Contents:
This speech was given by Pericles after the first battles of the Peloponnesian War. (From A History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides)
Directions:
"Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition…
"If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger…
"Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.”
HERODOTUS Greeks and Persians
Herodotus (d. 424 BC), often called the “father of history,” wrote on a variety of topics, most importantly the Persian Wars. Although the gods are present in his narrative, they play a far less important role than in earlier Greek writings, and certainly, in the writings of other ancient societies. Human events take center stage. Two themes dominate in his account of the Persian Wars. First is the contrast between the Greeks and the Persians. Second is his interpretation of what brings about the defeat of the Persians.
Directions. Refer to specific passages in the selections to support your answers.
Xerxes called a conference of the leading men in the country to explain to them his own wishes…” I will bridge the Hellespont [the narrow waterway that separates Asia Minor from Greece] and march an army through Europe to Greece and punish the Athenians for the outrage they committed upon my father and upon us…I will not rest until I have taken Athens and burnt it to the ground…”
The first to speak after the king was Mardonius. “Of all Persians who have ever lived,” he began, “ and of all who are yet to be born, you, my lord, are the greatest. Every word you have spoken is true and excellent, and you will not allow the wretched Greeks to make fools of us.”
For a while, nobody dared to put forward the opposite view, until Artabanus rose to speak. “It is my duty to tell you what you have to fear from the Greeks. The Greeks are said to be great fighters—an indeed, one might guess as much from the fact that the Athenians alone destroyed the great army we sent to attack them. I urge you, therefore, my lord, to abandon this plan…it is the great ones that the gods smite with their thunder, out of envy of their pride. The little ones do not vex him. It is always the tall trees that are struck by lighting. It is the gods’ way to bring the lofty low…the gods tolerate pride in none but themselves.”
Four years of preparation followed, until Xerxes was indeed ready to begin his invasion. When the army of Xerxes reached the Hellespont, the emperor ordered slaves to contract a double bridge made of cables of flax and papyrus. Herodotus continues the story…
They then began to build bridges across the Hellespont …but no sooner had the strait been bridged than a great storm came on and cut apart and scattered all their work. Xerxes flew into a rage at this, and he commanded that the Hellespont be struck with three hundred strokes of the whip and that a pair of foot-chains be thrown into the sea. It's even been said that he sent off a rank of branders along with the rest to the Hellespont! He also commanded the scourgers to speak outlandish and arrogant words: "You hateful water, our master lays his judgment on you thus, for you have unjustly punished him even though he's done you no wrong! Xerxes the king will pass over you, whether you wish it or not! It is fitting that no man offer you sacrifices, for you're a muddy and salty river!" In these ways he commanded that the sea be punished and also that all those who directed the bridging of the Hellespont be beheaded.
Later in the narrative, Herodotus described the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans sacrificed their lives, knowing they were doomed, to slow the Persian advance and allow their fellow Greeks to escape.
So the barbarians under Xerxes began to draw near, and the Greeks under Leonides went forth determined to die. The Greeks carried slaughter among the barbarians, who fell in heaps. Behind the barbarian troops, the captains of the squadrons, armed with whips, urged the barbarians forward with continual blows. Many were thrust into the sea and died; a still greater number were trampled to death by their own soldiers; no one heeded the dying. The Greeks, reckless of their own safety…exerted themselves with the most furious valor against them.
Homer’s great epic poems tell the story of the Greeks’ war against the Trojans, and its aftermath. The epics are thought to have evolved as oral poems between 1100 and 800 BC. The oral versions probably took written shape around 800 BC, this making them the oldest surviving works of Greek literature. After the fall of Troy, the Greek hero Odysseus sets sail for the home he has not seen for ten years. On the way, he encounters many obstacles that delay his return time and again. This prose adaptation from poetry tells of the escape of Odysseus and his men from the one-eyed Cyclops.
Questions. Refer to specific lines in the text to support your answers.
As soon as the Cyclops had put the stone back to its place against the door, he sat down, milked his flock, then gripped up two more of my men, and made his supper off them. So I went up to him with a bowl of black wine in my hands: "'Look here, Cyclops,' said I, you have been eating a great deal of man's flesh, so take this and drink some wine, that you may see what kind of liquor we had on board my ship…” He then took the cup and drank. He was so delighted with the taste of the wine that he begged me for another bowl full. “Be so kind,” he said, “as to give me some more, and tell me your name at once.” I then gave him some more; three times did I fill the bowl for him, and three times did he drain it without thought or heed; then, when I saw that the wine had got into his head, I said to him as plausibly as I could: “Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you…my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends have always called me.” But the cruel wretch said, “Then I will eat all Noman's comrades before Noman himself, and will keep Noman for the last. This is the present that I will make him.”
As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground. His great neck hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon him. Presently he turned sick, and threw up both wine and the gobbets of human flesh on which he had been gorging, for he was very drunk. Then I thrust the beam of wood far into the embers to heat it…We drove the sharp end of the beam into the monster's eye, and bearing upon it with all my weight I kept turning it round and round… thus did the Cyclops' eye hiss round the beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We ran away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore from his eye, and hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain, shouting as he did so to the other Cyclopes who lived on the bleak headlands near him. So they gathered round his cave when they heard him crying, and asked what was the matter with him. He shouted to them from inside the cave, “Noman is killing me…” "Then,” said they, “if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when Zeus makes people ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray to your father Poseidon.” Then they went away, and I laughed inwardly at the success of my cleverness.
The sheep were well grown, and carried a heavy black fleece, so I bound them noiselessly in threes together. There was to be a man under the middle sheep, and the two on either side were to cover him, so that there were three sheep to each man…Their master in spite of all his pain felt the backs of all the sheep as they stood upright, without being sharp enough to find out that the men were underneath their bellies. But when we were a way out from the cave, I first got from under the ram's belly, and then freed my comrades; as for the sheep, we managed to drive them down to the ship. I told them to get all the sheep on board at once and put out to sea; so they went aboard, took their places, and smote the gray sea with their oars.
Then, when I had got as far out as my voice would reach, I began to jeer at the Cyclops. He got more and more furious as he heard me, so he tore the top from off a high mountain, and flung it just in front of my ship so that it was within a little of hitting the end of the rudder. The sea quaked as the rock fell into it, and the wash of the wave it raised carried us back towards the mainland, and forced us towards the shore. But I snatched up a long pole and kept the ship off… When we had got twice as far as we were before, I was for jeering at the Cyclops again, but the men begged and prayed of me to hold my tongue.