Ancient Greece — Winter

"The 'frontier mentality' articulated in The Odyssey is related to archaeologically identifiable manifestations of Greek colonization, reflecting the outlook of 'proto-colonial' Greek traders, who needed to amass money and influence before they could launch an expedition aimed at creating a completely new settlement. Many Greeks from the eighth to sixth centuries were restless and on the move. Intrepid individuals left established communities in mainland Greece and on the western coast of Asia to form settlements far away, thus creating the distinctive map of ancient Greece." ―Edith Hall, Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

RECOMMENDED READING BOOK 1

This is the best one-volume introduction to the Ancient Greeks that I have ever read. It is in a beautiful hardcover edition that is very reasonable in cost. Get it. You will be happy to have it all year.

“Penetrating…Ms. Hall is an engaging writer and an acute scholar.”―James Romm, Wall Street Journal

“[Hall’s] book is a hearty, delightful voyage through 2,000 years of Greek history, written with wit and verve and deep insight.” ―Mark Gamin, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“In Edith Hall’s new and groundbreaking study of ancient Greek culture, society, and mentality over a millennium and more, from Agamemnon to Constantine, she acutely identifies and brilliantly explains why we simply cannot do without the ancient Greeks.” ―Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge, and the author of The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others

RECOMMENDED READING BOOK 2

The second great book we have for our winter quarter is from Josiah Ober at Stanford University. Professor Ober has just lectured at the Institute in December of 2019, and we hope he can return. This study of classical Greece with special emphasis on Athens is our best introduction to that magnificent world of Pericles and Sophocles. The beautiful hardcover edition (with Kindle available) is still selling on Amazon.

"This challenging book is like no other history of the ancient world. . . . [Ober] produces some engaging and striking analyses of familiar historical episodes." ―American Historical Review

"A fresh and vigorous account about the roots of democracy." ―Brian A. Pavlac, Canadian Journal of History

"In the late fourth century BC, Aristotle and his students collected the constitutions of more than 150…city-states. The scholar who would today follow in Aristotle's footsteps has to deal with a far more formidable mass of data. Few of today's scholars control more of this data, or write about it more insightfully, than Josiah Ober. [T]hose willing to put in the effort will learn much from the deep meditations of an expert historian and political philosopher." ―James Romm, Wall Street Journal

"An attractive, informative, and timely picture of Greece from Homer to Aristotle. . . . It's an absorbing story full of excitement, drama and hope." ―Evaggelos Valiantos, Huffington Post

"Intriguing. . . . [Y]ou can think of this book as how an economist might think about ancient Greece." ―Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

"One of HistoryBuff.com’s 10 Can’t-Miss History Books of 2015"

"[T]his could turn out to be Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for classical Greece." ―Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire

"One of Flavorwire’s 10 Must-Read Academic Books for 2015"

"Remarkable. . . . deserves a very broad readership in political science across subfields. It brings Greek antiquity into the 21st century." ―S. Sara Monoson, Perspectives on Politics

"In this exemplary book, Josiah Ober, one of the foremost international authorities on ancient Greek political, economic, and intellectual history, persuasively explains why and how ancient Greek communities and individuals managed―and sometimes failed―to flourish culturally and materially." ―Paul Cartledge, author of The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece

"This is a groundbreaking book on the ancient world. Displaying the narrative skill of a master historian, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece is must reading." ―Barry Strauss, author of The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Greatest Assassination

By 500 BC, the successful Greek colonies along the coast of Asia Minor were becoming a constant irritant to the large Persian Empire that claimed this territory as theirs. Finally, by the end of the 6th Century, the Persian leaders decided to invade European lands across the Hellespont, and defeat the Greek homeland once and for all. Thus, from the early 400s, mainland Greece was the target of one of the largest invasions in ancient history. The author who writes all about this is Herodotus. We call him the "first historian" of the West. And when we say that, we mean that he is the first person we know about to sit down and assemble documents, and travels to locations, and interview participants, and then to attempt to tell the whole story in human terms.

RECOMMENDED READING

After the defeat of the Persians, Athens led by Pericles began a program of rebuilding. The architectural projects reflected a larger civic confidence. The confidence was manifested not only in buildings but also in institutions. Most important of all was the building of a large true democratic state at the center of the great Greek world community. The Golden Age extends from 460 BC when the Greeks defeat on of the many Persian invasions to 431 BC when trouble among the Greek alliance leads to the Peloponnesian War.

