Humanities 1A Lindahl
Thucydides, History, the Peloponnesian War, and the rise of the Macedonian Empire
Classical Age of Greece (500-336 BCE) Art, Architecture, Democracy, Tragedy, Philosophy, History, Religion Post Persian war - Empire or Alliance? Athens and the Delian League, Sparta and the Peloponnesian League The "Age of Pericles" or the "Golden Age" of Greece The importance of Rhetoric (again)
Historein (from the Greek – “to inquire”) – What is “history”? Herodotus (490-420 BCE), life and work, “the father of history” “The theory of Natural Transformations” or “Cycle of Political Revolutions” (Polybius) Thucydides (454-400 BCE), life and work, “the father of (scientific) history” The purpose of historical accounts (see pp.12-13) Chronicle, narrative, politics, moral tale, tragedy – from Justice to Power Pericles (490-429 BCE) The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) The "Long walls" of Athens, the building of an empire The speeches – Pericles’ war speech, Pericles’ funeral oration, Pericles’ “Burdens of Empire” speech, the Mytilenean debate, the Melian dialogue, the Sicilian expedition speeches Alcibiades (450-404 BCE) – over-expanding empire (the debate with Nicias), The attack of Syracuse (the Sicilian Expedition), the Battle of Great Harbor, Syracuse, Sept. 413 BCE Alcibiades defects: Athens>Sparta>Persia>Athens>Thrace The end of the Peloponnesian War – Athens surrenders (404 BCE) Fourth Century Conflict in the Mediterranean (after the Peloponnesian War)
The Hellenistic Age (336-31 BCE) [Alexander to Roman empire] Philip II of Macedonia (383-336 BCE, r.359-336 BCE), m. Olympias Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) The taming of Bucephalus and other legends and/or facts Philip’s death, Making a clear point in Thebes Taking the world (334-323 BCE), visiting Troy, The Gordian knot The Battle of Issus 333 BCE, overreacting in Tyre Alexander in Egypt (332 BCE) – establishing Alexandria, consulting the oracle of Zeus Ammon The Battle of Gaugamela 331 BCE, marries Roxanne Changes in warfare: Strategy, Elephants, Catapults, Siege towers The death of Alexander, Babylon, 323 BCE (age 32), “to the strongest,” Easier to find the horse Hellenic Kingdoms: Ptolemy, Seleucus, Macedonia, Attalid “Hellenization” quotes:
- History is philosophy from examples. Dionysisius of Halicarnassus (30 BCE) - Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness…. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana (1905) - America is now at that historical point at which a great nation is in danger of losing its perspective on what exactly is within the realm of its power and what is beyond it…. It was approximately under this kind of infatuation – an exaggerated sense of power and an imaginary sense of mission – that the Athenians sacked Syracuse. J. William Fulbright (1966)