the year is 1687 the people of Athens are under siege unknown to them enemy Cannon line of Hill overlooking one of the world's most magnificent buildings the Parthenon tragically the Parthenon had been used to store of all things [Music] gunpowder one of the most beautiful buildings ever conceived it was almost completely destroyed for 2,000 years the Parthenon has stood overlooking Athens recalling a remarkable moment in history the Golden Age of Greece [Music] [Music] the city states of ancient Greece were all highly competitive but there was one state that expected to win and usually did it was the powerful brilliant daring city of Athens [Music] during the fifth century BC Athens grew more powerful as many CI States and Islands turned to her for protection from their Mutual enemy the Persians and so the Athenian Empire was born the Acropolis in Athens represents a pinnacle of achievement in the history of Western civilizations an extraordinary out pouring of creative Excellence that derives from one century the fifth century before Christ these magnificent buildings symbolize the collective inspiration of a people with a passion for Perfection the historian plutar wrote so the buildings Rose as imposing in their sheer size as they were inimitable in the grace of their outlines since the artists tried to excel themselves in the beauty of their workmanship each of them Men supposed would take many generations to build but in fact the entire project was carried through in the high summer of one man's Administration that one man was Pericles leader of the Athenians Pericles built the Parthenon to house and honor the deity to whom the city was dedicated the goddess Athena in her hand was a 6-ft statue of Victory adorned in gold and ivory Athena soared 39 ft High Pericles came to power in 461 BC Athens flourished as few cities ever have Pericles paid for the magnificence of all of Athens out of taxes collected from other city states in return for protection ours is no work a day City no other provides so many Recreations of the spirit our love of what is beautiful does not make us soft we regard wealth as something to be properly used rather than as something to boast about to me it's wonderful that in the Age of Pericles they would take what was a huge amount of their gross national product and pour it into buildings into a great Parthenon into architecture that has influenced the history of architecture in the West for centuries Beyond with the Acropolis and the parnon were saying to the world was that we are Athens we are the top we have this goddess whom we rever who looks after us under all circumstances and for whom we are going to build the most magnificent enclosure we can imagine and it was a mark both of respect to the goddess and a way of showing the other Greeks that in this constant struggle this constant competition Athens was the best the city was completed within 50 years designed by the finest architects in Greece and adorned by the greatest Greek sculptor fidus it was a Workforce that brought together the best Craftsmen from all over the Mediterranean Athens buzzed with new energy and most of all new ideas evening parties were occasions not to just watch pretty girls dance or to get drunk but to talk the star guest would be the brilliant philosopher Socrates usually all male Affairs there was one interesting exception foreign women seized in war often became captive entertainers one particularly clever and beautiful corisan was a spaser Pericles fell deeply in love with her and shocked Everyone by marrying her even Socrates was said to love her company it must have been mindblowing to be part of that atmosphere of the fifth century in Greece so much was being invented that we have inherited we think now in terms of Greek words philosophy and rhetoric and politics and geography and biology all of these things were just being discovered and discussed everyone was questioning these were the first people to calculate the position of the earth moon and stars and the first to conceive of the atom the classic age of Greece produced some of the world's greatest and most original Minds The philosophers Socrates Plato and Aristotle the mathematician Pythagoras the poet pindar the playwrights escalus Sophocles and Aristophanes the historian Herodotus and the father of medicine hypocrates these were some of the greatest Minds that have ever lived and they were all alive in this small town more or less at the same time in Athens Pericles presided over the world's first democracy although only the 30,000 male citizens had the vote all officers of the city were elected and their deliberations were held in public it was an idea that outlived the Kings and tyrants of succeeding centuries to emerge again in the democracies of the modern world our founding fathers knew Latin and Greek they read the authors they understood the classical tradition of a rule of law against Terr I never ceased to be amazed at the originality of the Greeks in inventing really democracy as we know it it didn't exist before they were tyrants and tribal leaders but public participation in governance in decision making on the part of citizens started really with the fifth century in Athens particularly under this extraordinary leader Pericles there was an opportunity for citizens to participate it wasn't we they everyone had to do it everyone had to give part of their time to be experienced in government and you had majority rule you had public debate everybody got into the ACT Athenian success in art and diplomacy in sports and in government was motivated by their desire