"The name of Greece strikes home to the hearts of men of education of Europe" (Hegel)

-Athens and Sparta defeat Persian invaders in 480 BCE

-Athens enters into Golden Age

-The Delian League and conflicts with Sparta reveal core values:

-Pericles’s Funeral Oration

-List the way of life that Pericles discusses

-Compare with the America that Bush described on 9-20-01

-Thucidydes: The Melian Conference, or should I say "Conference"…

-Other paradoxes of Athenian values: slavery, non-citizens, women

-acra= "hill", -polis= "city", -Acropolis= "city on a hill"

-democracy? -the level of participation, the way of choosing leaders

3) rationalism-

-Acropolis

-Propylaea

-Parthenon

serves as 1) shrine to Athena and 2) treasury of the Delian League (shortly after the Persian wars Athens allies with broader community of Greek-speaking peoples from mainland, Aegean islands, and Asia Minor)

Parthenon exhibits the Doric order

-Describe the main properties of the Doric order

-1687 Parthenon used as Turkish ammunition hub; by mistake, gunpowder ignites gunpowder and blows up center

-What responsibility do future generations have to preserve art from the past? E.g., -Iraq, Egyptian mummies, Nativity of Jesus, Buddhas in Afghanistan, etc.

Erechtheum (completed in 406 BC after Pericles’s death)-

Who was Erechtheus?

What are caryatids?

Architectural orders

1. Doric

 

2. Ionic

 

3. Corinthian

Famous Architects:

-Mnesicles, Ictinus, Callicrates

HELLENIC GREECE II

-THREE PLACES YOU FIND GREEK SCULPTURE:

-1) Metopes of Doric frieze

-example from book:

-2) cella frieze

-example from book:

-3) Free-standing pediment figures

-example from book:

What do the sculptures "say" about Athenian life?

-values: political, religious, sociological (public art, maleness and youthfulness is prized)

-The progression of Hellenic sculpture

-Its origins

1. heroic tales
2. festivals in honor of Dionysus
   

-Its levels of interpretation

1. storyline
2. struggles of life (involving gods and humans)
3. free will vs. determinism
4. medium for exquisite poetry

-Structure of drama: Prologue ® substance ® epilogue

-direct action never occurs on stage

-violent scenes happen behind the scenes and are reported

-conflict and tensions: why? Emotional exploration

Aristotle, in his Poetics, notes 6 necessary elements of tragedy:

#5) song- "that which holds the chief place among the embellishments"

#6) spectacle- special effects must not be primary to the plot

1) What do you think is the role of emotions in the story? Specifically, are the emotions portrayed as being in conflict with Reason, or in concert with Reason?

2) Discuss the blind Tiresias’s statement that "Wisdom is a dreadful thing when it brings no profit to its possessor."

Would Gilgamesh agree with this?

1. Free will vs. determinism: fate and gods
2. The Role of Women

1. Women can be Rational: Jocasta asks for evidence that Creon is a traitor when Oedipus makes the accusation. (Matthews/ Platt, p. 49)
2. Women can be pragmatic: "In God’s name, if you place any value on your life, don’t pursue the search." (ibid., p. 77) (Anti-Rational?)
3. Women can be overly interested in social position: Oedipus thinks that Jocasta leaves to palace b/c she is embarrassed at the thought of having married a peasant (ibid., 79).

 Music Theory revisited

Pythagoras

-religious significance

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

-The importance of Reason

-Idealism in Plato; Immaterial Forms, eternal vs. temporal

-What good is morality?

-The well-ordered soul and well-ordered State

-The tripartite division of the soul:

-‘Appetetive’ corresponds with commoners

-‘Spirited’ corresponds with protectors

-‘Rational’ corresponds with the philosophers

-How to get the people of the State to go along with this ideal

**The Noble Lie

-Womens’ role in the well-ordered state: The argument for allowing Women into system

Plato’s Apology

-Socrates the scapegoat?

-he questioned authority, but offered nothing in its place ("the barren midwife")

-Alcibiades, a follower of Socrates, leads Athens to defeat and defects to Sparta (then to Persia)

Video:

1. Why would Socrates be seen as subversive to the status quo in Athens?

 

2. What is the job of the enlightened philosopher?

Three Greek Ideas, revisited:

1) Humanism: "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras, philosopher); "Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man" (Sophocles, tragic poet)

-Humanism and religion

-The rise of natural science

• Humanism and ethics

-Humanism and the arts

 2) Idealism