Customer Reviews

The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization [VHS]

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The title of this DVD is not altogether accurate. If the writers had been interested in choosing a title which had veracity, the DVD would have been called "Athenians, Crucible of Civilization." For it is the Athenians, not the Greeks in general, which this documentary focuses on. Lacedamon, the other Superpower in Greece, as well as minor city states such as Corinth and Attica, are only mentioned in passing. Even then, the purpose for speaking of these places is almost always just to point out how they related to Athens.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that Athens was a watershed for western culture with its impressive contributions to political ideology, art, literature, theatre, architecture, philosophy, science, polemic techniques and so much more. All of these above topics were shunned by the people of Sparta, and the rest of the city states in Greece paled in comparison, insofar as these fields are concerned, when compared to the grandeur of the ostentatious Athenians.

One place in which this preference for Athens is taken too far, however, is in the treatment of the Persian War. There were four major battles in this war; Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis & Plataea. Only Marathon and Salamis are noted in this work; Thermopylae and Plataea are not cited at all. Apparently, the reason for this is that Marathon & Salamis were the two battles where the Athenians faced the Persians alone [at least for the most part; there were some allied ships sprinkled into the mix @ Salamis]. At Plataea they squared off against the Persians shoulder-to-shoulder with the Spartans and other Greeks. The Athenians were not involved @ Thermopylae at all. Persons who are unfamiliar with Greek history would be likely to walk away from this presentation thinking that there were only 2 major battles in the Persian War, and the Athenians deserve all the credit for saving Greece. That is a skewed understanding of history, and as such, not a good thing.

The biggest oversight of the DVD resides in its chapter on the battle of Marathon. We are told that after his 140 mile jaunt to Sparta, the messenger Pheidippides' plea for help was refused by the Laconians. That is very, very, very misleading. The Lacedamons did NOT intentionally hang their Athenian brethren out to dry in the face of the Persian invasion of Marathon. Rather, it was due to religious protocal which prevented the Spartan army from setting out right away. Here is the passage in Herodotus which details the Lacedamons' answer to Pheidippides:

"...the Spartans wished to help the Athenians, but were unable to give them any present succour, as they did not like to break their established law. It was then the ninth day of the first decade; and they could not march out of Sparta on the ninth, when the moon had not reached the full. So they waited for the full of the moon." (Herodotus, "Histories," Book VI [Erato], p. 342, trans: George Rawlinson)

When the Spartans did send their army, they arrived @ Marathon within an astonishing 3 days. Unfortunately, by then, the fighting was already over & the Athenians had earned a glorious (not to mention improbable) victory. So, the Laconians congratulated the Athenians and headed home. The (mostly Ivy league) historians who put this documentary together should have known better than to omit these facts.

By now you're probably thinking that I have nothing but bad stuff to say about this work, right? Well, no, that's not quite true; I've said all the negative things I am going to say (after all, I did give it 5 stars, right?). Now it's time to detail why I loved this DVD so much.

First of all, what the DVD does cover, it covers very well. The major epochs of Athens are detailed down thru the ages until the end of the Peleponnesian War. The work goes over such diverse subjects as the role of women in ancient Athens, the tactics and tools of warfare and the paradigms of pottery & architecture. Also, the lives of such great men as Themosticles, Pericles and Socrates are scrutinized extensively. As an added bonus the narrarator is none other than the venerable Liam Neeson, and the score is nearly movie-soundtrack calibre.

Despite my criticisms, I would highly recommend this DVD to all persons who have any interest at all in Greek history and / or the foundations of western thought.

This movie is an incredibly well done and thoughtful look at Greek history. It manages to include all the major events and individuals and do so in way my high school students as well as college students were able to understand. It brings Archaic and Classical Greece into perspective and is an invaluable tool useful not just in the classroom but for general use. Interesting and educational not two words often put together.

