and the Persian Empire , began in Ionia on the coast of Anatolia