In my first lecture, I made the generalization that history is the most wonderful, most interesting, most exciting, and most important of all subjects.  I find almost all periods of history and almost all historical peoples interesting in one way or another. 

Now I've probably told all of you a story about how I came to be a history professor, the story about my sister Marta telling me I had "the most beautiful voice for putting people to sleep."

Actually, while that did  happen, that's not the whole story.  All my life, Greeks had a special fascination for me.  It started in elementary school, when I fell in love with Greek mythology.  My best friend and I played at being Hector and Achilles rather than cops and robbers.  While I was in junior high, my dad introduced me to the works of Plato, and I fell in love with Greek philosophy.  As an undergraduate, I was a theater major: and fell in love with Greek drama.  I taught high school drama and English for several years, and didn't spend much time with the Greek literature.  And then one day I picked up Herodotus' history of the Persian Wars--and I was in love all over again.  I knew that, if I possibly could, I wanted to study this stuff for the rest of my life, to understand how human beings could create such absolutely incredible works--works that are, in my opinion at least, the finest achievements of the human mind.

But its not just in literature the Greeks excelled. They produced some of the world's greatest art, the first true science, and some of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen.  The Greeks end up making more important contributions to subsequent civilization than any other people.  Especially important, the Greeks taught the world new ways to dream.

The Greek dream begins with a people we call the Minoans, a people who lived, not in Greece proper, but in an island of the Greek coast, Crete.  The Minoans created the first great civilization in Europe, getting their start perhaps as early as 3000 BC and reaching their height around 2000-1500 B.C.  Unfortunately, we don't know as much about them as we would like: we can't read most of what they wrote, and what little we can read is nothing more than business records.  But archaeological discoveries (and Greek legend) suggest that they achieved a very advanced civilization.  The Minoans had indoor plumbing, and living standards higher than Europe would see again for 3000 years.  It's natural enough that the memory of this civilization would make later peoples think they had achieved a golden age and perhaps even exaggerate their achievements.  The Minoans probably are the source of the Atlantis legend, a legend that still fascinates people today.

Equally interesting is the next great phase of Greek civilization, Mycenaean Greece (1500-1200 B.C.).  With the Mycenaeans, we are a little luckier: we can read their writing.  Unfortunately, once again what we have is mostly business texts--and there's not much fascinating in that!.  But we also have another source for Mycenaeans: the poems of Homer, the  Iliad and the Odyssey.  The heroes Homer writes about (Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus, etc.) lived during the Mycenaean period.  Just stories?  Historians once thought so, but Archaeology has tended to confirm things Homer says about Mycenaean age.  And notice the dream: the characters in Homer's poems are still figures we feature in movies and books from time to time--although moderns sometimes twist the stories in rather odd ways--as does James Joyce in Ulysses.

The Trojan War was the last great adventure of the Mycenaean period.  Around 1200 BC or a bit later, the Mycenaeans were attacked by new Greek speakers: the Dorians.  With their iron weapons, the Dorians were able to dominate much of Greece and, unfortunately, their invasion led first to a period of decline. Among other losses, writing disappears, so we don't know much directly about the Dorian period.  It was in many senses a dark age--but a dark age gave rise to one of the most impressive civilizations the world has ever seen.

The Greek political system that emerged during the dark ages was based around what the Greeks called the polis (the word which, by the way, gives us our words political and politics).  The polis was a city-state: not a kingdom or empire, but an independent, self-governing community very similar to the Egyptian nomes or the first Sumerian cities.  Polises ranged from a few thousand, as many as 200,000.   But whether big or small, each polis has its own fascinating story to tell.  There's Corinth: the San Fransisco of the ancient world, a wealthy trading city, full of the finest in Greek culture, but also a city of thousands of prostitutes. If you wanted to go out partying in the ancient world, you said you were going on "Corinthing"--behaving as they did in Corinth. And then there's Thebes, a city that suffered military defeat after military defeat--until they put together an army dominated by homosexuals and became, for a short time, the dominant power in Greece.  And speaking of homosexuals, there's Lesbos--an island polis.  Lesbos is the island where the great Greek poetess Sappho taught.  Sappho's poems expressed such warm emotion for her female students that passionate love of one woman for another has gone ever since by the name derived from the island of Lesbos where Sappho lived.  I tell you, the Greeks name everything.