The Greeks: Cruicible of Civilization is an excellent documentary giving a good basic overview of the Classical Greek Civilization. However, there are certain shortfalls in the video. The narration, visuals, live action sequences, recreations and interviews are all used skillfully to move forward the story in an understandable language. A particularly useful item was the use of three actors playing the parts of Socrates, Themosticles, and Pericles of Athens. These actors do not have any speaking parts; instead they stand while narration moves around them. This allows you to be able to visualize this character, giving life back to someone who could easily be just an old name about a time long ago. I felt that was beautifully done. But it's not perfect. The video seems to focus almost completely on Athens. At the beginning it is stated that Athens was but one of 1000 city-states of Greece; the director seems to forget this point very quickly. Other cities are forgotten and only mentioned when, and if, they come into contact with Athens. This short changes the other cities, such as Thebes, Cornith, Argos, and Sparta which made up and influenced the Greek civilization. There also is almost no mention of the Greek colonies, or the nations that were comtemporary for the time such as the Persians, Egyptians, or Etruscans. Now that said, it can also be understood. If there is one place that is most identifable with influencing what we percieve as civilization, as society, as deomocracy, then it must be Athens. But still the city did not exist in a vacuum, it was part of a larger civilization. I have to say that this is a good, basic introduction to Classical Greece. An excellent way to begin the study of the past.

As a high school English teacher, I find this DVD to be a very good introduction to Greek history. It's basic, and it covers all the "bases"-art(pottery), literature(Homer), politics(Aristotle), and philosophy(Socrates).

However, most of the treatment is a bit too superficial for anybody who already has some familiarity with Greek history.

As noted by a number of reviewers, this DVD should have been called "The Athenians". The program suffers from a lack of detail despite its narrow focus.

The program uses shots of (I guess) live models standing stock still, in order to provide some kind of image of various characters from Athenian history who are profiled. The classical Athenians are portrayed as backstabbing turncoats, but still, the characters come and go for the most part without any kind of before and after history. Socrates is an exception, but literally everyone knows that story already, so no new ground is covered.

Themistocles, the genius behind Athens' naval victory over the Persians, was "ostracized" after his success -- a sign that the "democracy" of Athens was really just another fascist oligarchy -- and eventually wound up living in honor among his former enemies, the Persians. His ostracism is mentioned, but his ultimate fate in the Persian Empire is not. It would have taken an additional five or ten seconds.

The same can be said about the actions of another estranged Athenian, one who gave Sparta the key to success against Athens. Perhaps another ten or twenty seconds would have sufficed.

At one point during the war, Sparta sued for peace. The "democratic" government of Athens refused to parley. And as it imposed more and more tribute on the so-called Delian League, more and more of the tributary towns dumped Athens or even jumped to the Spartan side.

The "democracy" existed just long enough to start a major war with a view to a swift victory, then turn down the victory, and even widen the war, suffering a major defeat in the process, and eventually losing everything.

We see almost nothing regarding other Greek cities, even Sparta, the city on which Athens made war. The pretext for the war arose from something else entirely, and was the result of something Sparta did (as well as its political system), but this is not discussed in the video.

The video "The Spartans" [B0000C508X] deals strictly with the Greek city of Sparta, with an entire "episode" on the Peloponnesian War. Despite its focus on a single city, "The Spartans" does a better job of giving a real picture of life and politics in classical Greece. If you get "The Greeks", be sure to get "The Spartans" in order to see more of the picture, including important details of their struggle with Athens that are omitted from "The Greeks".

I do not agree that there was a lot to Sparta. It wasn't a sophisticated place at all. Besides the oppressive social structure, the mandatory buggery, the racism / elitism, the eugenics program, the enslavement of its neighbors for centuries, the employment of women as baby machines, and its defeat of Athens, followed by its defeat at the hands of its neighbor, there's little to know about Sparta. But boy, what an interesting and frightening story.

The Persians dealt piecemeal with the Greeks as much as possible. That strategy worked in Anatolia and elsewhere. The Greek city-states managed some major defeats of the Persians alone or by alliances, but on the other hand savaged each other using the Persians either as a pretext (the Delian League) or as an ally (Sparta, in the denouement of the Peloponnesian War). None of this is explained in the DVD, and again, it wouldn't have added significantly to the length.

"The Greeks" is a little on the repetitive side, and heavy on irrelevant modern graphics, possibly because it was intended for school aged viewers. The narrator's voice comes off as a little pompous in my opinion, and the soundtrack is ponderous. It's worth having around as an introduction to the city of Athens, provided this isn't the only thing in your video library. Enjoy.

