A SOARING SPIRIT: TimeFrame 600—400 B



A SOARING SPIRIT: TimeFrame 600—400 B.C.

Chapter 1: “Persia At the Crest,” pp. 9—38.

Chapter 2: “The Hellenic Unfolding,” pp. 39—95.

Chapter 3: “Dawn Of the Romans,” pp. 96—141.

Chapter 4: “Enlightenment In the East,” pp. 142—167.

CHAPTER 1: “PERSIA AT THE CREST”

1. The Persian empire reached its maximum extent soon after 522 B.C. under the rule of this leader. ______________________

2. This transportation route stretched nearly 1700 miles from Susa to Sardis in Lydia, and helped to hold together the Persian Empire. _________________________

3. According to Herodotus, when this future Persian King’s grandfather heard a prophecy that his daughter’s son would grow up to threaten his empire he ordered his chief steward to carry the newborn into the wilderness and slay him — when the steward Harpagus failed to follow through on the assigned task the Median monarch served up the steward’s own son for dinner. ___________

4—5. This city’s seven storied ziggurat was described in the Bible as the Tower of Babel. _______________ This, rather than the ziggurat, was regarded by the Greeks as one of the world’s seven wonders. __________________________

6. The Lydian monarch and rival of Cyrus’s Persia, he was told by the sibyl at Delphi that if he should go to war he would destroy a great empire — the empire he ultimately destroyed was his own. __________________

7. The twelve signs of the zodiac, which divide the heavens into thirty-degree segments, were a concept developed by this civilization. ________________________

8. The death of this king in 562 B.C. after a four-decade reign was one factor in Babylonian decline. ______________________________

9. The chief god in the Babylonian pantheon. _______________

10. The ceremonial Persian capital established by Darius I. _____________________

11. The kingdom in which gold coins of uniform size and value were first struck. _______________

12. The Persian prophet who helped to transform Ahuramazda from but one of several important nature gods into the Wise Lord, creator of heaven and earth, the all-seeing and all-powerful supreme deity. _______________________

13. The elite corps of the Persian military. ________________________________

14. True or False: The Persian royal messenger service was so efficient that two and a half millennia later, the U.S. Post Office would base its motto on Herodotus’s words about the Persian messengers — “Nothing stops these couriers from covering their allotted stage in the quickest possible time — neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness.” __________

CHAPTER 2: “THE HELLENIC UNFOLDING,”

A SOARING SPIRIT, TIMEFRAME 600-400 B.C.

1-2. The Greek battle formation, in which infantrymen marched and fought as one. _____________ The individual Greek infantryman. ___________________

3. The long Greek struggles between Athenian and Spartan. _______________________________________

4. The narrow Greek plain on which a Greek force led by Miltiades defeated the invading Persians in 490 B.C. — according to Herodotus 6,400 Persians were killed at a loss of only 192 Athenians. ________________________

5. The decisive naval battle of the Persian Wars, the Greek admiral Themistocles inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Persian Xerxes. _____________________

6. The individual Greek city state, each was independent. _________________

7-8. The twelve main gods of the Greek pantheon were thought to reside atop this Macedonian mountain. ___________________________ The supreme deity, king of the gods and defender of human liberty. ___________________

9. Goddess of wisdom and the legendary founder of Athens. _________________

10. Founded in 776 B.C. at Elis on the Peloponnesian peninsula, these games were the most famous religious festival of the Hellenic world — they brought together Greeks every four years for twelve centuries. __________________________

11. A form of Greek government in which power was vested in a single, absolute ruler. _______________________

12. The state celebration from which tragic drama emerged. ___________________________________________

13. The process by which the Athenian assembly could vote those who had betrayed the public trust into exile for ten years by writing the name of the accused on clay tablets, or ostraca. ___________________________

14. The Greek patron saint of metalworking. ________________________________

15. According to Herodotus, this Persian leader ordered the Hellespont chastised with 300 lashes and branded with hot irons after a storm destroyed the pontoon bridges over the famous channel as he prepared to move his army from Asia into Europe in order to invade Greece in 480 B.C. __________________

16. The high hilltop in Athens, in the fifth century B.C. it would become the site for the Parthenon, the magnificent temple to the city’s protecting deity. _________________

17. Spread beneath the Parthenon, it was the civic center of ancient Athens. __________________

18. The fraternal Greek get-togethers that typically lasted long into the night, with the wine and the conversation both flowing freely. ___________________

19. “Man,” he claimed, “is the measure of all things,” eloquently highlighting the skeptical humanism he shared with fellow Sophists. ________________________

20. The Sicilian city where the Athenians suffered crushing defeat in 413 B.C.; it would be the decisive battle of the Peloponnesian Wars. ____________________

Name That Greek

Match the famous Greeks listed below with the appropriate lettered identifications that follow.