But the most fascinating of all the polises, and the most important, were Sparta and Athens.

Some of you are familiar with part of the Spartan story from the move "300."  If you saw the older movie, Three Hundred Spartans, you'd have a far more accurate picture.  But note here: the Spartans are a people whose story we still tell, who still make us dream.

Now Sparta at first was little different than other city states.  But the city began to change after a series of wars with neighboring Messenia.  The Spartans acquired thousands of slaves (helots) and lots of good agricultural land. Nice!  But to maintain the upper hand, the Spartans had to turn themselves into a military machine: every aspect of Spartan life was devoted to military success.

Sparta's precarious position created a need for a cautious, conservative governmental system.  They adopted for themselves a mixed constitution with plenty of checks and balances.  Sparta had an unusual dual monarchy: two kings!  The also had a council of older men (the Gerousia) composed of 28 men plus the two kings to guide Spartan policy.  Most interesting was the democratic aspect of the Spartan system.  All arms-bearing men over 30 served in the Apella, a kind of assembly, that had the ultimate say in all issues.  But their was never any debate in the Apella: it was all straight up or straight down voting.  And the voting was done by acclamation: whichever side shouted the loudest got its way!

The lifestyle of Spartan men was designed to produce warriors.  And if you didn't have the aptitude to be a warrior, there was no need to worry: you didn't make it.  Any baby boy who didn't pass the initial health inspection by the Spartan ephors was simply killed.

Spartan boys left home at the age of 7, and, for the next years of their lives, they trained constantly in all of those skills useful to good soldiers.  They were taught to read and write--and sing!  And they were taught discipline and self-denial.  They lived what we still call a "Spartan" lifestyle: no frills at all.  A visiting Athenian said that one taste of Spartan food and you knew why Spartans didn't care whether they lived or died in battle. 

Spartan boys were taught to steal--but that it was a disgrace to be caught. Once, so the story goes, a Spartan boy had stolen a fox.  He was about to be caught, so he hid it under his robe.  The fox began to bite.  He didn't utter a sound.  It continued to bite.  Only when he dropped dead of his bites was the fox discovered.  That's discipline!

In general in military societies, the status of women goes down.  This was not true in Sparta.  Women tended to run things--so much so that other Greeks disapproved.  "Why is it that Spartan women are the only women in Greece who rule men?" asked a disparaging Athenian woman.  The Spartan queen Gorgo replied, "Because Spartan women are the only ones who give birth to men.

Because Spartans devoted themselves to much to war, they made few contributions to culture.  Here's a poem from the one great Spartan poet:
 
Yep.  Even Spartan poetry was designed for a warrior society.

The Spartans also left us some famous  "laconic" phrases (Laconia is the region around Sparta).  A laconic phrase is short and to the point. Examples:

1.  When Spartan men went to battle, they'd be handed a shield and with it two words from their mom or wife: "with it or on it."  Come back with your shield victorious or on your shield dead!

2.  After a famine, one of Sparta's allies needed relief.  They made a long speech to the Spartans explaining what they wanted.  The Spartans told them the speech was so long that, by the time they got to the end, the Spartans had forgotten what they wanted in the first place.  The allies got the idea and tried again.  They held up a sack and said, "The sack needs grain."  Much better, said the Spartans.  But you could have shortened it more.  Just hold up the sack and say, "needs grain"

Clever, but but these sayings are not all that important.  Sparta's real importance, their contribution to the Greek dream, the example of what a superbly disciplined lifestyle can do. And its Spartan discipline that makes them remembered.  We think it perfectly appropriate to nick-name athletic teams Spartans.  We've got the Michigan State Spartans, the Spearfish Spartans, the San Juan Spartans, the Wessington Springs Spartans and lots more.  You don't hear of athletic teams called "The Athenians," "The Thebans," or "The Corinthians."  And, of course, Lesbians wouldn't do at all.