This two and a half hour documentary is a an impressive effort on the part of PBS to give the viewer a glimpse of the glory that was ancient Greece .It does a good job covering those facets of ancient Greece that it choses to cover : the battles of Marathon , Salamis , the Paleponnesian war and fairly detailed vignettes of the statesmen & generals ( Cleisthenes, Themistocles,Pericles etc) .However the glaring weakness of this documentary lies in WHAT IT LEAVES OUT .After all , the enduring legacy of Athens to the western civilisation lies not in the wars it fought or the wealth it accumulated but in the treasure trove of philosophy,democracy,drama ,poetry and sculpture that it left behind. It is appropriate to have covered the contributions of Pericles and Themistocles to ancient Athens but what we really admire about ancient Greece isn't the military glory (the Tartars and Attila the Hun could have taught them a thing or two !)___rather it is in the dramas of Sophocles & Euripedes ,in the spiralling mysticism of Plato , the iridescent rationalism of Aristotle and the sublime majesty of Phidias's as manifested on the Parthenon frieze. It is in the intellectual and artistic realm that no civilisation ,before or since, can hold a candle to the ancient Greeks and the glaring deficiency of this documentary lies in giving short shrift to this aspect of the ancient Greek civilisation .I would have given it five stars but for this omission .

This title is somewhat of a misnomer. In reality, this film focuses mainly on the city state of Athens, and pays little attention to the rest of Greece. This is part of the ongoing Empires series of PBS. In a little less than three hours, this film manages to document the history of Athens from the founding of the citys democracy to the execution of Socrates and the dawn of the philosophical age of Greece.

This film is very well done, and superbly filmed. It also does an excellent job of detailing the events on which it focuses. The only complaint I have is that it is too short, and as such is forced to skip large periods in the history. This creates a number of gaps in the story, which are difficult to fill in if you are not at least modernly familiar with Athens history. Also, most of the detailed coverage ends with the death of Socrates, with the age of Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophers being only briefly summarized.

Despite this flaw, this documentary is a good one. Liam Neeson, who narrates the film, is a perfect fit for the part and does a great job. And, though the coverage isnt thorough and you will not learn everything there is to know about Greece from this film, PBS does as good a job as one can expect in just three short hours.

This video is an entertaining and edifying look at the culture that started western civilization. Narrated by Liam Neeson, it is a well-researched and absorbing look into why an obscure tribe of Hellenes rose up to found philosophy, democracy, and science, and what their legacy is today. This is THE video for anyone even remotely interested in ancient history, and I personally enjoyed it immensely.

This was an okay overview for those who have had no background in Greek history. To be more precise, this is not a documentary on Greek history but Athenian history. It presents Athenian history in a very favorable light, one I'm sure that a Greek historian would take issue with. While glorifying Athenian democracy, it does not mention that this democracy was a dictatorship to those surrounding city-states. Sparta is presented in a stereotypical war society with no depth or character and Argos is the only other mentioned city. I can understand that in 165 minutes not every aspect can be covered, but the glorified Athenian view was a little thick.

I also felt this presentation lacked the fullness that it could have had. Taking into consideration that this was made in 2000, it still lacked a depth of digital recreation. It also did not fully exploit dramatic recreation. Instead, it relies upon storytelling while panning to a single shot of a stationary dressed up actor covered in some strange gold-like substance.

What was positive about this presentation was Liam Neeson's narration. He is articulate and captivating.

I believe this is the first of the "Empires" series on PBS, and as such has a few rough edges that were smoothed out in later productions. The first weak spot is that it could be better focused in terms of time. Even though the time frame isn't all that wide, it somehow seems more sprawling than it should be. And as others have pointed out, it tries to include all of Greece, while in fact staying fairly close to Athens. I was also less than thrilled with the fact that when discussing one of their selected "great men" of Greece, the camera zooms in and holds on an actor standing like a living statue. And holds. And sweeps in again. And holds. Gets tedious... aren't there other visuals you could use?

These points aside, this really is a good documentary. There is a nice variety of info, from military issues, to philosophy, politics, trade, and art. The production values are stellar, the visuals generally fine, the narration excellent, and the info solid. Armchair historians will most likely enjoy this DVD, and I'm fairly sure younger viewers will be attracted to it as well.

Overall, a solid DVD, and a good start to a series that has gotten progressively better.