History 104A, September 21: Water vs. Rock: Athens and Sparta
My job is to try and help you. Your job is to recognize the fact
that we will have a choice of one out of three essay questions a week
from Friday. And if Peter remembers or if one of you want to remember
that between today and Friday, you can send me an e-mail to remind me
to bring in a take-home question so that you can prepare it and then
answer it in class. One of the three will be one that you can get
ahead of time, although you can't bring the answers with you. And if
I remember, I will be bringing you the paper to use so that nobody can
pull it out of their nice little notebooks. I'll talk more about that
at a later point and more about the exam, likely on Friday.
We are studying the Greeks. Only on Monday we learned the Greek
way which dealt with fates, hubris, polis, and anal sex. I've got to
wake you up. It's definitely a Wednesday. However, I also identified
and got into the beginnings perhaps of Athens and the Constitution
that led to a democracy. And I pointed out various forms of
government and how they expanded at different times in Greek history
depending on the polis as well. And those are terms that we still use
today from aristocracy, oligarchy, tyrants, despots, theocracies, et
cetera. And while we don't give you short answer questions, and
that's what I was going to go to is identification, we do anticipate
that a few of these terms names whatever will appear.
Q The essay questions are not open notes?
THE PROFESSOR: No, they're open head. If you open your notes, I
will spit our head open so Athena can come out.
2
I pointed out that Solon had provided Athens was tyrant with the
beginning of a Constitution. However, I don't think I mentioned
Pisistratus P-I-S-I-S-T-R-A-T-U-S and the fact that he built on that
and helped to create a more democratic Constitution. And we'll go a
little more into that and the development of the golden age of
democracy, the golden age generally in Greece. I didn't put
Themistocles on here. Again, things hit me.
What I wanted to start out today is some of the contrasts between
Athens and Sparta. A lot of the history that we deal with in the
height of the Greek culture, which would be pretty much from 500 to
350 BCE, is the conflict betweens Athens and Sparta. And it's a
conflict as I ended last time identifying between sea power and land
power, between a red state, Sparta, and a blue state, Athens. And for
those that don't know the reference there, based on the television
reports for the last presidential election, those that voted
republican and conservative, those states were identified in red; and
those that voted democrat and liberal were identified in blue. So
today we talk about red states and blue states. The colors are really
weird. If they put them up in red, they wouldn't have called them red
states because anytime you call them red, it meant that you were
calling somebody a commie. And if you called them pinko, it meant
that you were leaning towards communism. What does blue symbolize?
We used to talk about blue states which were states that were highly
Puritan and had all these censorship. Blue laws meant all stores were
closed on Sunday so that people would go to church. Have you heard
3
about blue laws before? How many of you have heard about the blue
laws? Again times change.
Coming up the steps this morning, I had an epiphany, which means
I had a rude awakening. My rude awakening is that I have been here a
long time because I actually knew all the buildings, that the
buildings of Ohlone College were named after. Now, that's really
scary. What was even scarier was how weird I am. I actually know the
names of the buildings without letters. Does anybody know the names
of any of the buildings?
A Hyman Hall.
THE PROFESSOR: That's one they actually don't have a number to.
I don't know the number of Hyman Hall. That may be why you know that
one. Nobody knows the names of any of the buildings. See, I told you
I'm weird. No, I'm not going to go through that. I don't want to put
them on the exam. Sorry, off the subject here.
We identified then Sparta as a conservative, landlocked
traditional society and Athens as a seafaring liberal society. The
Constitution for Sparta was given to them by their law giver somewhere
also in the 6th century BCE 500s, like the name of Lycurgis
L-Y-C-U-R-G-I-S. The societies are often used to contrast in our
history between the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, Germany,
the difference between a totalitarian society and the quote/unquote
free democratic society. So we will spend a little time here trying
to distinguish the societies. And they were really quite different
and yet had some similarities as I identified last time.
4
For example, they followed the growing tradition of infanticide,
that when a baby was born, the parent in Athens would decide to place
the baby up for adoption by leaving it up on the bottom of the
mountain. And if it didn't get adopted, it would go to Hades or
whatever. And in Sparta, all babies were brought before the kings and
there were two, one military and one civilian. And the kings would
decide whether that baby appeared to be a fighter, or if a female, a
breeder. And if not, they were placed by the decision of the kings on
the mountainside. Is it A Bugs Life that the queen decided which bee
was saved or which bug was saved?
A Ants.
THE PROFESSOR: Was it Ants? I know you people know those
movies. It came from your age.
