I. I.Introduction: Congratulations on Your Choice of Electives
A. You have elected to participate in the oldest ongoing application of human science
B. ALL other sciences and most of the arts owe everything to the concept initiated by the Ancient Historians--the preservation of analyzed data for the employment of future generations.
1. The very earliest writers of prose were the Ionian philosopher/physicists (Why are we here? What is here?) and the geographers (logographoi) (where?).
a) One of the geographers, Hecateus of Miletus, started trying to explain what places elsewhere were like and how they got to be here.
(1) The idea here was again, utility--If you were traveling to trade or see the sights, you needed to know what you were likely to find.
(2) Hecateus himself had served as a consultant during the Ionian revolt (500-494) against the Persian Empire, but it's hard to advise people when they don't know what your talking about.
b) Hecateus then ended up doing family trees, accounts of the local legends, and THE RESULTS OF HIS INQUIRIES (<1I)STORI/AI>1 abroad.
c) Congratulations! You have just received your first concrete benefit from this class: Never having to listen to someone uninformed tell you what "History" means.
(1) He influenced some people to write their local "histories," which didn't require so much traveling.
(2) And fortunately for us, a citizen of neighboring Halicarnassus realized that people would read and PRESERVE his book widely if he wrote about a broad topic and made it interesting to LOTS of people. And we're here to read Herodotus.
(3) The second surviving Ancient Historian, one Thucydides, felt that Herodotus had written too much for the market and not enough for utility. Since then, we've had the battle in historiagraphy between the readable and the applicable.
II. The Tools of the Trade:
A. As the word says, ASK! RESEARCH!
1. Perhaps the most fundamental reason for the course being fundamental is that we teach you the all important skill of reasoned inquiry--wondering why, asking how, and determining what stands your own test of rational credibility.
2. You'll be asking Herodotus and Thucydides, and Plutarch later, what happened when you read their books. It's your call whether or not you're going to believe them.
B. You'll also have the assistance of people who've been researching longer--starting with Professors Bury and Meiggs.
1. Bury wrote for the market in 1900 when interest in the subject dramatically picked up.
a) A retired arms dealer named Heinrich Schliemann had just announced that he found Troy and Argons(which we knew about from the Ancient myths and literature)
b) Sir Arthur Evans topped that by saying he'd found not only the Labryrinth on Crete, but even King Minos's throne
c) Oddly enough, they were more or less telling the truth!
2. As the archaeologists increased in number and dug up things people had to evaluate, revisions became necessary. Bury did his in 1913, Meiggs started again in 1951 and kept at it until his own death soon after our edition came out in 1989.
C. You are reading this book because, essentially, there is some information about everything there. It has its weaknesses--
1. It was written to be useful--which means that more attention was paid to that than to making it fun to read.
2. It was written when everybody cultured had READ Plutarch, Thucydides, and Herodotus. If you don't read them, you'll find yourself feeling very distant from the action.
D. Then, well, there's us.
1. Everything down to my own college grades is already availible for you to check on the World Wide Web, and they basically say one thing: Ancient History is my life (if you haven't figured that out yet)
2. Your two TA's are two terrifically competent types with interests of their own to add scope to mine.
III. If we've done our jobs in this course, you'll leave it knowing not only a great deal about the Ancient Greeks but how to subject anything anyone tells you to the test of rational credibility.
IV. The Gritty and the Nitty
A. The University is doing a very great deal to help you with all this if you're smart enough to take advantage of it.
1. Attendance is required at your recitations, which are DESIGNED to let you ask question until you're blue in the face. Read, listen to my lectures, WRITE DOWN what you don't understand, and help yourself and everybody else by bringing the questions to recitation.
