Ancient Greek Civilization - overview

I am now going to give an overview of ancient Greece. In future videos, we're going to go into a lot more depth on a lot of these events and ideas, but this one is to give you context on the big picture. And just to start, let's begin with the name Greece. It turns out that the Greeks do not call where they live Greece, neither did the ancient Greeks. They called it Elas, Elas, Elas. And the word Elas comes from Elin. So this comes from Elin, which is this legendary figure who is viewed as a progenitor of the Greek people. You can kind of view him as the father of the Greek people. And it's not well established in the historical record when Elin actually existed, but this is where we get the name Elas from. And it's very important. Do not confuse this Elin, who was a man, with Helen of Troy. Helen of Troy was a different person. When I was a child and I heard about Hellenic things or the Hellenic period or the Hellenes, I was like, oh, maybe that's something to do with Helen of Troy. No, that's referring to the Greek progenitor Elin. And so that's where the word Elas comes from and ideas like Hellenes, which is the Greek people, or Hellenic, which is referring to something that is Greek, or the Hellenistic period, which we'll talk about in many videos from now, which is this period of Greek influence, not just over Greece and the Anatolian Peninsula, but over Persia and over Egypt. So with that out of the way, let's now talk about the big arc of history of ancient Greece. And it's believed that the Greek peninsula has been settled by human beings for thousands and thousands of years. And as time goes on, we'll hopefully understand more and more about them. But my timeline right over here starts with Mycenaean Greece, which is, or it starts with the end of Mycenaean Greece. In other videos, we might talk more about the Mycenaean Empire. And as that empire falls, we enter into the Greek Dark Ages. And the reason why it's called the Dark Ages is there's not a lot of historical record of this period, roughly between 1100 BCE and 800 BCE. Now there's one event, and I'll kind of say that with a slight emphasis or a question, that is worth noting here. I have Trojan War, question mark, around 1200 BCE. Once again, there's not a strong historic record for the Trojan War, but it is a famous war that was chronicled by Homer. And even Homer, we don't know if he really existed or whether he was an entire literary tradition, but it was chronicled in the Iliad, in the aftermath, in the Odyssey. And once again, this was chronicled many hundreds of years later. And even Homer is a semi-legendary figure. But when people talk about the Trojan Wars or you see movies about it, we're talking about something that, if it happened the way it happened, it's on the order of 1200 BCE. Now as we exit the Greek Dark Ages, that's when we start to have some of the institutions that really, that we now identify with the ancient Greeks, get established. You have the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle of Delphi, often known, or Pythia, often known as the Oracle of Delphi. This is where leaders of the Greek city-states went for direction to understand what was likely to happen, to get prophecies. And this institution, the Oracle at Delphi, lasts through this entire period I have on my timeline into Roman rule for over 1,000 years, where the Oracle of Delphi is a very, very prominent figure in influencing Greek leaders. At around the same time, you also have the Olympic Games, where they are held at Olympia, where people compete to show their athletic prowess. And this ancient Olympic Games, once again, it continues on for over 1,000 years. Our modern Olympics are just kind of a flash in the pan, and it was obviously modeled after the ancient Olympics, compared to how long this lasted. Now, when most people think of Greece, they're actually talking about classical Greece. So this is the classical period right over here. We're gonna do videos on a lot of these events, but it's roughly the period between the Persian invasions that were successfully put off and the rise of Alexander and the fall of Alexander. And that's where you have all of these ideas of Greek democracy really kind of coming to the surface. Pericles, the Stratagos of Athens, who had the influence to really help democracy flourish under his leadership or during his leadership. You have the Acropolis and the Parthenon, these famous icons of Greek culture being established. But once again, this is in this period. That's in this period right over here. This is also the period that we associate with the famous Greek philosophers. These lines right over here are the lives of Socrates and Plato, who was Socrates' student, established the famous Academy. Aristotle, who was Plato's student and famous tutor of Alexander the Great. Now, as I mentioned, you had these city states and the ones that are worth mentioning, or all of them are worth mentioning, but I have in this diagram the most significant city states of ancient Greece that you'll hear a lot about. We talked about the Oracle at Delphi, the Olympic Games at Olympia. A lot of the conversation tends to focus around Sparta and around Athens. And then you'll also hear a lot about Corinth