Transcript Document 7142764

Ancient Greece and the
Formation of the Western
Mind
Greece is considered by most historians
to be the foundational culture of
Western Civilization, although this view
has come under more critical scrutiny
in recent decades. Greek culture was a
powerful influence in the Roman
Empire, which carried a version of it to
many parts of Europe.
the Glory that was Greece,
And the grandure that was Rome.
To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks
of yore, / That gently, o’er
a perfumed sea, /The
weary way-worn
wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long
wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy
classic face, / Thy Naiad
airs have brought me
home/ To the Glory that
was Greece,/ And the
grandure that was Rome.
Detail from Grecian Urn.
. . .Lo! In yon window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are holy-land!
By Edgar Alan Poe 1831
Artist: Dante
Gabriel Rossetti
(1828 - 1882)
Helen of Troy
Art Style: PreRaphaelite
Year: 1863
http://www.livingmyths.com/Greek.htm
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Helen.html
Why Study the Greeks?
• Western intellectual history always begins with the
ancient Greeks.
• This is not to say that no one had any deep thoughts
prior to the ancient Greeks, or that the philosophies of
ancient India and China (and elsewhere) were in any
way inferior. In fact, philosophies from all over the
world eventually came to influence western thought,
but only much later.
• But it was the Greeks that educated the Romans and,
after a long dark age, it was the records of these same
Greeks, kept and studied by the Moslem and Jewish
scholars as well as Christian monks, that educated
Europe once again (Boeree).
Though the origin of the
Hellenes, or ancient Greeks, is
unknown, their language clearly
belongs to the Indo-European
family.
• Named after the mythical king Minos, the
Minoan civilization flourished on the island of
Crete in the second millennium B.C.
• In the same period, the Myceneans developed
a wealthy and powerful civilization on
mainland Greece.
• At some point in the last century of the
millennium, the great palaces were destroyed
by fire.
• With them, the arts, skills, and language of the
Myceneans vanished for the next few
centuries, a period called the "Dark Age" of
Greece.
• Much of what we know about them is based on
the body of oral poetry that became the raw
material for Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and
Odyssey.
“Where Do I Come From?
Why do I Do the Things that I Do?”
• By serving as a basis for education, the Iliad
and Odyssey played a role in the development
of Greek civilization that is equivalent to the
role that the Torah had played in Palestine.
• The irreconcilable difference between the
Greeks gods of Olympus and the Hebrew god
led to a struggle from which only one survived.
• For those of us raised under monotheistic
religions or cultures, the Greek gods and their
relation to humanity may seem alien.
“Mythic Greek
gods were
admired for
qualities that
would make the
modern world
http://www.expressnews.ualberta
flinch.”
.ca/print.cfm?id=5998
Hebrews and
Greeks
• Whereas the Hebrews blamed humanity for bringing
disorder to God's harmoniously ordered universe, the
Greeks conceived their gods as an expression of the
disorder of the world and its uncontrollable forces.
• To the Greeks, morality is a human invention; and
though Zeus is the most powerful of their gods, even
he can be resisted by his fellow Olympians and must
bow to the mysterious power of fate.
Greek Piety vs. Greek Myths
Religious beliefs and practices of the ancient
Hellenes.
• Greek religion is not the same as Greek
mythology, which is concerned with traditional
tales, though the two are closely interlinked.
• Curiously, for a people so religiously minded,
the Greeks had no word for religion itself—
the nearest term being eusebeia (piety).
• The student of Greek religion is naturally
concerned to know what the Greeks believed
about their gods.
• They had numerous beliefs, but the sole
requirement was to believe that the gods existed
and to perform ritual and sacrifice, through which
the gods received their due.
– To deny the existence of a deity was to risk
reprisals, from the deity or from other mortals.
– The list of avowed atheists is brief. But if a Greek
went through the motions of piety, he risked little,
since no attempt was made to enforce orthodoxy, a
religious concept almost incomprehensible to the
Greeks.
• The Greeks had no word for religion itself, the
closest approximations being eusebeia (“piety”)
and threskeia (“cult”).
• The large corpus of myths concerned with gods,
heroes, and rituals embodied the worldview of
Greek religion and remains its legacy.
• It should be noted that the myths varied over time
and that, within limits, a writer—e.g., a Greek
tragedian—could vary a myth in order to change
not only the role played by the gods in it but also
the evaluation of the gods' actions.
