Chapter 3: The Greek Civilization 

Pre-reading

A. Skim and scan the following passage and answer the following questions.

1. How did the geography of Greece affect Greek history ?

2. What was polis, or city-state, and how did the city-states of Athens and Sparta differ?

3. What effect did the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War—the two great conflicts of the fifth century B.C.—have on Greek civilization?

4. On what ideals was classical Greek art based, and how were these ideals expressed?

5. What questions did the Greek philosophers pose, and what answers did they suggest?

6. Why are the Greeks considered the cornerstone of the Western intellectual tradition?

7. How was Alexander able to amass his empire, and what might his rule have been like he had lived?

8. Which religions were prominent during the Hellenistic period?

9. How was the Hellenistic period different from the Greek Classical Age?

10. What were the chief legacies of Ancient Greece?

Reading

Ancient Greece , the civilization that thrived around the Mediterranean Sea from the 3rd millennium to the 1st century bc , is known for advances in philosophy, architecture, drama, government, and science. The term “ancient Greece ” refers to both where Greeks lived and how they lived long ago. Geographically, it indicates the heartland of Greek communities on the north coast and nearby islands of the Mediterranean Sea . Culturally, it refers to the ways ancient Greeks spoke, worshiped, understood the nature of the physical world, organized their governments, made their livings, entertained themselves, and related to others who were not Greek.

The most famous period of ancient Greek civilization is called the Classical Age, which lasted from about 480 to 323 bc . During this period, ancient Greeks reached their highest prosperity and produced amazing cultural accomplishments. Unlike most other peoples of the time, Greeks of the Classical Age usually were not ruled by kings. Greek communities treasured the freedom to govern themselves, although they argued about the best way to do that and often warred against each other. They highlighted the ideal of democracy and the importance of the individual. They asked some basic questions about human life that still dominate our own intellectual pursuits: What is the nature of the universe: What is the purpose of human existence? What is our relationship to divine forces? What constitutes a community? What constitutes a state? What true education? What are the true sources of law? What is truth itself, and how do we realize it? They not only provided answers to these questions, but created a system of logic, analytical thought to examine them. This rational outlook has remained an important feature of Western civilization .

The city-states of ancient Greece fell to Roman conquerors in 146 bc . When Rome split in the 4th century ad, Greece became part of its eastern half, the Byzantine Empire . The Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans in 1453.

Long after ancient  Greece lost its political and military power, its cultural accomplishments deeply influenced thinkers, writers, and artists, especially those in ancient Rome , medieval Arabia , and Renaissance Europe. People worldwide still enjoy ancient Greek plays, study the ideas of ancient Greek philosophers, and incorporate elements of ancient Greek architecture into the designs of new buildings. Modern democratic nations owe their fundamental political principles to ancient Greece , where democracy originated. Because of the lasting influence of its ideas, ancient Greece is known as the cradle of Western civilization . In fact, Greeks invented the idea of the West as a distinct region; it was where they lived, west of the powerful civilizations of Egypt , Babylonia, and Phoenicia .

The heartland of ancient Greece consisted of the mountainous Balkan Peninsula and southern Italian Peninsula , as well as dozens of rugged islands in the northern Mediterranean region. Important settlements were located on the southern Balkan Peninsula; on the Peloponnesus, a large peninsula connected to the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula by the Isthmus ( 地峡 ) of Corinth; and on the large islands of Crete (Kríti), south of the Peloponnesus, and Sicily , south of the Italian Peninsula .

Mountains acted like walls separating communities . The Pindus Mountains, which run down the middle of the Balkan Peninsula , were the dominant range, with an average height of 2,650 m ( 8,700 ft ) above sea level. The mountains were once heavily wooded, but early Greeks steadily deforested the slopes for fuel, housing, and ships. Most fields that were level enough for farming and raising animals were small, supporting communities of only a few hundred inhabitants. Some locations, such as Sicily and Thessaly , had broader plains that supported larger communities. A few cities, such as Athens , Corinth , and Syracuse , grew to have 100,000 or more inhabitants because they had more farmland, deposits of valuable natural resources, and excellent ports. Both the Italian and Balkan peninsulas have jagged coastlines.

The Mediterranean Sea, which connected Greeks with each other and with the rest of the world, includes the Aegean Sea ( 爱琴海 ), an arm that extends between the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, and the Ionian Sea, which lies between the Balkan and Italian peninsulas. In the world of the ancient Greeks, the seas were more efficient travel routes than roads , which were no more than dirt trails. Ships could go much faster and carry much more cargo than wagons bumping over rough terrain. Access to the sea was so important that most Greek communities were within 60 km ( 40 mi ) of the coast. Cities that controlled good harbors grew prosperous from the trade that flowed to them and from the fees they could charge ship-owners and merchants. Eventually, ancient Greeks inhabited about 700 communities clustered around the Mediterranean Sea . The settlements reached from the Iberian Peninsula (now occupied mostly by Spain ) in the west to the Mediterranean coast of the Middle East in the east, extending southward to the northern coast of Africa .

People probably first entered the Greek heartland about 50,000 years ago in the Stone Age. They wandered in from southwest Asia and from Africa , hunting herds of game animals. About 10,000 years ago, people in the Middle East began farming the land, and knowledge of this new technology slowly spread with migrants into ancient Greece . By 7000 bc , increasing numbers of people were migrating from Asia Minor to start new farming communities in the Greek heartland, eventually establishing large settlements on the Balkan Peninsula, the Aegean Islands , and the large island of Crete . These Stone Age peoples made their tools and weapons from stone, bone, leather, and wood. Their technological skills greatly accelerated around 3000 bc when they learned from Middle Eastern peoples how to work with metals and use the wheel for transport. The period from about 3000 to 1200 bc is known as the Greek Bronze Age because bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, was the most commonly used metal.

