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Ancient Greece

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology

   This article is part of the series on:

   History of Greece
   Prehistory of Greece
   Cycladic Civilization
   Minoan Civilization
   Mycenaean Civilization
   Ancient Greece
   Ancient Greece
   Hellenistic Greece
   Roman Greece
   Medieval Greece
   Byzantine Empire
   Ottoman Greece
   Modern Greece
   Greek War of Independence
   Kingdom of Greece
   Axis Occupation of Greece
   Greek Civil War
   Military Junta
   The Hellenic Republic
   The Ancient Greek world, circa 550 BC
   The Ancient Greek world, circa 550 BC

   Ancient Greece is the period in Greek history which lasted for around
   one thousand years and ended with the rise of Christianity. It is
   considered by some historians to be one of the foundational cultures of
   Western Civilization. Greek culture was a powerful influence in the
   Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Europe.
   The civilization of the Ancient Greeks has been immensely influential
   on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science,
   and arts, fuelling the Renaissance in Western Europe and again
   resurgent during various neo-Classical revivals in 18th and 19th
   century Europe and the Americas.

   Ancient Greece is also the term used to describe the Greek-speaking
   world in ancient times. It refers not only to the modern continental
   Greece, but also to areas of Hellenic culture that were settled in
   ancient times by Greeks: Cyprus and the Aegean islands, the Aegean
   coast of Anatolia (then known as Ionia), Sicily and southern Italy
   (known as Magna Graecia), and the scattered Greek settlements on the
   coasts of Colchis, Illyria, Thrace, Egypt, Cyrenaica, southern Gaul,
   east and northeast of the Iberian peninsula, Iberia and Taurica.

Chronology

   There are no fixed or universally agreed upon dates for the beginning
   or the end of the Ancient Greek period. In common usage it refers to
   all Greek history before the Roman Empire, but historians use the term
   more precisely. Some writers include the periods of the Greek-speaking
   Mycenaean civilization that collapsed about 1150 BC, though most would
   argue that the influential Minoan was so different from later Greek
   cultures that it should be classed separately.

   In the modern Greek school-books, "ancient times" is a period of about
   900 years, from the catastrophe of Mycenae until the conquest of the
   country by the Romans, that is divided in four periods, based on styles
   of art as much as culture and politics. The historical line starts with
   Greek Dark Ages ( 1100– 800 BC). In this period artists use geometrical
   schemes such as squares, circles, lines to decorate amphoras and other
   pottery. The archaic period ( 800– 500 BC) represents those years when
   the artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, hieratic
   poses with the dreamlike "archaic smile". In the classical period (500–
   323 BC) artists perfected the style that since has been taken as
   exemplary: "classical", such as the Parthenon. In the Hellenistic years
   that followed the conquests of Alexander (323– 146 BC), also known as
   Alexandrian, aspects of Hellenic civilization expanded to Egypt and
   Bactria.

   Traditionally, the Ancient Greek period was taken to begin with the
   date of the first recorded Olympic Games in 776 BC, but many historians
   now extend the term back to about 1000 BC. The traditional date for the
   end of the Ancient Greek period is the death of Alexander the Great in
   323 BC. The following period is classed Hellenistic or the integration
   of Greece into the Roman Republic in 146 BC.

   These dates are historians' conventions and some writers treat the
   Ancient Greek civilization as a continuum running until the advent of
   Christianity in the 3rd century.

Origins

   The Greeks are believed to have migrated southward into the Balkan
   peninsula in several waves beginning in the late 3rd millennium BC, the
   last being the Dorian invasion. Proto-Greek is assumed to date to some
   time between the 23rd and 17th centuries BC. The period from 1600 BC to
   about 1100 BC is described in History of Mycenaean Greece known for the
   reign of King Agamemnon and the wars against Troy as narrated in the
   epics of Homer. The period from 1100 BC to the 8th century BC is a "
   Dark Age" from which no primary texts survive, and only scant
   archaeological evidence remains. Secondary and tertiary texts such as
   Herodotus' Histories, Pausanias' Description of Greece, Diodorus'
   Bibliotheca, and Jerome's Chronicon contain brief chronologies and king
   lists for this period. The history of Ancient Greece is often taken to
   end with the reign of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC.
   Subsequent events are described in Hellenistic Greece.

