Western Civ H

1. Each day class meets, students are expected to have all materials needed for class: textbook, three-ring notebook, and homework assignments.

2. Homework is due when class meets. From time to time, homework may be collected. Homework is often checked by unannounced, open-notebook reading check quizzes.

3. Grading policy is as follows: tests and essays: 50%; quizzes: 40%; participation: 10%.

4. Active, constructive participation is expected. Active, constructive participation is especially important in group activities. Failure to participate or to focus on the topic will have an adverse affect on your participation grade.

7. At all times, students will treat all members of the class with courtesy, respect, and kindness.

8. I have read through these procedures, have been given an opportunity to ask questions about them, and understand what is expected of me.

Note: Text = reading in your textbook; WP = reading available from my web page. Date indicates when the finished assignment is due in class.

GREECE

Overview of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greek History Worksheet
Rise of Democratic Ideas: Text Reading Guide
Funeral Oration of Pericles
Herodotus
The Odyssey
Greek Art
The Women of Athens: Two Views
Greek Vocabulary List

Navigation note: You also can scroll up and down to reach the above items and return to the top of this page.

OVERVIEW OF ANCIENT GREECE

Introduction--note the following:

In what areas did the Greeks have an impact on Western civilization?
In what ways were the Greeks different from other ancient peoples?
What Greek ideas seem particularly modern (like our own)?
What is meant by the Greek sense of the "wholeness of things"?

The ancient Greeks originated scientific and philosophical thought, created democracy, developed a humanistic outlook, and gave value to the individual. From 750 B.C. to 338 B.C. the Greek world consisted of small, independent, self-governing city-states, and from within this social and political context, they made their outstanding contributions to civilization.

In contrast to most other ancient peoples, the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, for example, the Greeks developed a rational and scientific rather than a mythical interpretation of nature. In trying to understand nature, Greek philosophers proposed physical explanations and gradually eliminated the gods. Greek thinkers also analyzed government, law, and ethics in logical and systematic ways. It was the great achievement of the Greeks to rise above magic miracles, and mystery to explain events. This rational approach did not end traditional religion, particularly for the peasants, who remained devoted to their ancient gods and cults. But alongside this traditional approach arose a philosophical-scientific view of both the natural world and human culture. For the Greeks, the ability to reason defined humans.

The Greeks enshrined the principle of political liberty. Egyptians and Mesopotamians were subject to the authority of god-kings and priest-kings, the common people played no role in political life, they had no awareness of individual liberty. In contrast, many Greek city-states--most notably Athens--developed democratic institutions and attitudes. While most other ancient peoples believed that law was given by the gods, the Greeks came to understand that law was a human creation and a product of human reason. The Athenians abhorred rule by absolute rulers and held that people could govern themselves.

The Greeks originated the Western humanist tradition. They valued the human personality and sought the full developed of human talents. In the Greek view, a man of worth pursued excellence and sought to mold himself according to the highest standards. Greek art, for example, made the human form the focal point and exalted the nobility, dignity, confidence, and beauty of human beings.

Greek culture has a distinctive sense of the "wholeness of things," a conviction that the universe contains an inherent order, that laws govern both the natural and human worlds, and that these laws can be understood through human reason.

Ancient Greek History

Assignment: Read and high-light. Be able to describe the main periods of ancient Greek history and identify the items on the worksheet that follows.

The Hellenic Period (750 -338 BC)

The Greeks--they called themselves Hellenes-- developed a proud ethnic consciousness. Although the small Greek city-states maintained their political independence from one another (there was no one "Greece" only many separate Greek city-states), they pursued a similar pattern of political development. Monarchies were slowly replaced, between 800 and 650 BC, by oligarchies of aristocrats, as the noble families acquired land, the measure of wealth and power. About 650 BC many of the oligarchies were themselves overthrown and one-man rulers, called tyrants, replaced the power of the landed nobles.

By 600 BC, Athens and Sparta were the two dominant cities of Greece. Sparta, a military state, led by conquest, and kept its subjects under strict rule. Athens, first a monarchy, was then ruled by nobles until about 550 BC. The statesman Draco established the first written law code in Athens, which limited the power of these nobles. (The harshness of some aspects of this code gives rise to the English adjective "draconian," which means "harsh or cruel.") A second major blow to the power of the nobles was a new code of law sponsored by the Athenian statesman Solon in 594 BC, which gave citizenship to the lower classes. (The English noun "solon" means "wise lawgiver.") The supporters of democracy won a complete victory around 500 BC when a new constitution, based on democratic principles, took effect under the great statesman Cleisthenes . The beginning of democratic rule was the dawn of the greatest period of Athenian history.