and Thebes. Sparta is famous for its militaristic society. It's often glorified, but it's also worth noting that they were significant slave owners at different parts in Spartan history. They had somewhere between seven and 20 slaves for every Spartan. Athens is famous for its philosophy. It's famous for the birthplace of democracy. It's famous for its art. It's famous for its architecture. Actually, all of these areas are famous for its architecture, but it's also worth noting that during the Golden Age and you have the Athenian Empire, they were also pretty brutal in putting down rebellion and in some ways subjugating different people. So it depends how you want to view things. And we're gonna have a lot of videos on all of these things. But at that time, we talk about these city states, even though they shared a common language and common culture, they went to the Olympic, they sent folks to the Olympic Games, they went to the Oracle of Delphi, they were independent states. And it wasn't until you have Philip of Macedonia in the fourth century right over here, where he starts to really unify these Greek city states. And it culminates with his son, Alexander the Great. And Alexander the Great not only unifies Greece, but he takes over the Persian Empire. And really kind of with his death, and he has a very short life, he ushers in the Hellenistic period, where you have Greek culture influencing that entire region, not only Greece, not only what was the Persian Empire, the Middle East, Egypt, the whole region gets influenced by Greek culture. And Greece, I guess you could say at the end, finally gets under Roman control and it depends which date you wanna use it. In the middle of the second century BCE is when Greece itself falls to Rome, but then other parts of, I guess you could say the Hellenistic world finally succumb to Rome, for example, Ptolemaic Egypt in the first century BCE. But even then, even when it becomes part of the Roman Empire, it influences the Roman Empire very, very, very heavily. Now other things that you will hear us talk about when we discuss the Greeks, besides the democracy and the philosophy, we're gonna talk a lot about wars. And it's worth noting what Greek warriors look like. So this is a depiction of hoplites, which are Greek citizen-soldiers in ancient Greece. And you'll also hear about a phalanx. A phalanx is the formation where they walked or they marched very tightly together. And when archers came, they would put all their shields up and they'd almost be like this armored tank. And it was a very effective method of warfare. Another word that you will hear associated with Sparta and those slaves is helots. Those were the names of those slaves and they weren't owned by individuals. They were actually owned by the state. Now some of the other cities here, Corinth will come up a lot. It has a very strategic location in the Ithmus of Corinth. Notice to get from the mainland or I guess into the Peloponnesian Peninsula, you have to go through this Ithmus. Thebes right here was a significant rival to Athens. At different periods of Greek history, it was the dominant city. Now the last thing I wanna mention is there's just a ton of culture that comes from the Greeks and a lot of words that we even use today. For example, the word draconian, which is used for something that's very harsh. Well, that comes from Draco's Law, which came in the 7th century BCE from Athens. He composed, he was a Athenian legislator who composed a very harsh series of laws and that's where the word draconian comes from. When people say something is Spartan, they kind of imagine it's something that's very basic or you just have the necessities. And it comes from the idea of Spartan culture that really everything revolved around military necessity. Even the word laconic, which means someone who doesn't, says just enough to get their meaning across, it comes from the region where Sparta is, Laconia. The Spartans were famous for their kind of very terse speech, famously when Philip of Macedon was threatening the Spartans and he's saying, if you don't come onto my side, I'm going to do this and that to you. If you don't become part of my kingdom, my empire, I'm going to do this to your city, I'm going to do that to your people. And the Spartans' famous reply was if, which is kind of a good example of laconic speech with that one word they were able to convey a lot. So I'm going to leave you there. In the next few videos, we're going to go into some depth on this. But it's important to realize that when people talk about ancient Greece, they're talking about a large span of history and most of what we associate with ancient Greece, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Persian Wars, the great Greek philosophers, most of that is associated with the classical period, often associated with the Golden Age, which is right around there. That well before this period, the Greeks weren't all these philosophers sitting around in togas, they might have been wearing togas, but at these earlier periods, they were more adventurers and conquerors and they might have been in small villages and eventually those evolved into the city state that especially in Athens and Sparta had their Golden Age in this period right over here.