   Any history of Ancient Greece requires a cautionary note on sources.
   Those Greek historians and political writers whose works have survived,
   notably Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato and
   Aristotle, were mostly either Athenian or pro-Athenian. That is why we
   know far more about the history and politics of Athens than of any
   other city, and why we know almost nothing about some cities'
   histories. These writers, furthermore, concentrate almost wholly on
   political, military and diplomatic history, and ignore economic and
   social history. All histories of Ancient Greece have to contend with
   these limits in their sources.

The rise of Greece

   The Temple to Athena, the Parthenon.
   Enlarge
   The Temple to Athena, the Parthenon.

   In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which
   followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost
   and the Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks created the Greek
   alphabet, most likely by modifying the Phoenician. From about 800 BC
   written records begin to appear. Greece was divided into many small
   self-governing communities, the latter being a pattern dictated by
   Greek geography, where every island, valley and plain is cut off from
   its neighbours by the sea or mountain ranges.

   Population grew beyond the capacity of its limited arable land
   (according to Mogens Herman Hansen, the population of Ancient Greece
   increased by a factor larger than ten during the period from 800 BC to
   350 BC, increasing from a population of 700,000 to a total estimated
   population of 8 to 10 million) . From about 750 BC the Greeks began 250
   years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. To the east,
   the Aegean coast of Asia Minor was colonized first, followed by Cyprus
   and the coasts of Thrace, the Sea of Marmara and south coast of the
   Black Sea. Eventually Greek colonization reached as far north-east as
   present day Ukraine. To the west the coasts of Illyria, Sicily and
   southern Italy were settled, followed by the south coast of France,
   Corsica, and even northeastern Spain. Greek colonies were also founded
   in Egypt and Libya. Modern Syracuse, Naples, Marseille and Istanbul had
   their beginnings as the Greek colonies Syracusae (Συρακούσαι), Neapolis
   (Νεάπολις), Massalia (Μασσαλία) and Byzantion (Βυζάντιον).

   By the 6th century BC the Greek world had become a cultural and
   linguistic area much larger than the geographical area of present
   Greece. Greek colonies were not politically controlled by their
   founding cities, although they often retained religious and commercial
   links with them. The Greeks both at home and abroad organized
   themselves into independent communities, and the city ( polis) became
   the basic unit of Greek government.

   In this period a huge economic development occurred in Greece and its
   overseas colonies, with the growth of commerce and manufacture. There
   also was a large improvement in the living standards of the population.
   Some studies estimate that the average size of the Greek household, in
   the period from 800 BC to 300 BC, increased five times, which indicates
   a large increase in the average income of the population.

   At its economic height, in the 4th century BC, Ancient Greece was the
   most advanced economy in the world. According to some economic
   historians, it was one of the most advanced pre-industrial economies.
   This is demonstrated by the average daily wage of the Greek worker, it
   was, in terms of grain (about 13 kg), more than 4 times the average
   daily wage of the Egyptian (about 3kg).

Social and political conflict

   The Greek cities were originally monarchies, although many of them were
   very small and the term "King" ( basileus) for their rulers is
   misleadingly grand. In a country always short of farmland, power rested
   with a small class of landowners, who formed a warrior aristocracy
   fighting frequent petty inter-city wars over land and rapidly ousting
   the monarchy. About this time the rise of a mercantile class (shown by
   the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC) introduced class conflict
   into the larger cities. From 650 BC onwards, the aristocracies had to
   fight not to be overthrown and replaced by populist leaders called
   tyrants (tyrranoi), a word which did not necessarily have the modern
   meaning of oppressive dictators.

   By the 6th century BC several cities had emerged as dominant in Greek
   affairs: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. Each of them had brought
   the surrounding rural areas and smaller towns under their control, and
   Athens and Corinth had become major maritime and mercantile powers as
   well. Athens and Sparta developed a rivalry that dominated Greek
   politics for generations.

   In Sparta, the landed aristocracy retained their power, and the
   constitution of Lycurgus (about 650 BC) entrenched their power and gave
   Sparta a permanent militarist regime under a dual monarchy. Sparta
   dominated the other cities of the Peloponnese, with the sole exceptions
   of Argus and Achaia.