Generally, when we speak about Athens in calling it a democracy,
the concept is that the people make the decisions. And therefore, the
individual is more important than the whole. The individual parts are
more important than the sum of the whole. The individual is the basis
of society and society must give up certain rights to and for the
individual.
For a totalitarian society, the whole is more important than the
individual, or the whole is more important than the parts; the state
is more important than the individual.
And in a totalitarian society, you sacrifice yourself for the
survival of a state. That is not to say that then, in a democracy,
you don't have an identity with the state, but you make the choice to
5
sacrifice yourself for the others.
As I said, the polis was vital to the existence of society and
the worse punishment would be not loving your city/state and being
ostracized, being kicked out.
The education in Athens was determined by the parent. The
parents decided what kind of a life you would have, what kind of an
education. This was within the family. And of course that liberal
concept today has somewhat between taken over by the republicans who
want to return control of education to the parents believing that it
was taken over or has been taken over by the state. In any case, in a
democracy such as Athens, the parents hired their tutors. They hired
the teachers. And during the golden age in the fifth century of
Athens, 400s, they were individuals who made good money teaching.
Teachers were well paid and they were called sophists S-O-P-H-I-S-T-S.
One of the things that I hope I come back to is that Socrates was
often called a sophist years ago. It's quite an error to refer to him
as a sophists. Sophists were pragmatists basically, which meant that
what worked was good. And what they were doing in their education was
preparing people for citizenship, to get ahead, to advance themselves,
and to make money. And so among the various elements of the education
of the sophists was to teach people rhetoric, how to talk, how to
argue, and how to win court cases. Because in Athens, court cases
were presented or they were charged by the individuals, which
translates to, you did not have attorneys or district attorneys. The
juries were made up of Athenian citizens up to 1,001. And of course
6
citizenship meant that you were willing to serve jury duty. You were
selected by lot just like we are today. Our names are drawn, in
California, from our driver's licenses or from our identity cards and
at times from vote registration. On the federal level, your names are
drawn out of a hat from federal registration. And it is anticipated
that, as citizens, we would love giving up Kirshner's course to go
serve on a jury. But the fact that -- how many of you have actually
served jury duty? How many have been called for jury duty? So it's
only a very few. That's interesting. I had gotten a call. I was
supposed to start September 24th, but I didn't want to deprive you of
having to deal with me. I will not be serving jury duty until my
vacation, I guess.
In any case, the trail of Socrates, which I think you've heard
about at some point -- we'll talk more about -- his jury had 501
people. And it was a decision made by majority vote. The jury would
decide the case. The persons would defend or argue their position.
In the case of Socrates, he lost by 275 to whatever the number is, in
that range, and the jury basically sentenced him to death for
impairing the morals of minors.
A Making the weaker argument the stronger.
THE PROFESSOR: Making the weaker argument the stronger to be
part of the legitimacy. We'll get into that in a minute.
However, the Athenian juries gave you an option. They would give
you a severe sentence and then you were allowed to offer an
alternative. And usually you realized that was your plea bargain, so
7
you might offer ostracism as an alternative to death. And of course
Socrates is -- Socrates' friends suggested he take ostracism. But he
was pretty arrogant to say the least, and he said he was 70 years old
and he had lived his life well and he had aided Athens and brought on
an educated youth and therefore as an option, he offered the jury the
option of giving him a pension for life the rest of his life. Well, I
think he knew what was going to happen. And he of course was
sentenced to take the hemlock which goes from the toes to the chest,
and it's a poison that kills you a little slowly, as slow as some
punishments, I suppose.
Athens had a council of 500 drawn by lot and originally drawn by
and from basically the five tribes, the various historical tribes. My
mind blanks out for sure or how many tribes there were. The council
could only suggest law. People voted. People in Athens were defined
as men only. Women were not people. Women were kept in seclusion.
They were generally not even allowed in the streets except to cover it
and to get water. They did not participate in civic affairs. Theirs
was to take care of the domestic household. As Plato said onetime,
women are for bearing children, babies, men are for love. Of course
we misinterpret that as we did previously with the Greek way. We need
to understand that the Greeks had more than one word for love. I
forgot to put those words up too. We have one word for love. We love
our mothers. We love our girlfriends. In fact, during Vietnam,
soldiers who were charged with rape, the courts and everybody else
referred to as "loving" the women. The Greeks had many words for
8
love. For sexual love -- eros. What Plato used for love spiritual
love -- agape, which the Christians have swiped and it's now used as
Christian love. It is basically or it comes from the Greek word
spiritual. And then there is brotherly love and the word for
brotherly love? What is City of Brotherly love? Philadelphia the
word for brotherly love is philia. You knew that.
