The Classical Age of Greece

This is Unit Four of Western Civilization One, part one of two: the Classical Age of Greece, from the Persian defeat in four seventy-nine to Philip's conquest in three thirty-eight. Unit three closed on the chain by which war remade Greek politics. This unit is about what Athens did with its decades at the top, and the anchor ties all of it to one idea: humanism, humankind as beautiful, capable and creative, worth studying on its own terms. Drama put human choice at the center. Natural philosophy asked about earthquakes without appealing to Zeus. History explained wars by how people respond to pressure. And the same city held its women as legal minors, worked a third of its people as property, and paid for its democracy with an empire its allies could not leave. Humanism was real and it was partial, and this part carries both halves; part two takes the philosophers, the art, and the exam's procedures. By the end you will be able to date the age and describe Pericles' democracy and the irony that paid for it. To describe the standing of women and the record on sexuality. To give slavery's sources, scale and work. To define humanism and trace it through drama and natural philosophy. And to say what Herodotus and Thucydides each invented.

Three entries on Athens at its height: the age's dates and its reputation, Pericles and the assembly, and the pay and citizenship law that an empire funded.

An age remembered for thought, not politics.

WC1 0301 The Classical Age, 479 to 338 BCE: Thought Over Politics

The Classical Age runs from the Persian defeat in four seventy-nine to Philip's conquest in three thirty-eight. The poleis peaked in wealth, war, art and thought, and the age is remembered for thought and art, with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as its summit. Classical Greece gets conflated with Athens; Athens was the richest polis, not the typical one.

An aristocrat who dominated without seizing power.

WC1 0302 Pericles and the Democracy at Its Height

Pericles, an aristocrat, dominated Athens by persuasion, never by office. The assembly of all adult male citizens decided, a smaller council ran daily business, and ten generals elected yearly handled war, with the anchor's fifteen hundred officials running the League's business. Rhetoric was the hinge between speaker and vote. Pericles' dates rest on the anchor alone.

The fairest government of its world, on its allies' backs.

WC1 0303 Pay, the Citizenship Law, and Democracy Built on Empire

Pericles introduced pay for public service, opening office to the poor, and in four fifty-one, on the witness's date, citizenship came to require two Athenian parents. The anchor's first irony is that the democracy strengthened as the Delian empire's extraction paid for it: among the fairest governments of its world, in the anchor's phrase, on its allies' backs. The irony is the anchor's framing, attributed.

Four entries on who was left out: women as wards, sexuality as the record states it, where slaves came from and how many, and what they did.

Wards of father, then husband.

WC1 0304 Athenian Women as Legal Minors

Athenian women were not citizens: no office, no property, no standing in court, wards of father and then husband. Elite women kept to the inner house, poorer women worked without control of their earnings, and symposia used enslaved women as entertainers. Aspasia, Pericles' companion, was a hetaira inside the elite circle. Every source is an elite man, and Sparta, the anchor notes, empowered women far more.

The record, stated as the anchor states it.

WC1 0305 Greek Sexuality and the Sacred Band

Elite Greek men were bisexual without modern categories: bonds between mentor and adolescent, and warrior bonds like Achilles and his lover. The Sacred Band of Thebes, the anchor's one hundred fifty couples, was the first force to beat Sparta in open battle. The witnesses name the Band and the anchor gives its count. State the record as the anchor states it, and import no later judgments.

A legal position as dire as any in history.

WC1 0306 Slavery in Classical Greece: Sources and Scale

The anchor calls the Greek slave's legal position as dire as any in history: masters could kill, rape or maim. Slaves came from war, from a Mediterranean trade, and from debt outside Athens: Persian captives, Africans through Egypt, steppe peoples by the Black Sea. The anchor puts one-third of Athens enslaved by four fifty. Demand rose with wealth; prosperity and slavery grew together.

From record-keeper to the silver mines.

WC1 0307 What Slaves Did, From Bureaucrat to Mine

Enslaved people managed businesses, kept records, made crafts and policed Athens as Scythian archers, and some bought their freedom. The mines were worst: silver and salt mines killed workers, and twenty thousand mine slaves fled to Sparta during the war. The anchor likens the mines to later plantation slavery, a comparison that is the anchor's, attributed.

