ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME: AN OVERVIEW DR LEWIS WEBB, CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY / ANTIKENS KULTUR OCH SAMHÄLLSLIV UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Structure Introduction Civilization? Why study Ancient Greece and Rome? Primary sources Secondary sources Ancient Greece Ancient Rome UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? What is civilization? ‘Civilization’ often equated with ‘society’. Culturally-bound concept. Always contested and argued over. Often used to hierarchise and judge societies, e.g. one civilization is judged more ‘civilized’ than another. Arrogant, paternalistic, Euro-centric view: Kenneth Clark, 1969, Civilisation: https://youtu.be/JxEJn7dWY60?t=213 ‘I think I can recognise it when I see it ’. Oxford English Dictionary s.v. civilisation (3 a-c): 1. The state or condition of being civilized; human cultural, social, and intellectual development when considered to be advanced and progressive in nature. Also in extended use. 2. The culture, society, and way of life of a particular country, region, epoch, or group. 3. A particular culture, society, and way of life as characteristic of a community of people; (also) a civilized society. UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? Even in antiquity, Greek and Roman communities contrasted their own societies with others, deeming their own to be more civilized and others ‘barbaric’, for example Greek communities and the Persians, and Romans and the Celtic and Germanic communíties. Ancient Greek: βάρβαρος (barbaros) – non-Greek, foreign. Latin: barbarus – non-Greek, non-Roman, foreign, strange; civis – citizen; civitas – citizenship, community, polity; civilis – citizen-like, civil, polite, urbane. Prof. Mary Beard (Cambridge) in Civilisations: How do we look (2018): “I am even more concerned than [Kenneth] Clark with the discontents and debates around the idea of civilisation, and with how that rather fragile concept is justified and defended. One of its most powerful weapons has always been ‘barbarity’: ‘we’ know that ‘we’ are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be uncivilised, with those who do not – or cannot be trusted to – share our values. Civilisation is a process of exclusion as well as inclusion. The boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ may be an internal one (for much of world history the idea of a ‘civilised woman’ has been a contradiction in terms), or an external one, as the word ‘barbarian’ suggests; it was originally a derogatory and ethnocentric ancient Greek term for foreigners you could not understand, because they spoke in an incomprehensible babble: ‘bar-bar-bar ...’ The inconvenient truth, of course, is that so-called ‘barbarians’ may be no more than those with a different view from ourselves of what it is to be civilised, and of what matters in human culture. In the end, one person’s barbarity is another person’s civilisation.” UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? ‘Civilization’ used in Europe in to acclaim and denote so-called ‘advanced’ cultures. For example, the concept was weaponized in imperialist and colonialist rhetoric in the 19th century (and even to this day e.g. ‘Western civilization’). Used to distinguish between so-called ‘civilized Europe’ and so-called ‘primitive’ societies of the East (termed the ‘Orient’ in this rhetoric). Here we use the term ‘civilization’ in a restrictive sense to denote past societies in prehistoric times and antiquity with certain characteristic features: a society that reached a certain degree of political, economic, social, and cultural development. 1. Political: societies that were governed by elites with military apparatus. Bureaucracy and administration. 2. Economic: societies had a tax and/or tribute system, allowing for food surplus. Craftspeople. Trade system. 3. Social: societies that were socially differentiated into different groups and had social control apparatuses/mechanisms. 4. Cultural: societies that had a written culture (not all). Common religion/religious practices with religious centres controlled by priests. Religion legitimized elite and hierarchies. Theocracies. Monumental architecture, e.g., pyramids, palaces, temples. UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? When humans began to cultivate land and settle, such ‘civilizations’ arose. This so-called domestication process occurred at different times over the earth, from roughly 8000–2000 BCE. Examples of early civilizations follow. Several of the earliest arose in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (present day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt). Examples: 1. Egypt (around the Nile Delta): ca. 3200–30 BCE. 2. Mesopotamia (between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers). – Sumerians: ca. 2900–2300 BCE (Early Dynastic Period, communities included e.g., Ur, Uruk, Lagash). – Babylonians: ca. 2000–1600 BCE (Old Babylonian Period; famously Hammurabi’s conquests and his law code). – Assyrians: ca. 1900–1700 BCE (Old Assyrian Period). 