21. Homer ______________

22. Pythagoras ______________

23. Thales of Miletus ______________

24. Heraclitus ______________

25. Sappho ______________

26. Solon ______________

27. Dracon ______________

28. King Leonidas ______________

29. Pericles ______________

30. Thucydides ______________

31. Hippocrates ______________

32. Herodotus ______________

33. Phidias ______________

34. Aeschylus ______________

35. Sophocles ______________

36. Euripides ______________

37. Aristophanes ______________

38. Democritus of Abdera ______________

39. Lysander ______________

40. Pindar ______________

a. The Spartan monarch who defended Greece from Persian invasion in 480 B.C. at the narrow pass of Thermopylae.

b. The most famous historian of the Peloponnesian War, he served Athens as a general during that conflict.

c. The legendary, blind Ionian eighth-century poet, he was the author of both the Iliad and Odyssey.

d. The poetess of love from the island of Lesbos.

e. Often referred to as the “Father Of History,” he portrayed the war between the Persians and the Greeks in epic terms.

f. Early philosopher who theorized that nothing existed but particles of matter, particles that he referred to as atoms, and that all else was illusion.

g. The supreme practitioner of fifth-century B.C. Attic comedy.

h. He suggested that the world was in continuous flux, that one could not step in the same river twice because the waters were ever flowing past him.

i. The youngest of the great tragedians, he moved away from a focus on the gods to the exploration of character.

j. A pioneer of medical science from the island of Kos, his oath to honor the profession is still intoned by doctors today.

k. The Spartan commander to which the Athenians surrendered in 404 B.C.

l. Poet who celebrated in his odes the Greeks’ victories in the Persian Wars and the victories of athletes at Olympia.

m. The first known Greek philosopher, he contended that the basic substance of the universe was water, from which all life sprang.

n. As an early Athenian magistrate, he laid down a civil code with penalties so extreme that his very name entered the language as an eponym for harsh punishment.

o. The famous sculptor of fifty-century Greece, amongst his creations was the 40-foot-high statue of Athena displayed in the Parthenon.

p. Born on the island of Samos, he developed a famous geometric theorem and held that all creation was locked into a system of numbers comparable to the tones of a musical scale, the music of the spheres.

q. The most traditional of the three Athenian tragic playwrights, he had fought as a soldier at both Marathon and Salamis, and chose to highlight this, rather than his success as a dramatist, on his tombstone.

r. His celebrated eulogy for Athenians slain in the Peloponnesian war became the most famous fifth-century statement of civic faith.

s. Greek dramatist with 123 plays to his credit, his crowning artistic achievement was probably the Theban trilogy: Oedipus the King, Oedipus At Colonus, and Antigone.

t. As chief archon, the state’s highest official, this Athenian had drawn up a new constitution and launched a program of social reform.

CHAPTER 3: “DAWN OF THE ROMANS,”

A SOARING SPIRIT, TIMEFRAME 600-400 B.C.

1. Rising to increased importance midway through the first millennium B.C., they inhabited a great many small, rural enclaves strewn over territory stretching 1600 miles from central Europe to the Iberian Peninsula.

2. The most important of the seven hills that surrounded Rome. _________________

3-5. The legendary founders of Rome, these twins were said to have been sired by Mars, the god of war, and suckled by a she-wolf. ________________ and ___________. The traditional founding date of Rome. _____________________________

6. Early Rome would be profoundly influenced by this civilization just across the Tiber River, the most advanced and powerful of its day in Italy. _______________________

7. The divining practice, still utilized by the Romans much later in the period of the empire, of attempting to foretell the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals. ______________

8. The character trait that the Romans admired most, it called for a sober, dignified, and well-grounded approach to life. _____________________

9. According to tradition, in 509 B.C. Roman patricians revolted, deposed this king, and along with him the entire institution of the monarchy, and the Etruscan families that had dominated life — a special form of republic became the replacement. ____________________________________

10. The fifth-century B.C. battle between the plebeians and the patricians, in which the former fought for political equality and economic justice against their wealthier rivals. __________________________________

11-13. In the revamped government, plebeian power rested most clearly in this new representative body. ____________________________________ The officers elected annually by this assembly, who by their veto power could block any act of the patrician consuls. ________________ The way in which the assembly measured public opinion. _______________________