A No.
THE PROFESSOR: Yeah, no. However, again men associated with men
and women, when men came into the house, went into the kitchen. Of
course there are still families today who function that way and at
parties the women hang out at the kitchen and the men sit in the
living room drinking their liquor of whatever, beer, watching Monday
night football or whatever they do instead of coming to my Monday
night class.
The council of 500 came up with laws, suggested laws. They were
then put to the people. The people again being men over the age of 20
who were citizens. There were many men in Athens over the age of 20
who were not citizens. They were aliens, ET, et cetera. As aliens
from other parts of Greece, they were accepted as semi people but not
Athenian citizens. They could never become an Athenian citizen. By
the way, the Japanese had that policy for many many years. There were
Koreans who had been living in Japan up until a few years ago who
could not become citizens. You had to be born in Japan directly and
of Japanese origin, one or the other parent. The fact is, that has
changed. The Athenians did not accept converts to their citizenship.
9
There were slaves in Athens, generally domestic. Slaves of the
worse kind of slavery for a while until it was semi abolished were the
slaves that worked in the mines. They did not survive very often.
And then of course there were slaves that did the rowing. Athens had
a population maybe at its max of about 100,000. It is estimated that
there were about 25,000 though who could actually vote. Where did
they vote? No, they did not have computerized voting machines. Those
that wanted to vote, you had a choice to vote or not to vote. In our
society of course, we also have a choice to vote or not to vote.
There are democracies that require you to vote. And if you don't vote
you're fined -- Australia, Austria, Mexico. You actually have to pay
a penalty for not voting, which in part, explains their high votes
turnout. In Athens, if you wanted to vote, you headed for the agora
A-G-O-R-A. The agora was the marketplace where people gathered.
By the way, I should mention that Athenians did pay some for
people to serve on the council of 500 because they recognized the fact
that some citizens could not afford to give up their work. They
served for a year, like a grand jury in our country. Once again, in
their serving, it wasn't necessarily all day or every day of the week.
They would go to the agora. And the way they cast their ballot was to
pick up a broken piece of pottery and write yeah or nay on it. Once
in a while they got mad and they threw the pottery, but that wasn't
the main thing. And once in a while certain political wise guys tried
to pad the ballot, stuff the ballot box. What they did was, they
broke pottery and wrote yeah or nay on it. It was a true democracy.
And when the law became law, Athens had councils, two councils.
The councils jobs were to carry out or execute the law like our
presidents. And they were elected by the council of 500 and served to
carry out the law that was passed by the citizens, the male citizens
of Athens.
Q Could females be considered citizens, they just couldn't vote?
THE PROFESSOR: Females had minimal rights.
Q Were they considered citizens?
THE PROFESSOR: No, within limitations they were people, but
second class people in the fact that they had very little legal rights
as well. The rights, like many societies for women, rested with their
husbands, with their parents, et cetera. And there was a great film
years ago that some of you may have seen, although I would be
surprised called Zorba the Greek with Anthony Quin. It deals with
Crete which, of course, basically has a Greek society today. And you
can still see -- and this film was made 30 years ago -- you can still
see that same isolation of women wearing black, hidden from society,
separated from society with no personal rights. Marriages were
arranged, et cetera.
Sparta -- Sparta the parents had few rights. The parents were
under the control of the state. They often were, marriages were
arranged for breeding purposes. And when a boy was seven years old,
he was put into a barracks to learn military training. The women were
then put into a school, if you will, with parents to teach them how to
sew, how to cook, and how to do quote/unquote womanly things,
11
obviously preparing them for marriage and child bearing.
Q At what age?
THE PROFESSOR: At seven also.
I guess that would be first grade, somewhere around there.
That's when education started, a little older than the education given
to the warriors. I think they were taken at what, about five or six.
I have a couple of people shaking their heads so they know what I'm
talking about. When I read the book, the first thing I thought of as
Sparta candidly. That's just me.
The educational training was military training for the men. They
were deprived actually for many things in life so that they would have
to suffer. Sometimes they were given little food as if they would
have to deal with it. And sometimes they were indirectly encouraged
to go out at night, sneak away from the barracks and steal food from
the helots H-E-L-O-T-S. The helots were slaves, if you will, serfs
better said, peasants.
