Alex's Western Civilization Blog

Today in class we took part one of the Greek tests. I feel like I did pretty good in this test. There were probably only three questions that I was unsure of but other than that I felt pretty confident in my answers. I thought that this test would be pretty difficult for me because I missed class yesterday and didn't take as much time as I usually do to study, but I felt like it went pretty well. There were three short answer questions, and they were to describe three geographical things about Greece and how they influenced their culture, what is your opinion about the Homeric question, and what's the significance of the "Allegory of the Cave." For the first question I wrote about their mountainous land and how it wasn't fertile, so they needed to trade; they were surrounded by water, so sea-bourne trade was a big thing for them; and they had nice weather, meaning that they participated in a lot of outdoor activities. For the second question I wrote about how I be...

I came late to school today, so I missed class

Today in class we went over what would be on our Ancient Greece test on Thursday. Some of the things that we went over were to study the map, know what’s significant about their geography, arable means that it’s suitable for farming, know the Greek diet, their climate led to outdoor activity, know about the Mycenaeans, Minoans, and Dorians, the Iliad was about the Trojan war, the odyssey was about someone’s journey home from the Trojan war, the dark ages were from 1150-750 BCE when the Dorians took over, know what the Homeric question, we need to know the essential government terms, know what a symposium is, know about Draco and Solon’s rule, and Cleisthenes created the council of 500. After that, we took some more notes which were that Hippias was a tyrant who ruled from 527-510 BCE, his brother was murdered and his rule became harsh, he was eventually ostracized from Athens, in revenge he began working with the Persian king Darius I, helping them invade Marathon, with Hippias gone, I...

Today in class we finished taking notes on the ancient Greece PowerPoint. Some of the notes I took were... - polis :  fundamental political unit, made up of a city and the surrounding countryside - monarchy : rule by a single person (a king, in Greece) - aristocracy : rule by a small group of noble, very rich, landowning families - oligarchy : wealthy groups, dissatisfied with the aristocratic rule, who seized power (often with military help) - tyrant : a powerful individual who seized control by appealing to the common people for support - During the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, aristocrats ran most of Greece - Aristocrats : members of the ruling class - the aristocrats would attend meetings called symposiums where the elite men would enjoy wine, poetry, performances by dancers and acrobats, and they were usually accompanied by hetaeras while discussing politics - there were no women, middle-class people, slaves, or aristocrats who were properly connected or were out...

Today in class we took notes on the Ancient Greece PowerPoint. The notes I took were the Mycenean influence that began around 2000 BCE. Mycenae was located on a rocky ridge on Peloponnesus, protected by a 20-foot thick wall.  In 1400 BCE, the Myceneans invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture through cultural diffusion. Mycenean kings dominated Greece from 1600-1100 BCE and controlled trade in the region. The Trojan War was fought around 1200 BCE. It was part of Greek mythology until the 19th century, most historians thought it was fictional because gods and goddesses were involved. There was archaeological evidence of wars actually being fought in Troy. Around 1200 BCE the mysterious "sea people" began to invade Mycenae and burnt palace after, so the Dorians moved into thi9s wartorn region, dominating from 1150-1500 BCE. During this time, known as the Dark Greek Age, writing for 400 years. Homer lived at the end of these Dark Greek Ages. The Homeric question is whether Home...

Today in the class watched a video that explains the "Allegory of the Cave." It took us the whole class to watch the video because we would pause it at all the important parts and have discussions about the information said. I took some notes during the video, and they were that Plato wrote it to compare "the effect of education and the lack of it in our nature." The cave dwellers are humans before philosophy. The sun is the light of reason. The alienation of the returned philosopher is what all truth-tellers can expect. The video explains how we are in shadow for most of our lives and many of the things we get excited about are "infinitely less real than we suppose, they are for the most part phantoms projected by our culture onto the walls of our minds." It says that we all begin in the cave. Plato's solution to this is a process of widespread carefully administrated philosophical education; pioneered by the Socratic Method. The Socratic method lets...

Today in class we took notes on the Ancient Greece PowerPoint. The notes that I took today were that the world's great civilizations are all located on water (especially rivers). Egypt had the Nile River, Mesopotamia had the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, India had the Indus River, and China had the Huang He River. Greece is a mountainous peninsula. Some of the key places that will need to know are the Aegean Sea, the Ionian Sea, the Adriatic Sea (which is just north of the Ionian Sea), Peloponnesus, Athens, Sparta, Crete, Asia Minor, and Macedonia. There are approximately 2000 islands in the Ionian and Aegean Seas. This combination is what shaped Greece's culture. Due to their geographic location, were many skilled sailors and shipbuilders. Greece had poor/limited natural resources, so they relied on trading. It was difficult to unite the Ancient Greeks because of the terrain. They developed small, independent communities (city-states), and that's who they were loyal to, Alt...