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World history
Course: World history > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Classical Greece- Classical Greece
- The Greek polis
- The Greek polis
- State-building: the Greek polis
- Greco Persian Wars
- Second Persian Invasion
- Classical Greek Society and Culture
- Philosophy: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
- Classical Greek society
- Classical Greek culture
- Classical Greek society
- Classical Greek culture and society
- Classical Greece
- Prelude to the Peloponnesian War
- The Peloponnesian War
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Classical Greek Society and Culture
Overview of cultural contributions of Classical Greece. Golden Age of Athens. Age of Pericles.
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- Is poison the only theory on how Alexander the Great died.(5 votes)
- It isn't the only theory: some people think he died of a disease, possibly typhoid fever.(7 votes)
- Do you have a citation for Cynics being so named for being "dog like"? As I understand it, the name of the Cynic philosophy isn't to do with being "dog like", though they did use that concept. It comes from the Cynosarges gymnasium, where Antisthenese originally taught, which just happens to mean "Place of the white dog".(7 votes)
- Did Alexander The Great have kids......... And who killed him and how?(4 votes)
- Alexander's children were believed to be Alexander IV of Macedon, Heracles of Macedon, and Keikavus.
Proposed causes of Alexander's death included alcoholic liver disease, fever, and strychnine poisoning, but little data support those versions. The actual cause of his death remains unknown.(3 votes)
- " Captive Greece took captive her fierce conqueror and instilled her arts in the rustic Latium."
Do we notice the heavy similarities between Greek and Roman mythology because of the heavy influence of greek culture on The Roman Empire or do they have , in anyway some similar roots . Also if the similarities between the gods are a result of the Greek influence .... where could I find more about Roman mythology prior to being have influenced by Greek mythology ?(4 votes) - Why do we call it classical Greece it is just Greece right or is there a reason for this why?(2 votes)
- Periods of "high culture" in the history of any nation or people are often characterized as "Classical". When doing "cultural history", it is not uncommon to find dividing dates between periods, not because the dates themselves were significant, but because it makes talking about trends more convenient. There is a period of Ancient Greek History when the culture of those peoples and states set a particular standard. "Classical" has been applied to that era. If nothing else, it differentiates that era from later centuries when other cultures were ascendant. Similar characterizations can be made for cultures of Peru, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and other parts of the world.(3 votes)
- Does the name and works of Xenophon have any relationship to the prefix "Xeno-" in terms such as "Xenophobic", "Xenon", or even things such as the famous "Xenomorphs" from Aliens? If so, how does it relate?(2 votes)
- It is believed that the Xeno- part of his name has something to do with him and uniqueness. It may be that he was strange when he was born or that he could learn foreign languages easily. It, however, has nothing to do with xenophobia or xenomorphs.(2 votes)
- Around, they say that Euclid lived in Alexandria and didn't live in "Greece proper" -- what does this mean? Was Egypt under Greek rule during the Hellenistic Period? If not, why is Euclid considered a Greek philosopher if he lived in Egypt? 3:52(2 votes)
- "Greece Proper" may refer to the territory currently under sovereign Greek rule. It might also refer to the imperial balances at the time of Euclid's life. Though the Ptolemaic dynasty sovereign over Egypt at that time was "culturally" Greek, it may have been an entirely different sovereign entity than that which ruled in Athens and its environs.(1 vote)
- What medium did ancient Greek scholars like Pythagoras, Aristotle, Euclid and Herodotus use to record their work? Have original copies of what they wrote survived until today?(1 vote)
- No original copies remain.(1 vote)
- There is a period of Ancient Greek History when the culture of those peoples and states set a particular standard(1 vote)
- At, the video mentions famous cynics. I thought cynics were people who made a satire of everything, what is meant here? 5:20(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In other videos, we've already talked
about how Classical Greece has had an immeasurable impact not just on Western civilization, but on civilization as a whole. In order to understand the period that we call Classical Greece, it's valuable to place it
in context on a timeline, so I have significant conflicts or events that happened to the Greek
world on this timeline, especially in the fifth
and fourth centuries BCE In the beginning of the fifth century BCE, you have the Greco-Persian Wars, where the Greek city states
are able to fend off attack from the great Persian Empire, and then they go on the offensive. But as we exit the fifth century BCE, the city states start
fighting amongst themselves. You have Athens leading the Delian League in a fight against
Sparta and their allies, which significantly
weakens the city states. It ends with Athens losing, but all of the city
states have been weakened, and it leaves them open to be
conquered by the Macedonians, in particular Phillip of Macedonia, and then his son Alexander the Great is able to not just keep control of Greece, of the city states, but conquer Egypt and Persia and get all the way to modern
day Afghanistan and Pakistan, but after his death, you then have his successors, and Greece falls under
the Antigonid dynasty. But eventually as we get into the second and first century BCE, it goes under Roman control, and we've talked about
this Classical period, all of the various contributions. We've talked about the
contributions in philosophy, from people like Socrates, and Socrates's student Plato, and Plato's student Aristotle, but there were also
significant contributions in mathematics. You have Pythagoras, who actually predates these philosophers, and he's most famous,
especially to many of us, for his Pythagorean Theorem and a lot of mathematics and the foundations of a lot of geometry. But he and his followers, they were actually creating
something of a mysticism, of a religion around mathematics, and even a philosophy