Settlers had begun sailing from Asia Minor to Crete about 6000 bc because the island offered large plains for farming and sheltered ports for fishing and sea trade. By 2200 bc , settlers had created a “palace society,” named for its several huge buildings that served as royal residences and administrative centers. Each palace was surrounded by many houses for ordinary people, but there were no defensive walls; smaller towns existed in the countryside. The palaces were probably independent, with no single ruler imposing unity over the island. This culture is named Minoan for King Minos, a legendary ruler in Greek mythology who kept a half-bull, half-human monster, the Minotaur, in a labyrinth ( 迷宫 ) in his palace at Knossos (Knosós). Formerly, scholars thought the Minoans were not related to the Greeks, but the most recent linguistic research on Cretan language indicates they were.

The Minoans were  the first great culture of Aegean civilization . They mastered metallurgy ( 冶金术 ) and other technologies, and knew how to write. They decorated their buildings with brilliantly colored frescoes ( 壁画 ) and celebrated at lively festivals. Innovative agriculture and international trade brought Minoans prosperity rivaling that of their eastern neighbors, such as the Hittite Kingdom in Asia Minor . Farmers made their labor efficient by simultaneously growing olives, grapes, and grain, which each required intense work at different seasons. This combination of crops provided a healthy diet, which helped the population grow, and enabled the Minoans to produce olive oil and wine for trade. The rulers controlled the economy through a redistributive system, so called because farmers and craft workers sent their products to the palaces, which then redistributed goods according to what the rulers decided everyone needed.

Despite recurring earthquakes, the Minoans prospered until about 1400 bc . Their lack of an effective defense, however, made them vulnerable to Mycenaean attacks, probably over the control of Mediterranean trade routes.

The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Peloponn e sus . Scholars call the Mycenaeans the “earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek.

Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to 2000 bc , mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 bc the Mycenaeans had become very prosperous. Like the Minoans, the Mycenaeans lived in independent communities clustered around palaces and ruled by kings. The palace at Pílos (Pylos) on the west coast of the Peloponnesus boasted glorious wall paintings, storerooms of food, and a royal bathroom with a built-in tub and intricate plumbing. The Mycenaeans' wealth also came from agriculture and international trade, and they had a redistributive economy. However, Mycenaeans differed significantly from Minoans in their religion and royal architecture. For example, unlike Minoans, they featured men much more prominently than women in religious leadership positions, and they built their palaces around megarons , soaring throne rooms with huge hearths ( 炉膛 ).

The Mycenaeans had a warrior culture that enabled them to conquer the Minoans by about 1400 bc , but the Mycenaeans' eagerness to fight also contributed to their downfall. By 1200 bc Mycenaeans were warring with each other and embarking on overseas raids for treasure, riding into battle on expensive two-wheeled chariots. The destruction of the city of Troy in Asia Minor sometime between 1230 bc and 1180 bc may correspond to the legendary story of the Trojan War . The story, told centuries later by Homer in the Iliad, describes a famous battle in which a Greek army sacked and burned Troy . The turmoil around the eastern Mediterranean continued until about 1000 bc and was so severe that it ended not only the Mycenaean culture but also the Hittite and Egyptian kingdoms.

The wars caused  Greece 's economy to collapse and its population to fall suddenly, which created poverty and political confusion that lasted for more than 200 years. This period traditionally is called the Greek Dark Age (1000?-750? bc ), partly due to a lack of written evidence that limits our knowledge of it, but also due to the harsh living conditions then. Greeks had lost the distinguishing marks of civilization: cities, great palaces and temples, a vigorous economy, and knowledge of writing. The Mycenaean kings were replaced by petty chiefs, who had limited power and wealth. Artists stopped drawing people and animals on pots, restricting their decoration to geometric designs. Greeks cultivated much less land, had many fewer settlements, and did much less international trade than they had during the period of Aegean civilization. Settlements shrank to as few as 20 people.

Recovery took a long time. The earliest revivals of trading and agriculture occurred in a few locations about 900 bc . An innovation in metallurgy helped Greece escape its Dark Age. Fighting at the end of the Mycenaean period had interrupted the international trade in tin, which was needed to make bronze weapons and tools. To fill the gap, eastern Mediterranean metal workers invented a new technology to smelt iron ore. Greeks learned this skill from eastern traders and began mining their own iron ore, which was common in their heartland. Generally harder than bronze, iron eventually replaced it in most uses, especially for agricultural tools, swords, and spear points. The lower cost of iron implements meant more people could afford them. Plentiful tools helped increase food production and thus restore the population and prosperity. Technological innovation paved the way for the political and cultural innovations of the Archaic period. Near the end of this Dark Age appeared the work of one of the greatest poets of all time, Homer , who produced the first great epic poems of early Greece : Iliad and Odyssey .

The Iliad is set around the end of the Trojan War , fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. It is a tale of the Greek hero Achilles and how the “wrath (anger) of Achilles” led to disaster : Insulted by his commander, Achilles withdraws from the war, leaving his fellow Greeks to suffer terrible losses, which forces the commander to negotiate with him, but he refuses, claiming that his mother, the sea-goddess Thetis, has told him he has a choice: either a short life with great glory if he fights at Troy, or a long life in obscurity if he returns home. But after the greatest Trojan warrior, Hector, kills his close friend Patroclus, he turns his anger against the Trojans and kills Hector.

