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               History 104A, September 26: Gold leads to Art, Philosophy, Perfection and even War.

 

               First of all, the gamers association -- I thought it was a

 

          gaming club -- going out and shooting deer or something.  The gamers

 

          association at Ohlone is holding a Texas hold em poker tournament

 

          Friday, cafeteria, September 30th, starting at 1:00.  The games start

 

          at 2:00.  The sign-ups is at 1:00 or it goes until 9:00 o'clock or

 

          until you lose all your money.  Noncash prizes only.  Proceeds to go

 

          to the hurricane fund Katrina.  If any of you are interested in

 

          playing poker, since nobody seems to have any classes on Friday

 

          afternoons.  Does anybody have a class on Friday afternoon?  I take it

 

          back.  Four of you do.  Okay.  We are preparing, coming down for the

 

          exam that is scheduled for Friday.  We have a group meeting Wednesday,

 

          and some of you still have to turn in papers from missing the last

 

          group meeting, just as a reminder.

 

               We left off with the defeat of the Persians during what was

 

          called the Persian wars in 479 BCE.  And we are now going into what

 

          has been known as the golden age of Greece.  Building economics,

 

          social life, peace, part of what we refer to as a golden age, which is

 

          going to somewhat end in about 50-60 years with the Peloponnesian

 

          wars.  Peloponnesia, if you recall, is the peninsula that Sparta is

 

          located on in southern Greece.  And this is the war between Athens and

 

          Sparta, between the land power, Sparta, and the sea power, Athens.

 

          What happens at the end of the Persian wars is the beginning of

 

          Athenian imperialism.  Athens feeling its oats, feels superior because

 

          of the defeat of Persia begins to not only about an alliance between

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          cities, but begins to force certain cities to join when at the name

 

          the Delian League, for the office like NATO, National Atlantic Treaty

 

          Organization.  It is the alliance quote/unquote of free states, not

 

          quite so free.  Fearful of Athens, as they always were distrustful of

 

          those New York liberals or San Francisco liberals, Sparta retaliates

 

          by creating a Peloponnesian league, a league of basically monarchies,

 

          aristocracies, and more the landlocked powers, although they do

 

          identify with certain colonies overseas.  During this expansion of

 

          Athens wealth booms into the city and a tremendous construction

 

          projects are undertaken, including the building of the Acropolis from

 

          wood and miner buildings to major monuments, major structures made out

 

          of rock.  And the most famous of which is the Parthenon.

 

               The Parthenon is dedicated to Sparta, Athena.  And there was

 

          supposed to be a statute in there some 80 feet high covered in gold

 

          army that was dedicated to Athena.  The Parthenon stood for a thousand

 

          years until about 1800 when Greeks went to war with Turkey.  And the

 

          Greeks kept their munitions there, and the Turks bombarded it and much

 

          of it blew up.  You can see it right behind me here on the hill --

 

          well, you can't see it too well.  My batteries are dead, up on top

 

          they're sort of faded in the background.

 

               An individual in the period of 1800 ADCE Greek declared its

 

          independence from Turkey and again war broke out and that was part of

 

          the reason for it.  Many Englishmen, romanticizing Greece, including

 

          lord Byron the poet, went to war there.  Another man, Elgin, and he

 

          proceeded to bring back to the British museum what were known as the

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          Elgin marbles which are many of the pieces of the artwork that were on

 

          the Parthenon along the edges.  Now, the Parthenon is a fascinating

 

          structure because it very much reflects the Greek attitude in life,

 

          perfection, but the image of perfection, not necessarily the reality.

 

          The Greeks looked at everything from a sort of intellectual

 

          perspective.  And the Parthenon was built in such a way that from the

 

          city, the distances between the columns looked even, the shape of the

 

          columns looked straight up and down.  In reality, mathematically, they

 

          had figured out how to create that imaging by creating different

 

          features.  The columns would buckle sort of in the middle.  The steps

 

          would be a little uneven and slightly bent, so it would look perfect;

 

          in other words, the striving for perfection and certainly during the

 

          golden age.  And that's another element that I would add to Greek life

 

          with the hubris, the fates, the polis, is the striving for perfection.

 

               The 1950 comic book heroes were perfect.  They were super men and

 

          even Batman had his perfection, maybe a little perverted with Robin,

 

          but we can't be sure.  Has anybody seen the new Batman movie yet?  Any

 

          good?  The 1950s was a period where people strived for perfection.