2. Penn does one thing, at least, better than ANYONE in Ivy League--using the Internet.
a) All three instructors will be availible via electronic mail 24 hours a day, instant and guaranteed delivery.
b) This class is the first such to have a Home page on the World Wide Web, which your TA's will make sure you know how to use.
c) These very notes on Claudia, course handouts, and links to more material will also be availible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
3. There is a library full of books, with a classics seminar room on the 3rd Floor, and a list of useful books in both the syllabus we just handed you (telling you how useful they are!) and in the back of your Big Blue Book (BBB) and in more other places than you might ever have thought.
4. Finally, we're going to make sure that you can analyze by requiring you to analyze things--on the tests and on the papers. The WATU program as we have it is set up to give you even more help with the mechanics of that.
V. End as of 9/6/95
VI. I need to take a quick run over the kinds of evidence we've got from the Ancient World, just so you can know what we've been working with and your starting to use.
A. As a historian, I work most often with what's called Literary evidence, "that which is written.
1. Greek literature starts with Homer who isn't big on the Historian's "reasoned enquiry," but who offers information by the very large shovelful about which to make reasoned enquiries.
2. Hesiod's Works and Days tells up about being a farmer in 8th Century Boetia, Pindar's Olympiads tell us about Greek nationalism, not with a historical end in view, but nonetheless.
3. Herodotus and Aeschylus started writing about the same time, but again, the tragic dramas and particularly the political commedies of Aristophanes tell us a great deal about contemporary attitudes and events.
4. We know that Herodotus read the 7th century poet Archilochus (1.12.2).
5. We have the recorded speeches of several political leaders, in and out of the histories.
6. Thucydides reacted to the myths of what had been before by analyzing them in his introduction, 1.1- 20.
B. Bridging the gap between the literary and the physical evidence is the epigraphic material, letters inscribed upon stone (et. al.), giving us ancient words without the problems of copying errors that torment the official books.
1. Best example is Simonides' epitaph for the Spartan dead at Thermopyle (480)
2. Th.
3. Themistocles Decree--Real or Forgery?
4. Herodotus 4.87 told his readers where to see the architect's memorial to Xerxes pontoon bridge.
5. Check Th. 6.54 to find him using epigraphy to reconstruct the affairs of the Peistratid tyrrany.
C. Ducking back to Schliemann, we have the physical evidence from archaeology.
1. Lion of Chaeronea: The actual monument to the Theban Sacred band at Chaeronea (B&M p. 440) blown up to look for treasure, now reconstructed.
2. Arguments about where the battle was fought: Plutarch in Demosthenes vs. theories vs. Lion vs. mass grave of the Sacred Band (Macedonians vs. Thebans--Philip's unlikely generousity).
3. Homer and Schliemann, Plato and Atlantis/Thera
D. Numismatic evidence comes out of the digs
1. Who's on the coin? What does the coin say where?
2. How thick is the coin? How well made of what metal?
3. Much the same is done for the buildings and any other artifact brought up by diggers or divers.
E. Pottery--easily broken, hard to destroy, has allowed a system of dating as techniques and designs changed over the years.
1. The system is shakier than many would admit, but it does allow relative chronology, at least
2. It's amazing how consistent the potters in the various regions were...
VII. How others have done it:
A. Historians have divided chronology into periods where people generally did the same sort of things for broad categorization.
1. Old Stone (Paleolithic Age) earlier than 10,000 B.C. In Greece, that Neanderthal skull in the Chalcidice.
2. New Stone (Neolithic) Age extended from 10,000-3,000 B.C. Here's the Francthi Cave, evidence of overseas travel (obsidian from Melos and Donald Frey's bones of 3,000 lb. tuna!), pottery, and at the very end-- the Ice Man (in Italy).
3. Bronze Age (3000-1000 B.C) and you can argue that we're still in the Iron Age, although I might argue that the Silicon Age began in about 1967, and the Aluminum age in 1941.