that would later influence some of the other philosophers
that we talk about, especially this ideal
of ideal platonic forms. You can imagine, if you're
studying perfect right triangles, there's no such thing as
a perfect right triangle in the universe. These are ideas that we use in geometry, and other things in the universe are really just approximations of these, but to appreciate the
philosophical side of Pythagoras, here are some quotes from him, or quotes ascribed to him. "There is geometry in the
humming of the strings. "There is music in the
spacing of the spheres. "Reason is immortal, all else mortal." And you see even in the sixth century BCE this thread of Greek thinking, putting reason at a very high level, not just trying to explain everything with pure mysticism, although Pythagoras definitely was, and Pythagoreanism was
definitely about mysticism, but it was mysticism that at the core had mathematics and geometry. But continuing on with significant mathematical contributions
from ancient Greece, we have Euclid. We don't know all of the exact details of his birth and his death, but he is the Father of Modern Geometry, and as you can see in this map here, he didn't live in what we
call Greece proper today. He lived in Alexandria, a city established by Alexander the Great, and this is during the Hellenistic Period where all of the territory, or most of the territory
that had been conquered by Alexander the Great was
still ruled by his successors. Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy, establishing the Ptolemaic dynasty in the time of Euclid, and Euclid lived in that great center of learning and the arts, Alexandria, which even exists today, and he is most famous for his Elements. This is a much later
printing of his Elements, of Euclid's eEements, but you would be amazed
how much of modern geometry has been described by Euclid. Even your geometry
textbook can trace it back directly to Euclid's Elements. Abraham Lincoln famously
learned every proof in Euclid's Elements in
order to fine tune his mind. So you can really view Euclid as the Father of Geometry, but that's not all. There are many other contributors
in philosophy and math, and this is just, once again, a sample of all of the folks who contributed. On the side of philosophy, you have Xenophon, who was another one of Socrates' students in addition to Plato, and in fact, the life of Socrates we learn from the writings
of Plato and Xenophon. Xenophon was also a historian who gave us some accounts of
the later Peloponnesian War. You have the famous cynics, Antisthenes and his student Diogenes, Diogenes, famous for living
in a barrel in Athens, and somewhat insulting
Alexander the Great. But these cynics, which
the word is derived from being dog like, these are people who were philosophers who gave up the trappings of materialism and caring, frankly, what
other people thought. As we go a little bit out of
our timeline right over here, you have Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time, but you also have
contributions in the arts, some of the most famous
playwrights of the ancient time, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. Aristophanes, we might
remember as being a bit of a thorn in the side of Socrates. He wrote about Socrates, but it was more of a parody. You have contributions in medicine, the famous Hippocrates. The Hippocratic Oath
still has an influence on modern medicine. You have some of the earliest
what we could say historians that we know of, Herodotus, famously giving
us the accounts we have of the Greco-Persian Wars, a lot of what we even know about the ancient Persian Empire. You have Thucydides, who gives us accounts
of the Peloponnesian War along with Xenophon. And so when you see this density of arts, sciences, learning in one place, a lot of this was centered in Athens. It makes you wonder what
was going on at that time, and historians do call the period from when the Athenians were
able to fend off the Persians all the way until the end
of the Peloponnesian War as the Golden Age of Athens, and for good reason. Look at this flourishing of
the arts and the sciences that developed during that period. You might wonder what was
happening in terms of government, and government of this period might be one of the longest lasting influences. As we exit the sixth century BCE in 507, you have Greek Democracy
taking root in Athens, and in fact, the word
democracy is a Greek word, government by the people. And shortly after that, during the Golden Age of Athens, you start having leadership by Pericles. He was an orator. He was a statesman. He was a general. In this period right over here that I have in orange, often known as the Age of Pericles, he helped Athens invest significantly in the arts and in architecture. Some of the most iconic structures we now associate with
Greece or ancient Greece were built during his time. They were promoted by him. Here you have a picture of the Acropolis, which is this rock outcropping, which still exists in Athens as it likely looked during
the time of Pericles, during the Golden Age of Athens, and you can see here in particular the most famous structure. The Parthenon, a lot of
which still stands today, was constructed under
the rule of Pericles. As I mentioned, the Greek
city states get conquered by the Macedonians, but after the death of
Alexander the Great, falls under the control
of the Antigonid dynasty, but eventually, as we get
into the second century BCE, off of this timeline, it comes under Roman control, becomes part of the Roman Empire. But the Roman Empire is itself
significantly influenced by Greek culture, Greek mathematics, Greek architecture, Greek philosophy, and in a lot of ways, the Romans end up becoming the caretakers of much of this culture that
we talk about in this video, and once you have the
decline of the Roman Empire, especially the western Roman Empire, and Europe enters into the Middle Ages, you have the Islamic world that acts as a bit of a bridge of this Greek culture into
the European Renaissance and eventually the Enlightenment. And so we can trace even our modern views of science and philosophy all the way back to these Greeks, and so I'll leave you with this quote from the Roman poet Horace who wrote this around
the first century BCE. "Captive Greece took
captive her fierce conqueror "and instilled her arts in
rustic Latium," or Laecium. And so what he's saying is, even though Rome had conquered Greece, Greece's culture took
captive her conqueror, took captive the Roman culture, instilled Greece's arts
in the rustic Latin world.