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The Competitive Character of the Ancient Greeks· Why do you think the competitive nature of the Greeks was so important for their success as a people and culture? What are some of the advantages of being very competitive? Greece was very small compared to all her neighbors (like Persia and Egypt) so why was being competitive a big advantage for Greece? The Ancient Olympics vs The Modern Olympics Talk about the fact that Greek male athletes competed nude versus today (imagine how that would play out with modern television, Discuss the sheer scope of the modern games with so many nations versus the smaller number of Greek cities · Are the Olympics today more about the athletes or the nations? Women in the Olympic Games did women watch the games? Did they participate? Women roles in Greek society· After looking at the role women played in both watching and participating in the Olympic Games, what do think the role of women was in Greek society? Were they valued? Did they have a voice in society?
Use these cites and upload for assignment
British Museum Running Girl artifact at
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/b/bronze_figure_of_a_girl.aspx
Philadelphias Penn Museum on Women and Greek athletics at
http://www.penn.museum/sites/olympics/olympicsexism.shtml
The Competing Poleis Although Greece was an agricultural society, the polis— not the farm—was the focal point of cultural life. It consisted of an urban center, small by modern standards, often surrounding some form of natural citadel, which could serve as a fortification, but which usually functioned as the citystate’s religious center. The Greeks called this citadel an acropolis—literally, the “top of the city.” On lower ground, at the foot of the acropolis, was the agora, a large open area that served as public meeting place, marketplace, and civic center (see the beginning of Chapter 5). Athens led the way, perhaps because it had become something of a safe haven during the Dark Ages, even flourishing as a result, and it thus maintained something of a civic identity. Gradually, the polis came to describe less a place and more a cultural and communal identity. The citizens of the polis, including the rural population of the region—the polis of Sparta, for instance, comprised some 3,000 square miles of the Peloponnese, while Athens
controlled the 1,000 square miles of the region known as Attica—owed allegiance and loyalty to it. They depended upon and served in its military. They worshiped and trusted in its gods. And they asserted their identity, first of all, by participating in the affairs of the city-state, next by their family (genos) involvement, and, probably least of all, by any sense of being Greek. In fact, the Greek poleis were distinguished by their isolation from one another and their fierce independence. For the most part, Greece is a very rugged country of mountains separating small areas of arable plains. The Greek historian Thucydides attributed the independence of the poleis to the historical competition in earlier times for these fertile regions of the country. His History of the Peloponnesian Wars, written in the last decades of the fifth century bce and begun during the wars (he served as a general in the Athenian army), opens with an account of these earlier times, tracing the conflict in his own time to that historical situation (Reading 4.5):
While Greek poleis might form temporary alliances, almost always in league against other poleis, few of the invasions Thucydides speaks of resulted in the domination of one polis over another, at least not for long. Rather, each polis maintained its own identity and resisted domination. But inevitably, certain city-states became more powerful than others. During the Dark Ages, many Athenians had migrated to Ionia in southwestern Anatolia (present-day Turkey), and relations with the Near East helped Athens to flourish. Corinth, situated on the isthmus between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese, controlled north– south trade routes from early times, but after it built a towpath to drag ships over the isthmus on rollers, it soon controlled the sea routes east and west as well. Life in Sparta Of all the early city-states, Sparta was perhaps the most powerful. The Spartans traced their ancestry back to the legendary Dorians, whose legacy was military might. The rule of the city-state fell to the homoioi, or “equals,” who comprised roughly 10 percent of the population. The population consisted largely of farm laborers, or helots, essentially slaves who worked the land held by the homoioi. (A third class of people, those who had inhabited the area before the arrival of the Spartans, enjoyed limited freedom but were subject to Spartan rule.) Political power resided with five overseers who were elected annually by all homoioi—excluding women—over the age of 30. At age 7, males were taken from their parents to live under military discipline in barracks until age 30 (though they could marry at age 20). Men ate in the military mess until age 60. Women were given strenuous physical training so that they might bear strong sons. Weak-looking babies were left to die. The city-state, in short, controlled every aspect of the Spartans’ lives. If the other Greek poleis were less militaristic, they nevertheless exercised the same authority in some fashion. They exercised power more often through political rather than militaristic means, though most could be as militaristic as Sparta when the need arose.
