Golden Age of Athens, Pericles and Greek Culture | World History | Khan Academy

In other videos, we've already talked about how Classical Greece has had an immeasurable impact, not just on Western Civilization, but on civilization as a whole. In order to understand the period that we call Classical Greece, it's valuable to place it in context on a timeline.

I have significant conflicts or events that happened to the Greek world on this timeline, especially in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. In the beginning of the fifth century BCE, you have the Greco-Persian Wars, where the Greek city-states are able to fend off attack from the great Persian Empire. Then they go on the offensive, but as we exit the fifth century BCE, the city-states start fighting amongst themselves. You have Athens leading the Delian League in a fight against Sparta and their allies, which significantly weakens the city-states. It ends with Athens losing, but all of the city-states have been weakened, leaving them open to be conquered by the Macedonians, in particular Philip of Macedonia.

His son, Alexander the Great, is able to not just keep control of Greece, of the city-states, but conquer Egypt and Persia, getting all the way to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, after his death, you then have his successors, and Greece falls under the Antigonid dynasty. Eventually, as we get into the second and first centuries BCE, it goes under Roman control.

We've talked about this Classical period and all of the various contributions. We've discussed the contributions in philosophy from people like Socrates and Socrates' student Plato, and Plato's student Aristotle. But there are also significant contributions in mathematics. You have Pythagoras, who actually predates these philosophers, and he's most famous, especially to many of us, for his Pythagorean theorem. A lot of mathematics and the foundations of a lot of geometry can be traced back to him.

However, he and his followers created something of a mysticism, a religion around mathematics, and even a philosophy that would later influence some of the other philosophers we talk about, especially this ideal of ideal Platonic forms. You can imagine if you're studying perfect right triangles; there's no such thing as a perfect right triangle in the universe. These are ideas that we use in geometry, and other things in the universe are really just approximations of these.

To appreciate the philosophical side of Pythagoras, here are some quotes from him, or quotes ascribed to him: "There is geometry in the humming of the strings; there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Reason is immortal; all else mortal." Even in the 6th century BCE, we see this thread of Greek thinking putting reason at a very high level, not just trying to explain everything with pure mysticism. Although Pythagoras definitely was, and Pythagoreanism was definitely about mysticism, it was mysticism that, at its core, had mathematics and geometry.

Continuing on with significant mathematical contributions from ancient Greece, we have Euclid. We don't know all of the exact details of his birth and death, but he is the father of modern geometry. As you can see in this map here, he didn't live in what we call Greece proper today; he lived in Alexandria, a city established by Alexander the Great. This is during the Hellenistic period, where most of the territory conquered by Alexander the Great was still ruled by his successors.

Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy, establishing the Ptolemaic Dynasty in the time of Euclid. Euclid lived in that great center of learning in the arts, Alexandria, which still exists today. He is most famous for his "Elements." This is a much later printing of Euclid's elements, but you would be amazed how much of modern geometry has been described by Euclid. Even your geometry textbook can trace it back directly to Euclid's elements. Abraham Lincoln famously learned every proof in Euclid's elements in order to fine-tune his mind, so you can really view Euclid as the father of geometry.

But that's not all. There are many other contributors in philosophy and math, and this is just, once again, a sample of all of the folks who contributed. On the side of philosophy, you have Xenophon, who is another one of Socrates' students in addition to Plato. In fact, the life of Socrates we learn from the writings of Plato and Xenophon. Xenophon was also a historian who gave us some accounts of the later Peloponnesian War.

You have the famous cynic Antisthenes and his student Diogenes. Diogenes is famous for living in a barrel in Athens and somewhat insulting Alexander the Great. These cynics, which the word is derived from being dog-like, were philosophers who gave up the trappings of materialism and caring frankly about what other people thought.

As we go a little bit out of our timeline, right over here, you have Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time. But you also have contributions in the arts. Some of the most famous playwrights of ancient times include Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes. We might remember Aristophanes as being a bit of a thorn in the side of Socrates; he wrote about Socrates, but it was more of a parody.

You have contributions in medicine, such as the famous Hippocrates; the Hippocratic Oath still has an influence on modern medicine. You have some of the earliest historians we know of, like Herodotus, who famously gave us the accounts we have of the Greco-Persian Wars. A lot of what we know about the ancient Persian Empire comes from him, and you have Thucydides, who gives us accounts of the Peloponnesian War along with Xenophon.

When you see this density of arts, sciences, and learning in one place, a lot of this was centered in Athens. It makes you wonder what was going on at that time. Historians do call the period from when the Athenians were able to fend off the Persians all the way until the end of the Peloponnesian War as the Golden Age of Athens. For good reason, look at this flourishing of the arts and the sciences that developed during that period.

You might wonder what was happening in terms of government. The government of this period might be one of the longest-lasting influences. As we exit the 6th century BCE, in 506-507, you have Greek democracy taking root in Athens. In fact, the word democracy is a Greek word meaning "government by the people." Shortly after that, during the Golden Age of Athens, you start having leadership by Pericles. He was an orator, a statesman, and a general during this period, often known as the Age of Pericles.

He helped Athens invest significantly in the arts and in architecture. Some of the most iconic structures we now associate with ancient Greece were built during his time and were promoted by him. Here you have a picture of the Acropolis, which is this rock outcropping that still exists in Athens, as it likely looked during the time of Pericles in the Golden Age of Athens. You can see here in particular the most famous structure, the Parthenon, a lot of which still stands today, was constructed under the rule of Pericles.

As I mentioned, the Greek city-states get conquered by the Macedonians, but after the death of Alexander the Great, they fall under the control of the Antigonid dynasty. Eventually, as we get into the 2nd century BCE, off of this timeline, it comes under Roman control and becomes part of the Roman Empire.

However, the Roman Empire is itself significantly influenced by Greek culture: Greek mathematics, Greek architecture, Greek philosophy; and in a lot of ways, the Romans end up becoming the caretakers of much of this culture that we talk about in this video. Once you have the decline of the Roman Empire, especially the Western Roman Empire, and Europe enters into the Middle Ages, you have the Islamic world acting as a bridge for this Greek culture into the European Renaissance and eventually the Enlightenment.

So, we can trace even our modern views of science and philosophy all the way back to these Greeks. I’ll leave you with this quote from the Roman poet Horace, who wrote this around the first century BCE: "Captive Greece took captive her fierce conqueror and instilled her arts in rustic Latium." What he's saying is, even though Rome had conquered Greece, Greece’s culture took captive her conqueror and instilled Greece's arts in the rustic Latin world.