Aspects of Western Civilization

Description

PREFACEPART I: THE FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION Chapter 1: Civilization in the Ancient Near East: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Israel Mesopotamian Civilization The Reign of Sargon The Code of Hammurabi The Epic of Gilgamesh The Biblical Flood Egyptian Civilization The Authority of the Pharaohs Building the Pyramids Herodotus Mummification Herodotus Ramses the Great The Artistic Vision: The Great Pyramids Egyptian Religion and Values Instructions of Kagemni The Pyramid Texts The Book of the Dead: Negative Confession Against the Grain: The Amarna Revolution The Hymn to Aten Akhenaten Hebrew Civilization Origins, Oppression, and the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt The Creation of the World Paradise and the Fall from Grace The Hebrew Bondage The Burning Bush The Mission of Moses The Departure of the Israelites Covenant and Commandments The Ten Commandments The Covenant Code Wisdom and Psalms Job: “Clothed In Fearful Splendor” Psalm 104: “All Creatures Depend On You” Prophets: Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah Amos: “Let Justice Flow Like Water” Yahweh: “There Is No God Except Me” Isaiah’s Vision of Everlasting Peace The Reflection in the Mirror: The New Covenant of Jeremiah “Deep Within Them, I Shall Plant My Law” PART II: THE GREEK WORLD Chapter 2: Legend and History: The World of Early Greece The Trojan War: Homer’s Iliad The Wrath of Achilles Homer The Death of Hector Homer Homecoming: The Odyssey of Homer The Adventure of the Cyclops Homer Odysseus in the Underworld Homer The Return of Odysseus Homer Early Greek Literature (700-500 B.C.E.) Pandora’s Box of Evil Hesiod Works and Days: Advice for the Wise Hesiod Greek Love Poetry Sappho The Celebration of Athletic Glory Pindar Chapter 3: Democracy and Empire: The Golden Age of Athens The Greek Polis: Two Ways of Life “Man Is a Political Animal” Aristotle The City-State of Sparta: Reforms of Lycurgus Plutarch Spartan Discipline Plutarch “Happiness Depends on Being Free, and Freedom Depends on Courage”: The Funeral Oration of Pericles (430 B.C.E.) Thucydides The Historian at Work Herodotus “As Rich as Croesus”: The Happiest of Men? The Persian Wars and the Defense of Greece (490–480 B.C.E.) “The Spartans Will Fight” Herodotus The 300 Spartans at Thermopylae (480 B.C.E.) Herodotus Greek Tragedy (480-430 B.C.E.) Oedipus the King (430 B.C.E.) Sophocles Antigone (441 B.C.E.) Sophocles The Athenian Empire, War, and Decline (480–404 B.C.E.) The Historian at Work: Thucydides Bloodbath at Corcyra The Mytilenian Debate (427 B.C.E.) Thucydides The Melian Dialogue (416 B.C.E.) Thucydides The Reflection in the Mirror Hubris: The Conceit of Power The Trojan Women (415 B.C.E.) Euripides The Sicilian Disaster (413 B.C.E.) Thucydides Women and War: Lysistrata (411 B.C.E.) Aristophanes Against the Grain The Trial of Socrates “You Will Not Easily Find Another Like Me” Plato Chapter 4: The Age of Alexander the Great The Rise of Macedon and the Fall of Greece The First Philippic (351 B.C.E.) Demosthenes “They Speak of Nothing But Your Power” (346 B.C.E.) Isocrates On the Crown (330 B.C.E.) Demosthenes Alexander the Great? “Carve Out a Kingdom Worthy of Yourself!” Plutarch The Destruction of Persepolis Diodorus Siculus The Character and Leadership of Alexander Arrian “Making Humankind a Single People” Plutarch The Thought of the AgeThe Philosophy of Plato The Unenlightened Majority Plato Allegory of the Cave Plato The Equality of Women in the State Plato The Thought of Aristotle Virtue and Moderation: The Doctrine of the Mean Aristotle The Status of Women Aristotle PART III: THE ROMAN WORLD Chapter 5: The Roman Republic: Origins, Breakdown, and Rebirth Roman Virtues in the Early and Middle Republic (753-150 B.C.E.) The Historian at Work: Titus Livy The Power of the Past The Oath of the Horatii: “One of the Great Stories of Ancient Times” Livy The Rape of Lucretia Livy