Social Sciences and History / Unit 5 SSH 0420 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Polis, Persia, and the Hellenistic World
Captions available
The idea
The polis defined itself by self-government: Sparta an oligarchy of soldier-citizens, Athens a democracy of adult male citizens. Persia was repelled twice; then the Peloponnesian War exhausted Greece by three fifty BCE. Philip of Macedon then ruled it; Alexander took Persia and died in three twenty-three.
In practice
Alexandria's library; Stoicism for Greeks without sovereignty.
Where people slip
Hellenistic means three twenty-three to thirty-one BCE.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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