Ancient Greece
Greece was a beautiful country of the arts. Ancient Greece’s time was around 2000 to 30 B.C.E. Ancient Greece’s people had to deal with mountainous lands, making it hard to live there. Though these causes were against them, they survived and had beautiful and dramatic plays, arts, and architecture. Greece had many wonderful and terrible leaders, and took over much of the ancient world.. Greece had a very rich religion, counting up thousands of gods. Greece also was known for their arts, from pottery to dramatic plays. Even though Greece had a geography that was hard to live in, they did many great things. Greece began as small towns and villages, but they realized it would be better to live together. They Greeks started
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Athens’ patron goddess was Athena, goddess of wisdom and war. Once they formed the city states, the started colonizing and taking as much as possible. Who ruled these city states? Nobles, at first. Then the people wanted to rule. Greece city states started to become a democracy. Most city states accepted the change. Sparta didn’t though, and remained under the rule of a king. Once Greece was stabilized, Greece started to be targeted by other civilizations. The first major war that Greece was in was against Persia from 492 B.C.E. to 490 B.C.E. To win this war, most of Greece had to work together. This peace didn’t last though. Sparta grew jealous of Athens, who was in their Golden Age. During this war, Sparta won. Their unison didn’t last though. They city-states soon broke into uncertainty. In the far corners of Greece, the Macedonians attacked the rest of Greece …show more content…
Greece religion had hundreds of gods, for every part of life. Your whole life revolved around gods. The most worshipped gods were the twelve Olympians. They controlled everything, weather, water, seasons, and anything else. There was also the minor gods, which varied wildly, from the gods that made you sleep to gods that ferried you to the underworld. The people worshipped the twelve Olympians in huge temples. One of the most popular temples was the Parthenon, in Athens. People worshipped gods by offering sacrifices of tame animals, or animals that have been domesticated to the gods. People believed that when you died you would have to go to Hades (ruled by the Olympian Hades) and be judged and sent to either Elysium a sunny, happy place where the good and remembered went or Tartarus where the wicked went. People believed that if you were forgotten, you would wander the lands in Hades, neither in Elysium or or the evil
In Ancient Greece, winning was the only option, and this idea was demonstrated not only in their art, theater, and literature, but in their war. The Greeks were ferocious warriors, so much so that their entire society can be considered a warrior society. In order to always come out on top, Ancient Greek city-states, called "polis,” linked together through alliances. If one city went to war, the other city state would join in, and if they didn't then they would suffer
When people wonder about Ancient Greece the first thing that comes to their minds is Greek mythology; gods and goddesses that have helped shape many historical events. “In ancient Greece, stories about gods and goddesses and heroes and monsters were an important part of everyday life.” (“Greek Mythology.”) The civilization showed that numerous characters and stories helped shape Greeks. The beliefs the Greeks had with mythologies was they understood the meaning behind all the characters that are known today. However, to the Greeks, they were not just characters, these were their gods and goddesses who gave them meaning and understanding of the world around them. Worshiping the gods and goddesses helped them with their religious rituals and the temperament of the weather. A famous wine-jar that was made during this time period was “Achilles killing the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, 540-530 BCE, black-figured amphora”. (Khan Academy) The civilization that they lived in grew around their worship and achievements.
Greece was a very high-class civilization, where the government was based on city-states. Perhaps their greatest invention of all was the form of government they came up with, which we still use today-democracy. However these Greek democracies are nothing like our democracy today. The probably most well known ruler of Greece was Alexander the Great. He was the leader of Macedonia, the city-state that took control over Greece, and he eventually gained control over Greece as a whole. Alexander the Great was probably the best leader of all time in Greece. He conquered new lands, but he was the first person to adopt the new land's customs, instead of forcing his customs on the new territory. This is why many of the civilizations he conquered actually were glad he took them over. He also encouraged his soldiers to marry the women from the new territories to show cultural involvement.
During the era before Classical Greece Sparta and Athena had different paths because Sparta had two kings and an oligarchic government, while Athens had instituted democracy. Sparta treated men to be warriors and women could have their own properties, while in Athena men were trained to be public speakers and women had only several rights. Despite the differences they joined to a war against Persia, and after that there was a Peloponnesian war between the two poleis, where Athena lost, at the end, Sparta, Athena and Thebes each took turn on the dominant Greek power. One interesting fact is also that the buildings that they built had a political purpose also to celebrate civil power and pride.