The Courage of Mucius Scaevola Livy “Hannibal at the Gates!” Livy “Cracks in the Wall”: The Breakdown Begins (150-100 B.C. E.) The Destruction of Carthage (146 B.C.E.) Appian The Growth of the Latifundia Appian The Murder of Tiberius Gracchus (133 B.C.E.) Plutarch “Vengeance with Excessive Cruelty” Sallust The Fall of the Roman Republic (100–31 B.C.E.) The Historian at Work: Appian The Revolt of SpartacusThe Civil War (49–45 B.C.E.) “The Die Is Cast”: Caesar Crosses the Rubicon Suetonius “We Must Trust to the Mercy of the Storm” Cicero Julius Caesar: The Colossus That Bestrode the World? Caesar’s Reforms Suetonius Abuse of Power Suetonius The Assassination of Julius Caesar (44 B.C.E.) Plutarch The Power Vacuum (44-31 B.C.E.) “A Public Prostitute”: The Philippic Against Mark Antony Cicero The Murder of Cicero: “Antony’s Greatest and Bitterest Enemy” Appian Against the Grain Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile “The Attraction Was Something Bewitching” Plutarch “She Was No Weak-Kneed Woman” Horace The Establishment of the Augustan Principate (31-27 B.C.E.) The Powers and Authority of the Emperor Dio Cassius The Transition from Republic to Principate Tacitus Res Gestae: The Accomplishments of Augustus Augustus The Mission: “To Spare the Conquered and Crush the Proud” Virgil Chapter 6: Caesar and Christ Roman State Religion and the Mystery Cults The Imperial Cult: The Deification of Augustus Dio Cassius Invasion of the Eastern Cults Minucius Felix Orgiastic Frenzy Apuleius The Message of Jesus The Baptism of Jesus The Sermon on the Mount The Good Samaritan The Mission of Jesus Instructions to the Twelve Disciples Peter: The Rock Suffering, Persecution, and the Son of Man The Final Judgment The Work of Paul Paul’s Answer to the Intellectuals “Neither Jew Nor Greek, Male Nor Female” The Resurrection of Christ Conflict and the Development of the Christian Church Roman Imperial Policy Regarding Jews and Christians The Historian at Work: Flavius Josephus Mass Suicide at Masada The Persecution of Christians Under Nero (64 C.E.) Tacitus “The Infection of This Superstition Has Spread” Pliny the Younger “A Religion of Lust”: Anti-Christian Propaganda Minucius Felix The Reflection in the Mirror “Christians to the Lions!” A Christian Defense Tertullian The Early Church Fathers First Principles of the Early Church (225 C.E.) Origen The City of God Saint Augustine Against the Grain Augustine: From Sinner to Saint The Confessions Saint Augustine The Triumph of Christianity The Petrine Theory Pope Leo I Loyalty to the Pope: Oath to Gregory II (723 C.E.) Bishop Boniface Chapter 7:The Pax Romana and the Decline of Rome Strength and Success (14–180 C.E.)Political and Military Control The Imperial Army Favius Josephus A Roman Triumph Zonaras Imperial Patronage Pliny the Younger Techniques of Roman Control Tacitus The Historian at Work: Tacitus The Murder of Agrippina “All Roads Lead to Rome” The Glory of the City Strabo The Artistic Vision: The Roman Aqueduct: Pont du Gard The Magnificence of the Baths Lucian The Bath House Seneca The Dark Side of Rome Juvenal “Bread and Circuses” Fronto “The Give and Take of Death”: Gladiatorial Combat Seneca “Charming Privacy”: The Rural Aristocrat Pliny the Younger Social and Intellectual Aspects of the Pax Romana The Roman Woman “Subordinate Beauty” Valerius Maximus The Funeral Eulogy of Turia Quintus Lucretius Vespillo Slavery in the Roman Empire A Slave Rebellion Pliny the Younger The Proper Treatment of Slaves Seneca Social Mobility: “Once a Mere Worm, Now a King” Petronius The Stoic Philosophy “What Is the Principal Thing in Life?” Seneca Meditations Marcus Aurelius Failure and Decline (180–500 C.E.) “Empire for Sale” (193 C.E.) Dio Cassius News of the Attacks Jerome The Reflection in the Mirror: The Decline of the West Decline and Christianity Edward Gibbon
PART IV THE MEDIEVAL WORLD Chapter 8: Icon, Scimitar, and Cross: E arly Medieval Civilization (500-1100) Byzantine Civilization &nbsp

