Greece Notes

1. Anatolia - King of Troy, Prium, had a son, Paris. Paris met with some Greek kings.

They invited all nobles and gods/goddesses to a wedding, except one goddess. She sent a golden apple that said "to the fairest."

2. Paris was chosen to pick the fairest, and he chose Aphrodite. She said she would give him any woman as his wife, and he chose Helen, who was already married.
3. He kidnaps her and takes her back to Troy. Greek soldiers try to get her back.
4. They made a Trojan horse and left it outside the city and left. The horse was brought into the city, and that night, soldiers came out and burned the city down

Persian Wars

5. Herodotus - the first historian in ancient civilization
6. Persians came up through many of the ports of the western Anatolian peninsula.
7. They decide to invade Greece, led by Prince Xerxes.
8. Invasion comes across the Bosphorus - they want to control the two major areas of trade.
9. Plan is to raid and destroy the city of Athens
10. The Greeks decide they are going to meet the Persians at Thermopylae
11. The Greeks were vastly outnumbered and had to cut off the Persians to keep them from coming through.
12. Their plan is to hold the Persian army for as long as possible while Athens is being evacuated.
13. Every single Greek soldier at the battle is killed, but when the Persians reach Athens, it is empty.
14. Lycurgus was the first of the Spartan leaders to create a system of laws, during the period of the "Age of Tyrants"
15. Tyrant meant that one person was in charge
16. Sparta was the dominant military power in Greece.
17. Hoplite battle style
• Swords with weight on the end
• Phalanx formation - march straight (in one direction) as a square
18. Greece was in an almost constant state of war.
19. Battle of Salamis - Greeks destroyed Persian fleet and they were forced to go back to Persia.
20. If Greeks would have lost the Persian Wars, it would have completely changed the course of history.
21. 480 B.C. - Persian Wars come to a close
22. Acropolis - Athens was built around the highest point.
23. Theatre started in honor of the gods.
24. Parthenon - most important temple in all of Greece
25. Pericles - most important political leader in Athens in the classical age
• We cannot subsist on an army alone
• He convinces the Greeks to create a huge navy

Peloponnesian Wars

26. Conflict between Sparta and Athens
27. Athens built long walls from Athens to the port.
28. Sparta camps out outside the city walls and blocks off the trade route.
29. The plague hits the city, and the Athenians can't go anywhere.
30. They come to a truce and Sparta went back home, but Athens suffered greatly
31. People felt threatened by Socrates, and they charged him of corrupting the youth
32. They said he could be banished from the city or be put to death, and he chose to be put to death.
33. Athens decides to get back at Sparta by attacking Sicily.
34. Alcibiades was the one who came up with this plan.
35. There was an act of vandalism in Athens, and Alcibiades was blamed.

Alexander the Great

36. He was born in Macedon, in the shadow of Mt. Olympus.
37. He was born to King Philip of Macedon, who had been in a lot of wars.
38. King Philip was assassinated when Alexander was 19, and he took the throne.
39. The first thing he does is get revenge on the assassins
40. He decides to take revenge on the Persians for invading during the Persian Wars.
41. He first goes to Troy, lands on the shore, and throws a spear at the shore. He says "By this spear, I claim Persia."
42. He ends up in a village called Gordian on the coast of Anatolia (modern day Turkey)
43. There was a knot in an oxcart, and there was a legend that said if you could figure out how to undo the knot, you would become the ruler of the world.
44. He realizes that it doesn't matter how the knot is undone, so he slashes it with his sword.
45. He continues along the coast and defeats Persians along the way, and he eventually ended up in Egypt.
46. The Egyptians worshipped him as a king because they hated Persia.
47. He does to the Siwa Oasis because there is an oracle there. As soon as he walks into the temple,

they greet him as the son of the god Aman

48. Alexander decides to invade Persepolis in Mesopotamia. He meets the Darius, King of the Persians in the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C.
49. Within the first minute of the battle, he rushes across the river and the Persians run away