The Spartans developed a totalitarian society under the influence
of a military etymology where about 25,000 controlled what may have
been nearly a million people. The estimates will vary. The land
around Sparta was worked, produced, and held by helots. And the
Spartans simply were the police, the warrior class, the military
caste. In Sparta, they did not teach mythology. What they taught was
patriotism and war. They didn't want to distort people, men or
women's thoughts. Their clothes had no pockets in them, so they could
have no worldly wealth. The money were these big iron bars basically,
12
so that wealth was not something you would search for. Your only
interest was to go to battle and fight and die for the nation.
Spartans told some stories, I guess they were myths about heroes.
One young boy one day who was out away from his group and he found a
fox. He picked the baby fox up, put it under his tunic because he was
called into lineup, muster. And there, standing at attention, the fox
began to naw at his stomach and his intestines and finally he
collapsed dead, never crying out in pain. That was the glory of
Sparta.
They told stories of an early Spartan mother who, when her son
came home with wounds in his back, the mother chopped his head off
when he was sleeping because it was obvious he was running from battle
not towards it. Lovely society.
Those were the two main societies that we learned about in our
earlier educations. And of course that leads us to the wars with the
Persians, the Persian wars, and then the Peloponnesian wars
P-E-L-O-P-O-N-N-E-S-I-A-N.
We identified that Persia began its basic expansion in the middle
of the sixth century and began to move through all of this area here
and these cities along the coast were Greek. Persia conquered these
Greek cities, including the Greek colony or major country, if you
will, of Lydia, which we pointed out was originally the first to
develop, around 600, coinage. Many of these cities were colonies of
cities such as Corinth. It began its empirism by taking over the
territory nearby. And as these cities began to want their rebellion
13
or perhaps because they were inspired by the mother country, the
Persians decided that they had to go punish the Greeks on the mainland
or better said in Europe. And the first force, in 490, came down with
Darius the king, expecting an easy victory against the un-unified
Greeks.
The Spartans never enjoyed going into battle with large numbers
away from their homeland. The reason basically because they were
fearful of slave rebellions. They were fearful they would rise up.
However, various commissions went to them to try to convince the
Spartans to lead the military force against the Athenians. But the
Athenians wanted to also build their forces. And of course the major
battle that we know of by the Athenians against the Persians was the
battle at marathon on the coast of the Aegean, is exactly 26.2 miles
from the City of Athens. The Athenians somehow won that battle
because of their technique with their large shields and larger spears
and their method of protection and their phalanx movement, their
hoplite weapons, whatever for it's worth, fancy looking outfits, sort
of cute.
Q I missed the name of the war?
THE PROFESSOR: The Persian war. The battle of marathon, like
the marathon itself. The name marathon or the race the marathon comes
from that battle because Phidippides ran from marathon to Athens to
announce the victory, and we don't know what time he covered the
course in. However, when we got there, he was so exhausted after
giving the good news, he died. And that is, of course, why up until
14
last year women were not allowed to run a marathon in the Olympics.
They were afraid that they would die. They couldn't handle the
strain. However, I think the general running of the marathon by the
top runners today is about two hours in nine or ten minutes. Women
run it at about two hours and 30 minutes, 26.2 miles, a hell of a run
I would say. However, the reason for the race in the Olympics -- the
first Olympics were held in 776 BCE. Boy, I'm jumping here from the
battle of marathon to Olympics but it comes to mind. It's all on the
subject.
The Olympic games it continued to about the third century AD or
CE, so for 900 years, if you will, there were Olympic games held in
Greece to celebrate Mount Olympus and the Gods every four years. I
guess I'll take a side trip here to the Olympics. The games were very
individual as the Greeks were. Later on, they did have some team
sports. And there were some equestrian sports, as most of you
probably know. Women were not allowed to even go watch the games
because the men participated in the nude. Now, that was the
isolation. However, women were allowed for one day to have their own
games, but they did have to wear clothing in their games. I'm not
sure what they participated in. The games generally included foot
races and the kinds of things that would be used for battle like the
javelin throw. The winners got a Laurel wreath to show their victory.
And there was only a first place which may be more practical. Who the
hell remembers the name of second and third place winners anyway. But
of course, as your coaches say, it's not winning the game, it's how
15
well you play. That's crap. I don't know any coach that believes
that. That's okay. We love to hear that. However, the athletes also
got great glories. They returned to their cities and had sponsorships
and got on the Cheerios box and had statues built of themselves. I'm
wondering if they have anybody that has statues in the United States
built to them? In any case, the athletes were permitted to go to
games by free passage. The Greek cities, the polises were often at
war. During the fourth year of the games, while war might continue,
any athletes were permitted to head to the Olympic games without
stoppage. The Olympic games were generally held here. Mount Olympus
was up here, which I couldn't understand.