This reader is appropriate as a main text or a supplementary text for introductory-level survey courses in Western Civilization and European History and Civilization.

Aspects of Western Civilization challenges students with basic questions regarding historical development, human nature, moral action, and practical necessity. This collection of diverse primary sources explores a wide variety of issues and is organized around seven major themes: the Power Structure, Social and Spiritual Values, the Institution and the Individual, Imperialism, Revolution and Historical Transition, the Varieties of Truth, and Women in History.

Perry M. Rogers received his B.A. from San Jose State University, his M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington where he specialized in ancient history with fields in medieval history, and Early Modern Europe. He has been a professor of Roman history at the Ohio State University and has held an adjunct position in the Liberal Arts at the Pontifical College Josephinum for several years. He remains Chair of the History Department at Columbus School for Girls, an independent, college preparatory school in Columbus, Ohio. Rogers’s two-volume publications for Pearson/Prentice Hall include Aspects of Western Civilization (7^th edition), Aspects of World History, and The Human Spirit: Sources in the Western Humanities.

What is the ideal way to teach Western Civilization?

•   Aspects of Western Civilization is broad in scope and explores a wide variety of political, social, economic, religious, intellectual, and scientific issues.  It is chronological in its approach and is internally organized around seven major themes which provide direction and cohesion for the text while allowing for originality of thought in both written and oral analysis:

1. The Power Structure
2. Social and Spiritual Values
3. The Institution and the Individual
4. Imperialism
5. Revolution and Historical Transition
6. The Varieties of Truth
7. Women in History

•   Aspects of Western Civilization follows a chronological approach which is easily incorporated into a traditional history or humanities curriculum.  There are thirteen chapters in Volume 1 and sixteen in Volume 2.  The second volume contains an opening chapter that covers both the Renaissance and Reformation movements, thereby providing a smooth transition to a second-semester modern Western Civilization course.  The length of the chapters is manageable and each chapter offers a good balance between political, social, and economic themes.  Author Perry Rogers provides extensive introductions to each primary source to give students the historical and biographical background necessary for effective analysis of the sources. 
  • The book provides a more extensive and diverse selection of primary sources than any other Western Civilization reader and a unique structure that helps students understand the sweep and continuity of history.
•   The text follows a problem-orientated approach.  Students learn from the past most effectively when confronted with problems that have meaning in their own lives.  Aspects of Western Civilization attempts to provoke controversy and discussion which may be rooted in topics of the past but which have real application and relevancy for the contemporary world.  History is not presented as a stagnant observation of past societies but rather as a vehicle for better understanding the present.  This text seeks to confront students with questions and problems that human beings have struggled with for centuries.  These problems revolve around themes that are explained in greater depth in the Preface. 
  • This approach differentiates this text from most other Western Civilization readers which present the primary sources in a rather static context.
•   Aspects of Western Civilization uses political history as its base but does not neglect the social, economic, intellectual, scientific, technological, and religious aspects of Western Civilization.  Most importantly, these subjects are integrated with the political, enabling the student to understand the relationships among these various aspects of history. 
  • This is the most comprehensive Western Civilization sourcebook on the market. No other text offers such a variety of sources and such a comprehensive integration of political, social, economic, and spiritual dimensions. 
•   Aspects of Western Civilization offers the instructor many pedagogical options.  Each chapter can be assigned for oral discussion in weekly sections (the study questions, quotations, chronologies, and thematic focus all provide an organizing principle for discussion).  The chapters provide the background, structure, and provocative questions necessary for engaging discussion.  The instructor also has the option of assigning particular sections from each chapter or even specific sources for more intensive analysis. 
•   Aspects of Western Civilization features a diverse and unique selection of sources.  This text includes not only the traditional primary source documents essential to the study of Western Civilization but also some more obscure documents that are not often found in similar texts: wall graffiti, election statistics, poetry, Islamic perspectives, records from the Nuremberg trials, and the Tridentine Index of Forbidden Books. Such sources create lively discussion.  Aspects of Western Civilization therefore promotes thoughtful comparisons between world societies that are linked to common problems, events, or historical themes within the same time period and across chronological divisions.
• Updated Translations. A strength of Aspects of Western Civilization  has always been the quality of its translations (many pulled from the Penguin Classics series).  In the seventh edition, older translations have been clarified and modernized, and in some cases retranslated by the editor.

