I.
Introduction
.
This was an age of tyrants, poets, and
philosophers. In extremely prolific age a number of significant
achievements were made between 650
and 500 :
1) writing down of law codes in many city-states
2) the rise of the oracle at Delphi to an influential position in Greek
world
3) the establishment of
other pan-Hellenic games of athletic, musical & dramatic contests.
4) coinage: "During the
Geometric period barter had been given up in favor of iron spits, and then in
the eighth century the Lydians invented metallic coinage, at first striated
pieces of electrum, a natural amalgam of gold and silver. The custom quickly passed to Ionia, and from the early
seventh century regular Ionian and Lydian issues may be dated.
West of the Aegean Sea the people of Aegina were the first to stamp their
coins, silver staters of about 12.3 grammes.
They had wide currency. Corinth
was not far behind Aegina in coinage. Its
standard coin was a silver didrachm weighing about 8.6 grammes and therefore
much lighter than the Aeginetan. This
standard was adopted by Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea and also by Athens and
came to be known as the Euboic standard. The
invention of coinage, of course, greatly promoted commerce, but at the same time
its introduction into an agrarian world was destined to have profound social
consequences, for a new form of wealth, independent of land, was now possible.
People of humble origin might become rich merchants or manufactures and
challenge the political exclusiveness of the landed proprietors" (Botsford
& Robinson, 64).
5) a new kind of soldier & war, the hoplite phalanx (middle class!).
Shortly after 700, heavily armed infantryman replaced horsemen as the
principle unit of the Greek military (Greaves 53)--actually developed during the
Age of Colonization along with the polis by the 8th and 7th BC.
The hoplite was a heavily armed infantryman who fought with sword and
pike (c.9' long); densely packed so that man's shield partly covered comrade to
his left. Bronze helmets, breast
plates, greaves (shin-guards), round shield, short sword and pike. These new developments in the military arena also prompted
Greeks to question the power, traditionally accorded the landed aristocracy
(Greaves 53).
II. Lyric poetry
As a result of this age of flux, of changing values (cf. Archilochos) a
new kind of poetry was produced. The
heroic verse of Homer was intended for ruling class of aristocratic society who
had leisure time to listen to the great deeds and misdeeds of great men of past.
Lyric poetry (reflecting a change in society and values) contains the
poet's own feelings, emotions, opinions. The
heroes of battles are no longer the ideal; the poets of the 6th BC talk about what they feel about life,
death, love, drinking too much.
One of
the most famous of these new poets is SAPPHO (c.620-555 BC) of Mytilene on
the island of Lesbos, the first woman to leave a literary record that reflects
her own personal experiences. She
was born c. 620 on the island of Lesbos where she spent most of her life and
seems to have combined life of wife and mother with poet and teacher -but her
husband died early so that she was forced to support her and her family by
heading a finishing school for the daughters of aristocrats.
We don’t know much about her, though the poet Alcaeus calls her
"violet-haired, pure & honey-smiling"; another calls her short,
dark & ugly.
Within
her own lifetime she was widely respected for her works (NOTE:
even Plato praised her poetry and scholars at Alexandria listed her as
one of the Nine Great Lyric Poets). Although
her poems survive only in fragmentary form (Christians have destroyed much of
it), what is left displays her greatest quality, her ability to probe the depth
of her own responses and by describing them to understand them
At any
rate, surrounded by a group of younger women who presumably came to Lesbos to
finish their education, Sappho’s poetry reflects the affection between Sappho
and her students --even the sensual love she felt (thus early Christian censors
were hostile to her poetry). An
excellent example of her poetry is Lyric #3 from Richmond Lattimore's
translation of Sappho in Greek Lyrics, p.40:
Some
there are who say that the fairest thing seen
on the black earth is an array of horsemen;
some, men marching; some would say ships; but I say
she
whom one loves best
is the
loveliest. Light were the work to
make this
plain to all, since she, who surpassed in beauty
all mortality, Helen, once forsaking
her
lordly husband,
led away
to Troy-land across the water.
Not the thought of child nor beloved parents
was remembered, after the Queen of Cyprus
won
her at first sight.
