John Carroll Human Geography

The plague that hit Athens during the Peloponnesian war was similar to COVID-19 because both spread quickly in places where a large amount of people were crammed into close quarters. While these two illnesses have different symptoms, they were both unexpected and threw people into chaos, greatly disrupting society.

The first week of cyber days was pretty difficult. It took a lot of time to get used to it and manage the classes. I kept forgetting assignments and my grades dropped a little, but I'm hoping that by next week I'll be able to handle it. I wish that we had less work per day, but I understand that the teachers have to give us enough work for a full class.

1. Pericles was a wise statesman, politician, and general that led Athens during most of its golden age. His goals for Athens were to strengthen Athenian democracy, strengthen the empire, and glorify Athens. 2. A direct democracy is run by citizens directly ruling, not through representatives. 3. The Delian League worked by Athens taking leadership of the other city-states, using money from the league's treasury to make the Athenian navy stronger, helping Athens to gain access to waterways and strengthen the safety of the empire. The Athenian military allowed Pericles to treat other members of the league as part of the empire. Money from the treasury was also used to beautify and glorify Athens.

Today in class, Mr. Schick prepared us for the next 2 weeks by telling us about cyber school methods and where we would turn in electronic work for the time we're out of school. He instructed us on staying healthy and virus-free, and discussed why forced quarantine would work in America, but isn't allowed.

Today in class, we got new seats and assigned pockets for our phones. After we got our new seats, Mr. Schick taught us about the proper steps to avoid getting sick during a time of widespread disease, and educated us on the correct way to wash our hands. After discussing how to avoid sickness, we talked about the upcoming cyber days. Cyber days are when we have classes and assignments electronically, because we're not in school. We used to do them at John Carroll for snow days, and we're learning about them now because we're going to have off school due to the Coronavirus. It's a bad idea to have this many people in the same place during a time where there's an illness present and spreading, so we're going to have to do cyber school.

I was absent today and could not complete this assignment.

Today in class, we watched a documentary about Ancient Greece narrated by Liam Neeson. The first episode began in 508 BC, centering the revolution in Athens. Cleisthenes was born around 570 BC, and grew up in Athens. In the revolution, he saw that the people had a right to rule themselves. We heard about Sparta next. Sparta conquered surrounding land, turning the conquered people into a slave class called helots. Every year, they'd kill many of the helots to reestablish themselves not only as their masters, but as a warrior civilization. Everywhere in Greece, the heroic ideal seen in stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey was what everyone, especially men, was supposed to strive for. Then, we learned about Pisistratus, a tyrant who went to the common people for support, since there were more commoners than there were aristocrats. This action upended the social hierarchy and led to successes for Pisistratus. He reduced taxes and offered free loans, so that people didn't hav

Today in class, we took a 10 question pop quiz on greek mythology, philosophy, and the Persian Wars. I got an 90% because I got one wrong. I'll study more before we take our actual test. After this, we learned about Aristotle. Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and a student at Plato's Academy. Aristotle opened his own school after Plato's death, called the Lyceum, where he focused on cooperative research on physics, logic, ethics, theatre, and other subjects. Aristotle wanted to foster the idea of Athens as an intellectual destination, gathering knowledge from all over the world, and having it easily accessible in one location, similar to the modern internet. Aristotle was a student of Plato, who was a student and follower of Socrates. Plato wrote about Socrates' trial and execution in Apology, and opened his school, called the Academy, in order to teach students differently than they did in traditional Greek schooling.

We began studying the three most influential philosophers in Ancient Greece, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates encouraged his students to examine heir beliefs and showed them the many contradictory thoughts that people had by using the Socratic Method, asking people a series of questions until they had a better understanding of their own thoughts. Socrates was put to death by drinking poison hemlock after pleading guilty when charged with disrespecting the goods and corrupting the youth of Athens. Plato, a student of Socrates, wrote about his teachings in a work called Apology. Plato also wrote The Republic, his opinion on what would be the perfect government. He wrote about three different classes, with a philosopher king at the top of the ruing class. Aristotle, a student of Plato, invented a method of arguing according to logic. He's known for teaching Alexander the Great when he was young.

In class today, we discussed military techniques of Ancient Greek city-states, focused on Sparta's infantry and Athens' Navy. We then looked at the Persian Wars and the advantages and disadvantages that each army had. The Persian army had the advantages of larger numbers and better trained soldiers against Greece, but the Greek army had more motivation, desperately wanting to preserve democracy, as well as the advantage of being in their own territory. Greeks also had hoplites and Spartans that trained from a young age, and an. impressive battle formation called the phalanx, a close-rank and dense formation. The Persians had cavalry, archers, and near unlimited resources, but struggled so far from their own home turf. We also learned that The 300 is a historically inaccurate movie. I've never seen it, and now I don't want to

We received our graded tests back and looked over them. I only got one question wrong, and got a 98%, so im happy with my score. Im really glad that I studied a lot before taking the test. This was only the first part though, and we're going to take the second part of the test in a few weeks after we're completely done with our unit on Ancient Greek society. We then began studying the Ancient Greek religious parthenon. Greeks had a unique relationship with their deities, and mythology often contains gods and goddesses interacting with humans. Humans had feuds, relationships, and children with gods and goddesses, leading to stories of mythical demigods and disputes between the gods and goddesses that impacted Greek mortals.