Ancient Greece

Aesop Fables

Perseus & Medusia - clash of titans 

Theseus & Minotaur

Icarus

Illiad & odyssey- watch Troy

Hercules 

Archimedes 

P137 of parallel myths 

https://youtu.be/OE4VldFPUWE

Theseus Ship

Theseus and 60 soldiers from Athens left for the Island of Crete. There they sought to find the Minotaur in the Labyrinth on the island of Crete. On the way there they were attacked. 20 men died and the mast, sails and oars were destroyed. They stopped at the island of Mikonos. While there they hired 20 more men and paid for a new mast, sails and oars.

They continued their journey and landed on the island of Crete. They descended to the labyrinth. With sword, shield and spear they fought the fearsome Minotaur. It killed 20 original soldiers but eventually Theseus was able to apply the fatal blow. Theseus and his men set to sea once again on their return trip.

On the way home there was a huge storm. The storm threw 20 overboard and they drowned. The hull was cracked by rocks. They were able to make it to the island of Santorini. While there they hired 20 soldiers to return to them to Athens and paid to get a completely new hull. They set off and returned to Athens.

When they pulled back into the harbor, the only person that had been on the ship when it left and was now returning was Theseus. The top half of the ship was all replaced in Mikonos and the bottom of the ship was replaced in Santorini. Is this the same ship that left?

What beyond parts gives the ship its identity?

How much of the ship would have to remain the same?

Your cells replace every 7 years. Personality changes.

Olympics

Philosophers

Socrates

Question Everything

His method of teaching was to have a dialogue with individual students. They would propose some point of view, and Socrates would question them, asking what they meant. He would pretend "I don't know anything; I'm just trying to understand what it is you are saying", or words to that effect. This is now called the Socratic method of teaching.

Ice Cream is the best dessert. 

We would ask, what makes one dessert better than another? What qualifies as dessert? Is the worst ice cream better than the best on-ice cream dessert?

If the person can't answer those questions how can they believe their claim?

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

No such thing as Evil

Socrates believed that nobody willingly chooses to do wrong. He maintained that doing wrong always harmed the wrongdoer and that nobody seeks to bring harm upon themselves. In this view all wrongdoing is the result of ignorance. This means that it is impossible for a human being to willingly do wrong because their instinct for self interest prevents them from doing so. 

It is true that people can choose to do things they know other people think are wrong. It is even true that people can choose to do things that they believe are wrong for others while trying to benefit themselves. However, people do not choose to do things that they perceive in the moment of decision to be wrong (harmful) for themselves. Humans have a powerful instinct for benefiting themselves. 

Physical harm, emotional benefit

emotional harm, physical benefit

Why do people steal, why do people lie?

When we think we're doing something for the right reasons, can it also be wrong?

Think of something someone did that you'd consider evil, did they think it was evil?

Taught my Socrates.

What is Holy? 

Holy is what pleases God.

So is there a natural law that pleases god or does what god says is good become good, therefore is a anything good or bad if it's decided without outside influence. 

The Cave

Aristotle 

Born in Northern Greece he was a genius child who went to Plato's academy at 17 years old. There Plato taught him all kinds of skills like Math, Psychology and Politics. 

When Aristotle grew up he opened his own Academy. He rented an old outdoor wrestling arena. Instead of sitting in class his students walked with him around the gardens. The students were called 'Wanderers.'

Logic

In those times, landowners of a community would meet in the public square and they would decide issues publicly. Aristotle noticed that the best ideas didn't always win. He identified three main methods of rhetoric: ethos (ethics), pathos (emotional), and logos (logic). 

Some people argued with emotions. Something upset them or scared them so they argued from that point of view. 

Some people argued from an ethical point of view, what was right or wrong from their point of view. The problem with that is that what is right and wrong is often based on opinion and so the argument from ethos often became an argument from authority. 

Aristotle argued that the only way to debate was through logic. If you allow people to steal without consequences then theft will be common and uncontrollable. If poor people don't get the food they need then people die and starve. 

