Archaic Period

800-479 BCE(479 BCE = Final defeat of the

Persian at Plataea)

The Rise of the Polis

Polis: A well-defined city-state, emerging in about 800 B.C.E Acropolis and agora Rule by oligarchy (government by the

few), with slow opening to democratization (p. 38)

Rise of the notion of “Citizenship” (p. 39) Athens Sparta

Sparta

A military society A genuine oligarchy: a constitutional

government operated by five officials elected annually by a small body of citizens

Sparta was famous for its loyal soldiers, its stable social order, its anti-immigration laws, and laws limiting material possessions.

The Persian Wars

Cleisthenes’s reforms as well as the Persian Wars are the two events that heralded the end of the Archaic Age.

The Persian Wars started in the late 6th century and ended in 479 B.C.E.

Kings of the Persians: Darius, Xerxes Three major wars with Persia:

Marathon in 490, Salamis, and Plataea in 479.

Religion

Two categories of Greek gods: Olympian and Chthonian

A pantheon of “Olympian” deities (42)ZeusHadesHermesPoseidonApollo

Chthonian deities: Demeter and Dionysus

So: polytheistic, anthropomorphic

Epic Poetry: Homer

Iliad: story of the Trojan War (the battle of Ilium) and of Achilles’s valor

Odyssey: the story of Odysseus (after the Greek defeated the Trojans) and his wanderings and cunningness before returning home

Natural Philosophy: Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Ionian Philosophers The Pythagorean Society Heraclitus The Eleatics Anaxagoras A search for basic orders and rules of

nature. A combination of science and philosophy An preoccupation with the external, material

world, the object, the not-self. A search for the essence (Urstoff) of things

Ionian Philosophers: Thales I Thales of Miletus: He is said to have predicted the

eclipse of the sun mentioned by Herodotus as occurring at the close of the war between the Lydians and the Medes.

In the Metaphysics Aristotle asserts that according to Thales the earth is superimposed upon water.

Ionian Philosophers: Thales II

Thales declared the primary stuff (Urstoff) of all things to be water.

He is the first to raise the question of the One, Unity in Diversity, Identity in Difference

Ionian Philosophers: Anaximander

Anaximander of Miletus An associate of Thales According to him the Urstoff, or the

primary element, is indeterminate. He called the Urstoff the

Indeterminate Boundless.

Ionian Philosophers: Anaximenes

Anaximenes of Miletus An associate of Anaximander According to Diogenes Laërtius he

wrote in the pure unmixed Ionian dialect.

According to him the Urstoff is air

The Pythagorean Society, I

The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul

Common grounds between Orphicism and Pythagoreanism

A promotion of soul-culture, achieved through the practice of silence, the influence of music and the study of mathematics

According to them the Urstoff is number. They argued that things are numbers (and not simply numerable).