Module Three: Rise of City States
Module Four: Persian Wars; Golden Age of Athens
These two modules take us through the Archaic period, the rise of the city-state, Greek colonization around the Mediterranean, and the clash with the Persian Empire. The modules highlight the ascendance of city states and especially the glory and power of Athens.
Power Points: Antigone, then and now; the Archaic Age; Persian Wars
Required primary text:
Sophocles, Antigone.
Required Secondary texts:
Antigone: Hegel/Gonzalez article. (two interpretations of Antigone)
Anderson, Greece and accompanying PPT
Write about life in 5th century Athens: war, foreigners, homosexual relations.
Pomeroy, Sparta (this chapter from Pomeroys Brief History of Ancient Greece will become even more important in the next part of the course, but it is posted here for an early start.)
Required videos:
Review: National Theatre; An Introduction to Greek theatre; An Introduction to Greek tragedy.
These are about 6 minutes long and they provide essential information for understanding the plays we are reading.
The paper:
Family vs. City State (Oikos vs. Polis)
How do we negotiate the tension between loyalty to our family and loyalty to larger communities?
Antigone charts the tension between the older Iron Age loyalties to family and kin and the new ideals and demands of the city states that emerged in the Archaic period and reached their peak in the 5th century and the successful defense of mainland Greek city-states against the Persians.
The trick to writing this paper is to see it as an agon between individuals who represent contending principles of loyalty and identity.
Here are my suggestions and questions for organizing the paper:
1. First read Antigone on your own. (If you read or saw the play before you started this course, try to wash the experience from your brain and read it with a tabula rasaa blank slate– in your head.) What do you think this play is about?
2. Antigone is a woman, Creon is a man. Is this important to the central issue in the play? What does it tell you about the way ancient Greeks viewed gender?
3. Are there bad guys and good guys in this play?
4. After you have read the play for yourself, look at the secondary material providedthe various modern interpretations. Do they agree with your reading of the playwhy or why not?
5. Can we still see signs of the tension between a private world (friends and family) and a larger public world (community, nation, global concerns) in our own time? Do you know people who explicitly prefer one or the other?