RECOMMENDED READING

"Kagan is well known for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War (The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, LJ 1/5/70; The Archidamian War, 1974; The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, 1981; The Fall of the Athenian Empire, 1987, all Cornell University Press). His latest work is the first genuine biography of Pericles in English since A.R. Burn's Pericles and Athens (1949) and the most spirited defense of the Athenian democracy since W.G. Forrest's The Emergence of Greek Democracy (1966). The book is a lively and thoughtful chronicle of the years leading up to and into the great war between the Athenians and Spartans. Pericles is cast as the tragic hero whose flaw is the very rationality with which he so skillfully guided the Athenians and forged an empire. Contrary to the charges of both ancient and modern critics, Kagan argues that the democracy was a rational, deliberate, and moderate regime, and Pericles is portrayed as the consummate visionary political leader whose great mistake was to expect everyone to think and behave as rationally as he did. This learned and passionate book is sure to cause controversy and is recommended to both academic and public libraries." ―V. Bradley Lewis, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Aeschylus (525–455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Our understanding of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theater and allowed conflict among them; characters previously had interacted only with the chorus. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotations and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy; his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is the only surviving classical Greek tragedy concerned with contemporary events (very few of that kind were ever written) and a useful source of information about its period. The significance of war in Ancient Greek culture was so great that Aeschylus' epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright. (Wikipedia)

REQUIRED READING

The Parthenon is the most influential building in the entire history of Western architecture.

"The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian state was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and Western civilization, and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. To the Athenians who built it, the Parthenon and other Periclean monuments of the Acropolis were seen fundamentally as a celebration of Hellenic victory over the Persian invaders and as a thanksgiving to the gods for that victory. As of 2018 the Greek Ministry of Culture was carrying out a programme of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure." (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

The magnificent night photo of the Acropolis is by Terry Allen. (Flickr)

"Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus; and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four. The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigone: they are generally known as the Theban plays. Sophocles influenced the development of drama, most importantly by adding a third actor (attributed to Sophocles by Aristotle) thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot. He also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights."(Wikipedia)
Athens and the Golden Age
Athens: 450 BC
Pericles, Sophocles

REQUIRED READING

WE WILL READ ANTIGONE IN THIS COLECTION...PENGUIN CLASSICS...ROBERT FAGELS TRANSLATOR

Alcibiades (c. 450–404 BC) is the most interesting leader in the later Athenian democracy as it faced demands for an empire and failed to live up to its own democratic ideals. The international event that manifests the failure of Athenian democracy is the Peloponnesian War in which Alcibiades was a major figure. He was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War. He played a major role in the second half of that conflict as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician. During the course of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades changed his political allegiance several times. In his native Athens in the early 410's BC, he advocated an aggressive foreign policy and was a prominent proponent of the Sicilian Expedition, but he fled to Sparta after his political enemies brought charges of sacrilege against him. In Sparta, he served as a strategic adviser, proposing or supervising several major campaigns against Athens. In Sparta too, however, Alcibiades soon made powerful enemies and felt forced to defect to Persia. (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

Alcibiades (c. 450–404 BC) is the most interesting leader in the later Athenian democracy as it faced demands for an empire and failed to live up to its own democratic ideals. The international event that manifests the failure of Athenian democracy is the Peloponnesian War in which Alcibiades was a major figure. He was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War. He played a major role in the second half of that conflict as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician. During the course of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades changed his political allegiance several times. In his native Athens in the early 410's BC, he advocated an aggressive foreign policy and was a prominent proponent of the Sicilian Expedition, but he fled to Sparta after his political enemies brought charges of sacrilege against him. In Sparta, he served as a strategic adviser, proposing or supervising several major campaigns against Athens. In Sparta too, however, Alcibiades soon made powerful enemies and felt forced to defect to Persia. (Wikipedia)

We have more surviving plays from the hand of Euripedes than that of Sophocles and they are from a later date. And therefore Euripedes gives us an insight into what was happening in Golden Age Greece in the later years of the 5th century BC. He shows us the religious doubt, the civic questioning, the moral confusion. His theatrical genius completes the picture of 5th century Greece that begins the century with the challenge of the Persians, confronts and defeats the Persians, rebuilds the society in a burst of enthusiasm, and then falls into decay in the last decades.

