Pg 488 Ancient Greece

 The Minoan civilization dominated the Greek world and in 1450 BC it collapsed due to
earthquakes and invasion
 When the Minoan civilization fell the Mycenaeans started to rule
 The Mycenaeans were strongly influenced by the Minoan civilization they had an economy
based on trade, and a writing system that mostly used clay tablets.

Pg 489 Ancient Greece

 The remains showed the armor the Myceneans wore in battle

 Scholars predict the Trojan war was in 1200 B.C. shortly after this the Greek world fell into chaos
and confusion. For 300 years, writing seemed to disappear, and this period is known as the
‘’Greek Dark Ages’’
 In about 850 B.C. Greek started emerging from this darkness
 After Homer’s time, Greek civilization started to become more organized and sophisticated.
Smaller communities organized as city-states. (Cities that functioned independently, as
countries do)
 Sparta was a city state known for their military prowess
 Athens was a city state also known as the birthplace of democracy.
 Some city-states would team up to defend and attack a common enemy

Pg 490 Greek Mythology and Customs

 Greek religion was based on a belief in many gods (Polytheism)

 Zeus was the king of gods, and he had a wife called Hera. Other gods and goddesses were
associated with different aspects of nature or human behavior.
 The most important gods were said to live on Mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece,
where Zeus sat on a throne of gold.
 Gods displayed human qualities and had a lot of fights. They were quick to punish humans of
excessive pride or ‘’’hubris’’.
 Human beings provided sacrifices such as animals to please the gods.
 In the Odyssey, Odysseus makes several sacrifices to plead for divine aid on his journey home.
 The Greeks worshiped the gods in temples dedicated to many gods or just one.
 The Greeks also celebrated their gods at great festivals such as the Olympic games, which were
dedicated to Zeus.
 The Greeks believed in prophecy, which they associated with the god Apollo. The Greeks also
believed in myths, stories about gods and heroes that they used to explain the world around
them. The Iliad and the Odyssey drew on these myths.

Pg 492 Homer, Epic Poet

 Homer is the legendary poet credited with writing the Iliad and the Odyssey. These epics, known
for their sweeping scope, gripping stories, and vivid style, have captured readers’ imaginations
for almost 3,000 years.
 Tradition said he was born in Ionia in western Asia Minor, and that he was blind.
 Ionia was a center for poetry and learning, where eastern and western cultures met, and new
intellectual currents were born.
 Most efforts to date Homer’s life place him somewhere between 850 and 750 B.C., a period that
saw a transition in Greek culture from an oral literary tradition to a written one.
 Whatever the truth about Homer may be, no one disputes the quality of the two epics which he
is credited. The ancient Greeks revered the Iliad and the Odyssey. They recited these poems at
religious festivals and had children memorize them in school.
 All the Greek writers and Philosophers who came after Homer drew on the two epics.

Pg 493 The Epic Form

 The Iliad and the Odyssey influenced virtually all the great western epics that followed them.

Pg 495 The Trojan War

 In the Iliad, Homer focuses on the final year of the Trojan War; in the Odyssey, he tells what
happened to one of the key warriors afterward.
 According to legend, the Trojan War began when Eris, goddess of strife, brought among the
gods a golden apple inscribed “To the fairest.” Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all wanted that
apple. They asked Paris, son of the king of Troy, to decide which of them deserved it. Each tried
to bribe him: Hera offered power; Athena, wisdom; and Aphrodite, the world’s most beautiful
woman.
 Menelaus, king of Sparta, could not persuade the Trojans to send his wife, Helen, back, he went
to his brother Agamemnon, who called on all the Greek rulers to honor a pact and go to Troy to
fight to bring Helen home. The Greeks agreed and sailed to Troy. They laid siege to the city but
for ten long years could not breach its impregnable walls.
 Agamemnon might have been a more powerful king and Achilles a superior warrior, but
Odysseus, king of Ithaca, was cleverest of them all.
 He devised a scheme in which the Greeks left a great wooden horse outside the walls of Troy
and tricked the Trojans into taking it inside. That night, the Greeks hiding inside the horse—
Odysseus among them— slipped out, unlocked the gates of the city, and allowed their fellow
warriors to come swarming in to defeat the Trojans and sack the city.
 Following the Greek victory, he set sail for Ithaca but encountered a series of perilous
misadventures that made his journey last ten years. It is this difficult, adventure-filled journey
that Homer’s Odyssey recounts.