• (490- 323 BC)
• Defined by the Persian Wars
• Period ends with the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC)

• began the revolt against the Persian Empire
• Sparta denied plea for help; Athens agreed to help
• Provincial capital of Persian Empire(Sardis); set on fire
• Persians could not afford to have revolts; if 1 group revolts others follow

• King of the Persian Empire
• set the invasion of Greece in place
• Father of Xerxes

• Athenians are outnumbered 2 to 1 in the battle
• Spartan army gets there too late
• Athenians manage to win; catch Persians unprepared
• Persians set sail for Athens

• Persian emperor Xerxes gathers 250 000 men and 1 200 ships
• Goes around land instead of water to get to Greece; to keep army safe
• Only 31 out of 2000 city statees resist Persian empire
• Greek Startegy -> defend at the narrows 

• Greeks defeat Persians; Xerxes goes home
• Xerxes leaves because he does not want to provide provisions for his army in the winter months
• Persians retreat from Athens, Greeks take over their ruined city

• Leonidas of Sparta; 7000 hoplites
• Purpose was to slow down Persians, so that Greeks could evacuate surrounding cities
• Spartans betrayed by one of their own
• Persians attack from behind

• Persians take over Athens and sack and burn it
• Athenians evacuate people onto ships; continue to fight naval battle
• Lured Persians into naval battle

• Greeks and Persians equally matched in battle
• Greeks defeat Persians
• Persians leave as quickly as possible; to avoid more battle

• Brute wealth ( acquire all "booty" of the Persians);raises standard of living
• The Delian League( Athens becomes leader; turns into Athenian Empire; states no better off)
• Radical Democracy in Athens (Payment for holding public office, Lottery to determine public service)

• Athens vs Sparta(and their allies called the Peloponessian League)
• 33% of Athenians died because of the plague
• Sparta defeats Athens in 404BC by building their own fleet funded by the Persians

• Equally matched in power and infantry
• Sicily is the breadbasket of the Ancient Aegean
• Lose entire Sicilan Expedition

• end of Classical Period; decline of city-state
• Increased foreign interference in Greece:
• Persian can influence Greece by using money to promote fighting to keep Greeks weak and divided
• Macedon: acts as buffer zone for the rest of Greece

• Philip II unifies entire Greek world under his command
• Battle of Chaeronea: Greek city- states become subjects to the king
• Philip II is killed by an assassin; he unites Greek world so that he could invade Persia
• his son Alexander the Great takes this idea and continues it

Hellenstic Period

• Antigonid- controls Macedon
• Seleucid (city of Antioch)- shrinking empire
• Attalid (city of Pergamum)
• Ptolemaic (city of Alexandria)- controls Egypt, ends after Cleopatra

• Myths: stories told about gods(explain divine, scientific and rational)
• Mythology=history
• Understanding of family helps understand the world around them

• The gods are organized into a family
• Creation of the world: Chaos, Void:something made out of nothing, Gaia( Earth-female) Eros(desire), Ouranos(sky-male)

• polytheistic- Olympian versus chthonic
• Epithets(Athena, polias, parthenos, promachos, ergane)
• Anthropomorphic(physically, socially, psychologically)
• Gods vs humans?->gods are more powerful and immortal
• humanism and pessimism

• Zeus- "bright"(sky god)
• dying consort of Great Mother Goddess
• Order in the Cosmos
• King(justice and oaths, xenia"hospitality")

• "lady"
• Marriage- Gamelia
• childbirth
• Queen of heaven

• "gift of the foam"
• sex
• Near Eastern parallels (Isthar, Innana, Cybele etc- Great Goddesses who combine powers of sex, war, and queen of heaven) 

• twin of Apollo
• Mistress of animals, birthing, ideal kore, archery

• twin of Artemis
• ideal kouros
• Delphic oracle

• unusual birth(Metis "wisdom")
• Succession in Heaven
• Warrior
• Helps heros
• God of wisdom