(Wikipedia) Euripides (486-406 BC) is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets," focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates," and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

REQUIRED READING

WE WILL READ THE BACCHAE for class.

The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese and attempt to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse, Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from the Achaemenid Empire, supported rebellions in Athens's subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens's empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens's fleet in the Battle of Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year. Corinthand Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused. (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

The work of Thucydides "marks the longest and most decisive step that has ever been taken by a single man towards making history what it is today." ―J. B. Bury, (The Ancient Greek Historians. New York: Dover Publications, 1958)

"Thucydides wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War in almost impossibly difficult Greek. Maybe the contorted language has something to do with the novelty of his enterprise. Writing at the end of the fifth century BC, he was attempting something never done before: an aggressively rational, apparently impersonal analysis of the history of his own times, utterly free from religious modes of explanation. In Thucydides’ view, the Peloponnesian War, fought on and off for thirty years between the two leading Greek cities of Sparta and Athens, had to be understood with respect to human politics and power struggles, not—as Homer had earlier seen the Trojan War, or as Herodotus had explained the Greek wars against the Persians—by referring to quarrels among the gods on Mount Olympus. This was revolutionary." ―Mary Beard, in "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?", New York Review of Books, September 30, 2010

The Greeks invented "history" and when we say that we mean they they created a new field of human endeavor in which the writer does research, collects documents, interviews witnesses, visits locales in his story and then tries to put it all together in a way that gives the readers a true picture of the past. The Jewish prophets whose work is preserved in the Hebrew Bible did not worry about the standards of history. They wanted to preserve God's truth. The Greek historian's thoguht it was possible for a human being to collect the evidence and write an accurate account of an event in the past. The master of this new discipline was Thucydides.

Thucydides (460–400 BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities, as outlined in his introduction to his work. He also has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by and constructed upon the emotions of fear and self-interest. His text is still studied at universities and military colleges worldwide. The Melian dialogue is regarded as a seminal work of international relations theory, while his version of Pericles' Funeral Oration is widely studied by political theorists, historians, and students of the classics. (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

"The 'frontier mentality' articulated in The Odyssey is related to archaeologically identifiable manifestations of Greek colonization, reflecting the outlook of 'proto-colonial' Greek traders, who needed to amass money and influence before they could launch an expedition aimed at creating a completely new settlement. Many Greeks from the eighth to sixth centuries were restless and on the move. Intrepid individuals left established communities in mainland Greece and on the western coast of Asia to form settlements far away, thus creating the distinctive map of ancient Greece." ―Edith Hall, Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

RECOMMENDED READING BOOK 1

This is the best one-volume introduction to the Ancient Greeks that I have ever read. It is in a beautiful hardcover edition that is very reasonable in cost. Get it. You will be happy to have it all year.

“Penetrating…Ms. Hall is an engaging writer and an acute scholar.”―James Romm, Wall Street Journal

“[Hall’s] book is a hearty, delightful voyage through 2,000 years of Greek history, written with wit and verve and deep insight.” ―Mark Gamin, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“In Edith Hall’s new and groundbreaking study of ancient Greek culture, society, and mentality over a millennium and more, from Agamemnon to Constantine, she acutely identifies and brilliantly explains why we simply cannot do without the ancient Greeks.” ―Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge, and the author of The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others

RECOMMENDED READING BOOK 2

The second great book we have for our winter quarter is from Josiah Ober at Stanford University. Professor Ober has just lectured at the Institute in December of 2019, and we hope he can return. This study of classical Greece with special emphasis on Athens is our best introduction to that magnificent world of Pericles and Sophocles. The beautiful hardcover edition (with Kindle available) is still selling on Amazon.

