3/23

Today in class we took  a test. The test was about what we had watched so far in the movie and I think that I did well on it. The test had twenty nine questions on it. I also got candy in today's class. The test was really easy and I think I did very good on it. The test had many different names of many people on it and it had also many important places and things.

3/22

Today in class we continued watching the movie. Perciles than took over reigns of Athens. The first thing he did when he was leader was to make a monument on the Acropolis. The monument took 15 years to make. He also made a major mistake. He wanted to wage war with Sparta. He proposed the idea to the Athenians whom agreed to the war. He came up with the idea that he should not attack on the land because the Spartans armies were more powerful on land so he chose to fight them at sea.

3/18

Today in class we continued to watch the movie on Greeks. We got to a part where the greeks invented a very effective type of ship that would ram the enemies boats. We also got to the part where the Persians invaded Greeks again. The had to leave Athens and the Persians burned Athens to the ground. The Greeks won the battle and they were able to extend their empire.

3/17

Today in class we continued watching more of the movie on Greeks. We talked about how Clestanies came to power. He over threw a tyrant than he later found out people were going to try to over throw him. The person that did over throw him was called Pysistratis. He did so by getting help from the Spartans and then he forced Clestanies into exile. The people of Athens than got mad and the over threw Pysistratis and told Clestanies to come back and help them form a new type of government. He did so and formed a democracy. The Persians realized how powerful Athens was becoming and how rich they were becoming because of there government so Persia invaded Athens. The Athens were able to defeat the Persian onslaught and then the Athenians went back to Athens feeling glad that they defended their democracy and celebrated.