How do you ensure complete understanding of primary source documents?

• Aspects of Western Civilization is structured to provide students with all they need to understand and analyze the sources. The main strength of the text lies in its structure and the direction given to students through the introductions to each of the primary sources.  Study Questions are provided to promote analysis and evoke critical response.  This structure offers advantages that cannot be gained by arbitrarily pulling primary sources from a web site with no introduction, no pedagogical vision, no commitment to the quality of translations, and no historical perspective.  Each chapter follows the same format:
  • Time Line Chronological Overview:  These brief time lines are designed to give students a visual perspective of the main events, movements, and personalities discussed in the chapter. Each chapter also has a Key Events Chronology for historical continuity.
  • Quotations:  These are statements from various historians, artists, philosophers, diplomats, literary figures, and religious spokespersons that offer insight and give perspective on the subject matter of the chapter.
  • Chapter Themes:   Each chapter is framed by several questions that direct the reader to broader issues and comparative perspectives found in the ideas and events of other chapters. This feature acknowledges the changing perspectives of different eras while linking historical problems that emphasize the continuity of history.
  • General Introduction: A general introduction provides a brief historical background and focuses the themes or questions to be discussed in the chapter.  
  • Headnotes:  These are extensive introductions that explain in detail the historical or biographical background of each primary source.  They also focus themes and discuss interrelationships with other relevant primary sources.
  • Primary Sources: The sources provided are diverse and include excerpts from drama and literature, short stories, speeches, letters, diary accounts, poems, newspaper articles, philosophical tracts, propaganda flyers, and works of art and architecture.
  • Study Questions: A series of study questions concludes each source or chapter section and presents a basis for oral discussion or written analysis.  The study questions do not seek mere regurgitation of information but demand a more thoughtful response that is based on reflective analysis of the primary sources. The study questions form the heart of this text and guide the student experience throughout.  They are designed to establish a common foundation for discussion and critical assessment and to provide a framework for students to think and react in oral or written analysis.  The study questions are divided into three separate types of questions, each numbered for easy reference and designed to develop a range of answers on several levels of complexity:
    •   Consider This: These questions are direct and pertain to individual sources.  They are primarily designed to solicit specific information about the context and content of the primary source and sometimes ask follow-up comparative questions that link sources.  They are rather limited in focus, but should provide a foundation for class discussion or a short paper.  They demand some amount of regurgitation, but do not neglect important analytical possibilities.  This is how instructors can promote class discussion and easily determine the extent of student understanding. 
    • The Broader Perspective: These questions go beyond foundational information and frame the larger, more abstract problems and perspectives of historical analysis: moral responsibility; justifications of power; definitions of freedom, decline, or progress, etc.  These questions are more complex and challenging and they require more attention on the part of the instructor.  But they stimulate discussions on a deeper level and seek to push students toward a more expansive awareness of the world around them.
    • Keep In Mind: These questions occur at the beginning of primary sources that appear only in the Features and help students analyze the source by providing a guidepost. They are designed to enhance discussion of a more complex topic.

How do you manage the integration of various historical themes?

