Greece is located in the Mediterranean. If you want to look at my cursor right here, we’re going to be looking at this region this week. And this location encouraged the Greeks to interact with other civilizations in the Mediterranean through trade, culture, and of course war. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, when we talk about the people of Greece, we’re actually talking about a number of different civilizations that lived in this area beginning in 2500 BCE. The earliest civilization in Greece emerged on the large island of Crete, which is southeast of the Greek mainland.
Last week, we discussed the Hebrews and their relationship with The Club of Great Powers. This week we’re going to discuss another civilization that belonged to The Club of Great Powers and developed around the same time as the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Persians, but in a different part of the Mediterranean. We’re going to look at the Greeks. For the Greeks, we’re going to start way back in 2500 BCE, and go all the way up to 338 BCE. Remember that BCE years move backwards and get smaller as we go forward in time. And to make this even more complex, the Greeks during this period of over 2,000 years, actually represent a few different civilizations that came and went. I’ve broken my discussion of the Greeks into two lectures, and these lectures contain a total of 10 quiz questions. So with that in mind, let’s get started. Greece is located in the Mediterranean. If you want to look at my cursor right here, we’re going to be looking at this region this week. And this location encouraged the Greeks to interact with other civilizations in the Mediterranean through trade, culture, and of course war. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, when we talk about the people of Greece, we’re actually talking about a number of different civilizations that lived in this area beginning in 2500 BCE. The earliest civilization in Greece emerged on the large island of Crete, which is southeast of the Greek mainland. Again, if you want to look at my cursor here, we’re looking specifically at this island right here. By 2500 BCE, a group of people were living in Crete and using bronze to make weapons. This group of people, who we call the Minoans, reached the height of their existence between about 1900 and 1500 BCE. During that time, the Minoans developed what’s known as a palace system. In this system, a small group of people held most of the money and power in society. They built huge palaces that stood at the center of their cities and towns. Now, the palace system wasn’t unique to the Minoans. It was actually a pretty common feature for all members of The Club of Great Powers. The Assyrians and Chaldeans, for example, also had a palace system. But in Minoan society, the wealthy elite lived in these palaces, while the rest of the regular Minoans lived in houses built around them. The most famous of these palaces was located in the city of Knossos. Now, on the right side of the screen is an image of what historians believe the Palace of Knossos looked like. And the Palace of Knossos spread out over three acres. This is a really big complex. It included hundreds of rooms situated around a central courtyard, and these rooms included living areas for political and religious leaders, government offices, and shrines for religious rituals. The palace even included bathrooms with plumbing. And the palace’s intricate web of winding hallways may have inspired the story of the labyrinth. If you’re at all familiar with Greek mythology, you may have heard this story before. The legend concerns a monster called a Minotaur that had the body of a man and the head of a bull, that lived during the reign of King Minos, for whom the Minoans were named. This monster was supposedly the offspring between a snow-white bull sent by the god Poseidon to King Minos for sacrifice. Now, instead of sacrificing like he was supposed to, King Minos kept it for himself. And as punishment, Poseidon made King Minos’s wife fall in love with the bull, which led to a monstrous offspring, the Minotaur. The name “Minotaur” actually translates to “Minos’s Bull.” When King Minos saw the Minotaur, he shut him into a labyrinth, which is a sort of maze with lots of confusing passageways and blind alleys. Later, King Minos’s son was killed by an early group of Athenians on the mainland of Greece. And King Minos sought to avenge his son’s death by demanding seven Athenian youths and seven Athenian maidens be sent every year to be devoured by the Minotaur. After the third year of sacrifice, the Athenian hero Theseus volunteered to go. When Theseus arrived, King Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, gave him a ball of string which he could unravel to retrace his steps and make it out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. Now, after Theseus succeeded in killing the Minotaur, he made it out with the other Athenian girls and boys sent to be sacrificed, and escaped with them and Ariadne back home. Although, I will add, one version of this story actually ends with Theseus dropping Ariadne off on the island of Naxos before he continued back home to Athens. What’s really interesting is that the legend of the Minoan Minotaur may reflect a small nugget of truth. The Minoans worshipped a god in the form of a bull and sometimes even a bull-man. And even more, the Minoans were known to engage in a very dangerous sport known as bull-leaping, similar to bullfighting, but involving an element of athletic dance. But getting back to the palace at Knossos. Even if the sprawling Palace of Knossos inspired this frightening tale of the Minotaur, we know that, in reality, the inside of this palace was spectacular. The rooms of this palace were decorated with frescoes, which is a type