HUM 2 Lecture 8: Humanities 2 - Culture of Ancient Greece and Rome - 8
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Published on 29 Jul 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Jeff Koo
Humanities 2
Culture of Ancient Greece
Fall 2019
4 units
● Archilochus
○ Wrote lyric poetry
○ 680-645
○ Using a lyre
○ Epic poetry is about remote past, Gods and heroes, wars, and origins
○ Lyric poetry, genres reflected by meter
○ Much more present and immediate genre
○ Didn’t care about tossing aside shield (Mark of cowards that no one would ever
do)
■ So offensive that it became illegal to call someone a shield dropper
■ No Homeric hero would ever
○ Fragment 22
■ Charon does not desire great Tyranny
■ First believed Archilochus was in rejection of great tyranny
■ Doesn’t say tyranny is a bad thing
● Gyges, r. 685-652
○ Reigned in Lydia
● Pheidon of Argos
○ First true tyrant
○ Difficult to date him
■ Sometimes between 8th to maybe even 6th century
● Herodotus, Ephorus, Pausanias
○ Herodotus 6.127 (5th Century)
■ Pheidon
● Established standard weights and measures for entire Peloponnese
● Displayed greatest act of hubris of any Greek when he expelled
magistrates of Olympic games and presides over them himself
○ Later historians try to add to the record
■ Sometimes embellish the record
○ Ephorus (4th Century)
■ Echoes Herodotus about Pheidon
■ Adds the Pheidon established standard coinage (But we know this was
incorrect)
■ In 4th and 5th century, coinage and weights were adjusted together
■ Standard Greek weight of a Drachma, coin created and weighs one
Drachma
■ Motive to take over games (With excerpt from Pausanias)
● Pisa was closer to Olympia, but Elis controlled the games
(Descendants of Dorian Greeks)