 

          You lived for only two groupings.  One was the working class group

 

          that were imperfect, and I'm talking the ivy league look.  You sat in

 

          a classroom like in the 1950s and everybody looked alike.  Basically

 

          everybody had crew cuts or flat tops, buttoned down shirts, and the

 

          girls had madras dress and penny loafers for men and women and that's

 

          the way you dressed.  They looked like Rich Cunningham from Happy

 

          Days/Nickelodeon again.  And the women and the working class blue

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          color group, when they went through college, they didn't go.  We have

 

          working class people today that didn't go to college.  They wore blue

 

          genes, T-shirts with cigarettes rolled up in the sleeves.  They had

 

          the long hair and sort of the Fronzerilli motorcycle jackets.  The

 

          women in that group wore pedal pushers, white sneakers, sort of like

 

          Grease with the jackets that were too big for them with the gang names

 

          on the back.  In the 1960s, and Superman we went through an era that

 

          was similar to the Hellenistic area in Greece.  We began to look at

 

          the particulars individually.  Today we see the long hair, short hair,

 

          beards, side burns, and that's just on the women.  Differences in

 

          choice and appearance.  Spiderman was not the perfect body.  He was a

 

          brooding hero, always feeling guilty, having trouble sleeping.  He

 

          didn't have that superman perfection.  And he even wound up with

 

          women, living with a woman as well.  Of course, as I said, superman

 

          was faster than a speeding bullet and don't mess around with women

 

          until basically the 1970s, but that's another story for those who know

 

          their comic book heroes.

 

               The Greeks even set the perfections of their heroes and they're

 

          Gods into a ratio so that you had a certain ratio -- two, three,

 

          seven -- anybody remember the ratio they used?  For the head, for the

 

          body, for the arm?  It was all done to create a certain level of

 

          perfection.  This was an am imagining of life.  And again goes back to

 

          what I said earlier -- well, maybe I didn't develop this.  I talked

 

          about hubris and not being as good as the Gods, and I talked about

 

          fate.  I didn't identify the difference between Greek Gods and our

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          Gods.  Our Gods are images we are supposed to adhere to.  We try to

 

          achieve the perfection of our Gods.  Our Gods are trustworthy,

 

          healthy, loyal, cheerful, obedient, and reverent.  They're all good.

 

          To the Greeks, their Gods were something above humankind.  You were

 

          not to emulate them or imitate them because that would be committing

 

          hubris.  What they did, you would not do.  If Zeus ran around with

 

          other women and turned himself into a swan or became a snake and

 

          impregnated Alexander's mother so that it was a half God, we could not

 

          therefore run around with women because that would be committing a

 

          crime of thinking that they were as good as the Gods.  So it was not

 

          looking up to them in that sense.  They simply existed, which is

 

          difficult again for many of us to understand.  And so that perfection

 

          of the Parthenon or the attempt at making an imaging of perfection was

 

          that same imaging that existed in Greek society.

 

               During most of this golden age in the building and development

 

          the council, the man who reflect Athenian democracy was Pericles who

 

          we have at least a report of his words defending and identifying what

 

          democracy was all about.  Pericles received a lot of advise from his

 

          mistress who was educated and well read.  She was not Greek.  Greek

 

          women, as I said, were to be in the homes bearing children.  Pericles'

 

          mistress Aspasia A-S-P-A-S-C-I-A I think was a Persian and of the

 

          class of high class prostitutes.  She was a Geisha girl in a sense

 

          like in Japan, highly educated, well dressed, or what we call I guess

 

          in some cities, high paid escorts.  Yes, prostitution, the oldest

 

          profession has existed since Lilith as we talked about earlier in the

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          semester.

 

               The Athenians, as I mentioned, created an educational system that

 

          pretty much allowed the parents to dictate what the education would

 

          be.  And there was this conflict that was occurring in the background

 

          with Sparta.  In the year 43l BCE Athens and Sparta went to war.  That

 

          war was devastating for lots of Greeks because of the allied cities.

 

          The Spartans pretty well devastated the Athenian army, but Athens had

 

          its walls and could hide in its city; however, at around 429 BCE a

 

          plague broke out, perhaps the bubonic plague, wipes out a large

 

          portion of the city and within some time even killing Pericles, the

 

          counsel of Athens.  Yet Athens continued to hold behind the wall of

 

          the city and the Spartans had control of the outside carry.  The

 

          Spartans decided to build ships to cut off the trade that was coming

 

          into Athens.  And by 404 BCE, a war for almost 30 years, the Athenians

 

          finally fell to the Spartans.  The Spartans were magnanimous in the

 

          fact they didn't destroy Athens or didn't burn it to  the ground or

 

          occupy it for very long.  What they do was set up a government of

 

          Athenians who were favorable to the Spartan philosophy.  They created

 

          a puppet government, if you will.  It was, at this time, that a man

 

          named Socrates ran into trouble.