for excellence ultimately it was a spiritual commitment this passion for Perfection Acropolis it is not a house of a governor it is not an administrative Center and it is not a shopping center as well it was the Temple of aena of a goddess they wanted to serve they wanted to create something above them elves above their height it wasn't like a modern Church it wasn't a place where you would go in and worship quietly the sacrifices were performed outside in part for hygienic reasons after all if you're slaughtering a bull you don't want it on the floor of your temple but also because the smoke had to rise to the gods and in the meantime since the Divinity was thought to dwell in his or her home you didn't want to get too close you wanted to maintain a kind of differential or respectful distance lest in advertently you might do something wrong and get somebody very powerful really angry at you and that's always a bad [Music] [Music] idea in 1928 off the northern coast of the Greek island of yuboa in the aian sea a small boat was looking for sponges the divver saw a strange shape benath the sand he had discovered a classical Greek statue that had sunk with the ship carrying it nearly 2,000 years before many now believe this rare bronze was Poseidon Greek god of the sea the Magnificent statue was one of hundreds stolen in the first and 2 centuries ad by the Romans Gods like Poseidon were thought to have a very real power over the lives of ancient Greeks overlooking the sea at sunon 37 miles south of Athens is a temple built in honor of Poseidon a God the Greeks were anxious to have on their side posidon is nature his domains are the depths of the earth and the Sea he creates storms he helps the seen or he sends them to their death so he's an uncontrollable God and you turn to him when you're scared the Greeks were very good in building temples where you had a sense of otherness a sense of such a great beauty that only the gods could live [Music] there up on Mount Olympus lived the pantheon of Greek gods there were gods for everything love fertility wisdom anger jealousy but one Greek god stood Above the Rest the all powerful Zeus ruler of the world and of the Gods themselves these gods were not imagined as Spiritual Beings they had very human characteristics and were known to interfere in the lives of humans on the slightest whim they could be rational and helpful or mischievous and vindictive anyone who offended them could expect terrible vengeance [Music] this is Deli the most important of All Greek sanctuaries to the gods this Temple was dedicated to Apollo the god of knowledge light music and healing G honored Apollo with plays debates poetry readings and in this Stadium near the top of the mountain great sporting events pilgrims would cleanse themselves in this spring having first sacrificed a goat to Apollo even in this highly educated and rational civilization they still believed in mysterious Divine Powers the Great temple of Apollo was home to a kind of prophet the article of Deli its pronouncements could affect the destiny of men and the history of Nations ordinary citizens would come to ask if they should marry or if their spouse was being unfaithful generals would ask if they should go to war a priest took their questions to the Oracle or pythia as she was called the medium was an ordinary Local woman sent into a trance Often by chewing hallucinogenic leaves her answers were always garbled messages that the priest would interpret more Ambiguously still leaving supplicants to choose the meaning that suited them best at times the answers were simply misunderstood when C's king of Lydia asked if he should attack the Persian Empire he was told if you go to war you'll destroy a great Kingdom he went to war the kingdom he destroyed was his [Music] own Greek sanctuaries were bursting with life and we shouldn't imagine them as pristine with their white temples and clean robed priests they were vendors there they were uh musicians there were camping grounds around the temples so everything was full of [Music] life thousands of people came to Deli every four years for a 5-day Festival moving up the sacred way to Apollo's Temple passing 3,000 statues and treasuries filled with the riches of various city states pilgrims were expected to offer whatever they could afford it was even said that King Midas sent his own solid gold throne all in the name of honoring Apollo but it was also at Deli that another unofficial ritual took place honoring not Apollo but a very different sort of God in Winter it said women would climb Mount Parnassus directly behind Deli and perform wild dances in honor of dionis god of wine they were called manads it was one of the few opportunities for women in this highly ordered Society to follow their instincts and Abandon All inhibitions manads were followers of diis so to say liberated women who live the household and go out in a completely female Bond atmosphere and they do dances and picnics probably harmless things but because they do it by themselves the male imagination made them do monstrous things they thought they were fornicating and having orgies and eating raw meat and so on such private rituals later became public events and the beginnings of what we now know as theater all drama originated as part of religious festivals and they had The God dianis Who was the god of everything delicious and people used to go out and celebrate and this led to poetry the DI RAM and then they introduced produced male figures and masks and gradually you got what we now think of as tragedy and comedy this Amphitheater at Delia is one