3. Crete. Minoans: 2600–1100 BCE. 4. Greek mainland. Myceneans: 1700–1050 BCE. Many others: Indus Valley Civilization/Harappan Civilization (present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, around Indus River), ca. 3300–1300 BCE; Shang and Zhou dynasties (present day China, around Yellow River region), 1600–256 BCE; Maya Civilization, ca. 250–900 CE (present day Mexico and Central America); Inca Empire, 1438–1532 CE (present day Peru). UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? How did these civilizations emerge? Various theories. 1. Ecology, e.g. fertile soil and food supply. Not all civilizations have these. 2. Technology, e.g. irrigation and metal production. Irrigation and ‘Hydraulic states’. 3. Military, e.g., defensible area, superior weapon technology, warrior elite, resources. 4. Trade. e.g., strategic area for trade-exchange. Long-distance trade. Cultural impulses from exchanges/external relations stimulated technological developments. 5. Religion, e.g., strong state-legitimizing religion. Community, legitimation of ideology, priests, bureaucracy, administration. Importance in all of these ‘civilizations’. Often accompanied by monumental architecture. Emergence through interaction of these factors. UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Why study Ancient Greece and Rome? Prof. Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton): “the societies of ancient Greece and Rome oversaw the rise and development of literary, artistic, philosophical, political, legal, and scientific projects that have shaped—and remain vitally important to—contemporary life.” Prof. Mary Beard (Cambridge): “Roman debates have given us a template and a language that continue to define the way we understand our own world and think about ourselves, from high theory to low comedy…many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, beauty, and even humour, have been formed, and tested, in dialogue with the Romans and their writing.” UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Why study Ancient Greece and Rome? Much of European literature and arts go back, in many instances to the Greeks and Romans. Many major philosophical and religious questions that we struggle with today arose in the Greek and Roman world. European political language, structures, and principles often have a Greek or Roman heritage. Legal language and structures in European societies are often indebted to Greek and Roman law. Modern science owes a major debt to the scientists of Greece and Rome: e.g. astronomy, biology, geometry, and mathematics. Greek and Roman thinkers set the terms of theoretical discussions for millennia. Just ‘dead white guys’? No! A diverse array of peoples and cultures. Broadly: interdisciplinarity, rigour, and perspective. UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Primary sources Material Written UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Secondary sources UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG ANCIENT GREECE Politics and Culture UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Chronology Ancient Greece Minoan Civilization (BA): ca. 3500–1100 BCE Mycenean Civilization (BA): ca. 1700–1050 BCE ‘Dark Ages’: ca. 1100–776 BCE Archaic Period: 776–479 BCE Classical Period: 479–323 BCE Hellenistic Period: 323–31 BCE Roman Period: 146 BCE (Corinth)–1453 CE UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Ancient Greece Why study Ancient Greece? (Cultural, political, and ideological impact on later times) How did Ancient Greek cultures spread? (Migration and colonisation) What were the political systems? (Monarchy, Tyranny, Oligarchy, Democracy) How, and why, did Greek democracy emerge? What were the social conditions like? What was the impact of Greece on Rome? UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Why study Ancient Greece? Politics Greek democracy. Unique! Influenced many other states, including Rome and beyond. Science Greek philosophy, science, and medicine: Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Galen, Hypatia. Greek concepts: politics, philosophy, art, literature, and science. Culture History - ἱστορία, historia, an inquiry Greek literature, art, history, and drama: e.g., Homer, Sappho, Herodotus (Persian Wars), Sophocles, Thucydides (Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta), Aristophanes, Euripides, Theocritus, Polybius (Rise of Rome). Greek religion: Impacted and spread to numerous other cultures. Greek language: e.g., history, geography, orchestra, gymnastics, church, school, meter, kilogram, tyranny, philosophy, tragedy etc. Ancient Greek cultures were influenced and developed in interaction with numerous other civilizations, including the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Persians. Spread throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa,