Unit 5: The Hellenic Civilization

Introduction

The Hellenic Civilization is a term which refers to that period of ancient Greek history between 507 BCE (the date of the first democracy in Athens) and 323 BCE (the death of Alexander the Great). This period is also defined as the age of Classical Greece and should not be confused with the Hellenistic Civilization which labels the period between the death of Alexander and Rome’s conquest of Greece (323 - 146 - 31 BCE). The Hellenic Civilization of ancient Greece consisted of the Greek mainland, Crete, the islands of the Greek archipelago, and the coast of Asia Minor mainly.

“Hellas, is the name given to the territory of the ancient Greek states

“In the ancient Greek world, religion was personal, direct, and present in all areas of life.

The gods existed, they could influence human affairs, and they welcomed and responded to acts of piety and worship

The political advance in Greece followed a pattern: first the rule of kings, found as early as the period of Mycenaean civilization; then a feudal period, the oligarchy of noble landowners, and, finally, varying degrees of democracy.

“The Hellenes profited greatly from the knowledge and achievement of other countries about astronomy, chronology, and mathematics (but it was through their own native abilities that they made their greatest achievements) in becoming the founders of European philosophy and science. Their accomplishment in art and in architecture was no less fundamental.

The Greek architecture is best known for its temples, amphitheaters, town council buildings, town squares and stadiums.

“The spirit of Greek Civilization subsequently exercised a great influence upon Rome (since 31 BCE) through the Hellenistic Civilization.

The Origin Of The Hellenic Civilization and Its Main Components

The Hellenic civilization of the ancient Greeks still influences Western societies 2,500 years after its flowering. It is remarkable that the “Classic Age of Greece” lasted approximately three hundred years, from 507 BCE to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

The character of the land influenced the social makeup of an individual polis. The recognized leading families formed a loose aristocracy but lived at only a slightly better level than their neighbors. The consent of the governed is one of the foundations of Western political theory.

The concept of equality and mutual interdependence of the citizen-soldiers (Hoplites) was reflected in the political structure of the polis. The usual governing structure consisted of a Council, made up by men from the leading families of the polis, (the aristocratic status came by birth) who set forth various policies, among which the most important ones were starting a war, ending a war or entering into an alliance with another polis.

There were variations within the poleis, especially as they became formalized as “city–states.” The two notable city– states, in the Classic Period, Athens and Sparta, had significantly different governance models, reflecting their different social mores.

The Spacio-Temporal Boundaries of The Hellenistic Civilization: The earliest of the mainland civilizations, the Mycenaean, referring to the citadel at Mycenae, in the southern part of the peninsula, flourished from about 1900 BCE to about 1200 BCE. It was a monarchy that occupied the central area of Greece. It engaged in trade with other Bronze- Age communities in the Mediterranean area, primarily in olive oil and wines. Some emigrants went west to Sicily (Syracuse), southern Italy and subsequently to the southern coast of France (Marseille), to the less populated areas in North Africa and to the east coast of Spain. The conquered peoples, or helots, were to become an ongoing problem for Sparta, threatening a potential slave revolt. The social strata of the polis, a recognizable aristocracy and the Hoplite as an independent citizenfarmer-warrior.

The accepted end of the Hellenic Era is dated at the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, the Greek empire continued, albeit in a disintegrated state. The successive period is titled the Hellenistic Era, as the old empire was carved up Alexander’s by generals into independent and rival kingdoms.

The Religion Of The Hellenic Civilization

The religion of ancient Greece was polytheistic, that is, having many gods and goddesses, who reflected life as it was lived in the land. The gods were immortal, but shared many of the characteristics of humans, including their vices.

Greek mythology underlay many religious beliefs. The gods’ interaction with humans was often the basis of the heroic actions of the human heroes. The mythology provided an explanation for natural phenomena

In time, compounds of temples to lesser gods would spring up around the main temple, creating large sacred complexes, usually on an acropolis that dominated a city or surrounding area. This sacred area (temenos) was separated from the rest of the community by a symbolic gate (propylon).

Priests orchestrated the rituals and offered prayers to the specific god of the temple. Women could serve as priestesses for female deities despite their generally subservient role in Greek society.

