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Notes on video lecture:
Herodotus and The Histories
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on April 28, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
substance, Ionia, summons, cult, criticize, your, Odyssey, wealthy, Solon, himself, buried, kill, Celtic, Gyges, empire, power, World, Anaximander, country, air, foreigners, skeptical, travel, quantity, rapport, poet, looking, Apollo, Bodrum, practical, Miletus, personal, examination, history, Biton, Croesus, Pythagoras, naked, happiness, pattern, hide, Ionian, Persia, rash, penalty, interviews, Persia, Candaules, reliable, water, quality, pyre, tail, happy
•
Herodotus (484-425 BC)
•
[hair-ODD-ih-tus]
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invented the genre of               
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born in Halicarnassus (today:             , Turkey)
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we don't know much about his                  life
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he comes up in his texts now and then but doesn't tell much about               
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tells legends but none very                 
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lived among the survivors and witnesses of the war against             
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traveled quite widely
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has a first-hand acquaintance with Greece,           , and even Egypt
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intellectual influences that affected him
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             philosophy
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identified with a city on the central coast of Ionia:               
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not to be confused with the Ionian Sea
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Thales
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one of the seven sages
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natural philosopher
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speculation of the basic substance of the cosmos:       
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                       (610–546 BC)
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student of Thales
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his sudent was                     
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basic element was the "immeasurable" the Apeiron [AP-er-on]
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Anaximenes
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student of Anaximander
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basic element was           
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an attempt to find out what is the basic                   
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what is missing is the gods
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rationalists
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overtly                   
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Xenophanes of Colophon
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[zen-OFF-en-eez]
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philosopher, theologian,         , and social and religious critic
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lived a life of             , left Ionia
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skeptic
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Gods of Thracians are red haired and blue eyed while the gods of the Ethiopians are snub-nosed and black
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if cows could depict their gods, they would have horns, hooves, and a         
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Hecataeus (550–476 BC)
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[hek-ah-TEE-us]
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the first known Greek historian
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one of the first classical writers to mention the              people
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wrote: A Trip Around the           
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actually a trip around the Mediterranean
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examined customs of different peoples he encountered
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Herodotus mentioned him but only to                    him
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Herodotus was influenced by his prose writing
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Homer
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grand sweep of his narratives in the Iliad and the               
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provides a model for story telling but Herodotus does something different with it
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but none of these philosophers had much of a                    impact on the day to day practices of religion or believes in myth
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The Histories
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his great work
•
first sentences
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Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry (histories), which mean "               into things"
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not having a muse inspire you
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conducting your own                       
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questioning sources
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so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time
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histories not only of the Greeks, but                      as well
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very open minded to other cultures
•
sources
•
traveled widely
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first-hand                     
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looking at things
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Hecataeus
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Homer
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underlying tensions of East and West
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says, "I know who first injured the Greeks"
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King                (595–547 BC)
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paradigm of what happens when people get           
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Herodotus jumps back five generations to tell another story
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King                   
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had a beautiful wife
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had a trusted courtier Gyges [GIGH-geez]
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says that Gyges has to see his wife           
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Gyges says it is against all customs
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tells Gyges to          and watch her undress
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Gyges succumbs to this persuasion
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while Gyges is watching her, she sees him
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she goes to bed, he slips out
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next days she                him
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you can          Candaules, marry me, and become king
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or you can die
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Gyges chooses the former
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Herodotus says vengeance would come in the fifth generation after           
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if there is an injury, there will be some kind of               , even if it takes five generations to work out
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the fifth generation was King Croesus
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King Croesus [KREE-sus]
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spectacularly               
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asks            who the happiest man in the world is
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three have been happier than Croesus
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Tellus the Athenian
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had sons
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his sons had sons who he lived to see
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died fighting for his               
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was given the honor of being              on the battlefield with a monument
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Kleobis [KLEE-ah-bis] and            [BIGH-tawn]
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painting by Nicolas-Pierre Loir (1624-1679)
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brothers who died peacefully in their sleep when their mother prayed for their perfect                    after they had demonstrated filial piety by drawing her to a festival in an oxcart themselves
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a hero          was established in their honor
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a pair of statues was set up for them at Delphi
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human life changes from second to second
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"count no man happy until he's dead"
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this interview with Solon is in the nature of the question "Which man is           ?"
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Solon is a Greek, a lawgiver, emphasizes               
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Croesus is Asian, a monarch, attention is fixed on                 
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Croesus' son dies
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Croesus decides to attack             
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Croesus was fond of the God at Delphi
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sent lavish gifts to this god of the Greeks
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asks what will happen if I attack Persia
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Oracle: you will destroy a great             
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neglects to ask whose empire
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attacks, driven back, captured in palace by Persian king Cyrus [SIGH-rus] (600-530 BC)
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put on a funeral         
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Cyrus repents to this Barbarism but flames are already too great
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Croesus prays to             , god at Delphi
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Apollo sends a rain shower down which quenches the flames
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Croesus is rescued
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Croesus and Cyrus establish a kind of               
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Croesus becomes, as Solon had been, a wise adviser
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Croesus asks Cyrus was are his men doing
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sacking your city
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no, they're sacking          city
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Cyrus admires his wisdom
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Herodotus sees Croesus as historical                that repeats itself: a ruler who
•
has enough
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wants more
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commits a          act
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suffers consequences
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Herodotus is intensely interested in the customs of other people