The Sacred Sanctuaries-
Although rival poleis were often at war with one another, they also increasingly came to understand their common heritage. As early as the eighth century bce, they created sanctuaries where they could come together to share music, religion, poetry, and athletics. The sanctuary was a large-scale reflection of another Greek invention, the symposium, literally “drinking together” by men (originally of the same military unit) meeting to share poetry, food, and wine. At the sanctuaries, people from different poleis came together to honor their gods and, by extension, to celebrate, in the presence of their rivals, their own
accomplishments. Delphi The sanctuaries were sacred religious sites. They inspired the poleis, which were always trying to outdo one another, to create the first monumental architecture since Mycenaean times. At Delphi, high in the mountains above the Gulf of Corinth, and home to the Sanctuary of Apollo,
the poleis, in their usual competitive spirit, built monuments and statues dedicated to the god, and elaborate treasuries to store offerings. Here, the Greeks believed, Earth was attached to the sky by its navel. Here, too, through a deep crack in the ground, Apollo spoke, through the medium of a woman called the Pythia. Priests interpreted the cryptic omens and messages she delivered. The Greek author Plutarch, writing in the first century ce, said that the Pythia entered a small chamber beneath the temple, smelled sweet-smelling fumes, and went into a trance. Modern scholars dismissed the story as fiction until recently, when geologists discovered that two faults intersect directly below the Delphic temple, allowing hallucinogenic gases to rise through the fissures, specifically ethylene, which has a sweet smell and produces a narcotic effect described as a floating or disembodied euphoria. The facade of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi consisted of two columns standing in antis (that is, between two squared stone pilasters, called antae). Behind them is the pronaos, or enclosed vestibule, at the front of the building, with its doorway leading into the cella (or naos), the principal interior space of the building (see the floor plan, Fig. 4.17).
We can see the antecedents of this building type in a small ceramic model of an early Greek temple dating from the eighth century bce and found at the Sanctuary of Hera near Argos (Fig. 4.18). Its projecting porch supported by two columns anticipates the in antis columns and pronaos of the Athenian Treasury. The triangular area over the porch created by the pitch of the roof, called the pediment, is not as steep in the Treasury. The Temples of Hera at Paestum From this basic form, surviving in the small treasuries at Delphi, the larger temples of the Greeks would develop. Two distinctive orders— systems of proportion that include the building’s plan, its elevation (the arrangement and appearance of the temple’s foundation, columns, and lintels), and decorative scheme—developed before 500 bce, the Doric order and the Ionic order. Later, a third Corinthian order would emerge (see Closer Look, pages 116–117). Among the earliest surviving examples of a Greek temple of the Doric order are the Temples of Hera I and II in the Sanctuary of Hera at Paestum, a Greek colony established in the seventh century bce in Italy, about 50 miles south of present-day.
Classical Greek architecture is composed of three vertical
elements—the platform, the column, and the entablature—which comprise its elevation. The relationship of these three units is referred to as the elevation’s order. There are three orders: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, each distinguished by its specific design. The Classical Greek orders became the basic design elements for architecture from ancient Greek times to the present day. A major source of their power is the sense of order, predictability, and proportion that they embody. Notice how the upper elements of each order—the elements comprising the entablature—change as the column supporting them becomes narrower and taller. In the Doric order, the architrave (the bottom layer of the entablature), and the frieze (the flat band just above the architrave decorated with sculpture, painting, or moldings), are comparatively massive. The Doric is the heaviest of the columns. The Ionic is lighter and noticeably smaller. The Corinthian is smaller yet, seemingly supported by mere leaves.