Individuals could also visit a temple any time they wanted to and it was customary to say a prayer even when just passing them in the street

The Civilizing Society Of The Hellenic Civilization

People: In the Hellenic Civilization, men lived better lives than women did. Only men could be full citizens and were empowered to make civic decisions. Men were the warriors that protected the polis, and fought its enemies. Apart from Sparta, women were forbidden to participate in communal sports, and were restricted from leaving their homes except to handle the necessities of the household and bear children.

Education: Education differed for boys and girls. Boys were educated to become good citizens and take part in the public life of the city-state. Girls were taught housekeeping and how to care for the family.

In Sparta, boys from the age of 7 were taken from their families to live a communal life in a military school barracks. Each boy was given one cloak which was inadequate to keep warm during the harsh winters. Food supply was not adequate. The boys learned to rely totally on their comrades if they were to survive.

In Athens, citizens had to be educated to take part in voting in the Assembly. The education of Athenian boys included fitness classes emphasizing sports that had embedded military training, e.g. javelin, shot put, discus and wrestling, for the army was composed of citizensoldiers, (Hoplites).

Economy: The economy of Hellenic Civilization was defined largely by the region’s dependence on imported goods. Because of the poor quality of Greece’s soil, agricultural trade was of particular importance.

At times of conflict, Greek armies would destroy their enemies’ olive groves depriving them of future harvests.

Taxes were important revenue streams for city- state governments and were levied on houses, slaves, herds and flocks, wines, and hay, among other things.

Trade: The growth of trade in ancient Greece led to the development of financial techniques. Most merchants, lacking sufficient cash assets, resorted to borrowing to finance all or part of their expeditions.

Currency: Coins played several roles in the ancient Greek world. They provided a medium of exchange, mostly used by city-states to hire mercenaries and compensate citizens

Shopping: The shopping centers (agoras) literally meant “gathering place” or “assembly”. The agora was the center of the athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life of the city. The Ancient Agora of Athens was the best-known example.

Government: The Greek philosopher Aristotle divided Greek governments into monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies and democracies, and most historians still use these categories. Only adult male citizens had the vote, and most of the people in Athens, women, children, slaves and noncitizen residents, were disenfranchised.

Greek ancient democracy: It was developed in the 5th century BCE in the Greek city-state (polis) of Athens. Athens was the first known democracy in the world

State’s organization: After the Greek Dark Age (1100-800 BCE), villages started to band together, in part for protection and in part for more organized trade.

They wanted strong trading centers. Groups of villages that banded together were called city-states

Military: The geographic topography of the Greek peninsula dictated that the city-states were separate and self-sufficient in military matters.

The city-states had no standing armies but relied the citizenry to provide the manpower for what was a militia force. These citizen-soldiers, or Hoplites, (the word derived from hoplon for shield, or item of armor) were the able bodied men of the polis, whose “day jobs” were as farmers and artisans. The battle formation was the Phalanx, or massed infantry formation where each Hoplite held his shield on his left arm, protecting the right side of his comrade on his left at the risk of his own possible injury, relying on the Hoplite to his left to protect his right side.

The Civilizing Culture Of The Hellenic Civilization

Ancient Greece has had an enormous amount of impact on culture in the western world.

Writing: For thousands of years, humans wrote without letters. They simply drew pictures to make their point. You did not have to know a certain language to understand these pictures.

The very early letters were probably brought to the Greeks by the Phoenicians, another ancient people. The Greeks added vowels to assist in pronouncing both the letters and the formed words.

These very early letters were probably brought to the Greeks by the Phoenicians, another ancient people. The Greeks added vowels to assist in pronouncing both the letters and the formed words.

Philosophy: From Thales (640 - 546 BCE), who is often considered the first Western philosopher, to the Stoics and Skeptics, ancient Greek philosophy opened the doors to a way of thinking that provided the roots for the Western intellectual tradition.

Here, there is often an explicit preference for the life of reason and rational thought. With:

• Socrates (469-399 BCE) comes a sustained inquiry into ethical matters—an orientation towards human living and the best life for human beings through search for truth.

