Year 12 Ancient - Lives of Eminent Commanders

Welcome back to Term 3, Year 12 Ancient. We have an intensive few weeks coming up, where we will aim to finish the rest of the course, and begin revising for the Trial HSC. Tutorials will start next week, most probably on Monday afternoons at 1.30 or so. I will keep you posted on that.

For now, here are the links to the ancient Roman sources (written by Cornelius Nepos, c.50BC) on some famous ancient commanders:

Miltiades
Themistocles
Aristides the Just
Pausanias
Cimon

Remember, you need to know all five of these guys for the HSC, plus Eurybiades and Leonidas.

Year 12 Ancient - Athens Documentary

If you get bored in the holidays...here is the History Channel docco on Ancient Athens. It is in three parts, so link through to the next instalments.

Have a great holiday!

Year 12 Ancient - Delian League/Athenian Democracy Powerpoint

Hi folks. Here is the PowerPoint we did last week, outlining the main points for the rest of the Greek World syllabus:

Delian League/Athenian Democracy

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by tomgriffith | Upload your own presentation

Year 12 Ancient - Exam Advice

Year 12 Ancient students will have their next assessment on Wednesday, in the double lesson. As you know, the format is as follows:

Time Allowed: 70 minutes

Part 1: 25 marks (35 minutes)
Essay question on the Persian Wars, using 'assess' or 'explain'.

Assess = make a judgement of value
Explain = relate cause and effect, make the relationships between things evident, provide why and/or how

So the question will ask you to make some sort of judgement about some aspect of the Persian Wars. Make sure you know:

• the causes and background of the conflict (persian expansion, Ionian Revolt)
  
• the details of the six major battles
• the contribution of Themistocles, Leonidas, Eurybiades, and Pausanias
• why the Greeks won and the Persians lost (you can find a sample essay on this dot point here)
  

Part 2: 25 marks (35 minutes)
10-mark question on Xerxes' rise to prominence (spend about 15 minutes on this)
Make sure you know:

• his family background
• his career before becoming king
• how he became king

15-mark question assessing his reign/career (spend about 20 minutes on this)
Make sure you know:

• his achievements/failures as a builder/engineer, a religious leader, a warrior, an administrator, and as king
• ancient and modern assessments of his reign

We will go through some practice questions on Tuesday. Any questions, send me an email. Good luck!

Year 12 Ancient - Notes on Plataea and Mycale

You can access the class notes on Plataea and Mycale here. They are a bit brief but will serve as a foundation...

Year 12 Ancient - Persian Wars Powerpoint

Ancient Historians - here is our first PowerPoint on the Greek World 500-440BC, a summary of the Persian Wars, with some brief info on each of the six battles:

Marathon
Thermopylae
Artemisium
Salamis
Plataea
Mycale


Uploaded on authorSTREAM by tomgriffith

You can download it here.

Year 12 Ancient - Persian Wars Introduction

I have found a good summary of the Persian Wars, written by Richard Hooker, on this website.

Here is the first paragraph, to whet your appetite...

Like the Trojan War, the Persian Wars were a defining moment in Greek history. The Athenians, who would dominate Greece culturally and politically through the fifth century BC and through part of the fourth, regarded the wars against Persia as their greatest and most characteristic moment. For all their importance, though, the Persian Wars began inauspiciously. In the middle of the sixth century BC, the Greek city-states along the coast of Asia Minor came under the control of the Lydians and their king, Croesus (560-546 BC). However, when the Persians conquered the Lydians in 546 BC, all the states subject to the Lydians became subject to the Persians. The Persians controlled their new subject-states very closely; they appointed individuals to rule the states as tyrants. They also required citizens to serve in the Persian army and to pay fairly steep taxes. Smarting under these new burdens and anxious for independence, the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, began a democratic rebellion in 499 BC. Aristagoras was an opportunist. He had been placed in power by the Persians, but when he persuaded the Persians to launch a failed expedition against Naxos, he began to fear for his life. So he fomented a popular rebellion against the Persians and went to the Greek mainland for support. He went first to the Spartans, since they were the most powerful state in Greece, but the Spartans seem to have seen right through him. When he approached the Athenians, they promised him twenty ships. In 498 BC, the Athenians conquered and burned Sardis, which was the capital of Lydia, and all the Greek cities in Asia Minor joined the revolt. The Athenians, however, lost interest and went home; by 495 BC, the Persians, under king Darius I (521-486 BC), had restored control over the rebellious Greek cities...
(click here to read the rest of the article)