The  Odyssey  is a tale of the return of the Greek hero Odysseus from the Trojan War , which begins with the disorder in his household during his long absence: A band of suitors ( 求婚者 ) were courting his wife, Penelope , and then tells of his ten years of journey with seductions as well as dangers. The second half of the poem begins with Odysseus's arrival at his home island, where, with patience and self-control, he tests the loyalty of his servants, plots and carries out a bloody revenge on Penelope's suitors, and is reunited with his son, his wife, and his aged father. The  Odyssey conveys  the underlying message that “Virtue is a better policy than vice.”

The disappearance of Mycenaean kingdoms left a political vacuum in Greece . The poverty and depopulation of the Dark Age forced people to cooperate to defend themselves, and gradually Greeks formed the idea that political power also should be shared . By about 750 bc , Greeks had organized themselves into independent city-states ( poleis ). Centuries later, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 bc ) insisted that the forces of nature had created the city-state and that anyone who existed outside the community of a city-state must be either a beast or a god. Breaking the Mediterranean tradition of royal rule, Greeks struggled to create new kinds of political organization for their growing communities. The main goal was to avoid strong central political authority, although sometimes tyrants temporarily seized sole power of city-states. The Greeks tried to share rule, sometimes within a limited group (oligarchy 寡头集团 ) and sometimes among the entire male population (a form of democracy). In a few areas, they also devised the league ( ethnos )—a loose alliance of geographically separate, small groups who agreed to share laws and defense—as a new form of political organization.

The city-state was generally a form of shared social and political organization based on the concept of citizenship, which guaranteed a shared identity, rights, and responsibilities to a city-state's free men and women. Citizenship sharply divided free men and women from slaves and foreigners. Citizenship made free men, regardless of their social status or wealth, political partners who shared equal privileges and duties under the rule of law. In some city-states, all free adult male citizens, including the poor, shared in government by voting in a political assembly, where laws and policies of the community were decided. Women also had a set of privileges and protections under the law, but equality did not extend to them, as they could not vote, and their sexual behavior and control of property were governed by stricter regulations than for men.

City-states typically consisted of an urban center with houses and public buildings surrounded by fields for farming and grazing. Citizens also lived in the countryside in villages or on farms. The most prosperous city-states controlled fine harbors, which brought revenues from trade and cultural interaction with others. Each city-state had centrally located temples to worship the particular gods protecting it, with the most important sanctuary ( 圣堂 ) located on the highest spot ( acropolis ). The urban center also featured an open gathering place ( agora ) for daily markets and conversation, and a defensive wall of stone and earth that protected the city. When enemies invaded, residents in the countryside took cover inside the walls of the city.

As the economy improved in the Archaic Age, the population grew rapidly, creating a shortage of good land and natural resources. The search for new farmland and metal ore drove Greeks to settle far from their homeland, sometimes living in others' settlements, sometimes establishing trading posts, and sometimes founding colonies as new city-states. By 500 bc, Greeks had founded numerous colonies in present-day southern France , Spain , southern Italy , North Africa, and along the coast of the Black Sea . Generally only men joined colonizing expeditions, often intermarrying with local peoples when they settled in new areas. New city-states were founded by all three traditional divisions of Greeks, distinguished by the different dialects of Greek they spoke: the Dorians, the Ionians, and the Aeolians.

Sparta

Sparta was merely a group of five villages in Laconia . From the 6th century bc on the Spartans looked upon themselves as merely a military garrison, and all their discipline pointed to war. No deformed child was allowed to live; boys began military drill at the age of 7 and entered the ranks at 20. Although permitted to marry, they were compelled to live in barracks until the age of 30; from the ages of 20 to 60 all Spartans were obliged to serve as hoplites (foot soldiers) and to eat at the phiditia (“public mess”).

Under their stern discipline, the Spartans became a race of resolute, ascetic warriors, capable of self-sacrificing patriotism, but utterly unable to adopt a wise political and economic program. The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 bc finally brought the rivalry between Sparta and Athens to a head. Upon the overthrow of Athens in 404 bc , Sparta became the dominant Greek state.

Athens

In the mid-9th century bc , the surrounding territory, including the nearby seaport of Piraeus , was incorporated into the city-state of Athens . When the monarchy was replaced by an aristocracy of nobles, the common people had few rights. The city was controlled by the Council of Elders, who appointed three (later nine) archons ( 执政官 ) responsible for the conduct of war, religion, and law. Discontent with this system led to a short-lived dictatorship by Cylon (632 bc ).

Continued unrest caused the social and economic crises in Athens , which forced the ruling Athenian aristocrats to choose Solon as chief archon in 594 bc . Solon established a council ( boulé ), a popular assembly ( ekklesía ), and law courts. With indebted citizens being sold into slavery, Solon set about crafting reforms. Among his first decrees, Solon made it illegal to borrow on the security of indebted people, and he forgave all debts and mortgages. In the political sphere, Solon added a fourth tier, the thetes, to the propertied class divisions of Athenian society. The thetes, who usually possessed no property, were allowed to participate in the public assembly. Solon also passed new laws that guaranteed certain liberties to every Athenian citizen . He also encouraged trade , reformed the coinage, and invited foreign business people to the city . Solon's reformed lay the foundation for Athenian democracy .