• The study of history is, by necessity, an integrative experience.   Aspects of Western Civilization provides insight into the interrelationships among art, music, literature, poetry, and architecture during various historical periods.  Students are linked to relevant historical events, broader artistic movements, styles, and historiography through four unique features of the text:

1.   The Artistic Vision: This feature emphasizes the creative processes and vision of an artist who embodies a dominant style of the period or expresses the social or spiritual values of the age.  This feature includes architecture as an expression of culture and presents a visual analysis of painting and sculpture, architectural floor plans, religious shrines, theaters, or other monuments that are important cultural expressions of a particular society. 
2. Against the Grain: This feature focuses on those who don’t fit or are in conflict with their societies but embody the edge of creative change and set new artistic or historical parameters: the outsider, the radical mind, the free thinker.  What impact does this individual have on the historical landscape?  To what extent does progress depend on those who threaten the status quo and seek new directions outside the mainstream?
3. The Reflection in the Mirror: This feature offers an analysis of a focused moral or philosophical problem within a culture.  It emphasizes the more abstract themes of progress and decline, arrogance and power, salvation, the impact of war and disease, the conflict between science and religion, the relationship between divinity and humanity, and the importance of human memory and creativity when juxtaposed with technological progress.  This feature promotes thoughtful reflection at critical moments of change.
4. The Historian at Work: This is a feature of Volume I that provides a longer and more extensive analysis of the work of an historian who is a central source for our knowledge of the period.  This feature allows students to view the creation of history by critically assessing method and understanding how the individual strengths and weaknesses of particular historians actually limit or enhance our perspective on the past and affect our assessment of truth.

These Features include primary sources that are presented in a visually stimulating box format with photographs, artwork, pull quotes, and study questions.  Each Feature is directly connected chronologically and thematically to the main text so that the flow of the historical narration is never interrupted, but rather enhanced through directed analysis. 

• No other primary source reader on the market makes such a commitment to creative format and pedagogical vision.  In Aspects of Western Civilization, primary sources become the essential component of historical analysis and perspective, rather than a peripheral static commodity.

What is the quality of written assignments your students turn in?

•   Aspects of Western Civilization is conceived as a vehicle for written assignments–a teaching option that is unique among primary source texts. There has always been a struggle in university courses over whether or not a “term paper” should be assigned.  Most undergraduates on the freshman and sophomore levels do not possess the skills or knowledge to carry out effective individual research.  Nor do professors or teaching assistants have time to offer the kind of direction that quality work demands.  So analytical writing, apart from exams, is often either ignored or characterized as a necessary but futile exercise.  The chapters of this text are structured as essentially self-contained topics.  Except for a more detailed historical background which can be found in a textbook, no further research is necessary in order to write an analytical paper of 8-10 pages.  To use the text as a basis for writing assignments, the student would merely be asked to write a paper on one of the chapters, using the Study Questions as the basis for analysis, and citation of particular sources and page numbers as evidence of responsible research.  Students are challenged and engaged by the process.  Discussions after such a writing assignment will be intense, to say the least, and are based on a firmer understanding of the material. As a side note, instructors may also assign particular sections for shorter, reflective papers (2-3 pages long). 
  • This writing option is a unique feature of Aspects of Western Civilization.

Are your students visual learners?

•   Visual Analysis:  A final feature of Aspects of Western Civilization which distinguishes it from most similar texts is the inclusion of photographs and illustrations that focus on a particular aspect of the chapter.  Students are directed to specific visual material at appropriate times in the chapter.  This integration of visual and written source material lends interest to the presentation and makes the history come alive!
• An Appealing Visual Format: Aspects of Western Civilization features an expansive visual format that is more stimulating for students.  This layout allows for the inclusion of pull quotes in the feature boxes and permits a smooth integration of visual sources with numerous graphs, charts, illustrations, and photographs.  Visual time lines positioned at the beginning of each chapter have been expanded and updated to provide a more comprehensive visual exposition of chronology.

The seventh edition of Aspects of Western Civilization maintains balanced coverage of historical periods while restructuring several chapters and enhancing coverage in particular areas.  It also offers additional pedagogical resources for the instructor and additional guidance for students. 

