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Notes on video lecture:
Solon Against Political, Economic, and Moral Decline
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on March 21, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Herodotus, ancestors, Solon, slave, civic, Corinth, grapes, hunters, ideology, assembly, customs, land, 6th, entitled, poetry, vivid, Plutarch, boundary, farmers, legal, legal, social, subsistence, debt, law, horos, knights, revolution, drinking, Eupatrids, seven, hectemor
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circumstances that make a state ripe for a tyranny
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entrenched, old elite who control:
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1. most of the good         
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2. political and            processes
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this was the situation in                with Cypselus [KIP-sel-us] and his son Periander
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a paradigm of how tyranny
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background to           
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in Athens
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domination of clans who called themselves the                   
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established tight control over resources of the state
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beginning of        century BC, economic crisis
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sources of this are from later
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large class of farmers who were impoverished and in a         -bondage
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tremendous              tension
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Solon
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paradigm of       -giver
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member of the            sages
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one of the founders of the Athenian            identity
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a middle citizen
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594 BCE Solon's reforms
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sources
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account in                   
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constitution of Athens
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                's Life of Solon
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600 years after his death
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Solon's wrote his own             
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Solon
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middle citizen
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may have been a merchant who traveled widely
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this was unlikely, as he was clearly a member of he elite and they wouldn't have chosen a merchant
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but a merchant would have been able to travel from place to place and observe other peoples'               
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reforms
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widespread
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economic reforms
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                , "sixth partner" debtor
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annually, the debtor owed one sixth of his land and crops to the creditor
•
          
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boundary stone's that marked off property
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seisachtheia
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"shaking off of burdens"
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cancellation of debt
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creditors wanted this because it staved off                     
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there was the idea that land could not change hands since it belonged to your                    and your offspring, and you were just holding it temporarily
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no internal slavery
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no Athenian could hold another Athenian as a           
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from then on, slaves were only from somewhere else
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political reforms
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four property classes
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1. Pentacosiomedimnoi
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property produced 500 measures of              and other crops
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traditionally, wealthy landowners
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2. Hippeis
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300 measures
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"horsemen" or "              "
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was more expensive to outfit yourself as a knight than a hoplite
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3. Zeugitae
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"yokemen"
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200 measures
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relatively well-to-do                who could afford Hoplite armor
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4. Thetes
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"none of the above"
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                       farmers
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replacing the criteria of birth with wealth
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linked this to access to political office
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e.g. only Pentacosiomedimnoi could have top positions
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but all citizens had the right to participate in the                 
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"the council of 400"
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mentioned but unsure it existed
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allowed for social mobility
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Aristotle in the Constitution of Athens saw a dedicatory statue, said, "I dedicate this on having risen from the Thetic class to the class of knights"
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the possibility to make money an rise through the ranks
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new economic reality
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right of            intervention
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any citizen could hold another
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right to transfer a legal case from a magistrate to jury court
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how Solon promoted his reforms
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he was a poet
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in a symposium
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formalized                  party for the elite
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recitation of poetry
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I gave everybody what they are                  to, not too much, not too little
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repeatedly refers to himself as a                  stone
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or a wolf surrounded by               , fending them off
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had himself the opportunity to make himself tyranny, but passed it up
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the first three-dimension, fully            character that we have seen so far
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becomes a figure of enormous importance of Athenian                 
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later thinkers return to his ideas

Vocabulary:

eupatrid, n. [yoo-PAT-rid] member of the nobility of ancient Athens, it is likely that public office before 594 BC was in practice confined to the eupatridae and that they had a political monopoly comparable to that of other Greek aristocracies in the Archaic period, Solon's reforms, by establishing property qualifications for office, limited their power, which disappeared entirely after 580 ⇒ "In Athens, we see the domination of clans who called themselves the Eupatrids."

People:

######################### (1592-1656)
Dutch Golden Age painter who early in his career visited Rome (1616) where he had great success painting in a style influenced by Caravaggio
  • he was one of four artists from Utrecht who went to Rome at around this time, the others being Dirk van Baburen, Hendrick ter Bruggen, and Jan van Bijlert
  • in Rome, he painted "Christ Before the High Priest" in 1617
  • he became especially noted for his depiction of artificially lit scenes, receiving the nickname "Gherardo delle Notti," or "Gerard of the night"
  • following his return to the Netherlands he became a leading portrait painter
  • 1624, painted "Solon in front of Croesus"

Spelling Corrections:

tyrrany ⇒ tyranny
subsistance ⇒ subsistence

Flashcards:

a paradigm of how tyranny works
Corinth with Cypselus [KIP-sel-us] and his son Periander
who painted picture of Solon visiting Croesus
Gerhard van Honthorst, 1624

Ideas and Concepts:

Mandatory democratic participation law, via tonight's Ancient Greece class, "Solon (638-558 BC) passed a law which forced every man to side with a faction in the event of civil strife in the city, a law believed to have been inspired by his desire to see citizens, during civil unrest, to take an active role in public affairs by choosing the side they believed to be virtuous and consonant with their own principles, and to risk themselves by giving their support rather than standing back apathetically in safety, as if watching a competitive game.":
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