The Persian Wars (499-480 BC)

The Greek colonies in Asia Minor (now modern-day Turkey) were conquered by the Persian Empire in the 500s BC. Some of these colonies, assisted by Athens, revolted against Persia. Persia invaded Greece to put down the rebellion. Although most of the smaller city-states surrendered, Sparta and Athens refused. At the battle of Marathon near Athens, the Athenians won an overwhelming victory over a Persian force three times as large. The next Emperor of Persia, Xerxes, tried to avenge his father's defeat. In 481 BC the Persians again invaded Greece. An the naval battle of Salamis, fewer than 400 Greek vessels defeated a much larger Persian armada. Xerxes, who had watched the battle from a golden throne on a hill overlooking the harbor of Salamis, fled to Asia in defeat.

The Golden Age of Athens (480 - 431 BC)

As a result of its brilliant leadership in the Persian wars, Athens became the most influential state in Greece. Moreover, the wars had demonstrated the increasing importance of sea power, for the naval battle of Salamis had been the decisive engagement. Sparta, the greatest military power in Greece because of its army, lost its prestige to the Athenian fleet. In 478 BC a large number of Greek states formed a voluntary alliance, the Delian League, to defend Greece from further Persian attack. Athens, however, began to exert its power over the other members of the league to such an extent that they became its subjects rather than its allies.

The period of Athenian domination during the 5th century BC has become known as the Golden Age of Athens. Under Pericles, who was the leading political figure, the city attained its greatest splendor. The constitution, reformed to further extend democracy, contained provisions such as payment for jury service, thereby permitting even the poorest citizens to serve. Pericles also was determined to make Athens the greatest artistic and cultural center of the Greek world. During the Golden Age, the Parthenon and other great buildings were constructed. Greek drama reached its greatest expression with the plays of such dramatists as Aeschylus and Sophocles. Thucydides and Herodotus wrote great works of history, while Socrates and Plato became the founders of Western philosophy.

The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)

Despite the strength and excellence of the city, the foreign policy of Athens proved its undoing. The members of the Delian League grew discontented under Athenian rule. Sparta, and the Peloponnesian League of city-states began to oppose Athens actively. In 431 BC the inevitable clash between Athens and Sparta led to the Peloponnesian War. This struggle between the two great city-states and their allies lasted until 404 BC and resulted in a Spartan victory over Athens.

The end of the Peloponnesian War was, unfortunately, not the end of war for the Greeks. For the next three quarters of a century, the Greek city-states weakened themselves in a series of unceasing civil wars. During this period of strife in Greece, Macedonia, the northern neighbor of Greece, arose. Philip of Macedon was a great admirer of Greek civilization, but he was well aware of its greatest weakness, the lack of political unity. Philip began the conquest of the Greek city-states, which he completed in 338 BC. His son, Alexander, who was then 20 years old, succeeded him. In 334 BC Alexander the Great invaded Persia. During the next ten years, before his death in 323 BC, Alexander's conquests extended Greek influence as well as Greek civilization and language throughout a Macedonian empire that ranged east to India and south to Egypt and Arabia.

Following the death of Alexander, Macedonian generals partitioned his vast empire among themselves. The disagreements resulted in a series of wars many of which took place in Greece. Thus, one of the characteristics of the Hellenistic Period, from the death of Alexander until Greece became a Roman province in 146 BC, was the decline of the Greek city-states. One irony of Greece's political decline was the triumph of Greece as the fountainhead of culture, as its way of life was adopted, as a result of Alexander's conquests, and spread throughout most of the ancient world.

In 146 BC, Greek territories came completely under Roman rule. Rome annexed Macedonia and the Greek city-states as a province. While this brought a final end to Greek independence during the ancient period, Greek culture once again flourished, as the conquering Romans themselves were captivated by all things Greek. The Romans will help to preserve, spread, and pass on the Greek heritage to future generations of Westerners. As the Roman writer Horace so aptly put it, in the end, "Captive Greece took captive Rome."

This speech was given by Pericles after the first battles of the Peloponnesian War. (From A History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides)

"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 (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.

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.

Assignment: Read and high-light. Be able to describe the main periods of Greek art history and identify the items in bold.

The civilization of the ancient Greeks, whose city states dominated the islands and the coast of the Aegean Sea, is the fountainhead of Western culture. Centuries before Rome reached its zenith, the Greeks established the disciplines of history, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, poetry, drama, music, and art. They left behind images of human perfection in clay, bronze, and stone that remain standards for all subsequent Western art.

In Greece, the Western taste for "naturalism" was born. Over time, the more rigid forms of Near Eastern art made way in Greece for a naturalistic, "realistic looking" representation of the human form. The Greek ideal of beauty sought to reflect in the arts the Greek humanist outlook. To the Greek mind, humankind (to echo the words of Sophocles) was the greatest wonder; the images created reflect this idealized outlook. Greek sculpture, particularly of the fifth century B.C., the classical period of Greek art, rejects the particular, the individual, and certainly the flawed, and presents the universal, the ideal, the perfect. The astonishing achievements of Greek art of the classical period, however, did not happen overnight. Between 800 BC and 200 BC, Greek art passes through four distinct phases: the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods.