Year 12 Ancient - Apollo and Hyakinth

I have been searching around on youtube for some decent Sparta videos, and unfortunately, tere are few of much educational value. however, there seem to be a few decent ones on the religion and mythology of Ancient Greece in general. Below is a 4-minute clip made by the youtube user Pathiarakos, on the entire Apollo/Hyakinth myth. It explains the story rather well:

Year 12 Ancient/Modern - Welcome Back!

Hi Ancient and Modern students. I hope it has been a relaxing and enjoyable Easter break for all of you. Now, back to work!

Term 2 will be a pretty tough one for all of you - there is a lot of content to cover, plus some assessment towards the end of term. Just to give you an idea, here is what we will be working on from Week 1:

MODERN: We will go straight into how Hitler turned Germany into a dictatorship in 1933-34. From there we will study some of the major policies of the Nazi Party, the nature of German society in the 1930s, and the forms of repression used by the Nazis. We will finish by examining the lead-up to World War Two.

These are the syllabus dot points we will cover:

– initial consolidation of Nazi power 1933–1934
– Hitler’s role in the Nazi state
– Nazism as totalitarianism
– the role of propaganda, terror and repression; SA and SS; opposition to Nazism
– social and cultural life in the Nazi state: role of Hitler Youth, women, religion
– Nazi racial policy; anti-Semitism: policy and practice to 1939
– nature of Nazi foreign policy: aims and strategies to September 1939
– impact of ideology on Nazi foreign policy to September 1939

This will take us into our conflict study for this year, the War in Western Europe. This overlaps with the Nazi Germany topic a bit, and covers the years 1935 until 1945. As well as the reasons for war, and the actual battles that were fought, we will be looking at the Holocaust, and the Nuremburg War Crimes trials.

This website is designed for school students, and has some excellent summaries of the major themes and concepts.


ANCIENT: We will spend the first few weeks of term finishing off Sparta - particularly focusing on everyday life, culture (art/literature/architecture), and the economy.

These are the syllabus dot points we shall cover (although some we have already looked at):

– land ownership: agriculture, kleroi, helots
– technology: weapons, armour, pottery
– economic roles of the periokoi (‘dwellers around’) and helots
– economic exchange: use of iron bars, trade
– art: sculpture, painted vases, bone and ivory carving
– architecture: Amyklaion, Menelaion, the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia
– writing and literature: Alcman and Tyrtaeus – Greek writers’ views of Sparta
– daily life and leisure activities – food and clothing – marriage customs
– occupations

This will lead us into our Period Study - the Greek World 500-440BC. This huge topic covers the Greco-Persian Wars (you know, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis), as well as the lead-up to the Peloponnesian Wars, and the growth of Athenian democracy.

This website will introduce you to some of the most important people, places and themes associated with Ancient Greece during this time period.

Good luck in Term 2!

Year 12 Ancient - Gods Poll

The Greek Gods poll has closed, and the most popular response (for the 8 of you who voted...I really need a more engaging poll topic!) was Athena (62%). Apollo and Zeus both rated at 37%. For the record, I think my response was Apollo. Come on, he was like the Brad Pitt of Ancient Greece!

Year 12 Ancient - Agoge Powerpoint

I have tried embedding the powerpoint this time...you should be able to click on it to view it.

