PERICLES AND CLASSICAL GREECE
Week Three
tri = three
tricycle
trio
triangle
mis = bad/wrong/ill
misspell
mistake
re = again/back
recycle
retro
reminder
I. Pericles and the Parthenon
The goddess Athena
West metopes of the Parthenon
The Parthenon
Paradox of Pericles and the Parthenon
The Athenian Empire, designed to keep Greek cities free, began to enslave those very cities. Athens, the most assertive democracy in the ancient world, was effectively ruled by a single man who held no elected office.
II. Persian Wars
A. Battle of Marathon After a stunning victory over the Persians,
Athenians are convinced of their invincibility, superior culture, and efficiency of democratic government
B. Battle of Thermopylae Ten years later, Greek city-states ally and fend off
Persian invasion led by Xerxes
C. Delian League An alliance of equal city-states meant to free
Aegean territory from Persians Gradually turns into an Athenian Empire
III. Pericles
A. Extender of democracy An aristocrat, but extended
political participation to all free citizens, abolished property requirements, and paid juries.
B. Builder of public works Helped fund construction
of the Lyceum, statue of Athena, Parthenon
sym/syn = together/same
synonym
symphony symmetry
hypo = under/below/less
hypodermic hypotension hypothermia
hyper = over/beyond/high
hyperventilate hyperactive hypersensitive
III. Pericles
C. Promoter of Greek Culture
1. The Examined Life Sophists: Protagoras
instructs skills of rhetoric and logic
Socrates: condemns the Sophists for failure to engage issues of morality; Socratic method; “know thyself”; executed for corrupting the morals of youth
The Death of Socrates (1787)
III. Pericles
2. Understanding the Past Herodotus: the first
historian Analysis: of the
Persian Wars Philosophy of
history Context
Herodotus, The Histories, Book III
For if it were proposed to all nations to choose which seemed best of all customs, each, after examination, would place its own first; so well is each convinced that its own are by far the best. It is not therefore to be supposed that anyone, except a madman, would turn such things to ridicule. I will give this one proof among many from which it may be inferred that all men hold this belief about their customs. When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers' dead bodies. They answered that there was no price for which they would do it. Then Darius summoned those Indians who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar's poem that custom is lord of all.
III. Pericles
3. Athenian drama Roots: Indebted to Homer
and early Greek material Sophocles: Analyzes the
competing allegiances of the family and the state in Antigone
Aristophanes: comedic sympathy with common people
Human condition
4. The human image Less stylized; more natural
Narcissus
III. Pericles
5. Architecture Acropolis: melding of idealism and realism;
but the grandeur is something of an illusion
“Secrets of the Parthenon”
D. Aggressor in Foreign Policy End of Delian
League (431) Peloponnesian War
First phase: inconclusive
Second phase: Athens defeated by a Spartan-Persian alliance
IV. Pericles’ Demise
Destruction: Of Pericles and the economic, political, and civic foundations on which the Parthenon had been built.
Philosophy and the Polis: philosophers respond to political disruptions by elaborating new theories
IV. Pericles’ Demise
A. Platonic forms Distrusted Athenian democracy; the best
government should rest in the hands of philosophers
Cave allegory: ignorance (darkness) and truth (light)
B. Aristotelian empiricism Realism and systematic observation
C. Hellenistic philosophies Cynics: freedom through renunciation of material
objects Epicureans: freedom from pain Stoics: freedom from disorder
“Seinfeld”
“Friends”
“West Wing”
IV. Pericles’ Legacy
Funeral Oration: “Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty.”
Epilogue
Epilogue
Pieces of the Parthenon at the British Museum, the Louvre, Copenhagen, and elsewhere.
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