of hundreds built by the ancient Greeks here plays were produced that are still performed today many were about women YULA gavala is a well-known Greek actress who has played most of the female roles in the classical plays most of theen women were kept at home but uh they were very powerful personalities they were running the house and the lives of their husbands Ula is preparing to rehearse media one of many plays about the terrible things that happen when a woman's passions are Unleashed of course this woman power closed into those beautiful houses was mysterious too for men it was that other world that they wanted to know more experience more and that's why they chose women as their herin for their plays theater became absolutely Central to a way of life they would have a whole day you'd start in the morning You' get three plays and they went on a long time uh you had subsidy from the government and you also had private support from the very rich and you had political debate you had a sense of involvement the chorus was a device that represented the people and uh the stories were often known from mythology but it was the way they were played out that really captured the imagination of an entire populace passion is the way to courage media is about a woman driven to unspeakable acts of Revenge when her husband betrays her for his own personal gain you could have state in Corinth media refuses to accept her husband Jason's decision to abandon her in favor of the King's Daughter instead you talked like a fool and now what and now you're banished the tragedy of media is that she gives up everything for Jason and in a male dominated Society she's powerless to prevent him deserting her and her children [Music] traces of that tension between men and women can still be seen in Greece today this too is a society dominated by men men committed to demonstrating their [Music] masculinity no women are performing in any roles in this Summer Festival not even dancing men do whatever they like the women remain passive [Music] bystanders Athens has been described as a boy club and in some ways this is very very true women resident foreigners slaves were not fully enfranchised and they were somehow lesser beings it was the boys in the boys club that ran the show and they wanted to keep it that way and to some long-suffering women men still seem to be running the show you coward I saved your life and every Greek AB the Argo knows it and after I endured all that you craw to another woman Jason where am I to [Music] go in her desperation media reaches a tragic conclusion that her only possible revenge is to kill her own children well you you take a play like media which so speaks to a society now in which divorce is rampant in which men and women get so angry at each other in which child custody is essential issue and you see it played out with an intensity of emotion that absolutely brings you to tears women like media um Helen there are women that we see even today we women we have today the same problems problems with the relationship with men in our family with husbands [Music] each age has its own Beauty a youth that lies in the possession of a body able to endure all kinds of contests whether of the race course or of bodily strength while the young man himself is a pleasant Delight to behold to the Greeks a beautiful body was as important as a brilliant mind [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was in this Stadium where the Nan games were held one of the four great religious and athletic festivals of ancient Greece the original Stadium held 20,000 Spectators the site was excavated by Professor Steven Miller he will announce who is restaging the games I'm not do that his Heralds have to be coached name and anybody have a safety pen in the original games the officials would have been chosen from each city state I I us to get a dinner before this the ancient Greeks did not take weekends off they worked every day except for the more than 50 religious holidays and sporting festivals they' come in clusters of family or friends uh spread their blankets break out their wine skins and sit and watch of the games uh you should also Imagine cheering sections we have actually uh found evidence in the form of concentrations of coins that show us for example uh across the way it was the center of the Corinthian cheering section it's almost all of the coins that have come out of the stadium from Corinth uh are there here on the opposite side uh just behind where the judge's stand is not coincidentally uh we have found almost all of our coins from Argos and of course the games were controlled by Argos so you have the cheering section right behind the judges stand reinforced foring I'm sure the judges decisions at the stadium site Miller made a remarkable Discovery a starting line with holes in it from this he reconstructed the ancient starting mechanism the his Flex I think you can hear the torsion and what we have is a mechanism that like the elbow when the arm is straight up Falls forward and I think it's important to listen to the smack that it makes when it hits ropes were held in front of the athletes by posts that an official would drop simultaneously releasing the competitors okay ready set go originally athletes competed in the nude and women were excluded from the games but one woman determined to see her son compete dressed up as a male trainer when her son won she jumped over a fence in her excitement all was revealed after that even trainers were required to be in the nude long jumpers carried weights that would thrust them forward and were