Maddie's Western Civ Blog

If I were to go back in time and visit myself 3 months ago and tell myself what was going on in the world right now, I definitely would not believe me. Everything is different. I have not left my house since school got out, I haven't seen my friends in forever, and all my soccer games/practices are canceled. School, soccer, and friends are basically my whole life (and family.) Suddenly, my whole life is now just me at home, doing homework, working out, and spending time with my family after dinner. It's been really harder me to start my school work at a decent time. I usually stay up really late, so it's hard to start my homework as soon as I get up. The first thing I do when I get up is sick up my phone. As soon as I do this, I start scrolling through social media. I do this for way too long. When I am doing my homework, my phone is usually close by, so it's hard not to pick it up and start talking with one of my friends. I'm trying to work on not picking up my pho...

The plague that hit Athens during the Peloponnesian War and what is happening RIGHT now really aren't all that different. What is happening right now is scary and real and unknown, just like the plague in Ancient Greece. During the Peloponnesian War, no one was safe from this plague. The great and mighty Pericles died from this plague. COVID-19 has demonstrated this as well. For example, Tom Hanks, Prince Charles, and Colton Underwood from The Bachelor  have all tested positive. COVID-19 and the plague have both proven that no one is immune to either. The ancient plague and COVID-19 both spread very, very fast. One of the reasons why the plague spread so fast was because the city of Athens was too crowded. Not many people took care of themselves well enough and many did not have good hygiene. COVID-19 has spread very quickly too. For example, just on Monday, March 23, 2020, there were about 41,000 confirmed cases and 573 total deaths in the United States. As of March 26, 2020, howe...

Philip II of Macedon: Philip II of Macedon was king of Macedon from 359 B.C to 336 B.C. In his early life, he was held hostage in Illyria and Thebes. In Thebes he gained lots of knowledge about battle strategy and the military. His brother, Perdiccas III, brought him back from Thebes. In 364 B.C he returned to Macedon, and in 359 B.C, he became king. Philip was married seven times and had many children, (one of them being Alexander the Great.) Philip used all of his military knowledge to strengthen/renovate the army. His tactics/knowledge was extremely helpful, and soon the Macedonian army was a superior force. From all the battles and fighting, Philip was actually blind in one eye and walked with a limp. In 336 B.C, Philip was assassinated by one of his body guards. Alexander the Great:  Alexander III, son of Philip II, was born in Pella, Macedonia. In 336 B.C, Alexander became king due to his father's assassination. He claimed the throne and even killed his rivals before they c...

At the age of thirteen, Alexander the Great received something that would change his life forever: a horse. Now, this wasn't just any ordinary horse. Little did Alexander know, but this horse would stick by his side for a very longtime. When the pair first met, Alexander could tell that the horse was in distress. It was scared of its own shadow! Alexander told his father that if he could not tame the horse, he would pay back the 13 talents his father spent on the horse. Alexander helped Bucephalus calm down and relax. The horse immediately felt at ease. Bucephalus let Alexander mount, and the two felt a connection like never before. Some say that Bucephalus and Alexander were even born on the same day! The pair rode into war together many times and were successful. Unfortunately, one time they were not. Bucephalus was mortally injured in the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 B.C. After the battle, sadly, he died. Alexander loved and cared for him so much. Alexander named a city after him c...

Today is the last day of cyber week #1. To be honest, it was a lot harder than I expected. I think the hardest thing for me was avoiding distractions. My phone was always with me so it was really hard to  not to pick it up. Yesterday, I decided to take a break after I finished annotating for English. I decided to watch a show. This break ended up being two hours. This really put me behind and screwed up my whole day. Every day, I usually start off with my Western Civ blog because it's the most fun out of all my homework. Then, I'll do my Spanish and religion homework. Then, I do my Bio homework.  Next, I'll do my math which takes me FOREVER. I really like math this year and I really like my teacher. My teacher is extra helpful and nice. However, it's a lot harder to learn the material at home. Later in the day, I will start my English. English takes a long time too. We are reading Fahrenheit 451  and we are also working on a big project. The last subject I will do is Ar...