In 560  bc  the  tyrant Pisistratus , supported by the aristocracy, gained control of Athens . He enlarged the meeting place of Solon's council in the agora (marketplace) and built a new temple of Athena on the Acropolis ( 雅典的卫城 ). Pisistratus also sponsored public events such as the festival of Greater Panathenaea, held every fourth year in Athena's honor. Many other public works were undertaken by the tyrant and his sons between 560 and 510 bc . The sons of Pisistratus did not enjoy the popularity of their father, however, and eventually fell from power.

In 509  bc   Cleisthenes led a democratic revolution . He reorganized the city's tribal structure and consolidated a base of support in the more democratic urban center of Athens and in Piraeus .

Classical Greece (480-338 bc ) is the name given to the period of Greek history from around 500 B.C. to the conquest of Greece by the Macedonian king Philip II in 338 B.C. It was a period of brilliant achievement, much of it associated with the flowering of democracy in Athens under the leadership of Pericles. Many of the lasting contri- butions of the Greeks occurred during this period. The age began with a mighty confrontation between the Greek states and the powerful Persian Empire.

As Greek civilization grew and expanded throughout the Mediterranean, it was inevitable that it would come into contact with the Persian Empire to the east. By 500  bc  the Ionian Greek cities in western Asia Minor had already fallen subject to the Persian Empire . An unsuccessful revolt by the Ionian cities then—assisted by the Athenian navy—led King Darius I of Persia to seek revenge by attacking the mainland Greek. The enormous Persian kingdom far outstripped the Greek city-states in every category of material resources, from money to soldiers.

In 490  bc  Darius sent a fleet to capture Athens , expecting it to surrender. Instead, in the Battle of Marathon, outnumbered Athenian army charged the Persian forces and drove them away. A messenger ran more than 32 km ( 20 mi ) from Marathon to Athens to announce the news, a run memorialized in modern marathon races.

Darius's son, Xerxes I, led an immense invasion of Greece in 480 bc to avenge the Marathon defeat. So huge was his army, it required seven days and seven nights of continuous marching for it to cross a pontoon bridge ( 浮桥 ) between Asia Minor and mainland Greece. Some city-states in northern and central Greece surrendered, but Sparta led an alliance of 31 city-states against the Persians. A small detachment of Greek soldiers led by Spartan king Leonidas I gave their lives to temporarily block Xerxes' army at a narrow pass called Thermopylae .

By the time the invading Persians reached Athens, the residents had evacuated ( 疏散 ), and the Persians burned an empty city. Athens was prepared to fight with its navy, built up from the earnings of a rich discovery of silver a few years before. The Athenian general Themistocles defeated the Persian navy in the Battle of Salamís by luring Persian ships into a narrow channel, where the Greeks' heavier ships began to ram and sink them. In 479 bc the Greeks completed their triumph by defeating the Persian infantry at Plataea , relying on superior tactics and armor. This string of unexpected Greek victories in the Persian Wars preserved the Greeks' independence and gave them so much self-confidence that they felt superior.

Athens  and  Sparta  did not share the joy of victory for long. Athens used its wartime fleet to become an aggressive military power rivaling Sparta . Both sides acquired allies to strengthen their positions. Sparta maintained its alliance with other city-states on the Peloponnesus . Athens allied with city-states in northern Greece, the Aegean Islands, and the west coast of Asia Minor, which were most exposed to Persian retaliation ( 报复 ). Members of the Athens-led alliance, known today as the Delian League because its treasury was originally located on the island of Delos, swore a solemn oath never to desert the coalition ( 联合 ) .

The Delian League brought Athens unprecedented power and income. In time, more and more league members found it easier to pay their dues ( 应付款 ) in cash rather than furnish their own warships and crews, and they let Athens build and man the league's ships. Poorer Athenians welcomed this arrangement because it gave them paying jobs as oarsmen (Greek warships were rowed so they could ram other ships in battle). As naval strength became the city-state's principal source of military might, oarsmen gained greater political influence in Athenian democracy. Since Sparta and its allies had far less naval power, they could not match Athens on the sea, where it gained money and goods by trading with other states or raiding them.

The Delian League became an Athenian empire as league members became more dependent on their lead city. Eventually, the allies had almost no navies of their own, and therefore they had no power to resist Athenian orders, Athenian demands for increased dues, or the ban on leaving the alliance. Athens 's demands of its allies generated resentment. From the Athenian point of view, however, the empire met its goals: expelling Persian garrisons ( 驻军 ) from the Aegean and supporting Athenian prosperity and culture with spoils ( 掠夺物 ) of war and with allies' dues.

Pericles , an Athenian from a distinguished family, became the era's leading politician in the 450s bc by promoting Athenian dominance within the Delian League and expansionist goals outside the league. He supported far-flung ( 远距离 ) naval expeditions to territories in Phoenicia and the Black Sea region and engaged the navy in a confrontation with Sparta, which were ventures that benefited his power base, the fleet's oarsmen. Eventually, he overreached ( 弄巧成拙 ) by advising war on too many fronts at once while generating resistance among allies by making harsh demands of them. To devote its resources to maintaining the empire, Athens signed a peace treaty with Sparta , but the rivals continued to distrust each other.