Five entries on humanism in drama and science: the master concept, tragedy's flaw and chorus, comedy's mockery, the first inquiry without gods, and elements and atoms.

The anchor's master concept for the age.

WC1 0308 Humanism: The Thread Through Everything Greek

The anchor's master concept is humanism: humankind as inherently beautiful, capable and creative. Greeks sacrificed and consulted oracles, and Xenophanes dismissed human-shaped, meddling gods, but beneath the ritual the anchor finds a pragmatic indifference to the gods. That indifference is the anchor's characterization, attributed; the ritual continued.

A chorus, a powerful man, and a flaw.

WC1 0309 Drama Born of Dionysus: Chorus, Tragedy, Hubris

Drama grew from choruses at Dionysus festivals scripted into plays, with the chorus as narrator. Tragedy shows a powerful man undone by a flaw, usually hubris, or by fate, and uses pathos to draw sympathy; human choice sits at the center and few endings are happy. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are names the witnesses supply. The anchor never names the tragedians, and the exam does.

Mockery instead of pity.

WC1 0310 Comedy, Aristophanes, and Lysistrata

Comedy evoked mockery where tragedy evoked pity. Aristophanes' Lysistrata has the women of Greece refuse sex until the men end the war; it is ribald, sympathetic to women, and evidence that Athenian women were neither secluded nor silent. Use it as evidence with care, because it is a comedy. The anchor's claim that every modern film descends from Greek drama is its own, attributed.

Earthquakes from water, and the spirit that matters.

WC1 0311 Thales, Anaximander, and Inquiry Without Gods

Science and philosophy were one enterprise, explaining the universe on its own terms. Thales of Miletus thought earthquakes came from an earth floating on water and reputedly predicted the eclipse of five eighty-five; Anaximander drew the first distance map. The spirit of inquiry matters, not the conclusions. Thales and Anaximander rest on the anchor alone, and the eclipse date is witnessed.

Four elements, and who gets the credit.

WC1 0312 Four Elements, Four Humors, and the Atom

The four-element theory, earth, water, air and fire, is Empedocles' on the witness; the anchor credits Anaximenes, who held air to be primary. Galen later built the four humors on it, and Leucippus and Democritus proposed atoms. The reasoning was inductive, from observation to theory. Record the anchor's attribution and use the witness's, because the exam expects Empedocles.

Two entries on the invention of history: Herodotus explaining a war from sources, and Thucydides defending a thesis with evidence.

History as explanation from sources.

WC1 0313 Herodotus Invents History From Sources

History as explanatory narrative from primary sources is a Greek invention. Herodotus, born about four eighty-four on the witness, explained the Persian War by how peoples respond to political and social pressure, traveling and reading widely, and drew a world map with Greece at the center. He still called foreigners barbarians, while asking whether one culture can be better than another.

A thesis defended by evidence.

WC1 0314 Thucydides Argues a Thesis

Thucydides, about four sixty to four hundred, wrote the Peloponnesian War around a thesis, that Athens's hunger for power squandered its greatness, and defended it with evidence. The anchor calls him the real father of history, under Clio, the muse of history. A thesis defended by evidence is the method the exam expects you to recognize.

Look at what you can now do. You can date the Classical Age from four seventy-nine to three thirty-eight, describe Pericles dominating an assembly by persuasion, and state the anchor's irony that pay for office and the citizenship law rode on an empire's extraction. You can describe women as wards of father and husband, and the record on sexuality as the anchor states it, without later judgments. You can give slavery's sources in war, trade and debt, the anchor's one-third, and the mines that killed. You can define humanism and trace it through tragedy's flaw and chorus, comedy's mockery, Thales asking without gods, and Empedocles' elements. And you can say that Herodotus invented history as explanation from sources, and Thucydides the thesis defended by evidence. Part two opens on the question every Greek school answered, nature or custom, and ends on the arc that holds the achievement and the exclusions together.