1 HISB10 KEY TERMS: MIDTERM 2 ʹ CHAPTERS 4-6 CHAPTER 4: SPARTA 1. Ephebe y Originally an ephebe was a boy who had reached the age of puberty. Beginning in the late fourth century BC all Athenian boys who were in their eighteenth year had to undergo two years of military training called the Ephebia. The boys spent the first year in Athens under the guidance of state-employed military instructors and the second year as part of the garrisons of several frontier forts. In the Hellenistic period, the Ephebia changed, ceasing to be mandatory at Athens and elsewhere and increasingly focusing on providing boys with a cultural education centered on the gymnasium. homoioi ('similars' or 'peers') The Spartan term for full Spartan citizens, referring to their common experience in the agoge and the Spartan army. 2. Ephor (ephoros) y ͞Overseer,͟ magistrates, an office found in Sparta and in other Dorian states. In Sparta a board of five ephors was elected annually by the assembly; the senior ephor gave his name to the year. The ephors had great power in the Spartan state, including general control over the king͛s conduct. 3. Gerousia y The ͞council of elders͟ (from geron ͞old man͟). Term used at Sparta and in other poleis for the aristocratic council. The Spartan gerousia consisted of the two kings plus twenty-eight men over age sixty who served for life. 4. Helot y Term for groups of conquered people in Greece forced by their conquerors to work as serfs on their former lands. It is most commonly associated with Sparta, where helots probably outnumbered citizens by a ratio of seven to one. The Spartan way of life both depended on and was formed by the state͛s ownership of thousands of helots in Laconia and Messenia. Fear of helot uprisings often discouraged Sparta from engaging in distant campaigns. 5. Homoioi y Term Spartans used to refer to themselves, meaning ͞peers͟ or ͞men of equal status͟. 6. Kleros y An allotment of farmland sufficient to support a citizen-family; it was passed on in perpetuity in the male line. In oligarchic states, full citizenship was frequently tied to the possession of a certain amount of land. 7. Krypteia y ('the secret thing') A part of the Spartan agoge in which selected young men in their late teens wandered the countryside at night, empowered to kill at will helots who seemed less submissive than was expected. 8. Lacedaemon y The name Sparta was called in antiquity. For much of the archaic and classical periods, Sparta was the most powerful city in the Greek world. It shared many basic institutions with other poleis: society was patriarchal and polytheistic, servile labor played a key role, agriculture formed the basis of the economy, law was revered, and martial valor was prized. 2 But the intrusion of the Spartan state into the lives of individuals was not surpassed by others. 9. Laconia y The surrounding territory of Sparta. It was an important centre in the Bronze Age. New villages were founded as the population gradually increased, and four of these villages near the Eurotas River at the centre of the Laconian plain united to form the city of Sparta. The Spartan polis was the city center plus the territory of the plain. The town of Amyclae was added later. Because it was located inland, the problem of pressure on resources caused by population expansion was solved through conquest of their neighbors, and by the end of the eighth century BC, they had gained control of the plain of Laconia. The inhabitants of the Laconian plain were reduced to the status of helots, hereditary subjects of the state. Those who occupied the area surrounding the city became perioikoi. They were free but could not participate in the government. 10. Lycurgus y A shadowy figure who may or may not have really lived. Greek historians followed Spartan tradition and ascribed its creation to Lycurgus. Scholars today are agreed that many of the institutions whose creation Greeks ascribed to Lycurgus, such as men͛s dining groups, organization of the population by age cohorts, and the use of iron money, had, in fact, already existed in other Greek communities. 