• Semi- divine (demi-gods)
• Part mortal
• Legend; because there is usually some historical

• appears across all cultures
• earliest known generic hero is Gilgamesh (2600 BC)
• modern day: Harry Potter

• Pelops and Hippodamia 

• Epic poetry (epic cycle)
• Iliad
• Epic Hero is primarily a warrior
• Usually a King

• threat to birth; survival= box and water
• Does not know his true identity; divine or royal birth, but raised by surrogates(animals?)
• Abilities make him an outsider
• has a Sidekick
• has a Mentor
• The QUEST to regain heritage; tends to take him to borderlands
• Monster slaying; symbolic encounter with chaos/disorder/death
• The Hero’s Reward?; princess bride and kingdom to rule/ IMMORTALTIY(eternal fame…)
• Unusual and mysterious death

• Public
• Religion is central to the survival of the community
• Not concerned with morality
• Local scale: every state had their own calendar 
• no professional priesthood
• No sacred book, or canonical belief
• no churches
• Epiphany- believed that gods could make themselves present in the human world
• Reciprocity- if you give to gods they will give back

• Public festival
• Procession to the altar 
• Prayer->"euphemete"
• Sacrifice and libation
• Feast-> "rite of conviviality"
• Other(song/dance athletic competitions)

• Earth and Fertility
• Cyclical pattern of life and death
• To make their way to the underworld they are led there by hermes
• 3 rivers( Styx, Lethe, Acheron) to cross into the underworld
• Not allowed to use Hades' name summoning him= death
• Underworld is a functioning society
• Hades “the unseen one” and Persephone “destruction and slaughter”
• Judges in the Underworld (Minos) 

• Dionysos= Bacchos (son of Zeus)
• god of wine and alcohol
• dying god associated with fertility
• associated with the juices of life( blood, semen, wine)
• human worship of Dionysos= orgia, ekstasis(out of body experience), enthousiasmos, sparagmos, omophagy

• First to categorize different types of writing(genres)
• Poetry considered the preferable genre of writing
• Prose: there are historical and philosophical works, both were first written in poetry later turned into prose
• Alphabet ca. 800 BC

• dactyclic hexameter
• epic poets: epic cycle 
• Homer(Iliad and the Odyssey)
• Hesoid (Theogyny and Works and Days)

• 2 girls captured
• Father wants Chryseis back
• Apollo puts plague on camp
• returns girls-plagued
• Zues helps Trojans
• concerns itself with the rage of Achilles—how it begins, how it cripples the Achaean army
• poem focused on rage
• concerns itself greatly with the motivations and actions of the gods
•  concerns itself greatly with the motivations and actions of the gods

• Mourning of Patrodus
• Patrodus appears to him in a dream, begging Achilles to hold his funeral soon so that his soul can enter the land of the dead
• hold competiton in honour of this
• Athena robs last placer of victory even though Antilechus commited a foul

• Hectors body is being abused
• asked to give it back
• Priam steals it
• Trojans light Hector’s pyre on the tenth day

• Flashback
• Fruit of the Lotus
• Men want only fruit
• Son of Poseidon(Polyphemus) eats 2 men and captures Odysseus
• Polyphemus collapses with intoxication, Odysseus and a select group of his men drive the red-hot staff into his eye

• visting the souls of the dead
• they tell him stories
• they overwhelm him so he sails away
• gives the modern reader an extraordinary anthology of mythological lives
• the underworld segment ties together the poem’s various settings

• named after a city
• The dynastic head, Cadmus, is a brother of Europa, the woman Zeus kidnaps while she is a cow
• Cadmus' great grandson= Oedipus
• Oedipus abdicates the throne 
• in the end, all that is left of the city is a necklace Hephaestus gave to Harmonia upon her wedding to Cadmus
• offers bleak vision of justice in the world
• Oedipus must accept cruel fate and has no opportunity for epic adventure or glory