2. Plato’s Athens

Locate the Agora, Pnyx, Acropolis, courts, gymnasia, and theaters as places where civic life happened. Use these spaces to recognize why Plato’s conversations often move between public argument, religious setting, education, and social reputation.

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Trace how ordinary male citizens made decisions in the Assembly, prepared business through the Council of 500, and filled many magistracies. Distinguish direct democracy from representative government by following who debated, voted, and carried out decisions.

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Reason through why Athens used lotteries, short terms, scrutiny, and public pay to widen participation and limit concentrated power. Connect these practices to the democratic ideal that many citizens, not only experts or nobles, could govern.

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Follow how public speakers shaped decisions before large citizen audiences in the Assembly and courts. Compare respected leadership with the Athenian fear of demagoguery, where persuasive speech could guide the city or manipulate it.

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Trace how the Delian League, founded against Persia, became an Athenian empire funded by tribute. Connect naval power, allied resentment, and imperial wealth to the political confidence and moral tensions Plato’s Athens inherited.

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See how triremes, rowers, harbors, and the Long Walls tied Athenian democracy to sea power. Reason through why poorer citizens who rowed the fleet mattered politically and why Sparta viewed Athens as a dangerous imperial rival.

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Follow the basic conflict between Athens and Sparta from the Archidamian War through Pericles’ defensive strategy. Connect the crowding behind the Long Walls and the plague to fear, loss, and distrust in wartime Athens.

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Trace the Sicilian Expedition as a dramatic case of imperial ambition, bad judgment, and catastrophic defeat. Use the episode to recognize why Athenian debates about expertise, desire, and political persuasion carried such high stakes.

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Compare the oligarchic coups of the Four Hundred and the Thirty Tyrants as attempts to replace democracy during and after wartime crisis. Recognize why questions about rule by the many, the few, or the wise were not abstract in Plato’s Athens.

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Reason through the democratic restoration after 403 BCE and the amnesty that limited revenge after civil conflict. See how Athens tried to rebuild civic trust while leaving unresolved tensions about guilt, loyalty, and justice.

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Trace how large citizen juries, selected by lot, heard cases without professional judges in the modern sense. Identify why trials in Athens were public civic performances as well as legal procedures.

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Follow how litigants used logographers, character attacks, appeals to law, and emotional persuasion in court speeches. Practice recognizing why Athenian legal culture made reputation, rhetoric, and civic identity central to justice.

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Map traditional Athenian education through reading, poetry, music, memorization, gymnastics, and moral formation. Connect paideia to the larger question of what kind of character a city produces in its citizens.

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Compare sophists such as Protagoras and Gorgias as traveling teachers of rhetoric, argument, and success in public life. Reason through why their promise to teach excellence attracted ambitious young men and worried critics of democracy.

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Trace how civic religion tied sacrifices, temples, festivals, oaths, and divine signs to public life. Recognize why asebeia, or impiety, could become a civic charge rather than merely a private religious disagreement.

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See how the City Dionysia made drama part of civic and religious life, not just entertainment. Compare tragedy and Old Comedy, including Aristophanes, as public art forms that tested leaders, myths, values, and intellectual fashions.

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Recognize symposia and gymnasia as elite social settings where education, desire, status, athletics, poetry, and argument overlapped. Use these spaces to understand why private conversation in Athens could still carry public and political meaning.

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Review this chapter with practice based on your mistakes.