PART THREE: CHANGING VALUES; BEYOND THE SOCIETY OF CITY STATES:
In two modules in this part of the course, we witness the rivalry of Sparta and Athens, the Peloponnesian War, and the decline of the city-states as a political force. The troubled political and military history of the later 5th and early 4th century is associated with changes in values and world views that have intrigued modern philosophers.
In the Hellenistic Age, the conquests of Alexander the Great extend Greek culture into Egypt and Western Asia where it is blended with the religions and life-ways of these great civilizations.
MODULE FIVE: The Peloponnesian War
MODULE SIX: The Hellenistic Age
Power points: the Peloponnesian War; Socrates; Plato; Hellenistic Society and Culture;
Required primary texts:
Thucydides: Funeral oration by Pericles
Thucydides on the plague [this is in the file called Greek historians]
Thucydides (with Garner notes) on the Sicilian expedition
Plato; selections.
Euripides, The Bacchae, with study guide
Required secondary texts:
Nietzsche on the last words of Socrates.
Anderson, Hellenistic World.
Required viewing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prr2VS4aYxQ This is a short video called 5 Barbaric Facts about Spartaa bit sensationalized but not inaccurate. You can compare it to the chapter about Sparta from Pomeroy, which was posted in Module 4.
Platos Allegory of the Cave. (Alan Gendler)
Seven Wonders of the World
The Seven Wonders of the World is a long video, distributed through the BBC. It is about an hour and 35 minutes. You can skip the Hanging Gardens if you like. Be aware that these wonders were not all built during the Hellenistic period! The first of them is the only one left standing, and the last to be built was the first to collapse. What unifies them is the Hellenistic concept of sights theamata–things to be seen, spectacles to be experienced. You can see the word has the same root as theater.
Optional materials
Goldhill on the Bacchae
Pomeroy, Chapters VIII to XII.
Youtube videos about the Bacchae. I suggest looking at a few of these–try different ones: Judith Mossmans lecture (10 miutes) for something calm, rational and informative; National Theatre of Scotland (about 2 minutes) for an example of choices of casting and staging and somebody having fun with the play; Edith Hall, and Euripides Bacchaeshe emphasizes the performance aspects of the Bacchaeit is a play about spectacle and illusion, as Goldhill also emphasizes. Etc.
PAPER 3 (Changes in the submission folders): MONDAY MAY 9 CHANGING VALUES
How do the values of a society change? What happened to the warrior ideals of Iron Age Greece? How were they reassessed or modified? Did specific events contribute to these changes?
This paper discusses changes in values and culture in the Greek world from the middle of the 5th century through the period of Macedonian conquests and the Hellenistic Age to the Roman conquest of Greece.
The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta took place, followed by the weakening of the city states. In the 4th century, the kingdom of Macedonia conquered the city-states; under Alexander, Greeks occupied a large territoryfrom India to Egypt. After his death, much of this territory formed the Hellenistic worldkingdoms ruled by combinations of indigenous elites and Greeks in which Greek culture blended with the traditional cultures of the region. The disaster of the Peloponnesian War, the decline of the city states and the formation of brilliant new hybrid cultures formed a context for new ways of thinking about the worldworld views that were different from the warrior ideals of the old days.
Some questions to help you organize this paper:
How did values and culture change between the period of the Persian Wars and the end of the Peloponnesian War?
More specifically: How are the ideals and ideas that Plato proposes different from those of the Iron Age/Archaic culture? (Hint: think about the message of the Allegory of the Cavecontrast it to the values of the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey.)
What are some of the events or incidents that might have contributed to these changes?
(This question suggests that events have a role in changing values and culturefor example, that the election of 2000, 9/11, the financial crash of 2008, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and covid might have changed the world views that Americans had formed during World War II and the Civil Rights Movement. Just something to think about.)
What does Nietzsches comment to Socrates have to do with these cultural changes? Why is Nietzsche so angry at Socrates? (And you can review the Nietzsche selection fro