In the Age of Pericles, the Athenians became deeply attached to their democratic system. Here is an excerpt from the famous funeral oration by Pericles in 431 BC to honor the Athenians killed in the Peloponnesian War , an idealized account of the Athenian democracy presented by the Greek historian Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War as follows:

Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people . When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law ; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one , so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty . And, just as our political life is free and open , so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other. We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbor if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still do hurt people's feelings. We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law . This is because it commands our deep respect.

We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed , and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break…Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well : even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics—this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all. We Athenians, in our own persons, take our decisions on policy or submit them to proper discussions: for we do not think that there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated…Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece, and I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens , in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person , and do this, moreover, with exceptional grace and exceptional versatility. And to show that this is no empty boasting for the present occasion, but real tangible fact, you have only to consider the power which our city possesses and which has been won by those very qualities which I have mentioned.

In 431  bc  tensions erupted when Athens pressured Corinth and Megara , crucial Spartan allies who were rivals with Athens for seagoing trade. Sparta came to the defense of its allies, and the fighting escalated into the Peloponnesian War (431-404 bc ), named for the location of Sparta and most of the city-states allied with it. Sparta feared Athens would use its navy to cripple Spartan control over its allies. Pericles refused to let the Athenians yield to any Spartan demands for concessions ( 让步 ) because he believed Athens could exploit its superior wealth to win a long war.

Pericles's strategy was to make periodic surprise naval raids on Spartan positions while retreating behind Athens 's walls whenever Sparta 's superior infantry attacked. The Athenians launched some successful attacks, but Pericles's plan required sacrifice: the Athenians had to stay behind their city wall while Spartan troops ravaged Athens 's countryside. Pericles's strategy might have worked except for a terrible epidemic that struck Athens 's population, packed inside its wall. The epidemic, which started in 430 bc , killed thousands over several years, including Pericles himself.

Without Pericles's strong direction, leaders after him introduced increasingly risky strategies. Their harsh demands for money from Athens 's allies caused rebellions. Several times Athenian leaders refused Spartan offers for peace. In 415 bc Athens launched an overly ambitious campaign against Sparta 's allies in Sicily , far to the west, and the invasion force suffered a catastrophic defeat at Syracuse in 413 bc .

With Persian monetary support, Sparta built a navy and launched the final phase of the war by establishing an infantry base in Athenian territory for year-round raiding. Athens continued to fight for ten years, despite the devastation of its agriculture and the loss of income from its silver mines. Finally, in 404, incompetent Athenian admirals ( 舰队司令 ) lost the fleet and the war.

The war ended the Delian League, and Sparta installed a brutal puppet government in Athens . This puppet regime, called the Thirty Tyrants, was a group of Athenian oligarchs, organized into a council, who ruthlessly overturned democratic laws and institutions and executed opposition leaders. Rival Spartan leaders failed to support the Tyrants, however, and Athenian rebels restored democracy in Athens in 403 bc, less than a year after the Tyrants had been installed. Athens rebuilt its strength, competing with Sparta , Corinth , and Thebes for leadership. None was strong enough to dominate, however, and they drove each other to exhaustion by constant warfare in the first half of the 4th century bc . The interstate rivalry created dangerous instability in Greece .

Classical Greece saw a period of remarkable intellectual and cultural growth throughout the Greek world. Historians agree, however, that Periclean Athens was the most important center of classical Greek culture.

Great literary innovations in drama were produced in Athens in the 5th century bc . Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the most famous authors of tragedies. They based their plays on myths that presented moral issues, especially the danger of hubris (arrogant overconfidence). Their plots often involved fierce conflicts in families or dangerous interactions between gods and humans. The story of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, was one of the most famous tragedies.

Plays were performed outdoors at festivals honoring the god Dionysus in a competition sponsored by the city-state. Thousands of people packed the theater. Each author presented three tragedies, followed by a semicomic play featuring satyrs (mythical half-man, half-animal beings). Actors wore colorful costumes and masks; a chorus danced and sang as part of each play.

Comedies also were performed in these competitions. These plays displayed remarkable freedom of speech in criticizing public policy and making fun of politicians. Their plots could be fantastic, for example having a character fly up on a dung beetle to ask the gods for peace. Their language featured jokes, puns, and obscenities. The most famous comic playwright was Aristophanes, who wrote some comedies with powerful women as main characters. Greek comedy in the 4th century bc changed from political commentary to social satire. Authors produced comedies that provided insights into human weaknesses and the complications of everyday life.

Greeks began writing about history in the 5th century bc . Herodotus and Thucydides wrote long works that stressed eyewitness evidence, the multiple causes of events, and judgments about people's motives. Thucydides, followed by Aristotle, developed political science by analyzing how states operated.

The arts of the Western world have been largely dominated by the artistic standards established by the Greeks of the classical period to express the eternal ideals of reason, moderation, balance and harmony .

In architecture, the most important structure was the temple dedicated to a god or goddess. Athens 's Parthenon, built in 5 th century B.C. to the goddess Athena, became Greece 's most famous building for its size, many columns, and elaborate sculptural decoration.

By the Classical period, Greeks were carving statues in motion and in more relaxed stances. Their spirited movement and calm expressions suggested the era's confident energy. Statues of gods could be 12 m ( 40 ft ) high and covered with gold and ivory, such as Phidias's Athena in the Parthenon temple at Athens . The female nude became popular. Praxiteles's naked Aphrodite of Cnidus became so renowned that the king of Bithynia offered to pay off the city's entire public debt if he could have the statue. Cnidus refused.