A recognizable style of early Greek art first appears around 800 BC. This earliest, or Geometric period is characterized by rigid, geometrical patterns. Vase paintings of the period show a series of repeated geometric shapes. The human form tends to be absent or unimportant. Human forms, where they appear, seem rigid and geometric.

By about 600 BC, a new style appears. The human form is given greater prominence during this second, or Archaic period. Sculpture of this period most often shows a figure of a young boy, or a Kouros. The figure is stiff and unnatural, arms held rigidly at his sides, with a slight "Archaic" smile on his lips. As the Archaic period proceeds, poses take on a more relaxed naturalism, and the smile begins to disappear.

During the fifth century BC, Greek art of the Classical period reaches new heights of creativity and technical perfection. During this period, sculptors explore an easy naturalism that can capture the energy of the athlete or the easy grace of a perfect body at rest. The images are idealized, showing perfection of form. Some examples are the relaxed ease of the Kritios Boy (an early classical piece), the graceful athleticism of the Discus Thrower, and the poised power of the bronze statue of Zeus. Harmony, balance, order, simplicity, and rationality all are characteristics of classicism in the arts. This golden age of Greek art was short‑lived. Civil war and invasion shattered the confident spirit of Greece of the Golden Age.

Crises both internal and external civil war and invasion swept Greece in the fourth and third centuries. The order, balance, harmony, and simplicity of classicism is in the past. Greek art of the Hellenistic period communicates a new, opposite spirit to classicism Hellenistic art is disorderly, almost violent, complex and emotional, full of twists and sudden or swift movement. The statue of Nike (or the Winged Victory of Samothrace) is shown spread winged and windswept, landing on the prow of a ship. Struggle, violence, and tension is captured in the Laocoon, the Trojan priest punished by the gods for warning his fellow Trojans not to bring the wooden horse into the city. (He and his two young sons are being strangled by sea snakes.) Even the famous Venus de Milo, which at first seems classical (with her serene expression) is pure Hellenistic. Notice the twisting pose and the complicated drapery that surrounds her. The Old Market Woman gets us far away from the perfection of classicism and is a moving portrait of human decline and decay. In the progression from the Classical to the Hellenistic period in Greek art, we see the beginning of a characteristic pattern in the history of Western art: the cool, rational, perfect simplicity of the classical is almost always followed by the hot, emotional, realistic complexity of romanticism.

The glories of Greek architecture exist today as shattered ruins strewn around Aegean and Mediterranean coastlines. Even in decay, these temples astonish their viewers and have served as models for Western architects for over two thousand years.

Greek temples were designed in one of three architectural styles or "orders": the Doric, the Ionic, or the Corinthian orders. A Greek order can be easily identified by looking at the column and capital (top) of the column. The Doric column is topped by a simple, undecorated slab of stone. The Ionic capital curves into a scroll-like form. The Corinthian column is the most elaborate of the three orders: the capital is carved with a design of acanthus leaves. This column also is the tallest and most graceful of the three.

The temple complex built atop the Acropolis (hill) overlooking Athens is the crowning achievement of classical Greek architecture. There, the Parthenon--the great temple sacred to the patron goddess Athena Parthenos--stands, perhaps the single most admired (and copied) work of architecture in the Western world. Its massive size (eight frontal columns rather than the usual six), its elegant Doric simplicity, its sophisticated engineering (flaws are deliberately built into it to create the illusion of perfect flawlessness) all set the Parthenon apart. Time and man have treated the Parthenon harshly, yet it retains its place in the history of Western architecture as a sublime human achievement. Standing, too, on the Acropolis is the smaller, Ionic temple, the Erechtheum, with its unusual row of caryatid columns--columns in the form of female figures.

Greek art, particularly of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, set standards that Western artists will try to copy, to equal, and to surpass for the next two thousand years, and more.

Greek society, like most societies all over the world throughout history, was dominated by men. This was true of democratic Athens in the age of Pericles, no less than of other city-states. The actual position of women in classical Athens, however, has been the subject of much controversy. An additional problem is the absence of authentic women's voices in the form of documents written by women of the time.

The bulk of the evidence coming from the law, philosophical and moral writings, and other documents of daily life, shows that women were excluded from most aspects of public life. They could not vote, take part in the political assemblies, hold public office, or take any direct part in politics at all. In Ancient Athens, which permitted all of these things of its male citizens, the exclusion of women is all the more striking.

The same sources show that the private lives of Athenian women were equally limited. An Athenian woman was always under the guardianship of some male--father, husband, or nearest male relative--no matter her age. Women married young, usually between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, while their husbands were usually over 30. The difference in age reinforced the guardian role of husbands in a marriage. Marriages were arranged; a woman normally had no choice. Her dowry was controlled by a male relative and given to her husband to control. The main function of a respectable Athenian woman was to produce a male heir. A daughter could inherit property from her father in the absence of brothers or other males heirs, but she would be forced by law to marry a relative on her father's side.