• From the later 6th century BC onward, myths and
gods were subject to rational criticism on ethical
or other grounds.
– In these circumstances it is easy to overlook the
fact that most Greeks “believed” in their gods in
roughly the modern sense of the term and that they
prayed in a time of crisis not merely to the
“relevant” deity but to any deity on whose aid they
had established a claim by sacrifice.
– To this end, each Greek polis (city) had a series of
public festivals throughout the year that were
intended to ensure the aid of all the gods who were
thus honored.
– They reminded the gods of services rendered and
asked for a quid pro quo. In crises in particular the
Greeks, like the Romans, were often willing to add
deities borrowed from other cultures.
What a Neo-Pagan Says
Nobody would suppose they would make themselves a
better person by emulating Zeus, or even Athena or
Apollo (let alone Hermes or Pan). (Indeed, aspiring to
be like the gods is the most obvious form of hubris,
and invites Their wrath, as we see from many myths.)
But this does not mean the gods are immoral. The
gods have Their own morality, and it makes no more
sense to apply Their moral norms to us, than it would
to apply our moral norms to wolves. . . We worship the
gods - we respect Them, acknowledge Them - because
They are the ineluctable powers of the universe,
neither good nor evil (because our moral categories
are not appropriate for Them).
Sophistes
Grecian City States
• Though united by
their common
Hellenic heritage,
Greek city-states
differed in customs,
political
constitutions, and
dialects.
• They were often
rivals and fierce
competitors,
establishing colonies
in the eighth and
seventh centuries
along the
Mediterranean coast.
• The Greeks who established colonies in Asia
adapted their language to the Phoenician
writing system, adding signs for vowels to
change it from a consonantal to an alphabetic
system.
• First used for commercial documents, writing
was later applied to treaties, political decrees,
and, later, literature.
Battle of Thermopylae
• An Allied Greek force of approximately 7,000
men marched north to block the pass in the
summer of 480 BC.
• The Persian army, alleged by the ancient
sources to have numbered in the millions,
arrived at the pass in late August or early
September.
• Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held up the
Persians for seven days in total (including three
of battle), before the rear-guard was annihilated
in one of history's most famous last stands.
Aware that they were being outflanked, Leonidas
dismissed the bulk of the Greek army, and remained
to guard the rear with 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians,
400 Thebans and perhaps a few hundred others, the
vast majority of whom were killed.
The site of the battle today. The road to the
right is built on reclaimed land and
approximates the 480BC shoreline.
The Persian Immortals
Go tell the Spartans, passerby:
That here, by Spartan law, we lie
Athens and Sparta
• Inspired by their defeat of the Persian
invaders, Athens and Sparta emerged
as the two most prominent city-states
of the fifth century B.C.
• With the elimination of their common
enemy, however, the two cities
became enemies, culminating in the
Peloponnesian war, which left Athens
defeated.
http://www.sikyon.com/index.html
Sites Cited
• Berggren, Paula. Dale Hudson, and Anita
Mannur “Ancient Greece and the Formation of
the Western Mind.” Anthology of World
Literature. 2003-2006 W.W. Norton
http://www.wwnorton.com/nawol/s2_overview.ht
m 5 Oct. 2006.
• Boeree,George C. “The Ancient Greeks, Part
One: The Pre-Socratics” George Boeree’s
Homepage
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/greeks.html 2000
5. Oct. 2006.
• Bouchard, Gilbert A. “Olympics Viewed
Differently by Ancient Greeks” Express News. 13
Aug. 2004
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/print.cfm?id
=5998 5. Oct. 2006
• Eddy, Steve. “Greek Myths” Living Myths. 20012006 http://www.livingmyths.com/Greek.htm 5.
Oct. 2006.
• "Greek Religion." Encyclopædia Britannica.
2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9110627 5 Oct.
2006.
• Papakyriakou/Anagnostou, Ellen. Ancient Greek
Cities. 1997-2004
http://www.sikyon.com/index.html 5 Oct. 2006.
• Parada, Carlos. Greek Mythology Link 1997
http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/index.ht
ml 5 Oct 2006.
• Sophistes, Apollonius. "Hellenic Neo-Paganism"
The Biblioteca Arcana. 1995-1997
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/HNP.html#
immoral 5 Oct. 2006.