Since
young brides have hearts that can be persuaded
easily, light things, palpitant to passion
as am I, remembering Anaktoria
who
has gone from me
and
whose lovely walk and the shining pallor
of her face I would rather see before my
eyes than Lydia's chariots in all their glory
armored
for battle.
III..
The First Philosophers (Pre-Socratics,
6th c. BC)
“The Greeks broke with the mythopoeic outlook of the Near East and
conceived a new way of viewing nature and human society that is the basis of the
Western scientific and philosophic tradition.
After an initial period of mythical thinking, by the fifth century BC the
Greek mind had gradually applied reason to the physical world and to all human
activities. This emphasis on reason
marks a turning point for human civilization….
“…The
process began when some advanced intellects became skeptical of Homer’s gods
and went beyond mythical explanations for natural phenomena” (Perry 74). For example, Xenophanes of Colophon denied the
anthropomorphic gods altogether:
Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things
that are a shame and a disgrace among
mortals, stealings and adulteries and
deceivings of one another (fr. 11).
Yes, and
if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and
produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like
horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several
kind (fr. 15).
The
Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have
blue eyes and red hair (fr. 16).
The great innovation in thinking that insisted that phenomena of the
universe could be explained by natural causes (i.e., a rejection of the
supernatural) and that the universal principles in nature could be discerned by
REASON seems to have begun at the beginning of the sixth century BC in the Greek
city of Miletus in Ionia with Thales.
1.
Thales of Miletus (c.
624-547) has been called “the father of philosophy” and supposedly founded
the first school of philosophy. We are told that he studied “nature,” which probably
included the Chaldean science of astronomy (astrology) which was centuries old
and recognized the regular movements of the primary visible heavenly bodies
(Herodotus said he predicted a solar eclipse around 585 BC, though we doubt
this). He also supposedly studied
for a while with Egyptian priests where he learned geometry and engineering so
that he was able to determine the height of a pyramid by measuring the length of
the shadow at the time of day when a person’s shadow equaled his height.
Thales declared that water was the single and imperishable substance of
which all things are modifications. The
significance of this was that it “revolutionized thought because he omitted
the gods from his account of the origins of nature and searched for a natural
explanation of how all things came to be” (Perry 70).
2.
Anaximander of Miletus (c. 611-547) was the first of the Greeks to write
a book in prose. Although the book
is not extant, it was quoted by many later authors so that we have parts of it.
“He rejected any specific substance and suggested that an indefinite
substance, which he called the Boundless [apeiron] was the source of all
things. From this primary mass,
which contained the powers of heat and cold, he believed that there gradually
emerged a nucleus, the seed of the world. He
said that the cold and wet condensed to form the earth and its cloud cover,
while the hot and dry formed the rings of fire that we see as the moon, the sun,
and the stars. The heat from the
fire in the sky dried the earth and
shrank the seas. From the warm
slime on earth arose life, and from the first sea creatures there arose land
animals, including human beings” (Perry 75)
He believed thunder and lightning were caused by
blasts of wind, not Zeus! He also
believed that the earth is suspended in space and, for some reason, that it is
shaped like a cylinder.
Supposedly
he is also the first to draw a map representing the surface of the earth in
which he assigned geometric shapes to the seas and continents and squeezed them
into symmetry.
3.
Pythagoras of Samos in Ionia (c.580-c.507 BC) , whose name means
“mouthpiece of Delphi,” left home for political reasons and settled in
southern Italy where he founded a school. He
required his followers to lead pure and devout lives (i.e., uphold morals and
chastity, order and harmony for the common good) yet eventually, according to
one account, he a 300 of his followers were killed.
Nothing survives of his writings, but his chief doctrines include the
transmigration of souls (Orphism!) and the kinship of all living things.
He
discovered the numerical relationship of musical harmonies by experimenting with
a vibrating cord (the note produced varies in proportion to the length of the
string). He concluded that
mathematical relationships represent the underlying principle of the universe
and expressed this by saying, “All things are numbers” (actually he meant
this literally).He and his followers would greatly advance mathematical,
geometrical and astronomical science. They
proved, for instance, the “Pythagorean theorem”.
“Thus
the Pythagoreans shifted the emphasis from matter to form, from the world of
sense perception to the logic of mathematics” (Perry 76).