I think Socrates starting questioning the government like he did in video, was because he knew that what they were doing was wrong. When the soldiers came back after defeating the Spartans, they were soon thrown in jail. These men unfortunately could not save the men that had fallen off the ships. The government thought that this was a horrible crime. These men did not mean to leave the other men; they simply could not save them. The men that fought very hard in the war did not deserve to go to jail. It was totally unfair to them. One of the only people that spoke up for these men was Socrates. I feel that Socrates was WAY ahead of his time and was smart enough to question the government when no one else wanted to. He was smart enough to know what the government was doing was wrong. He actually stood up for what he believed in. However, he could not convince enough people that what the government was doing was very wrong. The government decided that the men would be put to death. It wa...

Welcome to the third day of cyber school. To be honest, I thought it would be a lot easier the regular school. Turns out, I was wrong. For some reason I feel even more stressed out at home than regular school. Hopefully I will get more comfortable with cyber school as the week goes on. Here is my blog: Pericles’ strategy for defeating the Spartans was to wait for fleet ships. The city would rely on fleet ships that carried shipments from overseas to survive. However, this was a huge mistake! One year into the war, some grain ships (that fed the city) brought more than just food with them. The people on these fleet ships had the plague! They brought the plague to Athens and things went horribly wrong very  quickly. Athen's people were all behind city walls. There was no way to contain this plague. The symptoms included inflammation of the eyes, fever, violent ulceration, and diarrhea. The symptoms were so intense that people would crawl into water sys...

Today is the first day of cyber school. I just finished my Biology homework and now I am on to my Western Civ blog. For this blog, we have to write a paragraph answering three questions from the textbook. Happy first day of Cyber School. Here is my paragraph: Pericles was a man who led Athens through much of its Golden Age. He ruled from 461 to 429 B.C.E. This period of time is often called "The Age of Pericles" because of his dominate rule. He had three goals for Athens. He wanted to strengthen Athenian democracy, hold and strengthen the empire, and, finally, to glorify Athens. In order to strengthen democracy, Pericles introduced direct democracy. In direct democracy, the "regular" people of Athens ruled directly and not through representatives. These citizens (all males) that were apart of the direct democracy made many government polices and rules that affected all of Athens. After the Athenians defeated the Persians, the Athenians made the Delian League. Athe...

Today was our last day of school for two weeks. It all feels so weird. I can't believe that school is actually closing. I am excited for online learning because it will be very different from regular school.   I'm nervous too.  Hopefully we go back to school after these two weeks. I just hope everything will get better soon. Today in class we talked more about online learning and how all the teachers will teach us. Some teachers might use Microsoft teams or post videos of them teaching the topic to veracross. It's going to feel very weird staying home and doing school for these next two weeks. I just hope that everything goes well.

Today we had a really long talk about Coronavirus. Tomorrow when all the students leave, the teachers are going to meet and discuss what will happen if the school gets shut down. We will have to do cyber days. It's so crazy. My soccer practice and games are getting cancelled and my spring break trip was cancelled as well. I am washing my hands a lot and using lots of hand sanitizer everywhere I go. This virus has affected the whole world. I am a little nervous and freaked out. This virus is basically shutting down the whole country very fast. The NBA suspended the rest of their season and so did the MLS. Everything is happening at once. It is very stressful.