We do actually have some records from the Olympic games and it's
sort of strange. It took a long time for us to figure out how they
did so much better than some of our modern athletes. For example, the
javelin throw that they used -- I don't know what we throw javelins
today, 160 feet or so -- there's was more than 300 feet. And we later
realized that the reason is that they used, what do you call did thing
that they attach to the hand? It's a string. And so they were thrown
with a sling. Their broad jumps, their long jump was over 40 feet. I
think the best now is around 30 something, 29.6 was held for many
years. I think somebody has broken that. Obviously the best you're
going to see is around 22 feet, but 40 feet. We now realize what they
did as well. They actually jumped using weights so that, as they
projected themselves, they throw the weights back, and that would give
them the extra momentum. Of course today we're beginning to develop
16
little gimmicks for our sports as well. The equipment has changed and
the swimming pool, the outfits that the people wear, it's unreal what
modern apparatus can do. For example, when I coached gymnastics
centuries back, there were no springs under the mat. The mat was on
the floor and floor exercise was done on the floor without a mat
actually. And so when I came back to gymnastics, I had left it for a
while, watching these people doing doubles and all kinds of various
tumbling routines. How the hell could they do that? And that's when
I found out that they actually have that extra little spring coming
out of the mats. Gimmicks like that have certainly made changes in
our sports as well.
Do any of you know the author Mitchner who wrote books like
Hawaii, very popular years ago? One of the books that he wrote was
dealing with the Olympic games. And it just was very interesting in
that he identified that, in the Olympic games later on, certain groups
such as Jews were considered more sexual because when they saw the men
in the games with the circumcision. Somehow or other it gave them a
sense that this is a group of different people. And so the nudity of
the games created certain myths around certain races or ethnic groups
for whatever that's worth.
The games, as I say, ended somewhere around the third century AD.
And picked up again, as many of you may be aware. The modern Olympic
games that started in 1896. They've made at least one good movie
about the beginnings of the first Olympic games. And it's a
fascinating film because Americans were isolated from Europe.
17
Obviously we didn't have planes or go over there very often to
participate in events. When America was invited to go to the games,
we didn't a real heavy sports tradition. The reason being that our
Protestant ministers condemned sports as a waste of time and immoral
and even the devil because people didn't work. They were out for
enjoyment. And where some of the more ivy league schools began sports
in the middle of the 18th century, by the third quarter we began to
have some but not so much in the track and field -- basketball,
football, baseball. So we didn't know much about certain elements of
track and field. The thing that struck me the most was the discus.
In Europe, the discus was thrown straight on. You didn't do the
circle, what do you call it to throw the discus. And the Americans
had no idea. They had never seen a discus, but they saw the
Discabolos (by the sculpture Myron), a
famous statue done in the fourth century, throw the discus. It
was about three times the size of a modern discus. So the Americans
produced a replica discus. And one of the Americans thought about the
style that the discus was being thrown and realized that the guy was
spinning, so they developed the spin throwing this massive discus.
When the team got to Europe and got the real discus, they were
absolutely amazed because, not only did it fly a greater distance, but
that it was so much lighter. So yes, we won the discus. The first
Olympic games held in the modern era was held in Greece. And the
Greeks insisted upon placing their major sport, which was the marathon
run, which the ending event for the games then as it is now. And the
Greeks won it. It was a great nation pride for Greece to restore
18
those games. In fact, that national pride was somewhat destroyed in
1996, 100 years after, because they did put in to get the games again
to celebrate the 100th anniversary and they were denied. And it was
placed in Atlanta in 1996. There were some strange events that did
exist in the modern Olympic games and that was the tug of war, part of
the Olympic games.
Okay. We doing a side trip to the Olympics. I've got one
minute. Back to the battle of marathon. In any case, the Persians
had to withdraw. The Spartans came in and Persians withdrew. And now
we have a period with the Greeks being aware that the Persians were
going to reappear. The days were not over. And so we will pick up
with Athens and Sparta and the rest of the Persian wars and the works
of Herodotus on Friday. And hopefully Peter is not here but maybe
somebody else will send me an e-mail to remind me to make up a
question.
---oOo---