 

               Now understand that many times in the books you'll read that

 

          Socrates was a free thinker, that he believed in promoting democracy

 

          and that was this opposition to the Spartan government, that he was a

 

          sophists.  None of that is actually valid.  Socrates we have some idea

 

          of what his philosophy was from his best known student, Plato.  He

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          believed in a republic which was a system where an elite group ruled

 

          and made the decisions for everyone else because they were

 

          philosophers, philosopher kings.  And it was a caste system, not an

 

          elected democratic structure.  And when he had students around him,

 

          when he questioned people in his Socratic method, he was leading them

 

          into a direction that we're going to talk about more when we discuss

 

          Plato, a direction of identifying the superiority of understanding

 

          wisdom, beauty, and justice.  He did not believe in the Athenian Gods,

 

          the Greek Gods.  And that certainly was detrimental to the ruling

 

          class now in Athens who use the Gods to control the people in the

 

          sense perhaps Carl Marx referred to it, religion is the opium of the

 

          people.  And in a church state where the state dictates to be the

 

          religious control, they can dictate to you your method of life through

 

          the religion, and pretty much that's what had now gone on in Athens

 

               In 399 Socrates was brought to trial for basically endangering

 

          the morals of minors, questioning the establishment.  And as I

 

          indicated, he was convicted and ordered to take hemlock.  And the

 

          jury, as I indicated, of 501 people gave him the death penalty.  He

 

          had the option of giving an alternative.  And he gave the option, the

 

          alternative that was to give him a pension for life.  He said he had

 

          lived his life, he was 70 years old, and he deserved a pension.

 

               The period of 399 to about 353 is still some development, some

 

          art, and much more creative kind of perfection art in Greece.  I

 

          mentioned one of the most famous statues from the period the

 

          Discabolos, the discus thrower by a man named Myron showing movement,

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          showing the perfection of the body, the Hercules with the steroid

 

          looking body that they did during this period of time.  But the Greek

 

          cities still prevail, although once again, somewhat under the

 

          dominance of Sparta at this time.  Athens maintained its economic

 

          trade and yet had more of a conservative kind of government.

 

               But in the north of Greece, in a place called Macedonia, there

 

          was a new group arising.  And that was the Macedonians, under Philip

 

          of Macedonia and later his son Alexander.  But before I move onto

 

          that, I do want to talk a little about the culture of Greece and some

 

          of the philosophies, if you will, of ancient Greece including Plato

 

          and Aristotle.  I'm going to cut the computer for a second because I

 

          want to use the board here.

 

               The Greeks again perhaps famous for philosophers because of their

 

          belief in individuality, allowing free thought, emphasizing free

 

          thought, have come up with every kind of development almost that we

 

          have today including the atom theory.  Again, it's one of those

 

          periods in history where the individual was allowed to speculate.

 

          Obviously, we don't see much development in the way of science, what

 

          we would refer to them as armchair philosophies.  Another, Aristotle

 

          but quite different in philosophy, does develop on what we might call

 

          the beginnings of science in his approach, which is, some

 

          experimentation, some investigation, and some rational thought and

 

          rational interpretation.  Maybe I should deal with the Greek Gods

 

          first if I can remember them.  Maybe you can help me here.  Who are

 

          some of the Greek Gods?

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          A    Zeus.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  And Zeus was the chief God, the head God.  And

 

          the Roman name?

 

          A    Jupiter.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  The 12 Olympians.  Zeus, Jupiter, identified with

 

          the sun basically.  The oak tree was identified with Jupiter -- I'm

 

          sorry, with Zeus and Jupiter.  Zeus had two twin brothers basically or

 

          they looked like him and it was often difficult to tell the

 

          difference.  Who were they?  Who were the basic brothers who looked

 

          like him and when we found statues, we had trouble telling who they

 

          were?  One was the God of the sea.  And his name?  What was the Roman

 

          name for the God of the sea?  Poseidon is the Greek name.  And the

 

          Roman name -- I'm surprised you didn't pick up on -- Neptune.  They

 

          were often made looking very much alike, but Zeus had a lightning bolt

 

          that he threw, where Neptune threw the trident, which is a pitch folk

 

          with three points to it.  And of course the other God identified as

 

          part of that trinity was Hades, God of the underworld, whose name for

 

          the Romans was Pluto.  Hades reflected wealth.  By way, Neptune was

 

          identified with the bull and horses, but guarded the sea.  Zeus'

 

          wife -- what was her name?  Hera.  And the Roman name for Hera was

 

          Juno.  She was the God of marriage despite the fact she had trouble

 

          with her own and was identified with the God, the mother Goddess also

 

          with the cow.  Any of the other Gods you can think of?