Today Mr. Schick was not here. We got to watch the video and take more notes. Here are my notes from today: pottery--> vases and pots potters: low class, looked down upon Hippias: son of Peisistratus, brother murdered, crazy ruler, paranoid all the work Peisistratus had done = ruined Cleisthenes formed a conspiracy to overthrow Hippias --> disappears  510 BC: Cleisthenes very powerful Olympic Games--> only men, women aren't even allowed into the stadium  anyone could win--> Heroic Ideal Isagoras--> aristocrat, got help from Spartans to overthrow Athens people revolted Isagoras and allies @ acropolis--> surrendered 3rd morning 508 BC--> first time people revolted against their leader  Cleisthenes returned--> forms beginning of democracy white stone yes, black stone no

Today we watched a video. The video was called: The Ancient Greeks: Crucible of Civilization.  I liked watching this video better than taking notes from the textbook. I felt like I could understand everything more because of the pictures/acting in the video. We took notes while watching the video. Here are my notes so far: 508 BC --> first revolution (Athens)  Cleisthenes --> born 570 BC, aristocrat first Greek historian --> Herodotus aristocrat: member of the ruling class acropolis: outcropping of rock in the center of Athena life expectancy @ birth was 15 yrs helots --> slave class in Sparta Heroic Ideal: individualism, arte (what everyone should be striving for: greatness) role models --> people in the Odyssey and Iliad "Athena" and Pisistratus reduced taxes and provided free loans grapes, olive trees (olive oil)

Today we took a pop quiz. As soon as Mr. Schick handed us our pop quiz papers, I was really nervous. I really needed a good grade on this to bump my grade up. When the quiz started, I felt really good about it. When I turned my quiz in, I thought I did really well. We reviewed the quiz and I got a 20/20! This raised my grade from a 88 to a 89. This is good news. After the quiz we took some notes on the power point. After the notes, we got to do whatever we wanted. I worked on my lab report for Biology. Today was a very chill day.

Today we took more notes on the three great philosophers of ancient Greece. We started out by taking notes on pages 138-139 in the textbook. After that, we took even more notes on the power point. Here are the notes from the power point. Socrates looked to science and logic (not the mythological gods) for explanations of how the world worked the Socratic Method fostered critical thinking “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates was charged with serious crimes impiety (disrespecting the gods) corrupting the youth of Athens at his trial, he described himself as a stinging gadfly, and Athens as a lazy old horse did not deny what he had done; asked for free dinners found guilty by an Athenian jury, and sentenced to death by drinking poison hemlock Plato Plato was a student and follower of Socrates he wrote out Socrates’ teachings, and described his trial in Apology Republic was Socrates’ discussion of justice and the ideal state -...

Today we took more notes on the power point. The notes were about the Spartans and Here are all the notes we took: Greeks were certainly a warlike people - especially the Spartans Spartans were known for their tough, ruthless infantry : soldiers who fought on land Spartan boys trained from the time they were seven Athens had a great infantry, too, but nothing could compare with their navy their most effective weapon was the trireme a technological marvel fastest ship in the world at the time rowed by up to 170 men on three levels could be used as a battering ram agile, fast The Palanx close-rank, dense grouping of warriors armed with long spears and interlocking shields soldiers would advance slowly toward the enemy, until they broke through their ranks Army vs. Army Greek army iron weapons meant ordinary citizens could afford to arm themselves foot soldiers ( hoplites ) trained from an early age armed with spears, swo...

Today we got our quizzes back. I was really unhappy with what I got. I got an 88. It's an ok grade, but I really wanted an A. There was one question that I knew the answer to, but I put down the wrong answer. If I didn't make this mistake, then I would've had an A. Despite this, I know I still have a lot of time to raise my grade. I have an 88 in the class so I know I can get it up to an A. We started learning about Greece pt 2 today. We spent the whole class learning and talking about Greek gods and goddesses. I really liked learning about the gods and goddesses in middle school, and I still do now. Here are some notes we took: What is unique about the Greeks’ relationship with their gods is the interaction with humans ---- Zeus - ruler of heaven and earth; father of Athena; god of the sky, weather, thunder, lightning, law, order, and justice. -Athena: Goddess of wisdom, skill,  warfare (and peace), intelligence, battle strategy, and handicrafts. - Apollo - god of...