Index cards with arguments. 

Inductive vs Deductive 

Inductive reasoning is the practice of making claims from examples. For instance, one might make an inductive argument that if they pull a penny from a bag that all the coins in the bag are pennies. This may be true but it can't be fact unless someone checked all the coins in the bag.

A deductive argument would be: All pennies are bronze. Bronze is a metal. All pennies are metal.

An inductive argument would be to say: Pegasus has wings, therefore all horses have wings.

A deductive argument would say: Zeus is a god, Gods are immortal. Zeus is therefore immortal. 

An inductive argument says: A Persian killed my friend, therefore all Persians are murderers. 

Inserting assumptions vs deducting from facts

Happiness 

Aristotle taught that the secret to happiness is to have a virtuous life. To him virtue was arrived at by finding the middle grounds between two extremes. 

When it comes to the attribute of Bravery: During a battle, charging the enemy without a plan or running away? The extreme of 

Boringness Wittiness Buffoonery 

Stinginess controlled money waster

Stubbornness compromise pushover 

One day a King asked Aristotle to teach his son. His son was called Alexander.

Alexander the Great

Alexander was a very confident young man. At age 12, he and his father had encountered a horse that was deemed untamable. Alexander took a liking to the jet black horse and realized that the beast was only afraid of it's own shadow. His father told him that if he could tame the animal Alexander could keep it. So Alexander, aged 12, approached the giant horse and turned it toward the sun. Once the horse was facing the sun it was no longer afraid of its shadow. Alexander called the horse Bucephalus and would be his horse throughout his life.

This father united Greece when previously they had governed themselves as separate regions.

Philip II was mysteriously murdered. Many people think it was someone who wanted Alexander to be king because at the age of 20, this is what happened. Some suspect Alexander's mother. Alexander's mother was part of a cult. She had snakes in her bed while she slept and told Alexander than Zeus was his father, not the King. But most of all she loved her son and wanted him to be king.

Once Alexander was king he put all other eligible claimants to death including his own cousin.

Alexander kept Greece unified by violently crushing rebellions. 

He then set his sights on conquering more land. Their greatest rivals at the time were the Persian empire, so they marched east.

While in modern day Turkey he came across the Gordion Knot. It was an impossibly complicated and tight knot of rope. Local legend went that whomever could untie the knot would conquer Asia. Alexander took a look at it and after getting annoyed with it he grabbed his sword and cut the knot. It fell loose.

Alexander marched to Israel where they greeted him as a hero.

There's a story that when conquering Greeks got to Jerusalem, the high rabbi took Alexander to the temple and showed to him a prophesy in the bible that said he would be a great conqueror written 300 years ago. Daniel 8. 

Alexander's conquering of Israel is the reason the new testament was written in Greek. 

Alexander carried out sieges and conquered Egypt.

He then headed to defeat the Persians. 

Alexander won the great war of Gaugamela against their bitter rivals the Persians.

He took a Persian wife, Roxanne and wore Persian clothes to show that he was now the Persian king. Many of the Greeks took offense to this as he was adopting traditions of the people they had been fighting for years.

He conquered more and more land, marching his troops further and further east. 

He waged war with India where his horse died and he named one of the conquered cities after it.

He fought 22 battles and never lost a single one.

Eventually his men refused to march any further. They missed home and wanted to return to Greece. He sent home disabled and elderly soldiers but kept the young men. He executed soldiers who misbehaved. He then started planning an invasion of the Arabian Peninsula. 

At the age of 32 he died mysteriously. One theory is that he was poisoned. 

Was he Great?

"Through Action, a man becomes a hero,

through death, a hero becomes a legend,

through time, a legend becomes a myth

hearing myth, man takes action."

Napoleon would later go on to try and emulate Alexander the Great and Hitler would go on to emulate Napoleon. 

History is not a celebration of great people, it's a record of how we arrived here. Historical figures are not perfect beings.