Continued Notes on the Greeks Crucibles of Change

• In 508 B.C. ordinary people turn on rulers
• Clestanies thought that regular people should be able to govern themselves.
• Aristocrat - member of a ruling class (which Clestanies belonged to)
• Acropolis - a big area of rock that was build around a town
• Life in ancient Greece was really tough
• The lower classes were slaves to the higher classes
• Greece was an unlikely land to hold home to a great civilization because the region is very mountainous.
• Greece was divided into tiny nations called city - states.
• Sparta was one of the biggest city states were the people there were raised to be warriors
• The Spartans had no luxuries and comforts in there lives which made them so willing to die.
• The state of Athens was only the third greatest in Greece
• The Greeks stories inspired Clestanies
• The Iliad and the Odyssey were the greatest of the Greek stories. 
• Clestanies was interested in the heroes that belonged in these stories which than made Clestanies want to be a real - life hero
• The women in Sparta had a lot more of a role in the Spartan society rather than in the Athenian society.
• Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey
• Tyrant - someone who comes in and seizes control
• Pysistratus was Clestanies brother in law and takes over Athens and he was a tyrant but was a good tyrant
• Hippias is also a very important person of this time. His brother was killed and he became paranoid and thought that everyone was a enemy
• When this happened and all this confusion was taking place, Clestanies rose up against him and took leader of Athens
• Clestanies was one of the most powerful figures in Athens
• In olympia, there was  a the Olympic games were people competed for bragging rights. This is were anyone could race anyone no matter how much money you had.
• 40000 Greeks would go and watch the Olympics
• This was the first step for the Greeks to make a democratic culture.
• When Clestanies gained power, he found that others were conspiring against him. Isagoris was one of the main people.
• He turned to the Spartans to help take over the power of Clestanies
• He wanted to turn Athens into a subject state of Sparta
• The first targets of the new tyrant were the Aristocrats
• Over 700 households were cast out of Athens
• The people of Athens became angry and attacked the Tyrant and then he was forced to give up his position and when the Athenians over took him, they told Clestanies to come back and form an advanced government. This is the first time in history in which regular people over threw their own leader. The Athenians fought Isagoris for 2 days and nights and on the morning on the third day, they had won.
• So what Clestanies did when he got back he developed a democracy
• He made it so that the average person could contribute to the decisions that the government.
• They had a meeting place in which they discussed what the people wanted the government to do called the Agora. Everyone both poor and rich could discuss there feelings of what is going on and make there suggestions for how to fix or make better of what is going on in there civilization.
• The  people would gather there every nine days to discuss everything that was going on. 
• The thing that they voted with was white and black stones.
• Everyone except women could vote and make suggestions at the Agora.
• When Clestanies died, a new generation of Athenians took up his legacay. They were put up with many struggles and would have to defend there nation from other enemies.
• Pheidippedes made on of the most astonishing athletic achievements because he was running to Athens to say that they were being attacked by the Persian Empire.
• The Hoplites were the main people that defended the city from the Persians which landed in Marathon.
• The average person also went to defend Athens and they grabbed whatever they could use as weapons. They were out numbered by 2 to run
• Pheidippedes ran for help from Athens to Sparta 140 miles in just to days but when he got there, help was refused.
• However Athenians had won the battle.
• The Athenians killed over 6000 Persians in one day.
• They had defended their democracy.
• The Athenians returned to there city to celebrate their victory.
• Phemistocles was a Athenian General that helped them win the war
• Phemistocles was a man who had risen to power because of democracy
• Phemistocles had learned the skills of leader ship in Athens and he was now going to be one histories greatest leaders. 
• He realized that if the Persians came again, they were going to be sure that they weren't going to go on land
• Trireme was than invented because they would attack from sea. It was lightweight and it was made to ram and than sink the ship and 125 + men would be at the oars
• He wanted to make a Athenian navy but that would be really expensive and he was able to make the navy because they found in the year of 483 B.C. a whole lot of silver
• He was able to make 200 of those ships 
• The Persian king Darius died in 483 B.C.
• Xerxes took his position and he said that he would not rest until he took Athens and burnt it to the ground.
• His army numbered at over 2 million men
• 483 B.C. Xerxes set out to Greece
• The army consisted of many nations including Egypt
• The Athenians knew they were going to be the first target and so they turned to the gods by first sending a message to the Oracle to see how this would turn out for them
• The Oracle of Delphi was supposedly the best Oracle
• The question the Greeks asked was What could they do to save themselves.
• He said that the ships he had made are going to be a key to winning this war and he ordered the evacuation of Athens
• Salamis is an important island off of the coast of Athens
• The Persians burned the acropolis to the ground.
• The Persians now occupy Athens
• The Persians had a fleet 4 times the size of the Greeks forces 
• Phemistocles plan was to defeat the Persians at sea and he chose to fight them at the straights of Salamis
• Phemistocles sent a person to Xerxes to say to him that now is the time to strike which was a trap
• The Persians moved into the Straight over night and were supprized when they awoke they realized what trap they had fallen into
• They had moved so far up the straight that they had no room to move.
• They Triremes tore down on the Persians and they destroyed the Persian fleet
• By the end of the battle, the Persians had lost over 200 ships
• The Greeks had won the battle
• This forced the Persians to run back to their homeland because those ships also were the Persians supply ships
• The Athenians were now able to make a great empire of there own
• Throughout the next several decades in Athens, were probably the best years in Greece's history.
• 450 B.C. the Delian League had become all of Athens empire and they were keeping an eye on Persia
• Athens was now becoming one of the greatest supper powers in the world.
• It also became a great economical power because thats were a lot of traders would go and they had so many different goods from so many different countries
• The Athenians became a very rich country
• The rise to all of these powers came so fast in less than a few decades
• All of this was because of the democracy that the Athenians had
• The democracy was greatly protected and because of it they were able to form the great nation they had become.
• The Athenians also expelled anyone that had become to powerful because of the threat that the Athenians loosing their democracy.
• The Athenians had then ostracized Phemistocles
• He died in exile in Persia.
• Pericles wanted to glorify Athens even though he liked democracy
• He wanted Athens to be the most amazing city on the entire planet in all of history
• He wanted to do something to the Acropolis is Athens and wanted to reconstruct it 
• He wanted to build a Parthenon in the center of the Acropolis
• It was the most beautiful building ever built and it was built to show off Athens
• The total budget of building it was more than a billion dollars in modern day terms
• 20000 tones of marble was used to make the building
• The Acropolis is the most glorious thing of the Athenian empire
• When you walked in the door there was a 30 foot tall statue of Athena which had all gold and jewels over
• Frieze was on the wall going around the temple and were pictures of regular people doing their regular day thing
• The monument still stands on the Acropolis today
• It took 15 years to build the monument
• Aspasia was Pericles wife who is not even from Athens and she is very smart
• This relationship caused a scandle throughout Athens because he treated her as an individual
• The worlds first theater was in Athens
• The favored tales of the Greeks days were the tragedies
• One of the great Greek tragedies was Oedipus was a guy who was taken away from his parents and he than married his mom and had kids with her. He than gouged his eyes out.
• Pericles brought upon his own destruction
• He wanted to make Athens the undisputed leader on the Mediteranian
• Hubris was used to describe Pericles
• 431 BC Pericles was to wage war with the city state of Sparta
• The Athenians lost the Peleponnessian war
• Because they lost they were looking for someone to blame that lowered the moral of the city, they were looking for Socrates. 
• Socrates was arrested and than put to death
• He was put  to death by Hemlock poisoning