In painted pottery, vase painters switched in the late 6th century bc from black on red painting to red on black, they could add tiny details that made their pictures come alive, and portrayed mythological and everyday scenes with increasing realism.

Philosophy is a Greek word that literally means “love of wisdom.” Early Greek philosophers believed that the physical world was governed by laws of nature, not by the whims of the gods . They called the universe cosmos , meaning “a beautiful thing,” because it had order based on scientific rules, not mythology. Therefore, the philosophers believed in logic. Their argument that people produce evidence for their beliefs opened the way to modern science and philosophy .

The Sophists , however, upset many people in the 5th century bc by teaching relativism ( 相对论 ), the belief that there is no universal truth or right and wrong. These wandering philosophical teachers, who provided instruction in several higher branches of learning for a fee, tended to emphasize forms of persuasive expression, such as the art of rhetoric, which provided pupils with skills useful for achieving success in life, particularly public life. Their skeptical ( 怀疑性的 ) view on absolute truth and morality eventually brought about sharp criticism from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who condemned them for taking money.

Socrates (469-399 bc ) insisted that the Sophists were wrong and that well-informed people would never do wrong on purpose. He taught his pupils not for pay for he believed the goal of education was only to improve the individual. His teaching method utilizes a question-and- answer technique to lead pupils to see things for themselves by using their own reason. He believed that all real knowledge is within each person; only critical examination was needed to call it forth. This was the real task of philosophy since “the unexamined life is not worth living.” His questioning of authority and public demonstration of other's lack of knowledge led him into trouble; he was accused and convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens , and sentence to death.

Socrates' pupil Plato (428-347 bc ) became Greece 's most famous philosopher for his theory of idealism . His complicated works argued that universal truths did exist and that the human soul made the body unimportant. According to Plato, a higher world of eternal, unchanging Ideas or Forms ( 本质 ) has always existed. To know these Forms is to know truth. These ideal Forms constitute reality and can only be understood by a trained mind, which is the goal of philosophy. The objects that we perceive with our senses are simply reflections of the ideal Forms. Hence they are shadows, while reality is found in the Forms themselves.

Plato founded an academy in Athens . His pupil Aristotle (384-322 bc ) did not accept his theory of idealism, believing that form and matter were inseparable. According to Aristotle's theory of materialism , by examining individual objects, we can perceive their form and arrive at universal principles, but they do not exist as a separate higher world of reality beyond material things. He turned away from theoretical philosophy to teach about practical ethics, self-control, logic, and science. Alexander the Great (whom Aristotle once tutored) sent him information on plants and animals encountered on the march to India . Aristotle's works became so influential that they determined the course of Western scientific thought until today.

Traditional Greek religion was pagan polytheism, meaning that it included many gods and other supernatural beings. Greeks inherited many of their ideas about the gods from the Middle East . Their basic belief remained constant: People must honor the gods to thank them for blessings received and to receive blessings in return. Greeks considered the gods human-like in form and emotions. The gods did not love all human beings; rather, they protected and benefited people and states who paid them honor and avoided offending them. People pleased the gods by sacrificing animals and other foods, decorating their sanctuaries ( 圣殿 ) with art, offering prayers, and holding festivals. The gods became angry when people performed sacrifices improperly, violated the sanctity ( 圣洁 ) of a temple, or broke their sworn word. Greeks believed that angry gods caused punishments such as famine, earthquake, epidemics, or defeat in war.

Greeks also believed that the vast difference in power between people and gods made the divinities' natures and purposes hard to understand, but traditional stories about the gods provided hints. Some people did not believe all the mythological ( 神话的 ) tales of monsters and divine love affairs with mortals, but everyone respected the myths as lessons about the gods' awesome power, their mysteries, and the precariousness ( 不稳定 ) of human life. For more direct information people could go to oracles ( 神殿 ), temples where the gods were believed to answer questions or deliver cures by various means. The priests at an oracle relayed a god's message, or the visitor could gain clues in a dream as to what the gods wanted. Seers ( 预言家 ) at oracles told prophecies about the future. Pilgrims ( 朝圣者 ) from beyond the Greek city-states flocked to major oracles, such as at Delphi, to ask for divine advice about marriage, children, money matters, and even foreign policy. The responses were always riddles, because gods were too complex to reply clearly to mere human beings.

As Greek religion evolved, 12 gods emerged as the most important. These gods were believed to assemble for banquets atop Mount Olympus , Greece 's highest peak. Their leader was Zeus, god of the sky. The others were Hera, Zeus's wife & the goddess of marriage; Aphrodite, goddess of love; Apollo, god of the sun; Ares, god of war; Artemis, goddess of nature; Athena, goddess of wisdom & war; Demeter, goddess of grain & the harvest; Dionysus, god of wine & vegetation; Hephaestus, god of fire; Hermes, messenger of the gods; and Poseidon, god of the sea.

City-states built temples to honor the gods protecting their territory and people. Both Athens and Sparta honored Athena, but with different rituals and prayers. A temple was a house for a god and was not open to worshipers. Only priests and priestesses entered to take care of the god's statue. The priests and priestesses were guardians only of ritual, not of correct religious thinking. Greek religion had no scripture or uniform set of beliefs and practices. Sacrifices of foods and animals, the main public religious activity, took place outside the front of the temple, where worshipers could gather to affirm their community's ties to the divine.

