第四讲：古希腊文化.docVIP

Lecture 4. Ancient Greek Culture 4.1. Introduction to Greek Culture Ancient Greek Greece is the term used to describe the Greek speaking world in ancient times. It refers not only to the territory of the present Greek state, but also to those area settled by Greeks: Cyprus, the Aegean coast of Turkey ( then known as Ionia爱奥尼亚，古希腊殖民地), Sicily and southern Italy ( known as Great Greece),and the scattered Greek settlements on the coasts of what are now Albania, Bulgaria, Egypt, France, Libya, Romania, Spain, and Ukraine. Traditionally, the Ancient Greek period was taken to begin with the date of the first Olympic Games in 776B.C., but most historians now extend the term back to about 1000 B.C. The traditional date for the end of Ancient Greek period is the death of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.. The following period is classified Hellenistic, which lasted until the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 B.C. The peoples of Greece ,under the influence of the divisive geography and the great variety of tribes, developed the city-states ____ small settlements that grew into minor kingdoms. The cities developed separately and independently. However, there was a general pattern of development, which varied somewhat in each particular instance. Monarchies yielded to aristocracies, which were in turn replaced by tyrannies. On the Greek mainland the tyrannies soon yielded to oligarchies or to democracies tempered by limited citizenship and by slaveholding; it was in Greece that the ideas of political democracy came into being. Solon established a democracy in Athens. Militaristic Sparta had unique constitutional and social development. The warring city-states had a sense of unity; all their citizens considered themselves Hellenes. Ancient Greece is considered by most historians to be the foundational culture of Western civilization. Greek culture was a powerful influence in the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Euro