History notes
- Early Greece
• Greece=45,000 square miles of territory
• Mountains and sea were significant
• Mountains isolated Greeks from each other
• Each communities fiercely attached to independence
• Fight each other to gain advantage
• Greece had a long seacoast
• Had islands
• Became seafarers
- Minoan Crete
• Earliest civilization in the Aegean Region emerged on the large island of Crete
• Named after Minos a legendary king of Crete
• Arthur Evan found the civilization in the turn of the 20th century
• Evans excavations revealed a rich culture
- The First Greek State: Mycenae
• Civilization was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann
• Mycenae civilization flourished between 1600 and 1100 B.C.E
• Mycenaean’s were above all warrior people who prided themselves on their heroic deeds in battle
• Supposed military adventures in homers books

- Greeks in a Dark Age (1100-c.750 B.C.E)
• 850- Greeks start to revive(comeback)
• Known as the dark age
• Greek migration Large, to southwest shore of Asia minor called Ionia
• 2 groups of Greeks settled elsewhere in Greece
• Settled in lesbos and Peloponnesus
• Lesbos=Aeolian Greeks of (colonized) northern and central Greece and the adjacent territory of the main land
• Peloponnesus= Dorians, and some went to the Aegean islands and Crete
• Trade recovers
• Iron replaced bronze, cheaper for people(more affordable)
• Greeks adopted the Phoenician Alphabet
• End of Dark Age
• Homer appears (one of the greatest poets of all time)
- Homer and the Homeric Greece
• Iliad and Odyssey first epic poems passed down
• Iliad=Epic poem about the Trojan War but really about Achilles is like the war hero (Paris=prince of Troy)
• Trojan War=Paris kidnaps Helen, wife of King of Sparta. Agamemnon Helens brother in law gets very mad and attacks troy with Achilles who was a great warrior
• Odyssey=Epic romance about Odysseus journeys-virtue is a better policy than vice
• Iliad and odyssey both describe social conditions of the Dark Age
• Iliad and Odysseus were basic texts of education for the Greeks
• Greece was a society based on agriculture (warriors and royalty=power, aristocratic heroes)
• (dark age) Greeks believed that their values were virtue and heroism
• Homer set the standard for the ideals of a citizen in the warrior- aristocratic world
• They preserved their own honor and families and pursued excellence
- Greek City States (750-500 B.C.E)
• Polis=city-state
• What were the chief features of a polis and how did Athens and Sparta differ?
• Citizens with rights=Adult males
• Citizens with no rights= women and Children
• Aristotle said citizens belong to the state, responsibility to the state
• Originally two areas with not many people but now little polis’s started to emerge
• Polis’s didn't really get along among each other
• So the polis’s because very independent so it started to tear apart Greece
- A New Military System a Greek Way of War
• Hop lights= heavily armed infantry men. Who wore bronze or leather helmets, breast plates and greaves(shin guards, round shields and short sword and long sword
• Went into battle as a unit
• In phalanx formation, but if the phalanxes order was messed up the whole unit was in jeopardy, rectangular formation
• What is 8 ranks,(phalanx) ppl? What did it look like
• Excellent weapons and body amour, Greek armies would train them how to be a disciplined soldier, effective
• Their opponents were just a bunch of untrained guys,they are just payed to fight
• Plato was a Greek Philosopher who described war as” always existing by nature between every city- state
- Civilization and the Growth of Trade
• At this time colonization and the growth of trade began
• Independent Polis saw links to the mother polis(metropolis)
• Polis’s not political, but based on shared social, economic and especially religious