Greek religion also had a personal aspect. Particularly important to individuals were so-called mystery cults. Through initiation into special knowledge provided by a god, worshipers could hope for protection in everyday life and a better chance of happiness in the afterlife. Otherwise, the dead could expect only miserable nothingness. The mystery cult of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, headquartered in the Athenian suburb of Eleusis, attracted initiates ( 新的信徒 ) from all parts of the Greek-speaking world. Initiates had to purify themselves of wrongdoing to win entry.

The Greek city-states was a male community: only adult male citizens took part in public life. Women were also citizens legally, socially, and religiously. Female citizens could own property and could go to court over property disputes. Nonetheless, ancient Greek society was paternalistic, with men acting as “fathers” to regulate the lives of women and safeguard their interests (as defined by men). All women were expected to have male guardians to protect them physically and legally. Women's important religious duties included control over cults reserved exclusively for them and paid service as publicly supported priestesses. Teenage women generally married men in their 20s.

In  Athens , most families owned slaves as household servants and laborers; even relatively poor people might own one or two slaves. City-states and gods also owned slaves as public servants for specialized tasks. People became slaves after being captured in war or seized by raiders. They had no status, no right to a family of their own, no property, and no legal or political rights. To encourage slaves to work hard, owners sometimes promised freedom at a future date. Freed slaves did not become citizens but non-citizens, like people from foreign lands or other states, officially allowed to live in a city-state.

The Athenian economy was largely agricultural but highly diversified ( 多样化的 ). Farmers grew mostly barley and wheat, raised sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens. The best cash crops were grapes for wine and olives for oil. Most craft production took place in small shops employing a handful of workers. Slaves worked side by side with owners and free laborers in craft shops and on farms. Agricultural commodities were traded abroad. Trade centered on natural resources such as metals and timber, luxury goods from jewels to spices, and craft products from painted vases to bronze mirrors. By the 6th century bc, Greeks had adopted the use of coins as money to make commerce easier between strangers.

The Athenian lifestyle was basically simple. Athenian houses contained bedrooms, storage rooms, and a kitchen around a small inner courtyard, but no bathrooms. Most families were nuclear, meaning a household consisted of a single set of parents and their children. Fathers were responsible for supporting the family by work or by investments in land and commerce. Mothers managed the household's supplies and oversaw the slaves doing domestic work. Food was simple, too. The poor mainly ate barley porridge flavored with onions, vegetables, and a bit of cheese or olive oil. Few people ate meat regularly.

Two Macedonian kings, Philip II (ruled 359-336 bc ) and his son Alexander the Great (ruled 336-323 bc ), filled the power vacuum in Greece by turning their formerly weak kingdom into an international superpower. The mountainous kingdom of Macedonia , north of the central Greek heartland, eventually became the leader of Greece and conqueror of the Persian Empire .

Macedonia 's success sprang from a nationalistic pride and superior leadership. Macedonians spoke a separate language from Greek, and Macedonia never embraced the city-state form of government. Commoners in Macedonia did not consider themselves Greek, and most Greeks regarded their northern neighbors as barbarians. However, Macedonian nobles learned Greek and identified themselves as Greek. Macedonia emerged as a powerful force when Philip II equipped his infantry with 4-m-long (14-ft-long) thrusting spears. Fighting shoulder to shoulder in phalanx ( 方阵 ) formation, Philip's army became a lethal ( 致命的 ) porcupine ( 箭猪 ) that could skewer ( 刺破 ) opposing troops before they could get close. Using diplomacy, bribery, and war, Philip forced the Greek city-states to acknowledge him as their leader in 338 bc . Philip's goal was to lead a united Macedonian and Greek army to conquer the Persian Empire as revenge for its invasion in 480 bc . Philip was murdered by a Macedonian noble in 336 bc , leaving the task to his son Alexander.

The Conquests of Alexander the Great

Alexander led the most astonishing military campaign in ancient history by conquering all the lands from present-day Turkey to Egypt to Afghanistan while still in his twenties. His greatness consisted of his ability to motivate his men to follow him into hostile, unknown regions. His feats made him think he was superhuman, and he demanded that the Greeks worship him as a god. Alexander's goals were the conquest and administration of the known world and the exploration and colonization of new territory beyond. By including non-Macedonians in his administration and founding colonies of Greeks wherever he went, he brought the Greek and Middle Eastern worlds into closer contact than ever before in trade, shared scientific knowledge, and cultural traditions. When an illness killed him in 323 bc , however, he had no son to continue his empire and his generals tore it apart, each trying to secure his own power.

The Hellenistic (“Greek-like” 希腊化 ) Period gets its name from the greater knowledge of Greek language and culture brought to the Middle East through Alexander's conquests and from the kingdoms established by his generals after his death. Antigonus I (382?-301 bc ) founded a kingdom including parts of Asia Minor, the Middle East, Macedonia , and Greece ; Seleucus I (358?-281 bc ) established rule over Babylonia and over land as far east as India ; and Ptolemy I (367?-283? bc ) took Egypt .

Referred to as "successor kings", these rulers had to create their own form of kingship because they did not inherit their positions legitimately. They were self-proclaimed monarchs with no special claim to any particular territory. They ruled with unlimited authority in theory, but in practice they needed the Greek city-states to support them with money and soldiers . Therefore, they usually let city-states keep their internal freedom so long as they followed the kings' foreign policies. Whenever possible, the kings incorporated local traditions into their rule. For the Seleucids, this meant combining Macedonian with Middle Eastern royal customs; for the Ptolemaics, Macedonian with Egyptian. Still, Greeks and Macedonians ranked higher than the local populations, who became second-class subjects.

