A History of Western Society: Printed Page 60
A History of Western Society, Value Edition: Printed Page 61
The Development of Greek Society and Culture
ca. 3000–338 B.C.E.
Humans came into Greece over many thousands of years, in waves of migrants whose place of origin and cultural characteristics have been the source of much scholarly debate. The first to arrive were hunter-gatherers, but techniques of agriculture and animal domestication had spread into Greece from Turkey by about 6500 B.C.E., after which small farming communities worked much of the land. Early settlers to Greece brought skills in making bronze weapons and tools, which became more common around 3000 B.C.E.
Although geographic conditions made farming difficult and limited the growth of early kingdoms, the people of ancient Greece built on the traditions and ideas of earlier societies to develop a culture that fundamentally shaped the intellectual and cultural traditions of Western civilization. They were the first to explore many of the questions about the world around them and the place of humans in it that continue to concern thinkers today. Drawing on their day-to-day experiences as well as logic and empirical observation, they developed ways of understanding and explaining the world around them, which grew into modern philosophy and science. They also created new political forms and new types of literature and art.
The history of the Greeks is divided into three broad periods: the Helladic period, which covered the Bronze Age, roughly 3000 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E.; the Hellenic period, from the Bronze Age Collapse to the death in 323 B.C.E. of Alexander the Great, the ruler of Macedonia, which by that point had conquered Greece; and the Hellenistic period, stretching from Alexander’s death to the Roman conquest in 30 B.C.E. of the kingdom established in Egypt by Alexander’s successors. This chapter focuses on the Greeks in the Bronze (Helladic) Age and most of the Hellenic period, which is further divided into the Dark Age, the Archaic age, and the classical period. Alexander’s brief reign and the Hellenistic world are the subject of Chapter 4. ■
CHAPTER PREVIEW
How did the geography of Greece shape its earliest kingdoms, and what factors contributed to the decline of those kingdoms?
What was the role of the polis in Greek society?
What were the major wars of the classical period, and how did they shape Greek history?
What were the lasting cultural and intellectual achievements of the classical period?
Chronology
| 3000 B.C.E. | Bronze tools and weapons become common in Greece |
| ca. 1900 B.C.E. | Minoan culture begins to thrive on Crete |
| ca. 1650 B.C.E. | Mycenaean culture develops in Greece |
| ca. 1300–1100 B.C.E. | “Bronze Age Collapse”; migration, destruction |
| ca. 1100–800 B.C.E. | Dark Age; population declines; trade decreases; writing disappears |
| ca. 800–500 B.C.E. | Archaic age; rise of the polis; Greek colonization of the Mediterranean; Homer and Hesiod compose epics and poetry |
| ca. 750–500 B.C.E. | Sparta expands and develops a military state |
| ca. 600–500 B.C.E. | Political reforms in Archaic Athens |
| ca. 600–450 B.C.E. | Pre-Socratics develop ideas about the nature of the universe |
| 500–338 B.C.E. | Classical period; development of drama, philosophy, and major building projects in Athens |
| 499–479 B.C.E. | Persian wars |
| 431–404 B.C.E. | Peloponnesian War |
| 427–347 B.C.E. | Life of Plato |
| 384–322 B.C.E. | Life of Aristotle |
| 371–362 B.C.E. | Thebes, with an alliance of city-states, rules Greece |
| 338 B.C.E. | Philip II of Macedonia gains control of Greece |