   In Athens, by contrast, the monarchy was abolished in 683 BC, and
   reforms of Solon established a moderate system of aristocratic
   government. The aristocrats were followed by the tyranny of Pisistratus
   and his sons, who made the city a great naval and commercial power.
   When the Pisistratids were overthrown, Cleisthenes established the
   world's first democracy ( 500 BC), with power being held by an assembly
   of all the male citizens. But it must be remembered that only a
   minority of the male inhabitants were citizens, excluding slaves,
   freedmen and non-Athenians.

The Persian Wars

   In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast of Turkey) the Greek cities, which
   included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus, were unable
   to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian
   Empire in the mid 6th century BC. In 499 BC the Greeks rose in the
   Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek cities went to their
   aid.

   In 490 BC the Persian Great King, Darius I, having suppressed the
   Ionian cities, sent a fleet to punish the Greeks. The Persians landed
   in Attica, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army
   led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The burial mound of the Athenian
   dead can still be seen at Marathon.

   Ten years later Darius' successor, Xerxes I, sent a much more powerful
   force by land. After being delayed by the Spartan King Leonidas I at
   Thermopylae, Xerxes advanced into Attica, where he captured and burned
   Athens. But the Athenians had evacuated the city by sea, and under
   Themistocles they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis.
   A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanius, defeated the
   Persian army at Plataea.

   The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians out of the
   Aegean Sea, and in 478 BC they captured Byzantium. In the course of
   doing so Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland allies
   into an alliance, called the Delian League because its treasury was
   kept on the sacred island of Delos. The Spartans, although they had
   taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation after it, allowing
   Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power.

Dominance of Athens

   Pericles
   Enlarge
   Pericles

   The Persian Wars ushered in a century of Athenian dominance of Greek
   affairs. Athens was the unchallenged master of the sea, and also the
   leading commercial power, although Corinth remained a serious rival.
   The leading statesman of this time was Pericles, who used the tribute
   paid by the members of the Delian League to build the Parthenon and
   other great monuments of classical Athens. By the mid 5th century the
   League had become an Athenian Empire, symbolized by the transfer of the
   League's treasury from Delos to the Parthenon in 454 BC.

   The wealth of Athens attracted talented people from all over Greece,
   and also created a wealthy leisure class who became patrons of the
   arts. The Athenian state also sponsored learning and the arts,
   particularly architecture. Athens became the centre of Greek
   literature, philosophy (see Greek philosophy) and the arts (see Greek
   theatre). Some of the greatest names of Western cultural and
   intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists
   Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles, the philosophers
   Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, the historians Herodotus, Thucydides,
   and Xenophon, the poet Simonides and the sculptor Pheidias. The city
   became, in Pericles's words, "the school of Hellas".

   The other Greek states at first accepted Athenian leadership in the
   continuing war against the Persians, but after the fall of the
   conservative politician Cimon in 461 BC, Athens became an increasingly
   open imperialist power. After the Greek victory at the Battle of the
   Eurymedon in 466 BC, the Persians were no longer a threat, and some
   states, such as Naxos, tried to secede from the League, but were forced
   to submit. The new Athenian leaders, Pericles and Ephialtes, let
   relations between Athens and Sparta deteriorate, and in 458 BC war
   broke out. After some years of inconclusive war a 30-year peace was
   signed between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League (Sparta
   and her allies). This coincided with the last battle between the Greeks
   and the Persians, a sea battle off Salamis in Cyprus, followed by the
   Peace of Callias ( 450 BC) between the Greeks and Persians.

The Peloponnesian War

   Alcibiades
   Enlarge
   Alcibiades

   In 431 BC war broke out again between Athens and Sparta and its allies.
   The immediate causes of the Peloponnesian War vary from account to
   account. However, three causes are fairly consistent among the ancient
   historians, namely Thucydides and Plutarch. Prior to the war, Corinth
   and one of its colonies, Corcyra (modern-day Corfu), got into a dispute
   in which Athens intervened. Soon after, Corinth and Athens argued over
   control of Potidaea (near modern-day Nea Potidaia), eventually leading
   to an Athenian siege of Potidaea. Finally, Athens issued a series of
   economic decrees known as the "Megarian Decrees" that placed economic
   sanctions on the Megarian people. Athens was accused by the
   Peloponnesian allies of violating the Thirty Years Peace through all of
   the aforementioned actions, and Sparta formally declared war on Athens.

