History Midterm (Ancient Greece) Flashcards
who and where transformed and simplified the writing system?
by merchant people from lebanon, The Phoenicians
why do the Phoenicians invent an alphabet?
They use this alphabet for their business dealings.
what do the greeks do using the phoenician alphabet?
The greeks adopt phenician writing their own language and made their own alphabet their own way.
where did the Greeks live?
The Greeks lived in Greece and the Aegean islands as well as Asia minor, southern Italy, Sicily and the coast of the black sea
what king of language do they speak
Indo- European language
What religion do the greeks and phoenicians follow?
polytheistic
are the greeks and phoenicians politically aligned.
no
where did phoenicians live? and what do the greeks call them?
they live in small city- states and the Greeks called them (“ poleis”) at the edge of the persian empire HUGE (persia).
What, very original, culture did the greeks invent?
were able to invent a very original culture including philosophy, democracy, and a very inventive political organization to try to make sense of life.
what do the phoenicians and greeks have different answers for? it was the center of Axial age thinking
the question of “How to live a good life”
what are the 2 important Greek poleis:
- Athens
- Sparta.
what were the major problems that both athenians and spartans had to solve?
- How to deal with inequality and exploitation? - How do we keep society from coming apart? - - When a small elite is exploiting the life of people.
what was the main problem in athens concerning the aristicrat families?
the main aristocratic families own almost all the land and are facing peasants working on this land to pay high rent and to bossas money nobles from them on bad years when the crops fail.
what happened if people couldn’t pay their debts?
they were enslaved legally by their creaditers
what happened when people started not being able to pay their debts?
things had gotten so bad that Athenian society was seriously destabilized so a revolt was brewing and even the wealthy classes recognized.
Explain the story of Solon the noble
solon, a noble that was given special powers given special powers to fix the social political problem decided all depts ( non- commercial) would be canceled Later on, since Solons solution had only partly solved the issue, another ruler took over: pisistratus, he tries to make rules that benefit the merchants doing commerce rather than the landed aristocracy.
what were christine’s winning insights?
let the rich keep their land and their money but make political decisions based on what all the groups in society want including the commoners, the peasants, the artisans, the regular people.. This was democracy
what was the solution to the social and political problems of the aristocrat families?
Democracy
explain how democracy went and how it helped the soldiers
people from the elite and from the common groups could come together and feel they were cooperating in the evolution and defense of their polis: the illustration of this is the is the new fighting style of the phalanx where individual soldiers (hoplites) needed to cooperate and work as a unit to survive
The other important polis in Greece
Sparta, in the southern part of Peloponnesus.
n the 7th - 6th centuries, the Spartans had conquered their neighbors: who?
the people living in the provinces of Laconia and Messenia.
The Spartans decided that they would enslave and do what?
the whole population of Messenia and force them to support the Spartans citizens.
The Messenians who were state owned slaves were called what?
Helots
what did the Helots end up doing?
They ended up doing most of the work of agriculture and craft for the Spartans.