•   Structural Changes: There are two new chapters in Volume 2 designed to help students better understand the development of nationalism and subsequent political unification movements during the nineteenth century (“Paths of Glory: Napoleon and the Romantic Movement” and “Fatherland: The Power of Nationalism”).   Chapter 10 (“Fin de Siècle: The Birth of the Modern Era”) has been restructured for greater continuity.  There are also two new chapters added at the end of Volume 2 (“The Era of the Superpowers: Cold War Confrontation” and “The Dynamics of Change in the Contemporary World”) in order to expand coverage of the Cold War from 1945 to 1990 and to focus in greater detail on events in the contemporary world from 1990-2010.
• Enhanced Coverage: Beyond the additional coverage from 1945 to 2010, several chapters in both volumes have been expanded to enhance the study of important topics: Hebrew prophets (Amos and Isaiah), early Greek literature (Sappho, Pindar, and Hesiod), values in the early and middle Roman Republic (Livy), and visions of the New World (Thomas More and Michel de Montaigne) in Volume 1.  Enhanced coverage in Volume 2 includes the American Declaration of Independence; Romantic poetry of Schiller, Goethe, and Byron; perspectives on the slave trade from Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce; additional nationalist sources from Alexis de Tocqueville and Theodor Herzl; and enhanced coverage of nineteenth century feminist movements (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House). Several selections also have been added to the coverage of the Holocaust and there are new sections on Serbian genocide in the Balkans in the 1990s, including the papal response. Coverage of the Cold War focuses on internal rebellion (Hungarian and Czechoslovakian revolutions), the Brezhnev Doctrine, and post-Cold War developments of eastern European and Balkan states. Finally, a new section on The Islamic World and the West concentrates on economic relationships between Turkey and the European Union, and Muslim relationships with France and the United States.
• New Feature Selections: Several new Feature selections have been added to the seventh edition, including a new rubric in Volume 1 entitled “ The Historian at Work.”  This Feature introduces students to historiography as well as to critical method, and provides longer excerpts from several of the most important historians of the ancient and medieval worlds (Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, Josephus, Appian, and Usamah ibn-Munqidh).  New Feature selections often focus on the integration of art and architecture into the political mainstream as revolutionary cultural elements (Giotto, Bernini and St. Peter’s Basilica, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Francisco Goya and Napoleon, Eugène Delacroix and the Greek Revolution of 1820, the social perspective by train during the Industrial Revolution, the insular world of Edvard Munch, and the nightmare visions of Otto Dix during World War I).  New Features also include Theodor Herzl and the Zionist movement, excerpts from A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Pope John Paul II on the Serbian genocide, and President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech to the Muslim world in Egypt regarding “a new beginning” with the West.
• New Pedagogical Aids: Every effort has been made in the seventh edition to aid both instructors and students in using the text for discussions and class papers.   Chapter opening essays and introductions to the primary sources have been reviewed and edited to establish a strong sense of historical continuity, and study questions have been clarified and refined to solicit specific information and offer a broader perspective on the abstract implications of ideas and events. Author Perry Rogers has inserted additional secondary sources on the decline of the Roman Empire and focused some questions on contending ideas under the rubric: “Taking Sides.”  He has edited and modernized translations to clarify ideas and bring older idioms into conformity with modern usage.   Study questions have been numbered for easier reference in class discussions and written assignments.  New Key Events chronologies have been added to each chapter and have been placed near corresponding coverage, giving students a solid historical reference point. 
• New Organizational Tool for Instructors: A new Thematic Index is available to instructors for download in PDF format to assist in developing comparative ideas across time and, ultimately, to make it easier to teach the course. This Thematic Index groups each primary source by chapter according to the seven themes listed in the Preface. Some sources are cross-referenced under multiple rubrics as application warrants. This superb organizational tool can be downloaded in PDF format from Pearson’s online catalog at www.pearsonhighered.com. Select “Educators” from the menu options and follow the instructions labeled “Download Instructor Resources.”

This reader is appropriate as a main text or a supplementary text for introductory-level survey courses in Western Civilization and European History and Civilization.

Aspects of Western Civilization : Problems and Sources in History, Volume 1, 7/e, challenges students with basic questions regarding historical development, human nature, moral action, and practical necessity. This collection of diverse primary sources explores a wide variety of issues and is organized around seven major themes: the Power Structure, Social and Spiritual Values, the Institution and the Individual, Imperialism, Revolution and Historical Transition, the Varieties of Truth, and Women in History.