Female Status in Athens & Sparta; Greek Ideals & Expressions of Beauty

Please respond to the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:

•TWO ITEMS SELECTED--using some of the EXPLORE subjects below.

FIRST ITEM---Identify some specific aspect of one of these subjects that you find especially interesting: Female status in Athens and Sparta and Greece generally.Explain your selection.

SECOND ITEM:Identify some specific aspect of one of these subjects that you find especially interesting:D) Greek ideals and expressions of beauty in the visual arts and architecture; Explain your selection.

•ONE ISSUE DISCUSSED--Greek philosophy in the Axial Age:After reviewing the EXPLORE items under "Ancient Greek Philosophy", discuss briefly one Greek thinker or Greek school of philosophy that you found interesting and identify a specific teaching or principle of that person or school.Explain your selection. Finally, describe how the period of Greek philosophy fits into the theory of a global "Axial Age" from about 800 BC to 200 BC.Modern comparison--In a couple of sentences, compare or contrast this Axial Age with our modern age of information.

Explore

  [note:  If trouble on any links, try this:  right click on the link and "open in new window". Or, you can open another browser window and copy/paste the url into that. ]

Ancient Greek Democracy and Aesthetics:

• Chapter 4 (pp. 118-119; 124):From oligarchy to tyranny to democracy at Athens.Chapters 4 and 5 (pp. 110-111; 136-138):social structure & female status at Athens and Sparta.
• Chapters 4 and 5--Celebrating Greek ideals:Olympics and athletics (pp. 116, 138); Sappho the female poet (pp. 123-4); Pericles--Athens as the School of Hellas (Greece) (pp. 138-9); mingling realism and the ideal of beauty (pp.116-120, 125, 139-140; later style changes--pp. 160-163); Athenian Acropolis and Parthenon (pp. 140-148):Greek theater (pp. 151-156).
• British Museum’s Running Girl artifact at http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/b/bronze_figure_of_a_girl.aspx
• Philadelphia’s Penn Museum on Women and Greek athletics at http://www.penn.museum/sites/olympics/olympicsexism.shtml
• Acropolis and Parthenon:See Week 3's Instructor Insights here in the course shell.
• Theater at Epidauros (double click on images to enlarge) at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifact?name=Epidauros%2C+Theater&object=Building

Athenian Greek Philosophy and the Axial Age:

• Chapter 5 (pp. 148-151, 159-160; readings on pp. 168-173):Greek Philosophy :Pre-Socratics; Sophists; Socrates and Plato; Aristotle; (later Hellenistic schools on pp. 188-189).
• Axial Age:See useful summation at http://www.humanjourney.us/axialintro.html ; review outline athttp://faculty.tnstate.edu/tcorse/H1210revised/axial_age.htm.