Greek Civilization (CLS-222), Fall 2018

Course Syllabus

Links to Tools

Pleiades: an ancient world gazeteer.
Pelagios: Annotate a text.
geojson.io: Create geographic data.

Assignments & Dates

First Major Writing Assignment

Final Project

(Newer assignments are added at the top of the list)

For Tuesday, November 27. Read from Hdt. 5.61 to 5.78, on the origins of Athenian Democracy, Athens & Sparta, a politicized “curse”. We’ll work with this text on Novermber 27 and 29.
** No Class Tuesday, November 20** while I get caught up on grading.
For Thursday, November 15. We’ll get back to the Greeks, and head into some Athenian history. Start reading at Hdt. 5.49 (p. 386 in the Landmark Thucydides). The year is 499 BCE. Persia has conquered the Greeks of Asia. The tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, comes to visit Kleomenes, King of Sparta, to convince him to wage war against Persia. We get to see how a map was used, and we get a little geography lesson. Read through 5.61. H. will talk about Hipparchus, the son of the tyrant Pisistratus, with (of course some parentheses and asides on the subject of writing.) In this section, see how much information technology you can identify (you have to have an open mind about what constitutes “information technology”).
For Tuesday, November 13. Read this handout on sex and laws.
For Tuesday, November 6. Work on submitting “issues” for your geography. Skip ahead in Herodotus and read about Persian Customs at 1.130–1.140. Links:
For Tuesday, October 29: Work on the writing assignment.
For Tuesday, October 23: Read Herodotus 1.71–1.94, on the end of Croesus’ empire. Work on the writing assignment.
For Tuesday, October 16: Read Herodotus 1.59-1.70, on the Athenians and Spartans. Know how Peisistratos became tyrant of Athens (there are several stories). Bring a laptop to class.
For Thursday, October 11: Study for the Greek Alphabet / Transliteration test. Read Herodotus 1.57-1.59. For a quiz grade, e-mail me your GitHub username; make the Subject line of the e-mail say “Greek Civ GitHub User”.
No Class Thursday, Oct. 4.
For Tuesday, Oct. 2: Go to https://github.com. “Sign up” for a (free) GitHub account. Remember your username and password. Read this short overview of Athenian history, since the next Herodotus readings will be about Athens.
For Thursday, Sept. 27: Read through Herodotus 1.56, on how Croesus consulted the oracle. Regarding your place names: 1. Get a Pleiades ID for each of your places. 2. Is any of them a region or island? If so, go to geojson.io, and draw a region around it, saving the resulting GeoJSON data somewhere.
For Tuesday, Sept. 25: Bring in the list of placenames in your assigned passage of Herodotus, and any questions about them. Read through Herodotus 1.45. The first stories about Croesus of Lydia. Write a very short summary, to hand in, of two parts of this narrative:
1. What happened between Croesus and Solon.
2. The story of Adrastus and Croesus’ son, Atys.
For Thursday, Sept 20, and Tuesday, Sept. 18: Read Herodotus 1.16-1.25. Be prepared, on Thursday, to answer some basic questions about this passage, especially about Sadyattes’ war against Miletus, and the story of Arion.
For Tuesday, Sept. 11: Read Herodotus 1.8-1.15, about how Gyges became king of Lydia. Be prepared for a very, very short quiz on the details of this story. If you are reading it, and something makes no sense let me know by email. Also, know that the citation scheme for Herodotus is: “book”, “section”, “subsection”, while the citation scheme for the New Testament (by way of comparison) is “chapter” and “verse”. So “Herodotus 1.8.1” but “John 2.1”.
For Thursday, Sept. 6: Read Herdotus 1.6 and 1.7. Be sure to read all of the notes. Be able to say, in one sentence, who Croesus was, from 1.6. Know who the last king of Lydia from the Heraklids was, from 1.7. Know what “Heraklids” means.
For Tuesday, Sept. 4: Read Herodotus 1.1-1.5 (pp. 3–5). Write out the following:
1. Whose account this is.
2. A short list of who kidnapped whom.
3. Based on Wikipedia, a one sentence (each) description of Io, Europa, Medea, Helen.
4. A one-sentence summary of Herodotus’ own opinion of the stories he has just related.
For Thursday, August 30: Read the Introduction to Herodotus by Rosalind Thomas, starting on page ix, sections 1.1–2.3. Write a very, very short summary of each of those sections (there are 5 of them). Ideally, one sentence per section, which means you will have to boil each section down to its essence. If you must write two or three sentences to summarize a section, so be it, but do not write more than 10 sentences in all. Bring your summaries to class to hand in as a first quiz grade.

Passages Read

1.proem
1.1–1.5 (The “Persian Version”; H. states his approach.)
1.6–1.7 (Intro to Croesus, King of Lydia.)
1.8–1.25 (Alyattes, Arion)
1.26–1.45 (Solon, Croesus, Adrastus)
1.46–1.58 (Croesus and the Oracles)
1.58–1.70 (Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens)

Topics Discussed

Dates: BCE/CE, BC/AD. 5th Century BCE (400s).
Basic geography: The Greek world is focused on the Aegean sea. Halicarnassus and Athens. Where “Barbarians” live.
“Hellene” = “Greek person”; “Hellas” = “Greece”; “Hellenic” = “Greek”. But n.b. “Hellas” for Herodotus means “wherever in the world there are people who speak Greek, share Greek customs, and worship the same gods.” There was no political entity called “Hellas”.
Herodotus’ purpose:
1. so that deeds (Greek and Barbarian) will not be forgotten
2. marvellous things
3. how Greeks and Barbarians came to fight one another.
Phoenicians
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory.
Sources for Greek mythology.
Io, Europa, Medea, Helen. Cadmus. Eponymous Hero. Autochthony.
Barbara Tuckman’s definition of “Folly”.
Geography, disambiguation, canonical reference: See https://pleiades.stoa.org.
Hodological vs. Cartographic thinking; “turn-by-turn” directions vs. looking at a map
“Sexy Time” : Selection + Exclusion + Transformation = Map. How this might work for History as well.
Delphi and Oracles. Dedications and monuments as “evidence.” Gifts to the god in the hope of getting a good answer.
Psy-ops in war. Arion and the dolphin.
Solon and Fortune (Cleobis and Biton)
Peisistratus, aristocratic families, a “third party” (and appeal to the people), P’s trick of dressing Phya like Athene, P’s eventual resort to foreign money and troops. Escalation of violence against the state by an ambitious leader.

Reflection

The Furman Advantage cites “reflection” as a key component. In this class, “reflection” (which could mean anything), will mean “the ability to talk about what you have done in terms meaningful to people outside of the University”.

Many parts of Herodotus, particularly Book 1, are self-contained stories; these can often read very much like the parables found in the New Testament. Like those parables, the stories from Herodotus can often apply to modern situations and provide insight. Unlike those parables, the stories from Herodotus are not that widely known. If you can remember a small handful of what you will read in this semester, you can use them later—in business, in conversation—to cast ancient light on modern problems.