One way was the sea. Athens was located on the Attica peninsula so they were surrounded by water on three sides and Athens built its naval supremacy of Triremes. The Triremes gave Athens control of the Mediterranean Sea so they controlled trade and gained the name the “Big Olive.” A lot of the battles of the Persian war were fought with navies and the Trireme allowed for them to win the narrow straits of Salamis. The sea also greatly impacted economy. The Ionian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Aegean Sea connected all of the land and islands of Ancient Greece so they could trade with one another. The Sea also allowed for travel and they could trade with other countries like Egypt. They could make a profit for their natural resources and benefit from obtaining resources that were not natural to Greece at the time. The biggest impact geography had on Greece was the land. The land was dry with only 20% arable land and it was extremely mountainous. The mountains ran from the northwest part of Greece to the southeast part along the Balkan Peninsula. Due to the dryness, the Greek city states were constantly looking to expand their land and the mountains caused each city state to be spread apart. This made them have decentralized governments. Also due to the mountainous geography, there were over 1000 Greek city states including Athens and Sparta. Land also was on Sparta’s side during the Peloponnesian
Ancient Greece had a major impact on the Western World due to many factors. Documents 1 and 2 reveal that the Western World has been impacted by political factors of the ancient Greeks, whille documents 4, and 5 show us that the Western World was impacted due to cultural reasons.
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.” This quote by Thomas Henry Huxley perfectly describes the importance of Greece. The two most important cities in Greece were Sparta and Athens, in most opinions. The rise and fall of Athens and Sparta helped to shape Greek history and the Eastern Mediterranean, there were also quite a few strengths and weaknesses.
Greece was a wonderful place to be where Athens was all about beauty and Sparta was all about their military. Greece has been through many changes since its modern day. Athens golden age was well know to our history because Athens was at its peak. All these changes has created the modern day Greece we know today.
Greece is the reason we have the olympics every four years which started in ancient Greece at about 776 B.C.E. It has remained as a symbol for the internal Greek struggle between unity and conflict. Greek arts in architecture, painting, and pottery making which influenced Roman art, and mosaic art is the reason we have designs in a bathroom like the texture and tiles. Greek arts have also
Greece is home to many famous things and many unique features. They are known for three major things their sport events, climate, food and drinks. There are very good all around athletes when it comes to sports, they have a very mediterranean climate, and they have many famous restaurants to eat at. ¨It is hard to imagine a world without Greece because virtually every aspect of modern life owes something to the ancient Greeks.¨
Greece was full of great battles, thriving, and strong warriors. Greece is responsible for our way of government, and still influences our everyday way of life. They came up with the alphabet, the numbers, and our way of science, slightly altered due to new technology, They even came up with philosophy. The greek timeline is full of surprises.
Greece is an important ancient civilization that is still alive today. Greece is an amazing country with amazing culture . Greece has a rich and interesting history.
Have you wondered where several of the gods came from and what is the slipperiest country? The answer is Ancient Greece and Greece! To name some, Oenomaus had his games there so did Apollo, and King Cecrops had the building called Parthenon in Acropolis. Greece has over 5,000 islands but on the other hand, about 220 of them have humans living on it. Greece is known for it's historical sites, artifacts, sculptures, and being the birthplace of democracy, a system of government by a group of people for a state or country.
Ancient Greece, (also known as Hellas) is a country full of city-states, Ancient Rome, a great city that has contributed immensely to the ever growing society known as the modern world. Four contributions that catch the eye is romance languages (Italian, French...), architectures (Parthenon, temples e.g), gods & goddesses (Zeus, Athena, Hermes e.g) and the well known christian Bible. These and many other great contributions show how vast the ancient society of these two history changing societies are to our wonderful planet earth.
Greece during its Golden Age (600 BCE- 300 BCE) was the civilization that was able to provide most of today’s literature, art, math,science, and philosophy. However Greece was not always an empire united by one, for all these islands and towns were scattered around creating their own governments. While around the world there were all these big empires, Ancient Greece was first to stand out with it’s isolated islands each having different governments. Ancient Greece valued their trade and their economy too. Ancient Greece valued their government also known as polis, poleis for many. These poleis were all different and some islands even had a mixture of more than one. Ancient Greece also valued their economy, where most of the things they had were imported. However Ancient Greece was able to provide an abundant amount of olives and olive oil. Ancient Greece also valued their philosophy, being most known for it. It provided this world with three of the most influential philosophers ever, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.