The Greek wedding of science and
mathematics (which will bear fruit in the Hellenistic Age) is the single
most important thing the Greeks did to put Western science on a
different path from the rest of the world. This is what eventually
will lead the West to its superiority in technology, and therefore
prosperity, to which the rest of the world is desperately attempting to
catch up.
4.
Parmenides of Elea in southern Italy (c.515-450 BC) put forth the
proposition that an argument must be consistent and contain no contradictions.
He saw reality as one, eternal, and unchanging; all change and motion and
nature are a delusion. Since,
therefore, the senses mislead us, truth could be reached through abstract
thought, through the mind, alone. [This
will inevitably influence Plato’s thinking.]
5.
Democritus from Abdera on the Greek mainland (c. 460-370 BC) adopted and
developed the atomism of Leucippus and declared that ultimate, unchangeable
reality consists of atoms (small indivisible particles not obvious to the naked
eye) and the void. Indeed, everything behaved according to mechanical principles
and was made up of combinations of these eternal, indivisible and imperishable
particles.
Concepts essential to scientific thought thus emerged in embryonic form
with Greek philosophers: natural
explanations for physical occurrences (Ionians), the mathematical order of
nature (Pythagoras), logical proof (Parmenides),
and the mechanical structure of the universe (Democritus).
By giving to nature a rational, rather than a mythical, foundation and by
holding that theories should be grounded in evidence and that one should be able
to defend them logically, the early Greek philosophers pushed thought in a new
direction. This new approach
allowed a critical analysis of theories, whereas myths, accepted unconditionally
on faith and authority, did not promote discussion and questioning.
These early philosophers made possible theoretical thinking and the
systematization of knowledge—as distinct from the mere observation and
collection of data” (Perry 76).
Acute,
though all this is, it was still theory. What
the Greeks did not do was to advance, either to scientific laws or to the
practical application of these theories in technology.
Why? They relied more on the
mind than the senses, because the senses could be deceived (and they lacked the
instruments to support and improve the senses). They also had a preference for abstract theory rather than
practical activity, due no doubt to the fact that these Greek philosophers came
from the upper classes and felt trade and crafts were for lower classes.
Soon, as we shall see, this elevation of reason will move from its focus
on the natural world to human beings beginning with the Sophists and then
Socrates with a concern for virtue, justice, piety, friendship education, not
science.
IV. The Persian Wars
Our chief source for the Persian Wars is Herodotus’ (484-420 BC)
History of the Persian Wars. This
work will earn him the title of the “father of history" (historia
"inquiry") because he asked questions about the past instead of just
repeating ancient legends (traveled and questioned foreign peoples and examined
his sources critically to determine the truth).
Thus, he was the first writer in Western tradition to devote himself to
historical writing rather than epic or lyric poetry.
Despite this fact, he would be more credulous than Thucydides would be;
i.e., Herodotus accepted the existence of dreams, omens and oracles and divine
intervention in the world.
Herodotus
felt the Persians lost because they were morally in the wrong, i.e., hubris,
excessive ambition of Persian king (wanted to rule Europe as well as Asia) and
the major theme of his work becomes the conflict between Near Eastern despotism
& Greek freedom.
1. Marathon: We have already encountered the Persians in our survey of
Western Civilization in the person of Cyrus the Great (r.559-530) who conquered
Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to Palestine and rebuild their temple.
Cyrus also conquered the Medes, who earlier had
combined forces with the Chaldeans to destroy Nineveh in 612 BC and conquered the
hated Assyrians. The last couple of
hundred years have greatly increased our knowledge of this period of history:
"Official inscriptions of this Persian Empire--carved in three
languages (Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian), all written in cuneiform
script--gave scholars in the early nineteenth century their first chance to
learn how to read cuneiform. This
led to the gradual deciphering of Babylonian (Akkadian), which in turn made
possible all of the discoveries about ancient Mesopotamia.... Inscriptions
of the sixth century BC, when deciphered, opened up more than two thousand
years of history that, had it not been for the continued use of cuneiform,
might still be unknown" (Winks, 41).
"Cyrus
moved westward into Anatolia, absorbed the Lydian kingdom of the rich king
Croesus (more about him when we talk about the Delphic oracle), and conquered
the Greek cities of Ionia along the Aegean coast.
Next he moved east all the way to the borders of India, annexing as he
went, though imposing no such tyranny as had the Assyrians.