You can access and download it here as well.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by tomgriffith

Year 12 Ancient - Ancient Greek Pronunciation

In my struggle to pronounce 'agoge' correctly, I resorted to the internet for some advice. I found this useful set of hints here:

Hints on Pronouncing Ancient Greek Names

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Here are a few suggestions to help you pronounce ancient Greek names (and other ancient Greek words) in their usual Anglicized way (i.e., not in reconstructed ancient Greek pronunciation). This is at best a guide; to be sure you will have to look in a dictionary. For the most part, pronounce the name like an English word, but with the following exceptions:

• Final "e" is always pronounced: Athene = a-THEE-neh.
• "Ch" is pronounced like "k," never as in "church."
• "C" is pronounced soft (like "s") before "e" and "i" sounds, otherwise it's pronounced hard (like "k"). (This is quite unhistorical; in ancient times all "c"s were hard, but we are used to pronouncing "Caesar," "Circe," etc. with a soft "c.")
• The same applies to "g"; soft (as in "giant") before "e" and "i" sounds, hard (as in "gate") otherwise.
• "Th" is always smooth, as in "thigh," never rough, as in "they."
• You can pronounce the vowels as in English, but you will be a little closer to the ancient pronunciation if you pronounce them as in Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, etc.).
• "Ae" and "oe" can be pronounced like "e."
• General rules of accent:
  • If a name has two syllables, accent the first.
  • If a name has three or more syllables, then:
    • accent the second-to-last syllable, if it's long;
    • accent the third-to-last, otherwise.
  Unfortunately, the decision is determined by whether the syllable is long in Greek! However, if the syllable contains a diphthong or contains a vowel followed by two or more consonants, it is guaranteed to be long. Beyond that, you are on your own, I'm afraid.
• Examples: Aeschylus = ES-kih-lus or EE-skih-lus, Aphrodite = ah-froh-DI-tee, Herodotus = heh-RAH-do-tus, Thermopylae = ther-MO-pih-lee, Thucydides = thoo-SIH-di-des.

Source: Crosby & Schaeffer, Intro. to Greek, sect. 66.

So...agoge should be pronounced AH-GO-JAY according to this...
...but other sites have been telling me 'AH-GO-GAY'! If anyone tracks down the truth, let me know, please!

By the way - if you want to hear some Ancient Greek spoken (by a Harvard professor, not a Greek person...) try going to this page.

Year 12 Ancient - Spartan World Website

I discovered this rather useful website today, put together by a guy called Paul Houston, on all things Spartan. It is a little fiddly to get around, but there are some good summaries of the main themes we cover. Check out the section on the two Spartan kings.

There is also a great glossary of Spartan terms on the site.

Year 12 Ancient - Map of Ancient Greece

Below is a map showing the major city states (poleis) of Ancient Greece - Sparta and Athens - along with their main allies. Athens and Sparta were both at their height around 500BC, and competed for hegemony (dominance) of the area we now call Ancient Greece.

In reality, Greece was not one country, but many island- and city-states, scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean from Macedonia and Thrace in the north, to Crete in the south, to Ionia (Turkey) in the east.

Sparta's allies (in purple)were called the Peloponnesian League, as Sparta was the main state on the Peloponnese peninsula.

Athens' allies (in orange) were called the Delian League, after the island of Delos where the states agreed to help each other.

You can click on the map below to gain a larger image.

Year 12 Ancient - Sparta Reconsidered

This website - Sparta Reconsidered - is useful if you want an overview of themes in Spartan history. It will prove useful throughout the course as it has pages on many aspects of Ancient Sparta.

If anyone finds any other useful 'overview' sites on Sparta, let me know!

Year 12 Ancient - Ancient Texts

Hey folks, I mentioned yesterday that you can access many ancient texts for free, online. Their copyright has expired so there is no problem with getting them. Of course, you can always buy the books - nothing compares to reading a real, normal book - but for saving some important texts onto your computer, try these links:

Go here for a whole bunch of ancient texts. This site gives you access to many books that are now in the public domain.

To download Herodotus' Histories, which we will refer to many times this year, go here for Vol. 1, and here for Vol. 2.

The other authors we will read this year are Pausanias, Aristotle, Plutarch, Thucydides and Xenophon. I will post links as we get to them!