 

          A    Athena.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  We mentioned earlier Athena was a Goddess of

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          wisdom.  She also gave the olive and she was identified as a warrior

 

          God.  And as Goddess of wisdom, what animal symbolized Athena?

 

          A    An elephant.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  An owl.  Many years ago I ran a chess program at

 

          a Chinese school called The Wisdom School.  I developed a logo using

 

          the owl.  But I found out that the owl is sort of an evil symbol to

 

          the Chinese.  It's not that symbol of wisdom, so they said it was

 

          okay, but you have to be careful on those things.  What is Athena's

 

          name in Roman Gods?  Minerva without my New York R at the end,

 

          Minerva.  Goddess of beauty?  Did you mention your own name?  I

 

          thought so.  Goddess of beauty?  Come on.  What's the Roman name for

 

          the Goddess of beauty?  You know this one I'm sure.  We're not

 

          studying any of these things in your readings?

 

          Q    Is it Venus?

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Yes.  Venus is the Roman name for the Goddess of

 

          beauty.  Now, you know, yes.  But the Greek name for the Goddess of

 

          beauty is Aphrodite.  Messenger of the Gods?  Flew around with wings

 

          on his heels?

 

          A    Hermes.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Hermes.  And the Greek or Roman name or Hermes

 

          was?  Mercury.  How many have we got?  Some of you are writing them

 

          down.  How many have we got so far?

 

          A    Four.

 

          A    Seven.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Seven.  God of war, that's one that everybody

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          knows too?

 

          A    Aries.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Aries is the God of war.  The Roman name is?

 

          Women are from Venus and men are from --

 

          A    Mars.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Mars.  The God of the smith, the God of fire, the

 

          God that loved Venus and who was married to her but she played Sex In

 

          the City.  The Roman name was Vulcan?

 

          A    Hephstus.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Hephstus, the God of fire, smith of the Gods.

 

          That should be 10?

 

          A    Nine.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Nine.  The God of male beauty and male wisdom?

 

          This God had body and mind, the Greek concept that you have to have a

 

          sound mind and a sound body?  And interestingly, the same name in both

 

          Greek and Roman?  Apollo.  Goddess of the hunt?

 

          A    Athena.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Athena was the God of wisdom and wore armor; is

 

          that correct?  The Goddess of the hunt, the Roman name was Diana and

 

          the Greek name was Artemis.  That's from the three musketeers.  I'm

 

          missing one.  Danged if I can figure out which one I'm missing.  Okay,

 

          we've got 11 of 12 anyway.  There were also some minor deities and

 

          they often fought among themselves, as we can see in the Trojan war.

 

          And they took sides in that war.

 

               We started to talk about philosophy.  And the first Greek

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          philosopher that we deal with generally is writing in the -- just

 

          coming out of the just ages, the archaic sage and his name is Thales.

 

          He's often described as an absent minded professor, one of those

 

          nerds, constantly thinking.  And they talk about him one day staring

 

          at the stars trying to figure out the meaning of life and walking

 

          along and fell into a well.  It is also said that because of his study

 

          of the stars, he made a lot of money.  We could tell when various

 

          crops would be good.  We could predict good weather, poor weather,

 

          probably a meteorologist if you will.  And so he knew when to tell

 

          people when to put in large sums of money.  And he apparently became

 

          extremely wealthy, made use of it practically.  He talked about how

 

          the universe had originated, observing how a large part of water

 

          played in nature and how silt developed in the water and standing

 

          water.  And he concluded that all life originated in water.  Now,

 

          perhaps it came from outer space on meteors and landed in the water

 

          and therefore we have a so called surface now on tonight.  And he

 

          believed that all forms of life would return to water.  He believed

 

          that Earth itself rested on an ocean like a floating block of wood and

 

          that the heavenly bodies consisted of burning ground and that the moon

 

          received its life from the sun.  Now, remember this is in the sixth

 

          century BCE, some of it not quite as accurate.  We don't really -- as

 

          the Earth lie on an ocean, but close in the sense of the magma and the

 

          floating and certainly the floating apart of Earth in early millions

 

          of years ago.