of painting you put on walls. And these frescoes were done in bright colors that depict sporting events and scenes of nature. And storerooms in the palace held enormous jars of oil, wine, and grain. And we know that the Minoans traded their stockpile of goods with other civilizations. In particular, the Minoans were known for their textiles, pottery, and metalwork. Archaeologists have found Minoan pottery in Canaan and Egypt and Western Turkey. And in exchange, they have found foreign luxuries in Crete, like Egyptian amulets. Artistic influences also traveled along trade routes. For example, Minoan-style frescoes appear regularly in Egyptian architecture from this time period. Now, Minoan civilization on Crete collapsed around 1400 BCE. And some historians believe that a tsunami triggered by a powerful volcanic eruption was responsible for destroying society in Crete. It’s also possible that some early communities from the Greek mainland invaded and destroyed the cities and towns, including Knossos. And perhaps it was both. But following the Minoans, Mycenaean civilization was located on the mainland of Greece. This is going to be our second civilization in Greece, so we’re switching from the Minoans in Crete to the Mycenaeans on the mainland of Greece now. The Mycenaeans entered this area around 1900 BCE and remained until about 1100 BCE. Like the other empires we’ve discussed, Mycenaean civilization was hierarchical, in that it had a king at the top who used the title of wanax. And below the king, or wanax, was the commanders of the army, the priests, and the government officials. Below them were the merchants, peasants, soldiers, and artisans. And finally, at the bottom, were the slaves. The Mycenaeans were a warrior people who prided themselves on their heroic deeds in battle. In fact, the Mycenaeans may have contributed to the downfall of the Minoans and Crete before them. We know that the Mycenaeans were military-minded because an ancient Greek author named Homer wrote about them in his famous books, the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Iliad, Homer describes the Trojan War. He claimed that the war was started by a prince of the city of Troy named Paris. Prince Paris had kidnapped a woman named Helen who was the wife of the king of Sparta. Now, the brother of the king of Sparta was a man named Agamemnon. And he was the king of the Mycenaeans, the wanax. In Homer’s story, Agamemnon, king of the Mycenaeans, helped his brother, the king of Sparta, by leading his Mycenaean army to attack Paris and Troy. According to Homer, the Mycenaean armies were a primary reason that the king of Sparta won the Trojan War and got his wife back. But by 1200 BCE, Mycenaean civilization began to fall apart too. And there were two reasons for this. First, earthquakes caused widespread damage to their buildings and institutions. And second, there’s evidence that, like the Minoan civilization before them, the Mycenaeans were attacked by another group of people, mysteriously called the Sea Peoples. Some historians believe that the Sea Peoples were actually the Philistines, who finally withdrew to Palestine after being defeated by the Egyptians. But regardless, by 1100 BCE, the Mycenaean civilization came to an end. Between 1100 and 800 BCE, the people living in Greece endured a dark age. During this time, the population declined and food production dropped. Archaeology shows us that former vibrant Mycenaean cities were depopulated by as much as 90%. In the absence of leadership, the people of Greece who had survived the invasions that destroyed Mycenaean civilization, they began to fight with each other for land and power. This created hardship for the people of Greece, but it did actually produce some good. As people fought with each other, they started using iron weapons instead of bronze ones. The minerals used to produce iron were more plentiful, making weapons cheaper to make, and iron is stronger than bronze. The result was that the people of Greece had more numerous and more effective weapons than ever before. Using these weapons, different groups of people began to conquer the lands around them to form independent regions that would eventually become the Greek city-states. A city-state is exactly as it sounds. It’s a region with a central city that serves as the political, religious, and social center of that region. Now, you can see the different Greek city-states on the map on your screen here. The city-states that developed in ancient Greece are very similar to what we have today in the United States. We have states with capital cities. And these capital cities are where the major government buildings are located and where officials meet and make decisions about the state. But unlike our states today, which are part of a larger unit, the United States, the ancient Greek city-states were independent with their own laws and leaders and forms of government. It was also during the Greek Dark Age that they adopted an alphabet from a different group of people, the Phoenicians, and added vowels to it. After the fall of the Mycenaeans, the Greeks essentially lost their written language and had to reestablish a new one. Having an alphabet enabled the Greeks to communicate with each other, create law codes, and write down their history, their legends, and songs. By 800 BCE, the Greeks began to settle down, and the Dark Age came to an end. This initiated two new eras, the archaic period, which lasted from 800 BCE to 500 BCE, and the classical period, which lasted from 500 BCE to 338 BCE. Relative peace between the Greeks in the archaic era allowed them to focus on developing their city-states, and as a result, the concept of the polis emerged. The term “polis” comes from the words “politics” and “political.” And it had two meanings. The polis referred