Chapter 2 Lecture One of Two The Cultural Context of Classical Myth To Greek Society ©2012 Pearson...

Chapter 2Lecture One of Two

The Cultural Context of Classical Myth

To Greek Society

©2012 Pearson Education Inc.

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.”


GREEK GEOGRAPHY


Greek Geography

• Mountainous• Mostly dry, non-arable land• Torrid, dry summers• Pockets of land that could support agriculture• Very little minerals• Rich in limestone, good clay, and marble


Satellite View of GreeceGreece is mountainous with only a few pockets of arable land. Thessaly is circled.


NASA

Map II: Southern and Central Greece Locate Boeotia, Attica, Argolis, Laconia, Messenia, and Elis, regions where agriculture was sustainable.


Figure 2.1 AthensIn the distance is Mt. Pentelicon, where marble was quarried (and still is).


University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive

Greek Geography

• The Aegean Sea the greatest natural resource– Maps of Greece

• Cycladic Islands and the Sporades• Importance of trade and colonization• Mountainous terrain encourage political

independence of cities and spawned myths of city founders


http://www.greeklandscapes.com/maps/satellite.html

http://www.dilos.com/region/maps.html

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


GREEK HISTORY


Greek History

– 7000 BC Paleolithic

7000–3000 BC Neolithic

3000–1150 BC Bronze Age


Greek History

3000–1600: Early/Middle Bronze Age

1600–1150: Mycenaean (Late Bronze) Age

1150–800: Dark Age

800–480: Archaic Period

480–323: Classical Period

323–30: Hellenistic Period


Greek History

3000: Writing and Cities, Bronze

1600: Ascendancy of Mainland Greeks

1150: Sack and Collapse of Cities

800: Greek Alphabet

490-480: Persian Invasion of Greece

323: Death of Alexander the Great

30: Rome's Conquest of Egypt


EARLY/MIDDLE BRONZE AGE(3000-1600 B.C.)

The Origins of the Greeks


Early/Middle Bronze Age

• Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC) peoples in the Greek area not Greek

• Agricultural peoples mainly• Worshipped goddesses of fertility



• 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



• Migration of a people, whom we call the Indo-Europeans – around 2100 BC.

• Were no doubt speaking an early form of Greek.– Indo-European is the basis for many world

languages today• Language of the people they replaced still in

many place names and names for plants and animals.



• Appear to be more warlike than aboriginal peoples

• Society divided into – (1) kings and priests– (2) warriors– (3) food producers


THE LATE BRONZE AGE(1600-1150)

Mycenaean Age


The Late Bronze Age

• Known also as the Mycenaean Age.• People called “Mycenaean” because that is

one of their main sites.– They may have called themselves “Achaean”


Figure 14.1 Lions Gate at MycenaeFor more images of Mycenae, click here.


Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athens

Late Bronze Age

• Mycenae taken over by Indo-Europeans in 1650 BC.

• Other Mycenaean sites: Thebes, Athens, Orchomenus, Pylos


Late Bronze Age

• Ruled by powerful and rich warrior kings.• Perhaps the Mycenaean destroyed the

Minoan sites on Crete in 1450.– Impressed by Minoan art and culture


Late Bronze Age

• Their writing system: Linear B (adapted from Minoan Linear A).– Translated in 1952; proved to be an early form of

Greek– Does not record literature or myths, but consists

only of inventory records


Late Bronze Age

• Great heroic legends of classical myth set in this period.

• Historically related to a conflict with Troy in about 1230.– Were they Greeks or Hittites?


THE DARK AGE(1150-800)


The Dark Age

• 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


The Dark Age

• Social disorganization, depopulation and impoverishment.

• Petty kings and small dominions.– Families and small villages


The Dark Age

• 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


THE ARCHAIC PERIOD(800-480)


The Archaic Period

• Invention of the Greek alphabet.• Includes symbols for vowels, not just

consonants.• Colonization from Euboea to southern Italy

and Sicily.• A cultural revival.


The Archaic Period

• The Greek polis.– People identified themselves geographically and

not just by family ties– “Citizenship”– Competitiveness encouraged, not so much

cooperation


The Archaic Period

• 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.


Figure 2.2 PapyrusAll ancient Greek literature was originally recorded on papyrus. The Greek alphabet, adapted from earlier forms of writing, was the first time a writing system aspired to be a complete acoustic map of a spoken language, including not just the consonants and syllables of words, but also their vowels. Our own "alphabet," whose name comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha beta), is only a slightly modified version of the Greek alphabet.


From “The Wisconsin Papyri,” no. 76, vol. 1, no. 10, 468 AD. University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive

The Archaic Period

• 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


The Archaic Period

• 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


THE CLASSICAL PERIOD(480-323)


The Classical Period

• 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


Figure 2.3 A Greek Hoplite and a PersianThe Greeks were better equipped for hand-to-hand combat.


The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, New York

PERSPECTIVE 2Frank Miller's 300


Perspective 2

• 300.• The story of the Battle at Thermopylae in 480.• Even today seen by some to be a metaphor

for the struggle of the West against "barbarism."



• 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.


Figure 2.4 SpartaMt. Taygetus towers over the modern village of Sparta. In antiquity Sparta was only a string of small villages.


University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive


• 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.



• 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.


THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD(323-30)


The Hellenistic Period

• 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.


The Hellenistic Period

• Finally pacified in 30 BC with the conquest of Egypt, by then a Greek dynasty.

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


End


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