March 16, 2011

The Greeks

Crucible of Civilization

Important Notes:

508 B.C. in a town called Athens, a tiny city in Greece. The ordinary people had turned on their rulers. At this moment one man looked on, Athenian nobleman name Cleisthenes would see that these ordinary people should have freedom and be able to govern themselves. With this decision he would set his fellow Greeks to a path to an Empire. Cleisthenes was an aristocrat, he was born to rule. Athens was built around the acropolis, a big out cropping of rock. They could seek out the attacks of their neighbors. In the narrow streets were the homes of workers and farmers. Reading and Writing were rare. Life expectancy was less than 15 years. Life was extremely tough. This was no society of even. The people lived under the rule of the aristocrats. It was not that the people were slaves; they were just treated as slaves. You were treated like this if you weren’t born an aristocrat. The people besides aristocrats had no part and no share in anything. The aristocrats just cared about holding their own power. Greece does not have the obvious look of the great civilizations of the world, such as Egypt and Persia who grew up around rivers and open planes. Greece was only a landscape ridden by mountain ranges and here and there, there were tiny islands. Greece was separated into tiny nations called city-states. It wasn’t one big country. There were Sparta and Corinth, and Athens. Even know they were all on the same peninsula they were separated by mountains. They would compete with each other. They had most of the same beliefs and gods they just weren’t familiar with each other and wanted to compete. All the city states were fiercely independent. Athens was important. There was one city-state that had military power. This city state was called Sparta. They were raised in the fields, separated from their family’s they were raised to be soldiers. They were brought up to put up with anything. The food was horrible. Death was as nothing to eating their food. Others could see where they were willing to die. They were the greatest fighters on earth. No one wanted to go up against the Spartan army. They had no luxuries or comforts. They wore red cloches. They did this because if they were messed up in battle their enemy wouldn’t know they were hurt. Both the Athenians and the Spartans won numerous battles where they were outnumbered. The Spartans started training to be military fighters from the age of 6 or 7 where they were taken away from their families. The life expectancy was short all over Greece. By Cleisthenes time they had conquered all their surrounding regions. They were a threat to everyone. This then was the world of Cleisthenes child hood. If there was one thing that inspired Cleisthenes and the fellow Greeks it was their stories. The two most famous stories were the Odyssey and the Iliad, written by Homer. Most people knew these stories. They knew about the different battles. They knew a lot about the life around them and their past from these stories. The Odyssey was a story about Odysseus trying to get home after the Trojan War. The women had more rights than you would think in Sparta. They had to help run businesses and work on the farm. They had a big responsibility because the men were away at war. They had more freedom than the women of Athens or really everywhere else. A hero by definition is ‘doers of great deeds’. They were terrific people but they were not perfect. They were determined to cease victory at all cost. The vision of the hero was the model that Cleisthenes was brought up to become. It was to pursue a life of greatness and glory. It was to pursue the strength and value, to cease power and victory for himself and himself alone, to become a real life hero. He was not the only one raised to be this way. There is a big change in the middle of the 6^th century. When one man tried to take control of tyrant, a tyrant is when someone grabs control. Pisistratus was Cleisthenes brother in law, he was the new tyrant. A goddess was Athena who was a tall a brown haired girl. She gave Pisistratus legitimacy to gain power. She was Zeus’ daughter.