Because the pure and legitimate lineage of children was so important in continuing the family line, women were carefully segregated from men outside the family and were confined to special quarters --"the geneikon"--in the house. Men and women did not socialize within the home--the husband would entertain male guests exclusively. While men were free to seek sex outside the marriage, such behavior was severely punished in women. Respectable women stayed home to raise the children, cook, weave cloth, and oversee the management of the household. Once a year, women could participate in the public festivals in honor of Athena and attended the dramas presented on this occasion. Aside from this, women were expected to remain home, out of sight, silent, quiet, and unnoticed. In his famous "Funeral Oration," Pericles said: "the greatest glory of women is to be least talked about by men, whether for good or bad."

This view of the status of women, based on legal sources and the public writings of Athenian men, leaves us with an interpretive problem. It does not fit well with evidence from literary sources, particularly the tragedies and comedies of the great Athenian dramatists. These often show women as central characters and powerful figures in both public and private spheres. This suggests that the role played by Athenian women may have been more complex than their

legal status suggests. Clytemnestra in the tragedy Agamemnon (by Aeschylus), for example, arranges the murder of her royal husband and places her lover on the throne, whom she dominates. The bold defiance of Antigone, too, makes us wonder about the submissiveness of Athenian women. In the play, Medea, by Euripides, the title heroine is a powerful and terrifying figure, who negotiates with kings and commits an astonishing number of bloody murders in the course of the drama. Yet into her mouth, Euripides puts the following words, which seem to be an accurate summary of the condition of women in 5th-century BC Athens:

Be able to explain the English meaning of the following words and their origins in the history and culture of ancient Greece.

Click on the web address below for a 2000 map of Europe, or see page 636 in your textbook.

Navigation note: You also can scroll up and down to reach the above items and return to the top of this page.

The poet Virgil, in his epic poem the Aeneid, attempted to capture Rome's particular genius and to distinguish it from the accomplishments of Greek Civilization. He wrote: "Others will bring more lifelike portraits out of marble; argue more eloquently, use the pointer to trace the paths of heaven accurately, and accurately foretell the rising stars. Roman, remember your strength is to rule Earth's peoples--for your arts are to be these: to pacify, to impose the rule of law to spare the conquered, strike down the proud." Whether his words are fully accurate is debatable. What is not is that in the space of a few hundred years, Rome grew from a small city-state in Italy into an empire that dominated the entire Mediterranean world. Their particular genius was the genius to govern; their greatest legacy, the rule of law.

Roman Origins. Roman legend links the founding of Rome with the Trojan hero Aeneas, who escaped the destruction of Troy and eventually settled in central Italy with a band of men. Other legends cite the story of abandoned twins, raised by a she wolf--the famous Romulus and Remus. The real Romans were a Latin people, sharing the Italian peninsula with a variety of peoples. The Etruscans to the north ruled over the Romans until 509 BC, when Rome successfully rebelled against them and established the Roman Republic.

THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. The Romans set up a new system of government without a king based on power in the hands of representative of the people. This form of government--a republic--would last for nearly 500 years. (The term comes from Latin meaning "the thing of the people.")

The most powerful governing body in the Roman Republic was the Senate. Its 300 members were drawn from the wealthy, land-owning patrician class. Senators served for life and controlled the finances and foreign policy of the Roman state. The traditional view of historians is that Rome was an oligarchy dominated by this wealthy class. Recent scholarship emphasizes the considerable powers of the other two assemblies which were popularly elected, included representatives from the plebeian class (the ordinary people of Rome), and had the power to pass laws and appoint most officials of the state. This view makes the Republic more like a representative democracy and less like an oligarchy. Scholars continue to disagree (that's ancient history for you--nobody knows for sure).

The executive power of the state was vested in two consuls elected by the Senate for one-year terms. Their job was to run the government on a day-to-day basis in consultation with the Senate. That there were two consuls who shared power and that they served a very limited term of office effectively checked their power. Two rulers in a crisis is a bad idea. In this case, the consuls resigned and the Senate appointed a dictator with vast emergency powers. these powers lasted for six months. At the end of that time, the dictator had to give up power. As Rome grew so did its list of elected officials

Three important themes dominate the story of the Republic: its gradual extension of rights to ordinary people, its astonishing territorial expansion throughout the Mediterranean world, and its political decline and collapse into monarchy in the first century before Christ.

1. Plebeian demands for greater equality were significantly aided by their right to vote in the lower assemblies and their importance as soldiers in the Roman army. An early breakthrough was the right to have the laws of the state inscribed and displayed on tablets in the center of Rome--the Roman Forum. The first written laws, the Twelve Tables, made it more difficult for the Patricians to manipulate the law. Plebeians could now appeal judgments against them, based on a written code. Officials called Tribunes were chosen to represent the interests of the ordinary people of Rome. They had the power to "veto" decisions of the Senate. In reality, this was the power to "object to" but not actually reject Senate decisions. Over time, Plebeians won the right to marry into the Patrician class, to be appointed to the Senate, to have one consul appointed from the Plebeian class, and to hold other high political and religious offices within the state.