jettisoned before landing in this way they could add up to a foot to each [Music] jump winners won no prizes other than Laurel or wild celery reads back home they'd be showered with flowers at lavish parades where they'd be drawn around town in the finest chariots often they'd have a statue made in their likeness if they were Athenian they'd enjoy free dinners for the rest of their lives the most important games in Greece were held every four years in this Valley at Olympia the first International sporting event in all the world was held here in 776 BC the Greeks were the first to elevate Athletics to the status of serious competition even our word athlete comes from the Greek word athlos or [Music] contest but the Olympic Festival was first and foremost a religious occasion as many as a 100 oxen would be sacrificed here on an altar in front of the Temple of [Music] Zeus its interior was dominated by a gold clad statue of the god before it every Greek athlete had to pray before he competed at the entrance to Olympia was the gymnasium where athletes trained and the office of the organizing committee who decided on an athlete's moral suitability to compete a hotel for VIPs was built around an elegant fountain at the far end was a many United Nations states were required to cease all hostilities during the games and met here to work out their differences Central to everything was the great Temple of Zeus you didn't go just for the Athletics you went to the religious Festival you went to sacrifice to Zeus you went to talk to people you knew from Argos or Sparta or Athens or thieves herodicus might come and read the latest chapter of his histories to see if it was going to sell pendar was waiting in the wings for an athlete to win so he could get a commission to write a poem uh iron the sculptor was here hoping to get a commission to do a sculpture of a Victorious athlete mind and body came together in the gymnasium this was a place for conversation and learning as much as for exercise and wrestling to the Greeks the aesthetic the physical and the intellectual were all part of their pursuit of perfection the philosopher fil estratus wrote dust from terra cotta is good for opening closed pores for perspiration but yellow dust also adds glisten and is a delight to see on a nice body which is in good shape with so much emphasis on male intimacy and physical Beauty perhaps it was inevitable that in Athens homosexuality was quite common with no Stigma attached whatsoever sexual relations between mature single men and younger boys were entirely acceptable as long as the boys were first wooed with gifts and as long as it stopped with marriage admiration among men was best reflected in the world of Athletics Steven Miller found some interesting graffiti in the tunnel at namia perhaps one that stands out the most clearly is epicrates Kos epicrates is beautiful and if we look over here at another grao we have the same name AC Catos is beautiful of course not everybody agreed somebody came along later and scra scratched the Greek phrase to grps on toss which is the rough equivalent of our modern expression says who cor is beautiful says [Music] who the Olympic torch still glows today if not always with the same strong clear flame that inspired those athletes 2,500 years ago [Applause] but it does sometimes carry forward the original goal that once every four years the nations of the world should forget their disputes and come together in friendship and open competition the Athenians tended to dominate in sports and just about everything else but their winning streak couldn't last forever and fate Was preparing to deal some cruel blows to this society which had risen so high and achieved so much in 399 BC the Athenians did a strange thing they put their wisest citizen on trial the great philosopher Socrates was judged by a jury of 200 of his fellow citizens each placed a pebble in one earned for guilty or another for innocent he was accused of not believing in the gods and of corrupting the minds of the young with his radical new ideas in many ways Socrates was the complete Athenian he served with courage and distinction as a soldier and as a Statesman and in this way fulfilled the Athenian ideal at the same time though he demanded explanations he demanded definitions of his fellow citizens he described himself after all as a gadfly as a stinging fly on the great sluggish rump of the Athenian po po I Socrates was found guilty he was sentenced to death by poison his trial and conviction would never have happened earlier under Pericles rule the Athenians became too cautious I think something happened their old willingness to engage to experiment to explore is still there but it's somehow muted the change in Athens had its root in events decades earlier in 430 BC a terrible tragedy beell Athens a plague that was said to have come from Ethiopia then passed through Egypt and Persia before finally reaching Athens it was a disease that killed almost every everyone had touched and had swept through the city the historian plutar wrote there was no record of the disease being so virent anywhere else as it was in Athens people in perfect health suddenly began to have burning feelings in the head their eyes became red and inflamed some too went blind and suffered from total loss of memory pericles's own sister and then to his horror his son caught the plague and he was already burdened by a disastrous war with the Spartans Pericles had brought the entire population of the Athenian Countryside within the Great Walls of Athens and sanitation one can be sure was primitive and a