Day 1 of Western Civilization

Today started our Honors Western Civilization course run by Mr. Schick. There are 3 new students who are in our class now who were not in our class before. We got a textbook for this class as well. The textbook contains a large number of pages with numerous words on each page. Therefore Mr. Schick has instructed us to leave them in the classroom in the basket under our chairs. This is very convenient as the load of things to bring to this new class is still the same. The unit one topic is Greece. Mr. Schick gave us an assignment to read pages one-hundred-eighteen through page one-hundred-twenty-six. However, this assignment was cut short due to the two hour delay we had due to ice. The next thing we did was listen to the first few slides of Mr. Schick's first presentation in the new course. All successful civilizations are usually near rivers  or other bodies of water. Examples of these are the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Indians, and the Chinese. Each of these border a body of water. They are the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, Nile river, Indus River, and Huang He River, respectively. Three 'seas' that we need to know where they are on a map are the Adriatic, Ionian, and Aegean Seas. The last fact for today was that 'Mediterranean' means 'Middle of the Earth.'

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Romans vs. Carthaginians

Today we began by finishing up the Amendments to the Constitution. We discussed the eighth amendment which dealt with the right to privacy. we continued with notes on the Romans and Carthaginians. There were three wars fought between the Romans and Carthaginians from 246-146 BC known as the Punic Wars. The Roman legions consisted of five thousand soldiers. The Roman army had heavy elite infantries. There were groups of eighty soldiers in groups called centuries which were very similar to the Greek phalanx. The first Punic War was fought from 264 to 241 BC. The war consisted of naval battles for control of the strategically located island of Sicily. The Romans were victorious in this war. Then the Carthaginian empire strikes back. The second Punic War was fought from 218 to 201 BC. The twenty nine year old Carthaginian general known by the name of Hannibal almost does the impossible and defeats Rome with a well thought out strategy. There is a good reason of why this war was the longes
Read more

Chi Cago's Guide to Ancient Rome

Etruscans came from north-central part of the peninsula metalworkers, artists, architects two foundation myths: Virgil’s Aeneid (where Aeneas escapes from Troy - sound familiar?) the story of Remus and Romulus Greeks they had many colonies around the Mediterranean Sea Romans borrowed ideas from them, such as: religious beliefs alphabet much of their art military techniques and weaponry the Latins! descendants of Indo-Europeans settled on the banks of the Tiber situated so trading ships - but not war fleets - could navigate as far as Rome, but no further a commercial port, but not susceptible to attack and... built on seven hills (esp. Palatine) many streams flowed into the Tiber there was a marshy area called the Forum,  between Palatine and Capitoline Hills Tarquin the Proud’s grandfather built the Cloaca Maxima (largest ancient drain), which channeled water into the Tiber urban legend says Washington DC was built on a swamp - but only abo
Read more

Plebeians and 'Bread and Circuses'

The plebeians were the poor group of people in society of Ancient Rome. They lived off of welfare benefits from the government which included bread and circuses. The government provided the plebeians with bread and other food and, while not taking them to an actual circus, they provided entertainment for them which is what the word 'circus' comes from in Latin. This entertainment was provided at stadiums some of which were called Circus Maximus and the famous Colosseum. In the Colosseum for example gladiator duels were held and the two men would battle to the death. Other forms of entertainment consisted of prisoners, slaves, or gladiators facing off a wild animal that had been caged, starved, and beaten for a few days. The ravenous animal would be released on an unarmed prisoner who owned debt or an armed gladiator-both of which usually lost. There was also a lot of gambling and betting going on at these events.
Read more