2. While the plebeians were on the march at home, Rome's armies expanded its power first across Italy and then the Mediterranean. The recipe for imperial success was a combination of skillful diplomacy, military might, and generally good treatment of its defeated enemies. In other words, Rome would first try to do a deal with you. If you were stubborn, they would beat you up. Then they would dust you off and be nice to you, often offering you full citizenship in their empire. By this method, Rome allied with other Latin tribes in central Italy, turned north and defeated the Etruscans, and finally turned south and defeated and absorbed the Greek colonies in southern Italy. Within 250 years, the Romans were masters of the Italian peninsula.

Their next step was to win control of the empire of their chief commercial and military rival in the western Mediterranean: Carthage. Between 264 and 146 BC. Rome fought three wars (the Punic Wars) against Carthage, a city-state in North Africa (modern day Tunis). Rome had its most difficult challenge in the Second Punic War, thanks to the successes of the remarkable Carthaginian general Hannibal (famous for crossing the Alps into Italy with elephants as pack animals.) He defeated Roman armies again and again, until superior Roman resources and patience won out in the end. In the first two Punic Wars, Carthage lost all its territory outside Africa to Rome: the large islands of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, and its lands on the Iberian peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal). Rome paid a heavy price: Hannibal's armies had ravaged the Italian countryside, causing terrible destruction. Rome would seek revenge in the Third Punic War. It attacked and destroyed the city of Carthage, killing most male inhabitants, selling the survivors into slavery, and pouring salt into the fields around the city (a mostly symbolic gesture of destruction). This incident provides the ironic phrase in English, a "Carthaginian peace."

Area by area, Rome expanded its empire, adding Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt to its empire. By the time of the birth of Christ, Romans could justifiably boast that the Mediterranean was indeed Mare Nostrum: "Our Sea."

3. The last theme of the Republican period --the decline and fall of the Republic--has its roots in Rome's expansion. Triumphant Rome tore its state apart over the spoils of victory. Ambitious generals and greedy Senators fought over the wealth and power that poured into Rome as its empire expanded. Poor farmers, ruined by the Punic Wars, poured into the cities, swelling the ranks of the urban poor. Jobs were scarce thanks to the widespread use of slave labor--slaves captured as a result of Rome's impressive conquests. Service to the Republic that had once been an honor and a civic duty was now a matter of greedy ambition. From 146 BC to the end of the Republic in 27 BC, turmoil rocked the Republic. Strong men seized power, often by making promises to the desperate poor in exchange for mob support. Civil wars split the republic into factions. When true reformers appeared, such as the tribunes Tiberious and Gaius Gracchus, they were destroyed by the Senate. Their plan for land reform--distributing land to the poor to restore the vitality of the small Roman farmer-- clashed with the desire of senatorial families to accumulate vast estates.

Historians Give Romans Better Marks in Democracy

[Directions: Identify the author’s thesis and the evidence he presents to support it.]

To most historians of this century, the Roman Republic was a corrupt oligarchy ruled by a rich and decadent aristocracy, despite its democratic constitution, popular assemblies, and regularly elected officials…compared with Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., which was revered as the birthplace of a purer [direct] democracy.

Yet over the last decade or so several scholars have been arguing that it was an imperfect but still recognizable democracy. Political office was less controlled by the aristocracy than was assumed. What’s more, they say in some ways, Rome had even more in common with modern notions of democracy than Athens did.

Republican Rome’s democratic credential weren’t always in doubt. After all, America’s founding fathers took the Roman Constitution, with its foundation of Senate and Assembly, as their model, not the single Athenian assembly. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian Assembly would still have been a mob…History informs of no long-lived republic which had not a senate.”

But in the 19^th century, Greece began to replace Rome as the West’s political and cultural model. As the British pushed to expand democratic reforms, liberals pointed to the Athenian experience was evidence that democracy was achievable without a traumatic upheaval like the French Revolution. Rome left a much better record of its political life than did Athens, which didn’t help its image. Since historians knew so much more about Rome, they could better trace [its flaws].

[Some] historians are trying to reverse this perception. After all, it was Rome, not Athens, that invented that cornerstone of modern democracy, the secret ballot. And even though some of Rome’s popular assembles may have had weighted voting systems that favored the rich, they were still the only political bodies that could pass laws and appoint officials. The Senate, dominated by the aristocracy, had neither of those powers. Traditional interpretations are turned on their heads, using the corruption of democracy as evidence of its existence. That bribery was widespread demonstrates how essential [approval of measures by the elected assembles] was to the exercise of political power.