B. Archaeology quits calling the shots after the Greek Dark Age from 1100-800
C. The Archaic Age, writing again, statues, temples, cities, colonkicks in from 800-500.
D. "The Classical Period" supposedly starts with the Persian Wars in 480 and ends with the death of Alexander III of Macedon in 323--and you can kiss your book goodbye after that.
E. It REALLY gets interesting (to me!) from 323 to 31 B.C. in the Hellenistic Age, when Greek civilization wielded political and cultural influence outside of Mainland Greece, and after that...
F. 31. B.C. to, say c. 500 A.D., the Roman Empire.
VIII. Greek civilization itself lacked this modern sense of eras.
A. We've got a really good date for the "start" of classical Greek civilization--namely, 776 B.C. when the first Olympic games were held, to which all Greek speakers were invited, and which began a dating system (of four year Olympiads) with which everyone was familiar after that.
B. Herodotus and Thucydides and a lot of people afterwards oscillated between the horribly inaccurate Athenian lunar/archon year which ended in the middle of the summer (why you'll see dates such as 431/0) and some system based on whatever event they were describing (e.g., the fifth year of the war).
C. Herodotus knew that wasn't particularly accurate, and tried to calculate the length of Egyptian history (at which Hecateus had boggled) based on their recorded list of kings starting with Menes(2.141-146). Setting a generation at 33 years, he came up with a 10,000 recorded span. (Actual date is 3,500). At least he was trying to be what we'd call scientific and also drew some reasoned conclusions on the span of Greek history as compared to Egyptian.
D. Speaking of scientific, and to give you an idea of why we still respect the intellectual abilities of the Greeks, we can't top Thucydides remark (1.10.2) that someone seeing the ruined monuments of Athens would think that Athens was more powerful than ever it was, while the same person looking at the rubble of the Spartan villages would be at a loss to understand Sparta's power and influence.
IX. We also need to treat the geography of Greece.
A. Worth noting that the first historian to note that geography was a major influence on the actions of men was Polybius of Megalopolis (203?-c. 120 B.C.)
B. The fact that Greece was a peninsula allowed its insularity--
1. Isolated on three sides, a culture and language persistently "Greek could develop
2. With that came a sense of identity--The Greek word "Barbaros, applied to cave-dwelling Triballoi and Persian noblemen alike, basically meant that they didn't speak Greek.
C. On the other hand, the convolutions of the coast, lack of navigable rivers, and mountain spines in Greece proper kept the individual communties divided.
1. In the Mycenean period, that prompted the large centralized palace complexes sheltering and supported by the surrounding farmers.
2. After the Dark Ages, in meant the polis city state.
3. A polis consisted of a few major components:
a) The acropolis, a height to which people could retreat in time of danger
b) The agora, where farmers could bring their produce and people gather for trade, government, or worship
c) The chora, the surrounding farmland, which would have farms close by kept by polis residence, and further out, villages usually affiliated with the polis where other farmers lived.
d) Isolation prompted disunity--it's worth noting that the largest areas had the largest political organization
(1) Athens dominated her surrounding region of Attica, Thebes Boetia, Argos the Argolid, and the Spartan villages the fertile plain of Messenia
(2) To the north, the plains of Thessaly allowed the formation of the Thessalian League
(3) The mountain valleys and coastal plain of Macedonia developed into an integrated kingdom, but both Macedonia and Thessaly were continuously under a great deal of pressure from northern tribes, and accordingly rather loose-knit.
X. End as of 9/11--Paper topics come out on 9/18! 1 choice of three
1. Trade was best and safest by sea, the Mediterranean being the warm and benign millpond it is between March and October.
2. The individual islands allowed isolated communities akin to the poleis but also "hops" directly across the Aegean to Asia Minor. Otherwise, without compasses, you hugged the coast.
3. Communities at vital points could find themselves powerful or attacked from all sides.
a) Corinth grew rich from her position on the Isthmus, and she and the communities to the south often thought they could ingnore dangers to the northward by fortifying and defending the Isthmus.
b) Megara and Aegina were in a position to interfere with Athens' growth and trade, and paid for it.
c) Attica was vulnerable to invasions overland, and paid for it.
d) The islands were the quarry of anyone who wanted to control the Aegean and the Greek and Asian coasts.