Introduction to Greece

Geography:
Only 20% of Greece was suitable for farming
The year round temperatures in Greece ranged from 48 - 80 degrees
The lack of resources in Greece lead to the Greek colonies

Mycenaeans:
Began around 2000B.C.
Mycenae is located on a rocky ridge and protected by a 20ft which wall
They lead for 400 years
They controlled the trade lanes
They also invaded Crete


Culture in Decline:
Around 1200B.C. sea people began to invade Mycenae and burnt palace after palace
The Dorians moved into the war-torn region
- They are far less advanced
- Economy Collapsed
- Writing disappeared for 400 years

Homer and Myths:
Only stories were kept and passed on were by words of the mouth
Homer lived at the end of the "Greek Dark Age"
He told about the story of the Trojan War and The Iliad and The Odyssey
The Trojan war was probably one of the last conquests of the Mycenaeans

Arete:
- virtue and excellence of you to do the best you can in your talents
Epics:
- narrative poems celebrating heroic deeds
Myths were created to explain creation:
- Zeus: leader of the gods
- Hera: Zeus' wife
- Athena: goddess of wisdom

Today in class 3/11...

We started watching a video about  ancient Greece. We also had a sub and we were required to take notes on the movie. Most of the notes that we took today was notes on Athens. We got notes about some of there rulers. We also learned that one of the great inventions that came from Athens was the modern day vase. Another thing that changed the world forever that was invented in Athens was a type of government. The type of government that was invented in Athens was the government that we now know as a democracy.