to the identity of the people living in a particular city-state, like the Athenians or the Spartans. As we’ll talk more about in a few minutes, this group identity came with political and social responsibilities to the state. In addition to an identity, the term “polis” also referred to a city center. In the archaic age, the Greek cities evolved similarly, regardless of which city-state they were located in. When a person visited a city-state, they would expect that these cities would be organized around the center, where political, religious, and social activities took place. In this center or polis, you would normally find the agora, which is where markets and important meetings were held. It was also where most of the city’s temples were located and where government buildings were established. In the picture on your screen here, you can see what remains of the polis of the city of Athens, which was located on a raised piece of land called an acropolis. If you can see my cursor here, this is the raised piece of land called the acropolis, with the rest of the city sitting below it. The residents of the city of Athens, as I mentioned, they’re going to live in that area around the acropolis. Again, in the United States today, we tend to have a very similar layout for our own cities. In the city of Shreveport, for example, if you want to go to the courthouse, you’re likely going to go downtown, right? This is where many of the theaters and conference centers are located. And we can expect a similar urban organization if we travel to other cities in the nation. So a similar setup is being used in these Greek cities that we’re talking about. So the Greek city-states were focusing on themselves. They had their own independent identities, their own polis, and as we’ll see, they often fought with each other. But they still shared a common, general Greek identity. And this is most clearly shown in the Panhellenic Games, also known as the Olympics, which began in 776 BCE. The Panhellenic Games took place every four years to honor the king of the gods, Zeus, near his giant temple at Olympia. Athletes who participated in these games were from all over Greek civilization, not just from one city-state. In addition, all wars between Greeks ceased when the games took place. So sports represented one way that people could come together to express their shared Greek identity. In addition to the development of the polis and a common Greek identity, the city-states of Greece also enjoyed a couple other common elements. The ancient Greeks, regardless of which city-state they belonged to, generally divided their population into two categories, citizens and noncitizens. Citizens were considered superior, and both men and women could be citizens. But only adult male citizens had political rights, which often included the right to vote. But these political rights were coupled with responsibilities. The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that citizens did not just belong to themselves. He said we must regard every citizen as belonging to the state. The idea of citizenship created a Greek society that was quite different from the other empire societies we’ve already examined. Beginning in the Greek Archaic Age, political leaders were often elected by citizens to run the community rather than simply inheriting power. And male citizens were expected to perform their civic duty by serving and protecting the city-state. Ranked below citizens were the noncitizens. Noncitizens could be resident aliens. These were foreigners who paid taxes and could serve in the army but didn’t have political rights. Slaves represented another category of noncitizens. A good example of this took place in Sparta. When the Spartans established their city-state, they enslaved another group of native people called the helots, who were forced to farm the land for Spartan citizens. The Greek city-states also developed similar military organizations and techniques. By 800 BCE, a new military order came into being that was based on hoplites. Hoplites were heavily armed foot soldiers who wore bronze or leather helmets, breast plates, and greaves, which were essentially shin guards. Each hoplite carried a round shield, known as a hoplon, which is why these soldiers were called hoplites. They also carried a short sword and a spear that measured about nine feet long. Hoplites advanced into battle as a unit, shoulder-to-shoulder, forming what they called a phalanx. A phalanx was a rectangular formation in which the men stood in tight order, usually about eight ranks deep. In this formation, each hoplite carried his shield on his left arm, usually to protect the unshielded right side of the man next to him. In his right, hand he carried his spear. And the result was that the phalanx represented a nearly impenetrable wall of armor and weaponry. If a man in the front row fell, the one behind him stepped up to take his place. And each soldier aided in the assault by leaning with his shield into the man in front of him. As long as the hoplites kept this order, they suffered few injuries and deaths and were often successful against their enemies. Unlike the soldiers of the empires we’ve already discussed, the Greek hoplites were not professional soldiers. Most did not make a career out of being a soldier. Instead, the Greek hoplites were generally citizen-soldiers. They were regular citizens who came together when necessary to protect their city-state. These citizens were expected to purchase and maintain their own weapons and armor, and they were expected to be trained and organized enough to come together to defend their city-states when necessary. As we’ll see, some city-states place more emphasis on this training and organization than others.
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