The Forum was the ultimate symbol of Rome’s open political system. This is where leaders went to make their case and win the support of the Roman population. Their power was so dependent on this popular support that rival groups vied for physical control of the places where citizens gathered…

The very scope and size of ancient Rome also makes it more relevant to many of today’s democracies. At most, the Athenian city-state had an electorate of 40,000 men in the middle of the fifth century B.C. At the end of the Roman Republic, however, there, were more than one million Roman citizens, many of them freed slaves. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of its quickly expanding empire were regularly granted citizenship.

Of course, extending citizenship didn’t always mean extending power. Rome became more authoritarian as popular leaders sought ever greater powers to tackle the problems of an expanding empire. And to vote, Romans still had to show up personally in Rome. Romans may have invented the secret ballot, but the mail-in ballot remained something of the future.

The End of the Republic. Out of the chaos emerged Julius Caesar, a talented general, ambitious for power, who was determined to make sweeping changes to Rome. His military successes, especially his victory over the Gauls extended Rome's empire into what is now France. His victories made him wildly popular with his soldiers and with the people of Rome. Ordered to return from Gaul to Rome without his army by an alarmed and threatened Senate, Caesar defied the Senate by "crossing the Rubicon" river with his army into Italy. (This phrase has entered the English language and means taking a decisive step from which you cannot return.) Civil war again erupted with Caesar victorious over the armies of the Senate. Although he kept the Senate and other features of the republican government, he took the title "Dictator for Life" and was, in fact, the absolute ruler of Rome, a virtual king.

Between the year 48 BC when he seized power and 44 BC, the year of his death, Caesar embarked on an ambitious program of reforms. he created public works projects to employ Rome's poor; he distributed public lands, he extended citizenship to newly conquered peoples, and he reorganized the government of Rome's territories outside Italy, the provinces.

Fearful that Caesar intended to create a monarchy, a group of Senators assassinated him on the steps of the Senate on March 15, 44 BC--the famous "Ides of March." Julius Caesar remains a figure of controversy among historians. Should he be regarded as a destructive force in Roman history--the assassin of the Republic? Is he better seen as a man ambitious to reform a Republican government grown hopelessly corrupt? Among historians, the debate about who was the real Julius Caesar rages on.

After the assassination of Caesar Rome again plunged into the chaos of civil war. Octavian Caesar, grand nephew to Julius and his adopted son and heir, allied himself with Marc Antony, a leading general and friend of Julius Caesar. Together they defeated the armies of the Senate and divided the Empire between them, each ruling half. Octavian Caesar became suspicious of Marc Antony's alliance with Cleopatra, the powerful Queen of Egypt, and in 31 BC, at the battle of Actium, Octavian defeated his enemies. Marc Antony and Cleopatra both committed suicide, leaving Octavian Caesar as sole ruler of Rome.

The formal end of the Republic can be dated to the year 27 BC, when Octavian accepts the title Augustus--the majestic one, truly a title fit for a king. Octavian uses this title as his name. He is careful to insist he is not a king--he calls himself princeps: "first citizen" of the Republic. It is interesting that this word is the basis for the word "prince," because whatever Augustus might say, the Republic is dead and the Roman monarchy or Roman Empire has begun.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE. After 27 BC, Augustus was the unchallenged ruler of Rome. His long reign, from 27 BC to AD 14 marked an end to the era of civil war, a continuation of reforms begun under Julius Caesar, and the beginning of a remarkable era of peace, order, and prosperity: the era know as the Pax Romana.

The Pax Romana (27 BC to AD 180) was a time when revolts were few, government was effective, and economic prosperity was wide-spread. Stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia, the Roman Empire united nearly 100 million diverse peoples. The same law bound together Britain, Italians, Greeks, North Africans, and a host of others. While some areas resisted this process of Romanization (uprisings of Jews in Judea and Gauls in present-day France, for example), most people viewed themselves as Romans, even though they had never set foot in Italy.

The good times begin to come to an end after 180. Rome had never worked out a reliable method for choosing a new emperor, and after 180, a series of powerful generals vied for power, often plunging Rome, once again, into civil war. Germanic tribes from Northern Europe and Asian nomads from the East attacked Rome's borders with increasing success and plundered its cities. The chaos caused disruptions to the economy, weakening trade. Other economic factors, such as heavy taxation and an over-reliance on slavery also weakened the economy of the empire.

Two powerful emperors, Diocletian (d. 305) and Constantine (d. 337) tried to halt the decline (partly by dividing the empire into eastern and western halves), but their efforts were not successful.

At the end of the 300s and early 400s, Germanic and Asian tribes over ran much of the Empire and began to set up tribal kingdoms in the old Roman provinces. The traditional date for the "end of the end" is the year 476, when the Germanic chief Odoacer overthrew the last the Roman emperors of the Western half of the Empire: Emperor Romulus Augustulus.

The Eastern Roman Empire, from its capital city of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) will continue to hold on for nearly 1,000 years, but the Roman Empire in the West had fallen.