disease like the plague spread like wildfire as it did its effects were no less devastating morally than physically all the oldw the things that the Athenians had relied on to hold their society together were [Music] shredded people came into temples to die or were still brought their own dead in and left them there the horror I think is really to us almost [Music] unimaginable inside there was a feeling of burning many of the sick who were uncared for actually plunged into the water tanks in an effort to relieve The Thirst it was unquenchable the plague affected Pericles in two ways first of all politically because the Athenians blamed him for it and for the first time in 15 years he was not elected to the office of generalship that he had held for so long shortly thereafter he himself caught the plague and died and with the death of Pericles a certain style of leadership died as well [Music] a third of the population would [Music] die without pericle leadership the Athenians were lost they started to make Reckless decisions for half a century Athens battled Sparta for dominance over Greece the decisive battle would be fought not on Greek soil but in Sicily Athens sent a fleet into battle but the highly trained Spartan Army sided with the Sicilians the Athenian Navy was destroyed in a series of disastrous sea batt battles and in 404 BC Athens was utterly defeated I think finally the Athenians lost the Great War against Sparta because they did overreach themselves the Spartans repeatedly offer terms of Peace but here's what that old Athenian aggressiveness comes into play as well the Athenians simply couldn't allow themselves to accept terms of peace from Sparta they wanted to win the defeat of the the Athenians in Sicily left Sparta as the dominant [Music] them escaped but he refused Plato wrote he said he had lived in Athens all his life for 70 years he had been content with the city and its people why should he now run away from it like the lowest slave the hemlock leaves were [Music] crushed the poison potion was prepared [Music] Socrates really does embody Athens at its best in some ways and when he dies we really do see that things have changed that things after Socrates just won't be the same Plato recorded the last words of his friend and teacher how much would one of you give to meet orus or Homer I should like to spend my time there as here in examining in searching people's minds to find out who is wise and who only thinks he [Music] is Socrates ideas live on to this day but over time his beloved Athens became part of other Empires the macedonians the Romans the ottoman Turks in 1971 its crowning Glory the Parthenon was discovered to be in danger of final collapse today it is being restored not to its former splendor but as a magnificent ruin worthy of the civilization it represents the pieces of marble so cruy Shattered by cannon fire are being painstakingly cleaned and carefully reassembled the holes made by enemy cannonballs are being precisely filled in the restoration will take even longer than the 15 years it originally took to build the parthan after its destruction in 1687 the temple was pillaged by treasure Seekers the Turks who ruled Athens at the time were easily bribed any passing visitor with enough money could walk away with one of the great sculptures heads and limbs were severed from bodies to make even more salable [Music] items all over Europe eager salesmen offered their plundered treasure to museums and private collectors when a young English aristocrat Lord Elgen arrived in 183 this was the situation he felt felt Justified his removing any remaining [Music] sculptures his men Pride loose 56 sections of freezes and a dozen or so statues including a magnificent horse's [Music] head it took 22 ships to carry the marbles to Britain one was wrecked on route [Music] the Elan marbles from the parnon are exhibited in the British museum I entered a very large room and there I saw the beauty that overwhelmed me of these Elgen marbles H I got so excited I had Goose pimples all over my body uh I couldn't speak I was just on a TR the beauty was so powerful I was silent for a very long time looking at that beauty and then I felt sad because I couldn't see in my country those marbles it's very sad for us not to have that great experience here in every [Music] [Music] day we need to see paron to see Acropolis to touch it it is a reminder of what we have achieved the exercise of uh reaching to the perfect was done and if uh we can assume for a moment that all these ruins remnants are disappeared erased from the earth it would be like a universe without the Fifth Symphony of Boven for example [Music] but there is a quality more durable even than Stone in the legacy of Athens this was a city whose brilliant light Shone so powerfully that it defined Western intellectual thought for centuries it is hard to go down a street without seeing some vesage of our enthusiasm for a Greek way of life and we forget that way of life at our Peril it was so so effective and so courageous it's extraordinary that a society of only 70,000 Athenian men and women who lived 500 years before Christ could influence the world so dramatically the Democratic spark they lit blazed again 2,000 years later to affect the lives of people all over the world this then is the kind of City for which men who could not bear the thought of losing her nobly fought and died Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our Empire which we have left future ages will wonder at us as the present age wonders at us now [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]