 

               Again, in the early 16th century another Greek philosopher and

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          I'll spell this one A-N-A-X-I-M-A-N-D-E-R.  Anaximander, he wrote a

 

          book called Nature.  He believed that the first principles of life

 

          were infinite and that it embodied all forms of matter.  In other

 

          words, he sort of saw it as the big bang thesis, that the heaven and

 

          Earth all had their beginnings at that time and they will return.  And

 

          also talked about the rough concept of evolution.  I'm not sure you

 

          need to know all these names by any means, but to get a feel for

 

          Thales, yes, Pythagoras, yes, but some of these others, like Heracles

 

          believed that fire was the primary form of life.  Pythagoras, of

 

          course you know, of course, because of the Pythagorean theory.  He

 

          developed in 474 BC and he migrated to a Greek colony.  His philosophy

 

          fell into mathematics and science and he organized it to religion.  He

 

          belonged to a discipline sort of like monks in the medieval system.

 

          His whole basic system was pretty much based on numbers.  We developed

 

          geometric theorems and he felt that a number held its place like for

 

          them -- water, fair, air -- held for the physicists.  Numbers were the

 

          primary methods or the numbers of the expression and he dealt through

 

          numbers.  We believed that the Earth was a sphere, round, and he

 

          studied the movement of the Earth and he was a firm believer in the

 

          transmigration of souls, the transmigration of souls.  What is the

 

          transmigration of souls?  What's the word we use for it?  Anybody

 

          here?  Anybody ever hear of transmigration of souls?  Or our next

 

          governor's sister, being Warren Betty or Beatty.  He's saying that

 

          he's going to run against Arnold.  Wouldn't that be a first, Hollywood

 

          stars running against each other?

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          A    Shirley McClain.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Who is famous for her believe in reincarnation.

 

          Transmigration of souls is reincarnation.  And he believed that God

 

          was identified with one, the number one was God.  Again, one of those

 

          earlier philosophies.

 

               Xenophanes -- matter is indestructible, the universe always

 

          existed and studied fossils.  He believed that the God's crimes were

 

          shameful and that the stories were false, that Gods had to be

 

          basically good.

 

               Well, I've got about five minutes.  I think I'm going to jump

 

          ahead -- excerpt Democritus.  Democritus was the one who came up with

 

          the concept of atoms moving around an empty space and they were all

 

          part and made up of these atoms, these infinitesimal individual units

 

          called atoms.  Again, we're talking about the period 2500 years ago.

 

               Plato, fourth century -- basically again, in his republic and

 

          other writings, we delineate a concept.  To Plato, the universe was

 

          created out of basic form and it continued to develop and unfold.

 

          This form was not reality; it was the beginning of reality.  If you

 

          will, it was unreal.  And with this form's expansion, we saw people

 

          who were becoming an animal, becoming some of whom had more knowledge

 

          of what Plato called the universals.  Here we had particulars that

 

          came into being as a becoming and particulars, the parts.  The

 

          universals that a few people could understand were wisdom, perfection,

 

          beauty, justice.  In our world, we had the imperfect of wisdom,

 

          beauty, and justice, but a few individuals who were to become the

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          philosopher kings could understand that perfection.  So Plato, we know

 

          this is a table.  We know it because somewhere in these universals

 

          there is an image of a table.  And so we understand what a table is.

 

          We understand what a cat is.  But they're not perfect.  You see this

 

          is that Greek sense again of that perfection that we can't achieve.

 

          But some people get closer to it.  They understand it better.  And

 

          these are the people that come out of these cogs, these wheels, these

 

          spokes that are going to be the rulers of society.  This is reality.

 

          This is what is.  And for Plato, in a sense, one might say this is

 

          God.  And there are people that understand God on a higher level.

 

          They will be the rulers.  They may come out of the working class.

 

          They may come out of the military class.  You go out and test to find

 

          those who understand it better.  It was sort of like a Mandarin system

 

          where, in China, they went around and tested the people in the

 

          villages to see if they could study in the universities and become

 

          part of society.

 

               Again, to Plato, the universals you cannot understand.  Most of

 

          us can't achieve this knowledge.  Most of us are in the world of

 

          becoming.  We see the elephant.  We may understand it.  But the men in

 

          the cave feeling the trunk, feeling the backside, feeling the tusks,

 

          will put together something else, but there may be someone who has a

 

          better understanding of what that elephant is in reality.  And

 

          Aristotle, although a student of Plato, was just the opposite.  That's

 

          what we'll finish up on on Wednesday.

 

                                        ---oOo---

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