Roman Law

Directions: Read and high-light; note key terms in italic.

Introduction. One of the most important achievements of Roman civilization was the establishment over a wide area of a code of law based on principles, organized according to reason, and--in theory-- applied universally. It had a powerful influence in shaping the character of Western civilization long after the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Early Republic. During this period, Roman Law was characterized by its gradual extension to the plebeian class. The first great accomplishment was getting the laws written down and displayed publicly in the Forum—the Twelve Tables. . This was accomplished by 450 B.C. By 350 B.C., plebeians had won the right to hold most public offices, including the right to elect one consul from the plebeian class. By 250 B.C., the popular Assembly won the right to have its decision exempt from veto by the Senate. Power, however, remained in the hands of an elite—no longer an elite by birth (patricians), but and elite by birth or wealth (patricians and wealthy plebeians). Since voting in the Assembly was not by secret ballot, bribery by the wealthy was widespread.

Law of the Nations. Toward the end of the Republic, a body of law developed to deal with the expansion of Rome and its rule over foreign peoples. The Law of the Nations incorporated Greek principles from Stoic philosophy, which recognized the rights of foreigners. The Law of the Nations and Roman Civil Law for its citizens in Italy merged into one law code as citizenship was extended widely throughout the empire.

Code of Justinian. In the 6^th century A.D., the Eastern Roman Emperor, Justinian, ordered the codification of all existing Roman Law into one code—the Code of Justinian. During the Middle Ages, the organization of this code influenced the development of Canon Law, the law code of the Roman Catholic Church. After the Renaissance, the Code of Justinian provided the basis for most European legal systems up to the nineteenth century.

Key Legal Principles of Roman Law. In the words of the Code of Justinian, “law is the art of the good and the fair.”

Assessing Caesar’s Assassination

Cicero: Justifying the Assassination. In the following reading from On Duties, Cicero, a leading orator and Senator, but not one of the assassins, justifies the killing of Julius Caesar.

Our tyrant deserved his death for having made an exception of the one thing that was the blackest crime of all…Behold, here you have a man who was ambitious to be king of the Roman People and master of the whole world; and he achieved it! The man who maintains that such an ambition is morally right is a madman; for he justifies the destruction of law and liberty and thinks their hideous and detestable suppression glorious…For oh ye immortal gods! Can the most horrible and hideous of all murders—that of the fatherland—bring advantage to anybody, even though he who has committed such a crime receives from his enslaved fellow-citizens the title of “Father of his Country”?

Dio Cassius: In Defense of Caesar and Monarchy. The reputation of Julius Caesar changed over the centuries. Some 250 years after Caesar’s assassination, the Roman historian and politician Dio Cassius, writing in Greek, acknowledged that while not wholly benevolent, the “monarchy” of Caesar was superior to the republican government of Rome.

His slayers, to be sure, declared that they had shown themselves at once destroyers of Caesar and liberators of the people: but in reality they impiously plotted against him, and they threw the city into disorder when at last it possessed a stable government. Democracy, indeed, has a fair-appearing name and conveys the impression of bringing equal rights to all through equal laws, but its results are seen not be agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but it is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them…successes have always been greater and more frequent in the case both of cities and of individuals under kings.

It happened as follows, and [Caesar’s] death was due to the cause now to be given. He had aroused dislike that was not altogether unjustified; except so are as it was the senators themselves who had by their novel and excessive honors encouraged him and puffed him up, only to find fault with him on this very account…

Directions. Read and high-light main ideas. Know important items in italic.

As Rome expanded in the centuries before the birth of Christ, it eventually ruled over most of the Western world. Of all the territories Rome conquered, Greece had the greatest influence on the development of Roman arts.

Greek colonies flourished in Southern Italy in the fourth century BC. Within two hundred years, southern Italy as well as the Greek peninsula itself had become Roman colonies. Greek arts and artists were embraced by the Romans, imported, emulated, and copied.

The Romans adopted the three Greek architectural orders, copied the great works Greek sculpture (the Discus Thrower, for example, is a Roman copy of the lost Greek original). Roman art in general looks, at first glance, very Greek. For example, the sculpture on the Altar of Augustan Peace reminds us of the Parthenon frieze. Two things, however, make it characteristically Roman: the figures are not idealized but are real portraits, and the message of the altar is very political. Perhaps more than anything else, Roman art was intended to convey the message of Roman power.

Although on the surface quite similar, Greek and Roman art presents a strong contrast in social outlook and values. Whereas Greece introduced philosophy, Rome gave us law. While the Greeks were masters of sculpture, the Romans were superior engineers. If the Greeks studied humans and their relation to the world, the Romans studied how to organize that world and make it run smoothly and efficiently. Where the Greek arts celebrated human potential, Roman arts trumpeted political conquests and imperial power.