The Greeks Crucible of Civilization

• Greeks saw the creation of arts and architecture. 
• The Greeks had many great people in their civilization.
• Clestanies realized that the people of Greece should have a chance for freedom, a chance to rule themselves.
• Clestanies was born around 570 b.c.
• He was born at Athens. 
• When Clestanies was a kid, Greece was not yet an empire.
• Reading and writing for the Athenians was very little. 
• The life expectancy for them was 15 years
• The great civilizations of Clestanies days were around Egypt and Persia.
• Greece is an odd great civilization because it had no great rivers and every other civilization that was  great had some great river. 
• Greece was made up of city states.
• The city state of Sparta was the greatest city state that could have taken over all of Greece. 
• The kids in Sparta were brought up as warriors and also to deal with anything and lived life without many pleasures.
• By Clestanies time the Spartans had conquered around 4000 miles of Greece.
• One thing that inspired him was the stories that the people of Greece told. 
• Their stories influenced and shaped him from his earliest days.
• Heroes of the stories influenced him very much and images of these heroes can be found over many of Greeks art.
• His goal was to become a real life hero which was able to accomplish
• Pysistrotis was a great leader of Athens because he lowered taxes and issued loans which  allowed the Athenians to make bigger farms, which than allowed the nation to become very advanced and had a great civilization.
• Greece was surrounded by many great empires. 
• Greece was also the great market place of the world, which allowed the country to become very advanced. 
• There was a great invention that came from Athens. The vase.
• The artists that made the vases, were the lowest of the low in the society.
• Ahtenian pottery had become very complicated because they actually painted the vase and made many different designs on it and made great art which is still used to make vases today.
• The reason of this was because the potters wanted to compete with each other and tried to make greater art than one another.
• Clestanies watched his homeland go from a modest settlement into  a big economic power.
• When Prysistrotis died his son Hypiot took over which the Athenians hated.
• When his brother died he got really mad and killed the murderers and tortured their wives also. 
• He became bitter and suspicious of everyone and started executing and banishing random people.
• Clestanies knew that something had to be done about Hypiot. 
• The first thing of his heroism was than created because he was able to over throw Hypiot whom was captured and banished forever.
• Clestanies was now the greatest power in Athens. He was now a living hero.
• The olympic games were invented by the Greeks to show great power over everyone else for whoever won. There was no physical prise, but the prise was fame all over Greece.
• When Clestanies was in power he soon realized that people were conspiring against him so that meant that Cleastanies had to fight for his life. 
• One of the men that wanted him dead called the Spartans to help him take over the reigns of Athens.
• he was able to over throw Clestanies and now the new rules was able to train Spartans in Athens.
• When Clestanies was exiled, Athens under went an extraordinarily event, the people of Athens rose up to a revolution.
• The common Athenians were able to over throw the new leader and the Spartans guarding him in only 2 days.
• This was Athens first step to and Empire.
• This was the first time in history when the people rose up against one of their own leaders.
• Clestanies was than called back from exile and was asked to form a government.
• He had to design a revolutionary government system. 
• A government in which the people of the society had a say in what the government did and they could also elect the leaders.
• A system of government which we now know as democracy. 
• This system of government set up some of the greatest bases that which the world has never seen.

Today in Class 3/4....

We looked a presentation about Egypt. We were subbed the first mod and half of the second than Mr. Schick came in because he was in the play. Once he came in he than went over the power point. We also figured out that we are going to have a test on Tuesday on Egypt. I think I will do good on the test but I need to study in order to pass it.

Egypt Power Point

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AdUU_awE1hVjZGNidHAyamtfMTM5ZGpoN2tjY3Y&hl=en&pli=1

More Notes on Egypt

Artisans would carve statues and reliefs showing military battles and scenes of the after life
Money/barter system was used - merchants might accept bags of grain for payment - later, coinage came about
Scribes kept records, told stories, wrote poetry, and described anatomy and medical treatments
They wrote hieroglyphs and in hieratic
Soldiers used wooden weapons (bows and arrows, spears) with bronze tips and they might ride on chariots
The upper class of society back than was known as the "white kilt class" - this class consisted of priests, physicians, and engineers
Hatshepsut was a woman who served as a pharaoh

Prezi On Ancient Egypt

ancient Egypt on Prezi

Ancient Egypt

Egypt is centered around the Nile.

The Nile empties into the Mediterarian Sea and empties out through a Delta.

The Nile supported water for drinking, for irrigating, for bathing, and for transportation.

Every July in Egypt it floods.

Every October it leaves behind rich soil

They are the first people to figure out a solar based day and a lunar based year.

The delta is a broad, marshy triangular area of silt.

The river flow from south to north

Managing the river required technological breakthroughs for their time. 

Pyramids:

Great Sphinx of Giza

It was a lion with a human's head

It was built from 2555 - 2532 BC

Oldest monumental statue in the world

The greatest amount of people back then were the greatest amount of people in the Egyptian society.