Instead of deporting whole populations, Cyrus allowed them to
worship as they pleased and to govern themselves in their own way under
his representatives" (Winks, 41).
Cyrus died fighting the Scythians (they decapitated him) in 529 BC.
After
his son Cambyses (r.529-521 BC) conquered Egypt and died (probably by suicide
after having water supply problems and failing to conquer Nubia),
his brother-in-law Darius (r.521-486 BC) came to the throne
and extended the empire to India.
At its height the Persian empire would consist of one
million square miles and almost 70 million people. To
the Jews the Persians were liberators, but to the Greeks they were a barbarian
threat to liberty so that in 499 BC the Ionian cities revolted (Greek cities of
Asian Minor against the tyrants/Persian rulers led by Aristagoras of Miletus, an
ambitious tyrant) and burned down Sardis, the Persian headquarters in Asia Minor
with the help of Athens (20 ships) and Eretria (5 ships).
[The Persians had established their chief
administrative headquarters at Sardis, Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, the
last three located in modern Iran.]
By 494 Darius crushes the revolt and Miletus (leading city-state of the
revolt) is burned.
"The
Persian ruler Darius now decided to attack the mainland Greeks, in part, no
doubt, to gain revenge for the Athenian action, but also to expand his empire
westward. In 490 BC, a Persian
expedition was sent to Greece” (Spiel. 4th Ed. 70)."
Hippias, the son of Pisistratus who had been thrown out of Athens with
Spartan help, was with the Persians hoping to be installed as tyrant of Athens.
The Persian force lands at Marathon (25
miles north of Athens) and the Athenians run up to
meet them. "The runner
Phidippides was already on the way to Sparta, covering the 150 miles in two
days; but he returned with the unwelcome news that, owing to a festival, the
Spartans would not march before the full moon, still some days ahead” (Burn,
161). (They don't make it in time.)
“The Athenians, aided by the Plataeans (from a
neighboring town in Boeotia) [Athens had protected them against Thebes-
BURN,161], confronted the Persians without additional assistance.
The two armies were quite different.
The Persians were more mobile and flexible with their light-armed troops
and relied heavily on missiles; the Greek hoplites were armed with heavy shields
and relied on spear thrusts at close range.
The Athenians and Plataeans were clearly outnumbered [probably mustering
10,000 troops compared to the 20,000 Persians], but led by Miltiades, one of the
Athenian leaders who insisted on attacking, the Greek hoplites charged
across the plain of Marathon, and crushed the Persian forces"
(Spiel. 70).
The Persians lost 6,400 to the Athenians 192.
"According to legend, Phidipides ran the twenty-five miles to Athens,
cried, 'We have been victorious!' collapsed, and died. In honor of
this exploit the modern Olympic Games instituted the 'marathon race"
(Carl J. Richard Greeks and Romans Bearing
Gifts 37).
"Darius now planned a much greater invasion, but an Egyptian
uprising and then his death [in 486] prevented it. His
successor, Xerxes (r.486-465), having subdued the Egyptians, resumed the
elaborate preparations for war in 481” (Winks, 43).
In 487 Archons became magistrates chosen by lot from among 500
candidates from each tribe and the strategoi [“generals”], who were
elected for their military talents and could be re-elected, became more
influential and powerful. During
the 480's Themistocles (c.527-460
BC) rises to power in Athens and persuades the Athenians to pursue a new
military policy: the development of
a navy of about 200 vessels (primarily triremes) when new supplies of silver
were discovered in 483 BC.
2. Thermopylae and Salamis (480 BC):
Xerxes would attempt to avenge his father's defeat
with a new, larger Persian invasion led by Xerxes himself. Estimates of this new Persian force vary: 250,000
men & 500 ships (Perry, 54); a huge army and possibly 3,000 ships (Winks, 43); 150,000 men
& 700 ships (Spiel. 4thEd. 71). "How
large Xerxes' army was, we cannot say; the earliest Greek estimates are the most
outrageous, beginning with the almost contemporary war-memorial at Thermopylai,
which spoke of three million. To
the Greeks, for whom `myriad', the word for ten thousand, was popularly used to
mean `countless numbers', such figures were clearly meaningless.