Rome's artistic intentions and Rome's practical innovations in engineering combined to produce architecture on a grand scale. The simplicity of Greek buildings (post and lintel construction, carefully cut marble stone) is replaced by arches, vaults, and domes that span vast interior spaces. Lighter and more plastic concrete replaces solid stone, and the lighter material allows Roman buildings to soar to heights impossible for Greek temples.

Characteristically, some of Rome's greatest architectural achievements were practical: the Roman roads that carried armies and merchants to every corner of the empire, and Roman aqueducts that carried water to Roman towns and cities from Iberia to Asia Minor. And Roman roads such as the Sacred Way and the Appian Way and aqueducts such as the Pont du Gard are still in surprisingly good shape 2,000 years later. Great vaulted baths like those of Caracalla in Rome and Bath city in Britain were huge recreational complexes that carried hot and cold running water and were fixtures of nearly all Roman cities and larger towns.

Two great structures that stand in the heart of Rome show a combination of Greek artistic influence and Roman architectural innovation. The Colosseum, the huge amphitheater that could seat 50,000 spectators, combines the traditional Greek orders with the innovative arch.

The Pantheon, the temple sacred to the seven planetary gods, combines a traditional Greek porch with Corinthian columns in front of a massive Roman dome nearly 150 feet high and 150 feet in diameter. The dome opens to the sky through an oculus while enclosing a vast interior space, imparting a sense of both grandeur and wonder to those inside.

The triumphal arches scattered around the Roman world bore witness to power of the emperor, his empire, and his legions. Their size, as well as their decorations and inscriptions, told a story of imperial might and conquest. Examples are the Arch of Titus and the triple Arch of Constantine.

Sculpture during the Republican period was guided by the requirements of truthfulness to the sitter's appearance. Roman Republican sculpture exhibits a frank realism that contrasts sharply with the idealism of Greek classical sculpture. For example, the Head of Pompey tells us clearly that this great Republican was chubby-cheeked, had a bulbous nose, and was having a bad-hair day when he posed for his portrait.

In the early years of the Empire, Augustus turned to a more idealized style, intended to covey the power and glories of emperor and Empire. The Augustus of the Prima Porta captures a heroic emperor in full body armor, and Augustus as Pontifex Maximus shows the emperor as religious leader of the Roman state. Spiritual and temporal authority are thus united in the person of the Emperor. This art of the Augustan period is the first great revival of the classical style in Western civilization.

The Fall of the Roman Empire

The Pax Romana (27B.C. – 180 A.D.) was the longest period of relative peace the Western world has ever known. During this period, the Empire was a solid structure built on four supports:

In the third century, the supports began to crumble; by the fifth century, the elaborate structure of empire collapsed in the West. What went wrong? An interwoven series of misfortunes battered the empire.

Political Disorder

One problem for Rome after the establishment of the monarchy under Emperor Augustus was its failure to establish a clear process of succession after the death of the emperor. When Marcus Aurelius died in 180, the last of the “good emperors” of the Pax Romana, would-be emperors fought for power, destabilizing the Roman state. Numbers tell the story. In the second century, five men sat on the imperial throne, while in the third century saw several dozen emperors rise briefly to power for brief, chaotic reigns—most removed through violence.

Military Breakdown

Beginning in the third century, the borders of the Roman Empire were tested by attackers. Germanic tribes from northern Europe (such as the Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, and others) broke through Roman defenses to raid and, later, occupy Roman lands. In the fourth and fifth centuries, fierce Asiatic invaders—principally the Huns--moved slowly westward, entering and disrupting the empire.

§ 410: the “sack of Rome”--the Visigoths invaded and plundered the city of Rome

§ 476: the traditional date for the fall of the empire in the West: the last Roman Emperor (Romulus Augustulus) is dethroned by the German general Odoacer.

Fierce fighting in the third century along with outbreaks of epidemic diseases (possibly the Black Death) reduced the population dramatically, contributing to the economic decline. Heavy taxation to pay for the Roman soldiers and government bureaucrats drained resources. Taxes became harder and harder to collect, roads were left unrepaired, the infrastructure deteriorated, merchants found it harder to transport goods, trade withered, and wealth declined. Many townspeople fled to the relative safety of the country and sought refuge on the latifundias—great estates of wealthy lords. There, they accepted a serf-like status in exchange for a place to live—trading personal freedom for security. Historians trace the origins of the feudal system of the Middle Ages to this process.

In the early 300s, two powerful emperors, Diocletian and Constantine, tried to address Rome’s problems. Diocletian imposed a near dictatorship and rigid economic controls. Constantine moved the capital city from Rome in the West to the city of Byzantium—renamed Constantinople--in the East, hoping to capitalize on the greater economic prosperity of the Eastern Empire.

The efforts of these emperors merely slowed but did not halt the decline of the West. Although the Western Empire collapsed in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, survived another 1,000 years. The Eastern or Byzantine Empire will finally fall to Turkish invaders in 1453.