A. There's a good example of how a modern historian can forget the limits placed upon the Greeks.
1. Victor Davis Hanson wrote The Greek Way of War in 1987, in which he argued that the Greeks had a very ritualized way of war, armies meeting at selected battlefields and fighting battles with ceremonial conclusions.
2. Hanson forgot that the battlefields were on invasion routes forced by the mountains, at points where the polis being attacked could defend its vital chora.
3. Naval battles similarly took place at choke points along a vital coast.
4. People have always wondered at the Greek reluctance to attack cities--the answer is, take a long look at some of these acropoleis and imagine people shooting at you, and remembering that most wars took place over farmland--only 20% of Greece proper is arable, and the goats, lumbering, and bad farming techniques played hob with the ecology as time went on.
5. Three responses to all this as populations grew:
a) The biological one--war
b) The Malthusian one--starvation and famine
c) The Bees' one--colonization
XI. The Chaos Engine--The Driving Force of European History, as Far as the Eye Can See
A. Climate during the Ice Age had allowed large numbers of mammalian species to flourish
1. Mammoths, Bison
2. Humans drawn northwards for the good hunting
3. Intelligence allows survival in the cold
4. Success leads to extinction of earlier species (Aurochs--large elk--exterminated within recorded history.
B. Dynamic--Too many monkeys, not enough bananas
1. Our species kills itself off--other species (Kaibab deer) starve to death.
2. Differentiated groups become desperate, (fierce) in varying degrees in the far North.
a) Climactic changes prompt move south
b) Fiercer groups drive less fierce groups before them
c) They hit the less fierce groups who did well in the warmer Southern climes
d) Cycles of Invasion--All the way down to 1989 and...? Fulda Gap
3. B.C.--People from Northern Europe and Asia begin mass migrations southwards into the Greek Peninsula. We call them "Indo-Europeans," speaking a common language and sharing some common traits.
a) Iliad--Oldest written account of Western civilization describes three-layered society of a king, who led the nobles as long as they agreed with him, and the tribesmen/warriors/women and children with less power. Fundmental tribal unity vs. outside world.
b) Fierce, warrior culture. Ranging South, they encountered what we today call the Minoan culture, earlier arrivals who had traded and been influenced by the older civilizations of Egypt and the Middle East (starting cf. 3000).
c) Minoan civilization goes down before more numerous Myceneans, as we call the earliest Indo-European arrivals, c. 1370.
d) Mycenean civilization collapses under pressure of later arrivals, Dorian Invasion of 370.
e) Resurrected _polis_ civilization overcome and dominated by Macedonian invasion of 338.
f) Greco-Macedonian civilization in Greece survives invasion of Celtic Gauls (Greek Galatiai) starting in 279, but Hellenistic warlords prevail.
g) Romans dominate Greco-Macedonian Civilization in between 168 and 31.
h) Amalgamation of Greece and Rome survives, shrinking, until Turks capture Constantinople in 1453.
i) West had gone down under Gothic and Frankish invasions in 5th A.D.
j) When did Europe stop worrying about invaders from the North? 1989?
XII. Characteristics of Bronze Age Greece/Minoan-Mycenean Civilization:
A. Towns and architecture start in the Neolithic Age--what marks the change?
B. Overseas commerce--Clear Evidence of Egyptian trade, such as scarabs, Egyptian references to Keftiu, Phoenician tin. Our oldest recovered shipwreck--Bass's off Cape Gelidonia, 1350 B.C.: copper, tin, resin, ivory, and a Mycenean seal...