"This challenging book is like no other history of the ancient world. . . . [Ober] produces some engaging and striking analyses of familiar historical episodes." ―American Historical Review

"A fresh and vigorous account about the roots of democracy." ―Brian A. Pavlac, Canadian Journal of History

"In the late fourth century BC, Aristotle and his students collected the constitutions of more than 150…city-states. The scholar who would today follow in Aristotle's footsteps has to deal with a far more formidable mass of data. Few of today's scholars control more of this data, or write about it more insightfully, than Josiah Ober. [T]hose willing to put in the effort will learn much from the deep meditations of an expert historian and political philosopher." ―James Romm, Wall Street Journal

"An attractive, informative, and timely picture of Greece from Homer to Aristotle. . . . It's an absorbing story full of excitement, drama and hope." ―Evaggelos Valiantos, Huffington Post

"Intriguing. . . . [Y]ou can think of this book as how an economist might think about ancient Greece." ―Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

"One of HistoryBuff.com’s 10 Can’t-Miss History Books of 2015"

"[T]his could turn out to be Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for classical Greece." ―Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire

"One of Flavorwire’s 10 Must-Read Academic Books for 2015"

"Remarkable. . . . deserves a very broad readership in political science across subfields. It brings Greek antiquity into the 21st century." ―S. Sara Monoson, Perspectives on Politics

"In this exemplary book, Josiah Ober, one of the foremost international authorities on ancient Greek political, economic, and intellectual history, persuasively explains why and how ancient Greek communities and individuals managed―and sometimes failed―to flourish culturally and materially." ―Paul Cartledge, author of The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece

"This is a groundbreaking book on the ancient world. Displaying the narrative skill of a master historian, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece is must reading." ―Barry Strauss, author of The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Greatest Assassination

By 500 BC, the successful Greek colonies along the coast of Asia Minor were becoming a constant irritant to the large Persian Empire that claimed this territory as theirs. Finally, by the end of the 6th Century, the Persian leaders decided to invade European lands across the Hellespont, and defeat the Greek homeland once and for all. Thus, from the early 400s, mainland Greece was the target of one of the largest invasions in ancient history. The author who writes all about this is Herodotus. We call him the "first historian" of the West. And when we say that, we mean that he is the first person we know about to sit down and assemble documents, and travels to locations, and interview participants, and then to attempt to tell the whole story in human terms.

RECOMMENDED READING

After the defeat of the Persians, Athens led by Pericles began a program of rebuilding. The architectural projects reflected a larger civic confidence. The confidence was manifested not only in buildings but also in institutions. Most important of all was the building of a large true democratic state at the center of the great Greek world community. The Golden Age extends from 460 BC when the Greeks defeat on of the many Persian invasions to 431 BC when trouble among the Greek alliance leads to the Peloponnesian War.

RECOMMENDED READING

"Kagan is well known for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War (The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, LJ 1/5/70; The Archidamian War, 1974; The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, 1981; The Fall of the Athenian Empire, 1987, all Cornell University Press). His latest work is the first genuine biography of Pericles in English since A.R. Burn's Pericles and Athens (1949) and the most spirited defense of the Athenian democracy since W.G. Forrest's The Emergence of Greek Democracy (1966). The book is a lively and thoughtful chronicle of the years leading up to and into the great war between the Athenians and Spartans. Pericles is cast as the tragic hero whose flaw is the very rationality with which he so skillfully guided the Athenians and forged an empire. Contrary to the charges of both ancient and modern critics, Kagan argues that the democracy was a rational, deliberate, and moderate regime, and Pericles is portrayed as the consummate visionary political leader whose great mistake was to expect everyone to think and behave as rationally as he did. This learned and passionate book is sure to cause controversy and is recommended to both academic and public libraries." ―V. Bradley Lewis, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Aeschylus (525–455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Our understanding of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theater and allowed conflict among them; characters previously had interacted only with the chorus. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotations and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy; his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is the only surviving classical Greek tragedy concerned with contemporary events (very few of that kind were ever written) and a useful source of information about its period. The significance of war in Ancient Greek culture was so great that Aeschylus' epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright. (Wikipedia)

REQUIRED READING

The Parthenon is the most influential building in the entire history of Western architecture.

"The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian state was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and Western civilization, and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. To the Athenians who built it, the Parthenon and other Periclean monuments of the Acropolis were seen fundamentally as a celebration of Hellenic victory over the Persian invaders and as a thanksgiving to the gods for that victory. As of 2018 the Greek Ministry of Culture was carrying out a programme of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure." (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

The magnificent night photo of the Acropolis is by Terry Allen. (Flickr)

"Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus; and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four. The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigone: they are generally known as the Theban plays. Sophocles influenced the development of drama, most importantly by adding a third actor (attributed to Sophocles by Aristotle) thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot. He also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights."(Wikipedia)
Athens and the Golden Age
Athens: 450 BC
Pericles, Sophocles

