CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. Geography, the Aegean, and Crete

A. The Society of Minoan Crete

(3000–1400 B.C.)

B. The Mycenean Greeks

C. Early Greek Society

III. The Development of the Polis

A. Life in the Polis: The Early History of Athens

B. The Social and Economic Structures of

Athenian Society

C. Sparta: A Conservative Garrison State

IV. The Persian War

V. The Peloponnesian Wars

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CHAPTER 2

ANCIENT GREECE TO THE END OF

THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS

A

ncient Greece was part of the larger Mediter-

ranean world. The eastern Mediterranean in

particular may be likened to a great lake that

facilitated trade, communication, and cul-

tural borrowing. Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, and

many others shared a similar diet as well as some ideas

and institutions, but each synthesized their borrowings

in different ways. The Greeks, for example, took their

alphabet from the Phoenicians and some of their scien-

tific and philosophical ideas from Egypt, while their

social organization resembled that of the Phoenician

city-states. Greek civilization nevertheless remained

unique. Its aesthetic ideals and its commitment to

human self-development, competition, and linear

thought transformed everything it touched and laid

the foundations of a characteristically Western culture.

Geography, the Aegean, and Crete

Mainland Greece is an extension of the Balkan

Peninsula. It is, as it was in antiquity, a rugged land—

mountainous, rocky, and dry, with much of the rainfall

coming in the autumn and winter months. Large areas

suitable for cultivation are rare, and deforestation,

largely the result of overgrazing, was well advanced by

the fifth century B.C. The Aegean Sea, with its innu-

merable islands, separates European Greece from Asia

Minor. It has been a crossroads of trade and communi-

cation since the first sailors ventured forth in boats. At

its northern end stood Troy, the earliest of whose nine

cities, each one built upon the ruins of its predecessors,

dates from before 3000 B.C. The town was built upon a

ridge overlooking the southern entry to the Darda-

nelles, the long narrow strait through which ships must

pass to enter the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the

Black Sea. The current in the strait runs southward at

about three knots and the prevailing winds are from the

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