Bbc ancient greece

4/10/2019 Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 1 - Google Docs Western Civilization: A Concise History Volume 1 Original Author: Dr. Christopher Brooks Last updated: March 2019 https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kIPKKXp8vsTCvLExEAUxRjxsz-vjHLbUYqDa1c1faY/edit# 1/264 4/10/2019 Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 1 - Google Docs Western Civilization: A Concise History Open Educational Resource released under the Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International) Licensed by Portland Community College 1 https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kIPKKXp8vsTCvLExEAUxRjxsz-vjHLbUYqDa1c1faY/edit# 2/264 4/10/2019 Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 1 - Google Docs Western Civilization: A Concise History Table of Contents Introduction 3 Chapter 1: The Origins of Civilization 15 Chapter 2: Mesopotamia 25 Chapter 3: Egypt 35 Chapter 4: The Bronze Age and the Iron Age 51 Chapter 5: The Archaic Age of Greece 74 Chapter 6: Persia and the Greek Wars 86 Chapter 7: The Classical Age of Greece 101 Chapter 8: The Hellenistic Era 120 Chapter 9: The Roman Republic 136 Chapter 10: The Roman Empire 165 Chapter 11: The Late Empire and Christianity 185 Chapter 12: The Fall of Rome 204 Chapter 13: Byzantium 211 Chapter 14: Islam and the Caliphates 229 Chapter 15: Early Medieval Europe 247 2 https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kIPKKXp8vsTCvLExEAUxRjxsz-vjHLbUYqDa1c1faY/edit# 3/264 4/10/2019 Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 1 - Google Docs Western Civilization: A Concise History The Idea of Western Civilization Introduction What is “Western Civilization”? Furthermore, who or what is part of it? Like all ideas, the concept of Western Civilization itself has a history, one that coalesced in college textbooks and curriculums for the first time in the United States in the 1920s. In many ways, the very idea of Western Civilization is a “loaded” one, opposing one form or branch of civilization from others as if they were distinct, even unrelated. Thus, before examining the events of Western Civilization’s history, it is important to unpack the history of the concept itself. Where is the West? The obvious question is “west of what”? Likewise, where is “the east”? Terms used in present-day geopolitics regularly make reference to an east and west, as in “Far East,” and “Middle East,” as well as in “Western” ideas or attitudes. The obvious answer is that “the West” has something to do with Europe. If the area including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Israel Palestine, and Egypt is somewhere called the “Middle” or “Near” East, doesn't that imply that it is just to the east of something else? In fact, we get the original term from Greece. Greece is the center-point – to the east of the Balkan Peninsula was east, to the west was west, and the Greeks were at the center of their self-understood world. Likewise, the sea that both separated and united the Greeks and their neighbors, including the Egyptians and the Persians, is still called the Mediterranean, which means “sea in the middle of the earth” (albeit in Latin, not Greek - we get the word from a later "Western" civilization, the Romans). The ancient civilizations clustered around the Mediterranean treated it as the center of the world itself, their major trade route to one another and a major source of their food as well. To the Greeks, there were two kinds of people: Greeks and barbarians (the Greek word is barbaros). Supposedly, the word barbarian came from Greeks mocking the sound of non-Greek languages: “bar-bar-bar-bar.” The Greeks traded with all of their neighbors and knew perfectly well that the Persians and the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, among others, 3 https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kIPKKXp8vsTCvLExEAUxRjxsz-vjHLbUYqDa1c1faY/edit# 4/264 4/10/2019 Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 1 - Google Docs Western Civilization: A Concise History were not their inferiors in learning, art, or political organization, but the fact remains that they were not Greek, either. Thus, one of the core themes of Western Civilization is that right from its inception, of the east being east of Greece and the west being west of Greece, and of the world being divided between Greeks and barbarians, there was an idea of who is central and superior, and who is out on the edges and inferior (or at least not part of the best version of culture)