REQUIRED READING

WE WILL READ ANTIGONE IN THIS COLECTION...PENGUIN CLASSICS...ROBERT FAGELS TRANSLATOR

Alcibiades (c. 450–404 BC) is the most interesting leader in the later Athenian democracy as it faced demands for an empire and failed to live up to its own democratic ideals. The international event that manifests the failure of Athenian democracy is the Peloponnesian War in which Alcibiades was a major figure. He was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War. He played a major role in the second half of that conflict as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician. During the course of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades changed his political allegiance several times. In his native Athens in the early 410's BC, he advocated an aggressive foreign policy and was a prominent proponent of the Sicilian Expedition, but he fled to Sparta after his political enemies brought charges of sacrilege against him. In Sparta, he served as a strategic adviser, proposing or supervising several major campaigns against Athens. In Sparta too, however, Alcibiades soon made powerful enemies and felt forced to defect to Persia. (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

Alcibiades (c. 450–404 BC) is the most interesting leader in the later Athenian democracy as it faced demands for an empire and failed to live up to its own democratic ideals. The international event that manifests the failure of Athenian democracy is the Peloponnesian War in which Alcibiades was a major figure. He was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War. He played a major role in the second half of that conflict as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician. During the course of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades changed his political allegiance several times. In his native Athens in the early 410's BC, he advocated an aggressive foreign policy and was a prominent proponent of the Sicilian Expedition, but he fled to Sparta after his political enemies brought charges of sacrilege against him. In Sparta, he served as a strategic adviser, proposing or supervising several major campaigns against Athens. In Sparta too, however, Alcibiades soon made powerful enemies and felt forced to defect to Persia. (Wikipedia)

We have more surviving plays from the hand of Euripedes than that of Sophocles and they are from a later date. And therefore Euripedes gives us an insight into what was happening in Golden Age Greece in the later years of the 5th century BC. He shows us the religious doubt, the civic questioning, the moral confusion. His theatrical genius completes the picture of 5th century Greece that begins the century with the challenge of the Persians, confronts and defeats the Persians, rebuilds the society in a burst of enthusiasm, and then falls into decay in the last decades.

(Wikipedia) Euripides (486-406 BC) is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets," focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates," and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

REQUIRED READING

WE WILL READ THE BACCHAE for class.

The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese and attempt to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse, Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from the Achaemenid Empire, supported rebellions in Athens's subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens's empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens's fleet in the Battle of Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year. Corinthand Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused. (Wikipedia)

RECOMMENDED READING

The work of Thucydides "marks the longest and most decisive step that has ever been taken by a single man towards making history what it is today." ―J. B. Bury, (The Ancient Greek Historians. New York: Dover Publications, 1958)

"Thucydides wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War in almost impossibly difficult Greek. Maybe the contorted language has something to do with the novelty of his enterprise. Writing at the end of the fifth century BC, he was attempting something never done before: an aggressively rational, apparently impersonal analysis of the history of his own times, utterly free from religious modes of explanation. In Thucydides’ view, the Peloponnesian War, fought on and off for thirty years between the two leading Greek cities of Sparta and Athens, had to be understood with respect to human politics and power struggles, not—as Homer had earlier seen the Trojan War, or as Herodotus had explained the Greek wars against the Persians—by referring to quarrels among the gods on Mount Olympus. This was revolutionary." ―Mary Beard, in "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?", New York Review of Books, September 30, 2010

The Greeks invented "history" and when we say that we mean they they created a new field of human endeavor in which the writer does research, collects documents, interviews witnesses, visits locales in his story and then tries to put it all together in a way that gives the readers a true picture of the past. The Jewish prophets whose work is preserved in the Hebrew Bible did not worry about the standards of history. They wanted to preserve God's truth. The Greek historian's thoguht it was possible for a human being to collect the evidence and write an accurate account of an event in the past. The master of this new discipline was Thucydides.

Thucydides (460–400 BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities, as outlined in his introduction to his work. He also has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by and constructed upon the emotions of fear and self-interest. His text is still studied at universities and military colleges worldwide. The Melian dialogue is regarded as a seminal work of international relations theory, while his version of Pericles' Funeral Oration is widely studied by political theorists, historians, and students of the classics. (Wikipedia)

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