UNIT 2:

Ancient
Greece
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 Greece and the Birth of the West
(800 B.C. to 300 B.C.)

Western civilization was born with the Greeks.

They introduced the concepts on democracy and
civil liberties, philosophy and elemental science,
drama and every kind of poetry, architecture and
sculpture in the classical style.

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Historical Background:

Civilization in the East was already old when

the Greeks first settled in Greece. China, India, and
the fertile valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile had
produced great cultures as early as 3,500 B.C.

The Greeks first met the first settlers of

Greece (Aegeans who settled in Mycenae, Tyrins,
and Cnossus) whose culture was gradually evolving
for 2,000 years.
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 Cnossus was destroyed about 1,400 B.C. by the
Greeks, while Mycenae and Tyrins fell into the
hands of the Greeks about 1,200 B.C. Some of these
Aegeans were annihilated or driven out by the
Greeks while others intermarried with the Greeks
to form one race.

In Sparta, the Aegeans were subjected to

perpetual slavery by the Dorians (the last group of
Greek conquerors).
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 The Greeks were actually divided into tribal
groups and did not think of themselves as one
people. The Greeks were called Achaians, Argives,
and Danaians by Homer in the 8th century B.C.

Later they developed the name Hellenes (after

Hellas, a Greek name for Greece). Their culture was
called Hellenic and later on called as Hellenistic
after Greece lost its independence.

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People of Hellas:

There are three branches of the Greek people

in Hellas. The Aeolians, the Dorians and the
Ionians.

The Dorians settled in the cities of Sparta and

Corinth. They preserved their military tradition
and an aristocratic social and political system.
Blessed with fertile soil, they became farmers and
sheep-herding mountaineers.
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 The Aeolians founded the cities of Thebes,
Delphi, Plataea and Mytelene. This branch of the
Greeks produced a school of passionate lyric poets
of whom Sappho and Alcaeus are the best known.

The Ionians settled in the islands of Andros,

Naxos, and Samos. Similar to them were the Attic
Greeks of Athens who produced the great leaders of
Hellas in war, trade, the arts, philosophy, and
political enlightenment.

Athens later on exercised democracy, while

Sparta was the champion of military autocracy.
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The Greek Point of View:

1. Founded Upon Freedom. Freedom from certain things

and freedom to do certain things. The freedom to act
required the freedom to think.

2. Concept of Religion. Religion was freedom from

abstract concepts of morality. The gods were superior to
men, not in their ethical standards or conduct, but in the
qualities of power, beauty, and immortality. They
resorted to sacrifices of animals and other food to their
gods for a good weather for their crops, freedom from
natural disasters, or success in war, athletic competition,
or even love. Since the Greeks felt no spiritual contact
with their gods, they had no sense of sin. 8
3. The After-life. They believed in an after-place
called Hades (a dark and static place) and in the
Elysian Fields of the blessed spirits.

4. Freedom from Menial Work. Slavery had been

accepted in the aristocratic society of the Greeks,
just like the Chinese, Hebrews and Egyptians.
Euripides attacked the practice of slavery, but Plato
and Aristotle accepted it to be the natural fate of
some people.
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5. Self-Knowledge (“Know thyself”). Self-knowledge comes
from experience in the world. To know one’s self meant the
realization of all his powers - - physical, intellectual, moral, and
aesthetic, through developing and refining them to the highest
possible degree.

6. Direct Democracy. The system of government was through a

multiplicity of small city-states, rather than a centralized
tyranny. The citizens must all take an active part in its civil and
military functions. Each served as a soldier, as legislator and as
a judge.

An individual must attend the Assembly personally to

speak, decide, and vote on all pubic questions. The idea of a
representative government is an abstract concept among the
Greeks. 10
7. Greek Extroversion. Greeks lived in the market
place, the gymnasium, and the Assembly, rather
than in the seclusion of their private lives. In
Sparta, boys were taken from their mothers’ care at
the age of 7 and was reared under public guardians.

State allegiance took precedence over family

ties. Marriage served the good of the state rather
than the private needs of individuals.

Only healthy children were reared at all. The

sickly ones were commonly exposed within 10 days
after birth, to death or possible adoption.
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8. Attitude Towards Women. Marriages were
usually by father’s arrangements, romantic life was
hardly realized by the Greeks. Domestic
arrangements after marriage involved a strict
division of labor.

The wife managed the home and the husband

took care of his public responsibilities. Thus, a
woman’s position in the society was inferior to man.
Pericles and Aristotle upheld that the inferiority of
women was a natural and inevitable thing.
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9. Aesthetic Ideal. Artistic expression was natural to
the Greeks because every aspect of their live exalted
beauty, the outer and inner harmony of man, as the
great objective of his development.

The good life was in the highest sense the

beautiful life, reflected in the inner harmony of all
phases of the individual - - physical, moral, and
intellectual.

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10. Self-Restraint. Self-restraint directed their
creative energy and prevented the Greeks from
wasting themselves in extravagance. On the temple
of Delphi was inscribed a rule of life to guide the
free expression of the self, “nothing to excess”.

Herodotus saw this rational control as

obedience to a superior principle: “though free,
they are not absolutely free, for they have a master
over them, the law”.
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 By the 6th century B.C., the city-states on
mainland Greece were thriving commercial centers.
They were building the basic structure of
democracy. They had inherited the adventurous
sea-faring spirit of the earlier Minoan civilization.

They travelled widely. They had a language

suited to precise description. They had assimilated
geometry from the Egyptians, and knowledge of the
calendar from Asia Minor.
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 There was an extraordinary flowering of
culture in classical Greece. The Greeks produced
ideas and artifacts out of all proportion to the
general development of the society of the time.

There were statesmen like Pericles, tragedians

like Euripides, sculptors like Phidias, historians,
musicians, potters, painters, lyric poets like Sappho,
satirists like Aristophanes, architects,
mathematicians as well as philosophers.

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 It must be remembered that the newly-
invented democracies were based on Slavery. Only
one-sixth of the members of a city-state were
citizens, once you counted out slaves, children,
foreigners (barbarians, the Greeks called them) and
women (who had almost no civil rights).

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REFERENCE:

The Committee on the Humanities (n.d.). The development of western thought: Readings in
the arts, philosophy, and literature from the ancient times to the medieval period
(volume 1). Philippines: Technology Supply, Inc.

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THE END !

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