• Plato (427—347 B.E) comes one of the most creative and flexible ways of doing philosophy, which some have since attempted to imitate by writing philosophical dialogues covering topics still of interest today in ethics, political thought, metaphysics, and epistemology. He argued that ideas control the life.

• Aristotle (384—322 B.C.E.) comes with large treatises on almost each topic of the world’s nature and human life, as well as on the investigation of the natural world, including the composition of animals.

With this preference for reason came a critique of traditional ways of living, believing, and thinking, which sometimes caused political trouble for the philosophers themselves.

Literature: The greatest literatures of the early Greek period were the Homeric Epics. These were epic poems which described the glorious deeds of great Grecian heroes. Epic poems are long poems, which do not rhyme, and describe a serious topic, which is culturally important. Homeric Epics described the great deeds of the warriors of Greece, who led the war against Troy, a rival state:

• The Iliad: The Iliad tells the story of Achilles, who was Greece’s best warrior, who fought in the battle against Troy.
• The Odyssey: The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus, (Ulysses, in English) who tries to return home at the end of the Trojan War.

The Library of Alexandria : The kings of Egypt created a giant library, the Library of Alexandria, where they stored all the great works of Greek poets, historians, philosophers, scientists, and others. This library probably contained over a half a million papyrus scrolls!

Theatre: The ancient Greek theatre history began with festivals honoring their gods. A god, Dionysus, was honored with a festival called by “City Dionysia”. In Athens, during this festival, men would sing to welcome Dionysus. Plays were only presented at City Dionysia festivals. Athens was the main center for theatrical traditions. he Greek rules of drama are famous, defined by Aristotle as the unities of time, place and action

• Unity of time: the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.
• Unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
• Unity of action: a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.

Music – Dancing: Dance was very important to the ancient Greeks. They believed that dance improved both physical and emotional health.

Art: Art and literature illustrate the basic character of Hellenic Civilization. The Greeks were essentially materialist who regarded the world in physical terms. Plato (promoting ideas) and followers are exception. Greek art symbolized humanism by the adoration of man as the most important being in the universe. Greek art was an expression of the national life.

• Greek sculptures. Greek sculptors tried to glorify the human body in marble and bronze.
• Greek painting and pottery. In terms of Greek painting it is required to mention pottery, since they played the main role in the decoration of amphoras, plates and bowls.
• Greek Architecture: Temples. Temple was conceived as the place where the god lived.

Olympics : In 776 B.C.E, about 3000 years ago, the first Olympic Games took place. Originally, the games were part of a religious festival to honor Zeus, god of the sky and the leader of the Greek gods who lived on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. The Olympics was one of four all-Greek (Pan Hellenic) games.

Science & Technology: Most of the scientific achievements commonly assumed of as Greek were made during the Hellenistic period, when culture was no longer principally Hellenic but a mixture of Hellenic and NearEastern.

• Mathematics. The founder of Greek mathematics was Thales of Miletus (640 - 546 BCE) who originated several theorems which were incorporated in the geometry of Euclid.
• Biology. The first of the Greeks who was interested in biology was the philosopher Anaximander, who developed a theory organic evolution.
• Medicine. The pioneer of Greek medicine was a philosopher, Empedocles, exponent of the theory of the four elements such as earth, water, fire, and water.

Food: The Greeks ate a variety of delicious dishes, some of which are still around today.

A typical meal in ancient Greece almost always included these things:

• Bread: This was a huge part of the Greek diet. It’s believed that the Greeks had between 50 and 70 different varieties of bread.
• Wine: The Greeks loved it, and even had rules on how to drink it properly. Wine was especially important for the symposia, a meeting of men to talk about ideas.
• Olive oil: Nearly all Greek dishes used olives, or were cooked using olive oil. Even today, Greeks consume more olives than any other country in the world.

Clothing: The ancient Greek clothing was very simple. Men and women wore linen in the summer and wool in the winter

Daily life at Athens: Life in Athens stands out in sharp contrast to that in most other civilizations. One of its leading features was the remarkable degree of social and economic equality prevalent among all the inhabitants.

