World History I SOL WH1.5e, f Mr. Driskell

World History I SOL WH1.5e, f Mr. Driskell

I. Drama A. The Greeks were the first civilization to have plays that would be shown in theaters. They would have large festivals to their many gods, and these plays would be performed at the festivals in order to honor the gods.

B. One of the most famous Greek playwrights was Aeschylus. He wrote the play The Persians, which is one source of our knowledge about the Persian Wars.

C. Another famous Greek playwright was Sophocles, who wrote the Oedipus trilogy of plays. Oedipus was a character who accidentally murdered his father and married his mother, and gouged out his own eyes when he discovered what had happened. Not surprisingly, the play was classified as a tragedy.

II. Sculpture A. One of the things the Greeks were very good at was building sculptures, or statues. In fact, the Greek city of Rhodes featured a giant statue of the god Helios which was declared to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. B. The greatest Greek sculptor was considered to be Phidias. He was responsible for creating the Statue of Zeus, which was another one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

III. Archimedes A. Archimedes was a brilliant Greek scientist living at a time when the Romans were coming to power. B. Archimedes most famous discovery was the law of buoyancy. He thought of the law of buoyancy while he was sitting in his bathtub. He immediately leapt up, and without putting clothes on, went running out into the streets shouting Eureka! Eureka! By the way, eureka means I have found it.

C. At one point in his life, the Greek city Archimedes was living in was attacked by the Romans. In order to defend the city, Archimedes had all of the soldiers polish their shields until they shown in the sun. Then, he had them use the shields to reflect the light of the sun onto the Roman ships, setting the ships on fire. This was called the Archimedes Death Ray. Some people, however, believe that this incident is just a legend, and never really could have happened.

IV. Hippocrates A. Hippocrates was a Greek doctor, and one of the first people to treat medicine as a science rather than a religious practice. B. Hippocrates came up with an oath that all doctors had to take, where they swore not to do harm. This became known as the Hippocratic Oath, and is still used today.

V. Architecture A. The Greeks believed in using columns to support their buildings. A column is essentially a wide pole made of stone, although the Greeks often decorated their columns. The three main types of Greek columns were Doric, Ionian, and Corinthian. The Parthenon, a famous Greek temple, was made with Doric columns.

B. You can still see the legacy of Greek columns today when you look at famous modern buildings such as the White House.

VI. Philosophy A. The world s first great philosopher was Socrates. He liked to ask questions as a way to get answers. He tried to find answers to many subjects, such as truth, justice, life, and death. In the end, the people of Athens thought he was too dangerous and they had him killed for corrupting the youth of Athens. His work lived on through his student, Plato.

B. Plato was a student of Socrates, and he put all of Socrates work down in writing. Plato also used Socrates as a character to explain his own work. Eventually, Plato created a school of philosophy. Because of where it was located, the school was called the Akademia. From this word, we get our modern words academy and academic.

C. A student of Plato at the Akademia was Aristotle. Aristotle was not only a philosopher, but also a scientist. He wrote many books, and his opinions were the definitive word in science for about 1500 years, until Isaac Newton and others disproved many of them.

VII. Mathematics A. While the Egyptians were brilliant mathematicians, they don t get as much credit as the Greeks because the Greeks did a better job of writing their work down. One brilliant Greek mathematician was Euclid, and he founded geometry. In fact, the geometry we learn in schools is called Euclidian Geometry.

B. Another Greek mathematician was Pythagoras. He discovered that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the squares of the two sides. We call this the Pythagorean Theorem.

VIII. Homer A. Homer was an ancient Greek poet who told epic poems. Epic poems are poems that are very long and tell a story. Homer was said to be blind and never actually wrote anything down, but his stories were passed down by word of mouth for generations before people started writing them down. B. Homer s first major epic poem was The Iliad. It told the story of the Trojan War, a war between the city of Troy and the cities of Greece. For a more modern take on the story, the movie Troy is a good source.

C. Homer s other major epic poem was called The Odyssey. It told of how one of the heroes of the Trojan War, Odysseus, had to make his way home over many years, encountering fantastic witches and monsters along the way. The modern movie industry owes a lot to Homer.