Chapter History
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32 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Mycenaeans | the first Indo-European inhabitants of the Greek peninsula in 2000 B.C.E. They grew up as stock raising nomads from the eastern European plains. |
| Mycenaean Age | lasted from about 2000 B.C.E to the conquest of the Greek peninsula by invaders in the 1100s |
| Illiad | An epic dealing with the Mycenaean's war against the powerful city-state of Troy |
| Odyssey | tells of the adventures of the hero Odyssesus (Ulysses) after the war. |
| Homer | WRote Illiad and the Odyssey, two epics of ancient Greece, written in the eigth century B.C.E |
| Minoan | The Cretan culture named after Minos, the mythical king of Crete |
| Knossos | The Minoan towns were led by Knossos on the northern coast |
| Dorians | Nomads from the north who defeated the Myceneans due to their weakened state from their internal wars |
| Hellenic Period | extended from the time of Homer to the conquest of the Greek city-states by the Macedonians in the mid-300s. It includes the Classical Age, when Greek philosophical and artistic achievements were most impressive |
| Hellenistic Age | the final blossoming of Greek cultural innovation, lasting from about 300 B.C.E to the first century C.E. During this age, emigrant Greeks interacted politically and intellectually with other peoples to prduce a hybrid culture that was extraordinarily influential on the arts and sciene of both Western and Asian civilizations |
| polis | developed during and after the Dark Age; city-state |
| monarchy | ruled by a single person, a king or equivalent (either sex) who has the final word in law by right. Most of the Poleis were monarchies at one time or another, and many of them apparently began and ended as such |
| aristocracy | ruled by those who are born to the leading families and thereby are qualified to rule, whether or not they are particularly qualified in other ways. Aristocrats are born to the nobility, but not all nobles are bron aristocrats |
| oligarchy | ruled by a few, and almost always the frew are are the wealthiest members of society. Many poleis were ruled by an oligarchy of landlords whose land was worked by tenant farmers |
| democracy | ruled by the people, almost always by means of majority vote on disputed issues. Voting rights in executive and legislative acts are limited to citizens, and in the Greek poleis, this meant freeborn adult males |
| tyranny | ruled by a dictator who had illegally seized power. That person might be a good or bad ruler, a man or a woman |
| Solon | The most important oligarch who responded to the figt of supreme power to quell the discontent by establishing a constitution that struck an uneasy balance between the desires of the wealthy few and the demandsof the impoverished and indebted masses. |
| Pisistratus | an aristocratic tyrant who succeeded in making himself the sole ruler and made certain important concessions to the com mon people to gain their support for his plan to start a new monarchic dynasty with his sons as the successors. |
| Cleisthenes | the winner of the ensuing free-for-all who was an aristocrat and the true founder of the Athenian democracy |
| ekklesia | general "town meeting" of all free male Athenians, called on an ad hoc basis to make critical decisions affecting the future of the polis |
| boule | a council of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot for one-year terms (under the general supervision of the ekklesia) |
| deme | the basic political subdivision of the polis; a territorial unit, something like a modern precinct or war, but smaller in population. Each deme was entitled to select a certain number of boule members and was represented more or less equally in the officers of the polis |
| ostracism | "pushing out" of a citizen who would not conform to the will of his neighbors. An ostracized person must go into exile and lost all rights of citizenship for a certain length of time, normally ten years. (some rather killed themselves that submit to ostracism) |
| Messenien Wars | A bloody territorial war between the Spartans and their nearest Greek neighbor, Messenia. The Spartans won. |
| Helotry | a state of near slavery; The Messenians were helots in Sparta once defeated by them |
| ephors | a group of elected officers who ruled Sparta under the symoblic leadership of a dual monarchy |
| Darius I | The Persian Empire in the First Persian War |
| Xerxes | Darius's successor, involved in the Second Persian War |
| Persian Wars | the conflict between the Greeks and the Persian Empire in the fifth century B.C.E, fought in two installments and ending with Greek victory |
| Pericles | Pericles, the great orator, led the democrats who were in comand of Athens and were responsible for bringing Athens into conflict with Corinth, one of Sparta's Pelopennesian allies. Pericles refused to back down to the Spartans and waged war (Peloponesian War) |
| Peloponnesian War | (431-404 BCE) an intermittently fought deadlock. Between Sparta and Corinth and Athens; a technical victory for Sparta, but actually it was a loss for all concerned. |
| Philip of Macedonia | the ruler of Macedoina, he transformed it from a primitive society into an effectively governed, agressive state. One by one he began to absorb the northern Greek poleis, until by the 340s he had made himself the master of much of the mainland |
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