At the same time as Sparta began to grow, the Athenians were developing a very different type of polis.  The Athenians were far more interested in trade and, as a result, far more cosmopolitan.  The Athens were also more democratic than Sparta. Leaders like Solon, Cleisthenes, and Pericles made the city increasingly democratic so that, eventually, Athens was the most democratic society in all history--except for the fact that women, resident aliens, and slaves were excluding from politics.  All Athenian men participated in the ecclesia, the assembly that had ultimate authority in all affairs.  And, unlike Spartans, Athenians were free to debate legislation.  If you were a persuasive enough speaker, no matter what your rank in society, you could get the Athenians to adopt your ideas.  Most official positions went to people who were chosen by lot--so that there was a good chance that Athenian man, at least sometime in his life, would serve in an important leadership position.  The law courts too were democratic: with 600 jurers, there was no chance of bribery or of anything but a representative cross section of society.  Also, there were no lawyers--and the rule was that a case started at sun up and had to be finished by sun down.

The Athenians and Spartans tended to be rivals in Greek affairs, but they could cooperate on occasion as they did during the Persian War.

After his victories over the Chaldeans and other peoples of the Near East, the Persian king Darius had annexed Ionia, an area on the west coast of present-day Turkey where Greeks had established many colonies.   The Athenians and Spartans had encouraged the Ionian to try to gain their freedom, and that had led to a revolt.  Darius put down the revolt (494 BC), but he was determined to punish those Greeks elsewhere who had encouraged the Ionian revolt.  In 490 BC, a Persian army landed at Marathon, a little more than 20 miles from Athens.  The Athenians could have waited behind their walls, but, instead, they decided to attack.

Previous Persian success had been based on coordination of archers and cavalry.  Archers threw the enemy into disarray, and then the cavalry swept in to destroy a disorganized enemy.

What to do?  The Athenian polemarch, Callimachus, deferred to one of the strategoi, Miltiades, who came up with an effective plan.  He deliberately weakened the Athenian center.  He ordered his men to run full speed ahead at the Persians, taking advantage of the fact that the Persians hadn't gotten their cavalry in place.  Ultimately, this strategy pays off really well.  The Athenians lost 192 men.  The Perisians lost about 6400--and we've got one of our great turning points in history.  We've also got the inspiration for the marathon!  With (supposedly) Phidipides, having already run to Sparta and back in the preceding few days, now running back to Athens and collapsing with a single joyous word: nikomen (we have won!).

[There's a neat video of the Battle of Marathon here online. The first 8 minutes is background, and you could skip it if you really want.  The video gives you a chance to see if you would have made the same choices Miltiades made.]
 
The Persian threat was by no means at an end: Marathon was a minor defeat to such a great power.  Darius began to regroup, raising an army large enough to do the job right.  But a revolt in Egypt delayed him, and Darius' own death added to the delay.  Not until 10 years later did the Persians renew their advance on Greece.

This time, the Persian leader was Darius' son, Xerxes.  Xerxes made splendid preparations: 5 million soldiers, says Herodotus.  Well, no.  But there were plenty.  The basic plan: a coordinated naval and land invasion moving across the Bosphorus and then working it's way south along the coast.

The Greeks met together to decide a strategy.  For fighting on land, they turned, naturally enough, to the strongest land-power for leadership: Sparta.  For leadership in fighting on the seas, they naturally turned to--well, here too they turned to Sparta--a potentially fatal mistake.