11. Messenia y The Spartans next invaded the Messenian lowlands; some Messenians became perioikoi, but most became helots. y First Messenian War ʹ sometime in the third quarter of the 8th c ʹ according to tradition, it lasted 20 years and ended in about 720 BC. Messenia became subject to Sparta. y In 669 BC, the Messenians rebelled; the Spartans, although greatly outnumbered, prevailed. [Second Messenian War] 12. Peloponnesian League y The modern name for an organization led by Sparta and dated to some time in the sixth century BC. Scholars have joked that it was neither Peloponnesian nor a league. It consisted of Sparta and less powerful allied states whose leaders swore to have the same friends and enemies as the Spartans. Thus the states were tied to Sparta but not really to each other, and some important members of the League, such as Thebes, were outside the Peloponnesus. The most important member after Sparta was Corinth, which provided naval power. After its victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), Sparta increasingly interfered in domestic affairs in allied states, causing substantial friction. The League finally dissolved in the 360s. 13. Perioikoi y ͞Those who dwell about,͟ term used for neighbouring peoples subordinate to a dominating polis. The chief example is Sparta, which treated the people of the perioecic communities of Laconia and Messenia as half-citizens, who possessed local autonomy and were obligated to military service but had no say in the conduct of policy. 14. Plutarch y Writers like Xenophon and Plutarch may have exaggerated the monolithic nature of Sparta and minimized departures from ideals of equality. 3 y Wrote Life of Lycurgus, which included an excerpt on the Spartan women͛s way of life ʹ including exercise so that they were stronger for child-bearing and nudity. Also detailed the process of a Spartan marriage. 15. Syssition y ('common meal') At Sparta all boys at the end of their agoge had to be admitted to membership in a syssition, a group of fifteen men who regularly ate and socialized together. Membership required the boy to obtain the unanimous vote of the existing members of the syssition and to contribute a set amount of food each month to the communal meal. A boy who failed to join a syssition or to maintain his monthly food contribution ceased to be a full Spartan citizen. 16. Xenophon y Writers like Xenophon and Plutarch may have exaggerated the monolithic nature of Sparta and minimized departures from ideals of equality. y Wrote Spartan Constitution, mentioning a combination of practices that satisfied both the private desires of individual women and men and the state͛s eugenic goals and insatiable need for citizens. CHAPTER 5: THE GROWTH OF ATHENS AND THE PERSIAN WARS 1. Alcmaeonids y Hippias͛ tyranny lasted another four years until 510, when he was driven into exile thanks to the efforts of the exiled Alcmaeonids. The key to their success was good relations with the Delphi. Taking advantage of the Delphians͛ failure to rebuild the temple of Apollo, which had burned down, the Almaeonids subsidized its reconstruction, even providing a frontage of first-class Parian marble instead of ordinary stone. In return, the priests made sure that whenever the Spartans went to Delphi for advice about future projects they always received the response: ͞First free Athens.͟ 2. Cleisthenes y Cleisthenes, the leader of the Alcmaeonid family, made reforms intended to break the power of rich families. He transferred the civic functions of the four ancient tribes to ten new ones established on a new basis. He divided Attica into three geographical areas, each subdivided into ten trittyes, composed of residential units called demes. The ten new tribes also formed the basis for the creation of a new Council of Five Hundred, with each tribe annually providing fifty members chosen by lot. The army also was reorganized on the basis of the ten tribes. 3. Council of the Five Hundred y Beginning in 487 BC, archons were chosen by lot from candidates drawn from the demes as was the Council of Five Hundred. As a result, ambitious men shifted their interest from the archonship to the strategia (generalship), leading ultimately to the decline in influence of the venerable Council of the Areopagus, which was composed of former archons. 4. Cylon y About 632 BC, Cylon, an Olympic victor, attempted to become tyrant of Athens. The coup failed and the archon Megacles had the conspirators killed. The Athenians believed he had 4 committed sacrilege in doing so, and later demanded the expulsion of politicians from Megacles' family, like Cleisthenes and Pericles. 5. Cyrus II y The political transformation of Greek poleis occurred at the same time as the emergence of the Persian Empire. The Persians settled in Iran by the early first millennium BC. In the sixth century BC, Cyrus II extended Persia and brought the Greeks of Asia Minor into the empire. 6. Darius I y Darius (522ʹ486 BC) reorganized the empire, dividing it into twenty satrapies. He centralized the government into his hands, exercising absolute authority. Darius facilitated travel in many ways, even building a canal linking the Nile and the Red Sea. He minted his own coins of silver and gold. y Persian king 7. Draco y Around 620 BC Draco codified Athenian law. His laws removed authority from the family and gave it to the state.