The water-supplies along their route were not sufficient for them, says
Herodotos, except at the major rivers; a statement `improved' by later rhetoric
into the saying that they `drank rivers dry'.
Actually this statement, without the rhetoric, gives a useful limiting
factor. General Sir Frederick
Maurice, who went over the ground at the end of World War I and applied the data
collected by British intelligence to Herodotos' story, found that water supplies
along the route would barely suffice for supply services for about 200,000 men
(including the non-combatant transport and supply services) with some 70,000
horses, mules and camels. The army
may have been smaller; but probably, in this great royal campaign, the Persians
brought the largest force that they could.
The mounting and supply of the expedition was a remarkable feat.
"The
backbone of the army was the Iranian infantry and (much less numerous) cavalry,
Persians, Medes, Bactrians and others, armed with bow, spear (not as long as the
six-foot Greek weapon) and short sword. The infantry carried large wicker
shields with a spike below, which could be stuck in the ground, forming a
shield-wall, while shooting. The
Persian Guards, the 10,000 `Immortals', so-called because there was never a
vacancy in their ranks, also had body-armour of metal scales sewn on to leather
tunics, but few others had any" (Burn, 174f.).
"The
Persians crossed the waters of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and made their way
into northern Greece. Herodotus
describes their encounter at the mountain pass of Thermopylae with 300 Spartans
[with a total of 700 Thespians alone out of 7,000 allies],
who were true to their training and ideal of arete and "resisted to the
last with their swords if they had them, and if not, with their hands and teeth,
until the Persians, coming on from the front over the ruins of the wall and
closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them." Northern Greece fell to
the Persians, who continued south, burning a deserted Athens" (Perry, 54).
"The Athenians, now threatened by the onslaught
of the Persian forces, decided to abandon Athens and evacuated the population of
Attica to the offshore island of Salamis. Meanwhile
the Greek fleet remained in the straits off Salamis while the Persians sacked
and burned Athens. The
Peloponnesians wanted the Greeks to retreat to the Peloponnesus and the Greek
ships to move to the isthmus as well. Themistocles'
refusal and his threat to withdraw the Athenian ships altogether if a fight was
not made forced the ships to remain and set up the naval Battle of Salamis.
Although the Greeks were outnumbered (370 ships
to 600 Persian ships), they managed to outmaneuver the
Persian fleet (mostly Phoenicians and Ionians) and decisively defeated them.
The Persians still had their army and much of their fleet intact, but
Xerxes, frightened at the prospect of another Ionian revolt, decided to return
to Asia. He left a Persian force in
Thessaly under his general Mardonius.
NOTE: "The
Delphic oracle had mysteriously prophesied that Athens would be destroyed and
had advised the Athenians to put their trust in their "wooden walls."
Themistocles persuaded the Athenians that the message meant they should
abandon the city to its patron goddess Athena and rely upon their fleet--their
wooden ships--for their defense so the fleet was enlarged
from 70 to 200 ships..
“Athens was accordingly evacuated, except for the
defenders of the Acropolis, whom Xerxes' men killed as they burned the city.
In the narrow waters of the Strait of Salamis, near Athens, the Greek
fleet awaited the Persian attack, for an engagement in the open sea would favor
the larger Persian fleet. Themistocles
sent a misleading message to the Persians pretending that he would betray the
Greeks, and so convinced them that it was safe to attack.
The Greek fleet--helped by deserters from the Persians who revealed
Xerxes' battle plans--won a smashing victory, as Xerxes himself watched from a
great throne set upon the shore. Xerxes
had to withdraw from Greece...”(Winks, 43).
3. Plataea and Mycale
(479 BC): “Early in 479 BC, the
Greeks formed the largest Greek army seen up to that time.
The Athenians forced the Spartans to move north of the Peloponnesus and
take on the Persians at Plataea, northwest of Attica, where the Greek forces
under the leadership of of the Spartan Pausanias decisively defeated the Persian army. The
remnants of the Persian forces returned to Asia.
At the same time, the Greeks destroyed much of the Persian fleet in a
naval battle at Mycale in Ionia” (Spiel. 4th Ed. 72).
The Greeks had won the war decisively and were now free to pursue their
own destiny.
Dr.
Richard Baldwin, Gulf Coast State College.