The Greeks are unable to hold Thessaly.  Next, they try to hold off the Persian land forces at Thermopylae and the Persian navy at Artemisium. At Thermopylae, the Greeks have 7-8 thousand troops, led by king Leonidas and his personal bodyguard of 300 Spartans.  Somewhat difficult to know why the Spartan contingent was so small: perhaps because the Peloponnesians weren't really interested in fighting for the north. 

The Greeks do OK for a while until a traitor shows the Persians how to get around the pass at Thermopylae.  Leonidas sends some of the Greeks home, but he and his 300 Spartans fight to the death.  Heroic, but the Persians now can head south.  The Greek navy at Artemisium is in an untenable position and it also has to retreat.

Athens in particular is in tremendous trouble.  Their allies want to go south and defend the Peloponnesian peninsula.  What to do?

"Trust to the wooden walls" says the oracle at Delphi, and many Athenians say that means to defend the acropolis with its old wooden walls.

Themisticles, one of the strategoi, interprets the oracle differently.  Wooden walls?  That's our ships!

At his suggestion, most Athenians evacuate the city and take refuge on Salamis--continuing, by the way, to hold regular government meetings and regular classes!

The city of Athens is sacked, but the real Athens--the people--continue on.  However, it looks like the Greek navy may give up on Salamis.  Themistocles proves himself a master trickster, tricking the Persians into fighting in the straits of Salamis and then tricking the Greeks into a position where they have to stay and fight.

Salamis turns out to be a great Greek victory--and Xerxes goes home, leaving behind his brother-in-law Mardonius in command of the Persian land forces occupying much of Greece.  Had Mardonius convinced the Athenians to go over to his side, things would have looked grim.  But Athens, despite the fact that the other Greeks had let them down, refuses to join the Persians.

In 479 BC, Sparta, reluctantly, sends troops north to join other Greeks in confronting the Persians.  They end up in a strategically unsound place at Plataea, and, after a few days, they more or less decide to find a better place to defend.  But communication is poor, and the retreat isn't well coordinated.  The Persians see an opportunity and attack.  But Spartan doggedness and determination now come into play.  They stand their ground, and, while the Persians fight bravely and have a superior position, they are no match for the Spartans.  Other Greeks regroup and come to Sparta's aid.  Mardonius dies in the fighting, his troops lose heart, and the Greeks turn the battle into a rout.

On the same day, Greek naval forces at Mycale defeat the Persians there, and the Persian threat to Greek freedom--at least for a time--comes to an end. But the Greeks knew they needed to be better prepared for the next attempt of the Persians to take their freedom.

At first, the Spartans seemed the logical leaders of Greek attempts to ward off any further attack from the Persians.  They had their own elite troops plus the forces of the Peloponnesian League.  Corinth, Megara and the Spartan “perioikoi” were all solidly behind Sparta.  

But the Spartans had a knack for making themselves unpopular.  Overseas influence was a corrupting influence on the Spartans.  Pausanias, the great hero of the battle of Plataea, is a good example.  Once out of Sparta, he was high-handed and corrupt—behaving like a Persian overlord in regions the Spartans had “liberated’!  He begins an intrigue with the Persians which might end up with him working for the Persians and marrying one of the Persian king’s daughters!  He’s recalled to Sparta to face trial, but there’s insufficient evidence.  He continues his intrigues, until one of the messengers read the message he was supposed to deliver and saw in it orders for his own death. He returns to Sparta and gives the information to the ephors, who want somewhat better evidence.  The messenger meets with Pausanias and reproaches him—and Pausanias admits his treachery, but promises the messenger rewards if he’ll not expose the story.  But the ephors were listening.  Pausanias figures out he is in trouble, flees to a temple, where the Spartans seal him in, letting him out only just before he dies of starvation.

Spartan difficulties here meant that overseas leadership ends up ceded to Athens.  But a strong Athens was a potential problem to Sparta, and so, in the period following the Persian War, the Spartans wanted to stop Athens from building new walls and fortifying the city (remember that the Persians had destroyed the city of Athens in 480 BC).  