People:

######################### (624-546 BC)
[]
Regarded by Aristotle as the the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, first to define general principles and set forth hypotheses for which he is often referred to as the Father of Science, along with Democritus
  • attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology
  • almost all of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers follow him in attempting to provide an explanation of ultimate substance, change, and the existence of the world without reference to mythology
  • in mathematics, Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore
  • credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem (any angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle)
  • referred to as the first mathematician to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed
  • pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from the city of Miletus on today's western coast of Turkey, he is was also known as one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece
######################### (1787-1849)
English painter, best known for his paintings of nudes
  • copied a great deal from the old masters in the National Gallery
  • 1816, traveled to Paris and Florence
  • 1822, made a longer trip to Italy
  • from his studies of the Venetian masters he acquired the excellence in color for which his works are chiefly known
  • 1824, returned to England where his "Pandora Crowned by the Seasons" was much praised
  • 1828 made a member of the Royal Academy
  • possessed a great charm of color, especially in the glowing but thoroughly realistic, flesh tints
  • he remains a neglected and underrated artist, one of the few nineteenth-century painters to paint classical subjects successfully

Spelling Corrections:

vengence ⇒ vengeance
advisor ⇒ adviser

Flashcards:

who were the 7 Sages of of Greece?
1. Cleobulus of Lindos ("Moderation is the best thing"), 2. Solon of Athens ("Keep everything with moderation"), 3. Chilon of Sparta ("You should not desire the impossible"), 4. Bias of Priene ("Most men are bad"), 5. Thales of Miletus ("Know Thyself"), 6. Pittacus of Mytilene ("You should know which opportunities to choose"), 7. Periander of Corinth ("Be farsighted with everything")
what did Anaximander consider the basic element?
Apeiron [AP-er-on], the "immeasurable"

Ideas and Concepts:

Seven quick wisdom tips from the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece via this morning's Ancient Greece class: "1. Cleobulus of Lindos ("Moderation is the best thing"), 2. Solon of Athens ("Keep everything with moderation"), 3. Chilon of Sparta ("You should not desire the impossible"), 4. Bias of Priene ("Most men are bad"), 5. Thales of Miletus ("Know Thyself"), 6. Pittacus of Mytilene ("You should know which opportunities to choose"), 7. Periander of Corinth ("Be farsighted with everything")"
From perhaps the earliest religious relativist, Xenophanes (500 BC), via this morning's Ancient Greece class: "Mortals think that the gods are born and have the mortals' own clothes and voice and form. But if cattle and horses and lions had hands or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do, horses like horses and cattle like cattle also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies of such a sort as the form they themselves have."
Greek geographical clarification of the day via this morning's Ancient Greece class: "Ionia was the name collectively given to a set of Greek cities of the coast of Asia Minor and nearby islands that were settled initially by Ionians, originally migrants who came from the Greek mainland across the Aegean Sea on the other side of the Greek mainland. In fact, while today, the sea below the Adriatic Sea is called the Ionian Sea and contains the Ionian Islands off the West Coast of Greece, the historical terms "Ionia," the "Ionian Cities," and "Ionian Philosophy" always refer to the west coast of modern day Turkey, a collectoin of cities which were spread over the provinces of Caria and Lydia and included, from south to north, the Carian cities of Miletus (the leading city of Ionia), Myous and Priene, the Lydian cities of Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomenæ and Phocæa, plus Samos and Chios on the islands of the same names, and Erythræus on the mainland facing Chios. In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, Ionia was the birthplace of philosophy, giving the world many of the most famous so-called Presocratic philosophers:Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, collectively called the Milesians (from Miletus), Heraclitus (from Ephesus), Pythagoras (from Samos), Xenophanes (from Colophon), Anaxagoras (from Clazomenæ)."
Hesiod's Creation Myth: Theogony
The Spartan Way of Life
600 BC Tyrants and Sages: Cypselus and Periander
800-700 BC: Athens Before Solon
Solon Against Political, Economic, and Moral Decline
Peisistratos: Tyranny and Civic Identity
The End of Athenian Tyranny and the Democratic Revolution
508 BC: The Democratic Reforms of Cleisthenes
Herodotus and The Histories
The First Persian War and the Battle of Marathon
Themistocles, Silver, and Greek Naval Policy
Xerxes and the Second Invasion of Greece
The Delian League
From Delian League to Athenian Empire
Pericles: Aristocrat, Orator and Democratic Citizen
Sophocles' Antigone: Tragedy and Athenian Civic Life