Friday, March 18, 2011

The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization

3/18
We are finishing the movie The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization. Here are the notes I took:

  • Darius is the great Persian king
  • Themistocles is an example of democracy 
  • Themistocles learned his skills at the agora 
  • Thought Persians were still a danger and they were going to harder to beat 
  • Triremp state of the art ancient ship 
  • an 170 oars men in 3 level
  • narrow, fast ship; they were very expensive
  • wouldn't be able to get it if they didn't find sliver 
  • Themistocles said that they should save the money to buy ships
  • 486 B.C. Darius died
  • Xeres, his son,  took his spot
  • Xeres began to gather his army 
  • Rumors began to leak at to Athens
  • over 2,000 men and they were ready to march
  • Terror gripped Athens
  • They turned to their 
  • The oracle of Delphi- at center of Greece which was considered center of the world; the naval stone of the the world 
  • It is build around a mountain with a spring
  • asked: what they could do to save themselves? 
  • answer: run 
  • Themistocles sent them back to the oracle
  • asked same thing 
  • answer: the wooden wall will not fail 
  • Themistocles ordered the evacuation of Athens 
  • ordered the men to met at Salamis 
  • Xeres entered the city; the people had already abandoned it
  • They burned the city
  • Persians gathered a force 4 times bigger than Athens 
  • Themistocles wants to fight at the Straits of Salamis 
  • It's a narrow pathway in between Athens and Salamis
  • Athenians spent the night rowing 
  • Went into battle on the sea
  • Xeres watched the battle on the shore
  • The Persians lost 200 ships 
  • The Greeks won once again 
  • They had defeated the greatest empire of the day 
  • After the battle it was a new dawn for Athens
  • delian league- Athens' empire 
  • Athens was the big trading place
  • democracy helped them a lot 
  • Every year they banished one person
  • they would write a name on a vase and place it in a pot
  • the person's name who came up most was to be banished 
  • Themistocles felt he was being under attack
  • Themistocles was banished 
  • he wandered from state to state and died in Persia
  • Greeks were looking for a leader 
  • Pericles knew what Athens wanted because he was born into a family like everyone else
  • Pericles  wanted all the money to make Athens the best city ever
  • wanted a new temple for the goddess, Athena called the Parthenon 
  • building complete in 15 years 
  • one of the most glorious symbol of Athens empire
  • 40 foot statue of Athena when you walked in 
  • gold, jewels all over it
  • a billion dollar work in modern day money 
  • frieze- most famous, a craving around the Parthenon 
  • 2 inches thick around; where regular people- the farmers, people of the war
  • Aspasia is someone Pericles  was with even though he was married 
  • Pericles treated Aspasia as an equal 
  • world first theater- where entertainment came from 
  • it was very loud- they would boo and drive the actors off the stage if they didn't like the play
  • They cried if they liked it 
  • Greeks invented drama- tragedies  and comedy 
  • Had a play twice a year

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