Athens gets its walls rebuilt anyway, thanks in large part to Themistocles, the man who had masterminded Greek victory at Salamis.  Themistocles tells the Athenians to get to building while he goes to Sparta to negotiate.  Themistocles then delays the discussion, claiming to be waiting for the other Athenian ambassadors.  The rumor spreads in Sparta that the walls are being built.  Themistocles tells the Spartans not to listen to rumors but to send men to go see for themselves.  Meanwhile, he’s told the Athenians to delay the ambassadors when they reach Athens: not really a hard thing to do when one considers all the good things one might enjoy in Athens that were unavailable in Sparta.  Themistocles gets the message that the Athenian walls were sufficiently strong to defend the city—and then goes home.  No point in negotiating anymore!

With Athens itself fortified, Athens can now lead a coalition of Greeks to deal with potential Persian problems.  In 477, the Athenians persuaded other Greek city-states to join them in what was called the Delian League.  The leagues was formed with three purposes: 

1.  To protect Greece against future Persian attacks.
2.  To liberate the Ionian Greeks
3.  To get reparations for the damages caused by Persia in the earlier war.

The Athenians gave each participating city-state a choice: they could contribute men and ships, or they could just pay a money equivalent at let Athens supply extra men and ships.

This ended up working out well for Athens.  Lots of good jobs for poorer Athenians, lots of opportunities for Athenian businessmen.  The Athenian economy grows, and, with the strong economy, Athenian culture takes off as well.  We’ll soon have the “Golden Age” of Athens. 

And Athens did a solid job: the Delian League worked well.  In 468 BC, troops led by Kimon [Cimon] won a huge victory over the Persians at Eurymedon.  The Persian threat seemed considerably less.  Many Ionian Greeks were now free.  And the Greeks had all sorts of Persian treasure, enough to rebuild what Persia had destroyed.  

Mission accomplished: time to disband the league?  Not so fast, says Athens.  The Athenians, partly from self-interest and partly because the Persians really were still a potential danger, wanted the keep the league together.

Pericles, Athens greatest general at the time, and for more than 20 years the dominant figure in Athenian politics, simply wouldn't allow Athens allies to leave the league peacefully. If they tried to leave the alliance, Pericles forces attacked, easily defeated them, and forced them. to pay tribute. The Athenians themselves had become imperialists...and a major threat to Greek freedom!

To the rescue, the traditional defender of truth, justice, and freedom in the Greek world: Sparta.  Sparta and its allies go head-to-head with Athens and it's allies in the long, Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC).  To make a long and fascination story short and dull,  I'll just say that Athens loses. 

Greece then goes through a period of turmoil: constant fighting between Argos, Thebes, Sparta, Athens, Corinth and the rest.  And, as one would expect, and outside power takes advantage of the divisions among the Greeks.

Fortunately for Greek culture, that outside power was Macedon under its great leader Philip of Macedon.  Philip conquered most of Greece, and then did something clever to hang on to his conquests.  He persuaded the Greeks that he wasn't there to dominate them.  Instead, his goal was to unite them so they could take on the real enemy, Persia.  He began preparing a Greek army to invade Persian territory, but, before he could launch his attack, he was assassinated.  His place was taken, though, by an even more capable figure, his son Alexander the Great.

After putting down some revolts in Greece, Alexander took his army into Persian territory--and beyond.  He ended up creating the largest empire the world had ever seen. 

But Alexander was more than a conqueror.  He was a conqueror with a dream: a dream of spreading Greek culture everywhere, but also of combining Greek culture with the best his subject peoples had to offer. 

Alexander died young, and his empire splintered.  But his dream in some ways endured.  History enters the Hellenistic age, one of the most impressive and creative eras culturally in all of human history, and an age that left us with plenty to dream about.