Greatness of Athens

I. Democratic empire

A. Defeat of Persian invasion

1. Athens forms Delian League

B. Democracy and Empire

1. Delian League becomes instrument of Athenian power

2. Acropolis rebuilt

3. challenges Sparta for dominance in Greece

II. Athenians' claim to greatness

A. Pericles's funeral oration (as rendered by Thucydides)

1. Athens is the ideal polis

2. Athenian ideals (according to Pericles):

III. Flowering of Art and Drama

A. sculpture: beauty of the ideal

1. Doryphoros ("Spear-bearer") by Polyclitus

2. vital balance

B. architecture

1. Parthenon on the Acropolis

2. vital balance

C. tragic drama

1. Attempts to reveal the human condition and encourage religious sensibility

2. plot involves a great man who is ruined by his own greatness

a. example of Oedipus Rex

3. moral balance