14. The newly-codified Roman laws of 450 B.C. _________________________

15. The legendary Roman warrior who halted an Etruscan invasion at the Tiber in about 500 B.C. and then, mission completed and bridge destroyed behind him, leapt into the river and died a martyr. ____________________________

16. The name given by Romans to Celts. _______________

17. This metal, new to western Europe, became the key to Celtic culture. __________

18. The powerful Celtic priests, their name may be derived from roots meaning “knowledge of the oak.” _______________

19. The modern name for the Greek trading post established around 600 B.C. on the French Mediterranean coast; it led to commercial contacts between the Greeks and Celts throughout the Rhone Valley. ________________________

20. Here, thought Celts, was the dwelling place of the soul. _________________

21. The mythic Greek sculptor who learned to breathe life into stone. ________________________

22. The Pythian games were held at this sacred Greek site. ________________

CHAPTER 4: “ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE EAST,”

A SOARING SPIRIT: TIMEFRAME 600-400 B.C.

1. This Chinese dynasty had wrested power from the Shang around 1100 B.C.; by the eighth century it had declined to such an extent that China disintegrated into hundreds of competing states. ____________

2. Learning from the nomads of the Eurasian steppes to the north and west, the Chinese introduced this to their battlefields in the fifth century B.C. ______________

3. Born in 552 B.C. in Lu, a small central state, he was from an aristocratic family imbued with nostalgic reverence for the golden age of the Zhou — far from counseling his disciples to adapt themselves to the needs of rulers, however, he asked them to look critically at their society and those who commanded it. _________________________

4. This great anthology of Chinese ballads dated back to the tenth century B.C. ___________________________

5. Historical works brought together in the fifth century B.C., they covered a period stretching from 722 B.C. to 481 B.C. — some disciples would later claim that Confucius himself was the compiler. ___________________________________________

6. Statements attributed to Confucius are collected in this volume. ______________

7. The answer given by Confucius when asked to state the single principle that should govern one’s conduct in life. _______________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________.

8-9. Literally “Followers of the Way,” these Chines mystics called for a retreat to nature and to the primitive state of society, pictured as an idyllic rural community where there was no place for envy or exploitation. ______________________ The legendary founder of this movement, he was said to have been a contemporary of Confucius who abandoned the pursuit of power for a life of meditation. __________________

10. The alluvial plain of the upper Indus River. __________________________

11. By 600 B.C., this plain was the acknowledged heartland of Indian civilization. _______________

12. The sacred verses that stretched back to the heroic, tribal days of the Aryans, they offered religious sanction for the division of Indian society into hierarchical castes. _____________

13. Meditative scriptures that pondered the riddles of human existence, they taught that each person’s soul harbored a spark of the divine, a spark that sought union with the universal essence, or brahman — they were disseminated by ascetic holy men and injected a strong ethical strain into Indian religion, if not the subversive potential to challenge the caste system. ___________________________

14. Born into the Brahman caste around 560 B.C. in the kingdom of Kosala, he would become one of the most influential individuals in the history of world religion. _________________________________

15. According to legend, the number of signs seen by Buddha before he recognized that he must understand human suffering. ________________

16. Literally the “Tree Of Wisdom,” it was the great pipal tree at Gaya under which Siddhartha vowed to remain sitting in his thirty-sixth year until he was able to solve the riddle of suffering.

17. The literal translation of the “Buddha.” ____________________________

18. The sanctuary near the modern city of Varanasi where Buddha met the five fellow ascetics who had earlier spurned him and preached his first sermon. ________________

19-23. The Four Noble Truths Of Buddhism:

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

24-31. The Eightfold Way of Buddhism suggested that to eliminate suffering, one had to adhere to 8 strictures. List these:

______________________________________

______________________________________

______________________________________

______________________________________

______________________________________

______________________________________

______________________________________

______________________________________

32. Those who followed the Eightfold Way hoped to achieve this, literally meaning the “blowing out,” as of a candle — the escape from the whole sorrowful cycle of human existence into oblivion. _________________________

33-34. By articulating his ideas, Buddha set in motion the Wheel of the Law, or _____________. The five ascetics to whom he preached his first sermon made up his original monastic order, or __________________.

35. The founder of Jainism, he was born around 540 B.C. and, like the Buddha, renounced his privileged status as a young man to search for spiritual enlightenment. ______________________

36. Jains taught that the soul was present in all living things in the form of these tiny particles; the only way to free one’s soul and achieve salvation was to renounce destruction of any kind, because even seemingly innocent actions might harm these particles that resided all around. _______________

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