The Greeks: More Detailed Notes from the Movie

• Greeks achieved their success by winning battles that were so uneven 
• 508 B.C was when Athens turned on their rulers, demanding freedom 
• Cleisthenes, who had been brought up from birth to be a leader, realized that the people of Athens needed to have freedom 
• Cleisthenes was an aristocrat 
• An acropolis was the "highest city" in Greece
• Reading and writing was not a usual skill
• Life expectancy in Athens was somewhere around 50 years
• Athenians lived under the rule of aristocrats
• In Greece, mountains are everywhere, cutting off ideas of wanting to combine forces with another area, so they weren't thought to have such strong militarily
• The places in Greece were called City States
• Sparta was the City State that dominated military in the area
• Spartans were brought up from birth to be soldiers by being separated from their families starting when the boys are six or seven years old
• The food that was given to the soldiers was so bad that the soldiers weren't worried about dieing because dieing wasn't as bad as eating that food
• Mythology influenced the young children in ancient Greece
• Iliad and Odyssey were maybe the most influential to the citizens in Greece, written by Homer
• Some people in ancient Greece memorized Iliad and Odyssey, and they are like, 400 page myths
• Everyone in Greece knew what the stories were about 
• In the 6th century, Athens got taken over by a tyrant 
• This tyrant was Pisistratus 
• Pisistratus was Cleisthenes' brother-in-law
• The original meaning of a tyrant was someone that came in and ceased power
• Back then, a tyrant didn't always mean that he was a bad ruler
• Pisistratus realized that to continue his rule and to ensure that his family would become rulers, he understood that he needed strong allies
• Pisistratus' rule began Athens growing 
• To get the people in Athens to like him, he lowered taxes, and he began giving out loans
• Pisistratus did this so people weren't going to stand up and run him out of government
• Greece was surrounded by huge military powers, from the Persian Empire, to Italian barbarians, and then the Roman Empire
• Other places were willing to trade their goods for the olives grown in Athens 
• Athens first great artistic legacy began at the vase 
• The look of the pot wasn't what was important, the contents inside the pot was more important
• Potters in Athens weren't thought as trash, but they weren't given any special rights
• 527 B.C Pisistratus died
• After Pisistratus' death, his son, Hippias took over
• Pisistratus was a tyrant, but that didn't mean he was a bad ruler
• But when Hippias took over, Athenians realized tyrants are also bad
• In 540 B.C Hippias' brother was killed
• After his brothers death, Hippias became a trash ruler
• Numerous executions and exiles were called by Hippias 
• The modern term, tyrant, is now what was happening under Hippias rule
• Cleisthenes realized Athenian life was going downhill 
• Cleisthenes took it into his own hands to restore Athenian life, and to overthrow Hippias
• 510 B.C Cleisthenes becomes ruler of Athens after overthrowing Hippias 
• After overthrowing Hippias, they didn't kill him or imprison him, they banished him from Athens
• Cleisthenes became the most powerful man in Athens