The kings frequently fought each other over territory . The Ptolemaic and Seleucid armies, for example, periodically engaged in a violent tug-of-war over the region along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean known as the Levant , which had been a crossroads of trade for thousands of years. These struggles left openings for smaller, regional kingdoms to establish themselves. The most famous was the kingdom of the Attalids in Asia Minor, which held power from about 250 to 133 bc , with the wealthy city of Pergamum as its capital. In Bactria , a region of Central Asia, Greek leaders broke from the Seleucid kingdom in about 250 bc and formed one of their own, which flourished on the trade between India and China and the Mediterranean world.

In the Hellenistic kingdoms, foreigners, kings and queens of Greek and Macedonian descent, had unrestricted rule over local populations. This kind of rule disturbed Greeks, who remembered their history of freedom, so in the 2nd century bc when the kingdoms had been weakened by war, some mainland Greeks appealed for help from the region's growing superpower, Rome.

The Romans had already taken over the areas in Italy and the western Mediterranean where Greeks had lived for centuries and saw the appeal for help as a chance to increase their power further. They intervened against the kingdoms and told the Greeks they were once again free, but the Romans meant that the city-states were free to govern themselves so long as they did what Rome wanted. The Greeks rebelled and a Roman army destroyed the city of Corinth in 146 bc . Thereafter Roman governors presided over mainland Greece . Within about a hundred years, Rome conquered the remaining Hellenistic kingdoms and their Greek cities. Egypt , under Queen Cleopatra, was the last to fall, in 31 bc .

Hellenistic philosophers concentrated on ethics, helping people achieve tranquility in a period of change when things seemed out of their control. In the 3rd century bc, Epicurus taught that people should not be afraid because everything, including our bodies, consists of microscopic atoms that dissolve painlessly at death. Zeno of Citium, who also lived in the 3rd century bc , founded Stoicism , which taught that life was ruled by fate but that people should still live morally to be in harmony with nature.

The Golden Age of Greek science came in the Hellenistic period, with the greatest advances in mathematics. The geometry theories published by Euclid about 300 bc still endure. Archimedes (287-212 bc ) calculated the value of pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) and invented fluid mechanics. Aristarchus , early in the 3rd century bc, argued that the earth revolved around the sun, while Eratosthenes accurately calculated the circumference of the earth. Also in the 3rd century bc , Ctesibius invented machines operated by air and water pressure; Hero later built a rotating sphere powered by steam. These inventions did not lead to practical uses because the technology did not yet exist to produce the pipes, fittings, and screws needed to build powerful machines. Military technology vaulted ahead with the invention of huge catapults and wheeled towers to batter down city walls. Finally, medical scientists made many discoveries, such as the significance of the pulse and the nervous system.

In the Hellenistic Greek, writers made history more personal and began composing biographies and artists began showing emotion in their statues. A 3rd-century bc sculpture from Pergamum showed a defeated Gaul escaping slavery by stabbing himself after having killed his wife. New subjects departed from traditional notions of beauty by representing drunkards, battered boxers, and elderly people with wrinkles. Hellenistic kings outdid the Athenians by erecting huge temples. The temple of Artemis at Ephesus is one of the Seven Wonders of the World .

This religious emphasis on right conduct became more pronounced in the Hellenistic period as eastern cults, such as that of the Egyptian goddess Isis , won Greek converts. Christianity took root among Greeks after emerging from Palestine in the 1st century ad . The New Testament of the Bible was written in Greek, as was a great deal of later Christian literature. Since Christians frequently disagreed with one another about doctrine and ritual, the Byzantine emperors continually tried to enforce uniformity on believers, sometimes by force. The Hellenistic Eastern church in Constantinople also developed bitter disputes with the popes in Rome to the Great Schism , the division of the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054.

The enduring legacy of ancient Greece lies in the brilliance of its ideas and the depth of its literature and art. The greatest ancient evidence of their value is that the Romans, who conquered the Greeks in war, were themselves overcome by admiration for Greek cultural achievements. The first Roman literature, for example, was Homer's Odyssey translated into Latin. Greek art, architecture, philosophy, and religion also inspired Roman artists and thinkers, who used them as starting points for developing their own style of work. All educated Romans learned to read and speak Greek and studied Greek models in rhetoric. Stoicism became the most popular Roman philosophy of life.

Arab philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists who became the leading thinkers of medieval times studied the works of Aristotle and other Greek sources intensely. During the European Renaissance from the 14th to the 16th centuries, people from many walks of life read Greek literature and history. Writing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, English playwright William Shakespeare based dramas on ancient Greek biographies. Modern playwrights still find inspiration for new works in Athenian drama. Many modern public buildings, such as the United States Supreme Court in Washington , D.C. , imitate Greek temple architecture. Although the founders of the United States rejected Athenian democracy as too direct and radical, they enshrined democratic equality as a basic principle. It was ancient Greeks who proved that democracy could be the foundation of a stable government . Pride in the cultural accomplishments of ancient Greece contributed to a feeling of ethnic unity when the modern nation of Greece was carved out of the Ottoman Empire . That pride still characterizes modern Greece and makes it a fierce defender of the Hellenic heritage.

Reliance on logic, allegiance to democratic principles, unceasing curiosity about what lies beneath the surface of things, a healthy respect for the dangers of arrogant overconfidence, and a love of beauty in stories and art remain incredibly important components of Western civilization. Ancient Greece contributed all of these things .

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