C. Large scale art & architecture, also influenced by Egyptian forms
D. Prosperity--Homer's descriptions in the Odyssey of people with large herds, trade goods
E. Lots of wars and slavery, palaces defended against same, as I said, proto-poleis.
F. Crete had its high point in the 2nd Millenium B.C., friezes showing fleets of pleasure Craft, compare Th. 1.4 on the legends of Minos's naval power--no flies on Th!
1. Cretan palaces initially unfortified, evidence of emergency fortifications before and after evidence of destruction
2. British scholars rather reasonably felt that that argued for a strong navy.
3. Contrary to experts such as Shirley Maclaine, we do NOT know a lot about Minoan religion. The arms on the "Snake Goddess," snakes and all, (B3, p.16 fig. 1.9) are RESTORED, snakes and all.
4. Admitting ignorance is one of the hardest and most important lessons for a scholar to learn.
5. Evans found 3 forms of writing at Crete--non- Egyptian hieroglyphic, and two syllabic systems, Linear A and Linear B.
6. Thanks to the late, GREAT Michael Ventris, we can read Linear B, but they seem to have used that mostly for palace inventories and probably not by the native Cretans themselves, who were writing and speaking in Linear A. Bureaucrats have a sadly long pedigree.
7. The Myceneans definitely used Linear B, and they, we think, invaded and conquered Minoan Crete.
a) Somebody did, and the Myceneans are at their wealthiest after Crete goes down
b) The Myceneans conquering Crete would then be using the Linear B.
c) We know that the Cretans greatly influenced Mycenean culture...and when you come to value the same things...
G. I promised you Atlantis--
1. In 1500 the volcanic island of Thera went "Boom," and people were thinking, Krakatoa--tsunamis--goodbye Minoan navy--Hello Myceneans!
2. Currently, however, we don't think Knossos was destroyed until 50 years later, and some have argued that Thera didn't so much explode as implode.
3. On the other hand, we've found offering bowls full of volcanic ash INSIDE Minoan buildings, which could certainly argue that the explosion impressed somebody-- it certainly put paid to Thera.
4. I'd argue that a big rain of arsenic-laden volcanic ash on top of the earthquakes and tsunamis didn't help ANYBODY in the region, and the Myceneans made their recovery at the Cretans' expense.
5. The problem there is that EVERYBODY was hard hit-- Egyptian writings of the period are INCREDIBLY downbeat, speaking of black clouds and where are the ambassadors from Keftiu?
6. While the Myceneans were sneaking up on the Cretans, somebody else was sneaking up on THEM and every body else and it's PARTY TIME...
a) Just one last look back at Homer--isn't he describing his Mycenean Greeks laying siege to a wealthy and powerful city, and don't a lot of heroes besides Odysseus find the roof falling in when they get home? See B3 p. 44 for how scary Archaeology can be.
7. Nestor's Pylos was one of the earliest Mycenean cities to be burned, and there we found the linear B tablet saying "Watchers have been sent to the coast to look for..."
XIII. Collapse of the old Eastern Mediterranean and the Dorian Invasion
A. The Egyptian and Hittite empires had been fighting and weakening each other, until they made peace after the great battle of Kadesh in 1289.
B. The chaos engine got going again--read the actual dispatches we have in B3, p. 45.
C. Remember what I said about the stronger groops pushing the weaker groups in front of them. Those on the coasts almost certainly became the "Sea Peoples" that so vexed Egypt and Saul's Israel.
1. The Odyssey mentions that Greeks from Crete attacked Egypt and got defeated (Od. 14.288-328)
2. The Pharoah Ramses III erected a monument to how his fleet successfully ambushed the Ekwesh/Akaiwasha in the Nile in 1190, our first recorded fleet battle, shortly before his assassination and the collapse of central control in Egypt.
3. The Egyptians mention the "Peleset," the Bible mentions the Philistines, and the later Dorians who ended up with Greece called the people they'd displaced the Pelasgioi. Draw your own conclusion.
XIV. End as of 9/13/95