The Civilizing Infrastructure Of The Hellenic Civilization

Buildings: The three-main famous Greek architectural orders are as follows:

• Doric:
• Ionic
• Corinthian:

Houses: Men and women lived in different parts of the house. Women had the back and upstairs part. Most houses in Ancient Greek towns were built from stone or clay. The city had a point, usually elevated called the “acropolis,” and a public square or marketplace (agora).

Polis: Polis is a term that is used to describe a tight-knit, small community of ancient Greek citizens who agreed on certain rules and customs. Usually a polis was centered on a small town and the countryside that surrounded it.

Roads: Although ancient Greece seems like an attractive world to people today, most residents traveled very little.

Transportation: In ancient Greece, wagons, carriages, and carts were used to carry people or goods. Traveling via sea was not as complicated as land travel in ancient Greece, and it was actually the preferred mode of transportation whenever possible.

The Transformation Of The Hellenic Civilization Into Hellenistic Civilization

The Hellenic Civilization is about a period of ancient Greek history between 507 BCE (the date of the first democracy in Athens) and 323 BCE (the death of Alexander the Great). This period is also defined as the age of Classical Greece and should not be confused with the Hellenistic Civilization which contains the period between the death of Alexander and Rome’s conquest of Greece (323 - 146 - 31 BCE).

The Main Events of the Hellenic Civilization

Bronze Age

(2000-1100 BCE)

• Arrival of the Greek in Greece
• Rise and fall of the Mycenaean kingdom Dark Age (1100-800 BCE)
• Greek migrations within the Aegean Sea
• Evolution of the polis
• Rebirth of literacy
• Social and political recovery Lyric Age (800-500 BCE)
• Colonization of the Mediterranean basin
• Flowering of lyric poetry
• Development of philosophy and science
• Rise of Sparta and Athens Classical Age (500-338 BCE)
• Rise of drama and historical writing
• Persian Wars
• Growth of the Athenian Empire
• Peloponnesian War
• Spartan and Theban hegemonies
• 338 BCE - Conquest of Greece by Philip of Macedon
• 338 BCE - The fall of Greece Hellenistic Civilization (338 BCE – 31 BCE)
• 338 BCE - the rise of Macedonian Empire which included Greece.
• Alexander the Great and his armies conquered much of the known world from Greece and Asia Minor, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persian Empire (Near East), and parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the steppes of central Asia to India.
• 332 BCE – the death of Alexander the Great marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period, when Hellenic civilization mixes with the Middle East civilization into Hellenistic Civilization.
• The huge territories which Alexander the Great had conquered became subject to a strong Greek influence (Hellenization) for the next two or three centuries, until the rise of Rome in the west, and of Parthia in the east (it was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran and Iraq). As the Greek and Levantine (Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine (Jordan) cultures mingled, the development of the hybrid Hellenistic Civilization began.
• The Hellenistic Civilization provided numerous advances, especially in the sciences and medicine and Hellenistic philosophy reached out to rich and poor.
• The Greeks and Easterners alike changed the East and Rome moved into this world.
• 31 BCE – The Romans (under future Emperor – August’s command) defeated Mark Antony’s fleet during the battle at Actium, ending Ptolemaic rule of post- Alexander the Great Empire.
• Interest in Greek art and culture remained strong during the Roman Imperial period (31 BCE – 565 CE) and beyond.

The Chronology of Greek Civilization till the Modern Times:

• 2800-1100 BCE The Bronze Age

• 1100-700 BCE – The Dark Age
• 700-500 BCE – The Archaic Period
• 500-300 BCE – The Classical Period
• 338-31 BCE – The Hellenistic Period
• 31BCE–565CE–TheRomanPeriod
• 565 CE – 1453 – The Byzantine Period
• 1453 – 1829 – The Ottoman Turkish Period
• 1829 – present Modern Greece
• 1944 -1949 – Civil War between communists and democrats, 100,000 killed, 700,000 displaced, and 25,000 immigrated to Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, AND Soviet Union)
• 1967-1874 – Military Junta
• 1952 Greece becomes a member of NATO
• 1991 Greece becomes a member of the European Community (later EU)
• 2009 Euro crisis in Greece (large debts) and Europe