   It should be noted that many historians consider these simply to be the
   immediate causes of the war. They would argue that the underlying cause
   was the growing resentment of Sparta and its allies at the dominance of
   Athens over Greek affairs. The war lasted 27 years, partly because
   Athens (a naval power) and Sparta (a land-based military power) found
   it difficult to come to grips with each other.

   Sparta's initial strategy was to invade Attica, but the Athenians were
   able to retreat behind their walls. An outbreak of plague in the city
   during the siege caused heavy losses, including Pericles. At the same
   time the Athenian fleet landed troops in the Peloponnese, winning
   battles at Naupactus (429 BC) and Pylos (425 BC). But these tactics
   could bring neither side a decisive victory. After several years of
   inconclusive campaigning, the moderate Athenian leader Nicias concluded
   the Peace of Nicias (421 BC).

   In 418 BC, however, hostility between Sparta and the Athenian ally
   Argos led to a resumption of fighting. At Mantinea Sparta defeated the
   combined armies of Athens and her allies. The resumption of fighting
   brought the war party, led by Alcibiades, back to power in Athens. In
   415 BC Alcibiades persuaded the Athenian Assembly to launch a major
   expedition against Syracuse, a Peloponnesian ally in Sicily. Though
   Nicias was a skeptic about the Sicilian Expedition, he was appointed
   along with Alcibiades to lead the expedition. Due to accusations
   against him, Alcibiades fled to Sparta where he persuaded Sparta to
   send aid to Syracuse. As a result, the expedition was a complete
   disaster and the whole expeditionary force was lost. Nicias was
   executed by his captors.

   Sparta had now built a fleet (with the help of the Persians) to
   challenge Athenian naval supremacy, and had found a brilliant military
   leader in Lysander, who seized the strategic initiative by occupying
   the Hellespont, the source of Athens' grain imports. Threatened with
   starvation, Athens sent its last remaining fleet to confront Lysander,
   who decisively defeated them at Aegospotami (405 BC). The loss of her
   fleet threatened Athens with bankruptcy. In 404 BC Athens sued for
   peace, and Sparta dictated a predictably stern settlement: Athens lost
   her city walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions. The
   totalitarian party took power in Athens with Spartan support.

Spartan and Theban dominance

          Related articles: Spartan hegemony and Theban hegemony

   The end of the Peloponnesian War left Sparta the master of Greece, but
   the narrow outlook of the Spartan warrior elite did not suit them to
   this role. Within a few years the democratic party regained power in
   Athens and other cities. In 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander
   from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos,
   Thebes, and Corinth, the latter two formerly Spartan allies, challenged
   Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in
   387 BC. That same year Sparta shocked Greek opinion by concluding the
   Treaty of Antalcidas with Persia, by which they surrendered the Greek
   cities of Ionia and Cyprus; thus they reversed a hundred years of Greek
   victories against Persia. Sparta then tried to further weaken the power
   of Thebes, which led to a war where Thebes formed an alliance with the
   old enemy, Athens.

   Then the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive
   victory at Leuctra ( 371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of
   Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban dominance, but Athens
   herself recovered much of her former power because the supremacy of
   Thebes was short-lived. With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea ( 362
   BC) the city lost its greatest leader, and his successors blundered
   into an ineffectual ten-year war with Phocis. In 346 BC the Thebans
   appealed to Philip II of Macedon to help them against the Phocians,
   thus drawing Macedon into Greek affairs for the first time.

The rise of Macedon

   The Kingdom of Macedon was formed in the 7th century BC. They played
   little part in Greek politics before the 5th century BC. In the
   beginning of the 4th century BC, King Philip of Macedon, an ambitious
   man who had been educated in Thebes, wanted to play a larger role. In
   particular, he wanted to be accepted as the new leader of Greece in
   recovering the freedom of the Greek cities of Asia from Persian rule.
   By seizing the Greek cities of Amphipolis, Methone and Potidaea, he
   gained control of the gold and silver mines of Macedonia. This gave him
   the resources to realize his ambitions.
   Philip II of Macedon
   Enlarge
   Philip II of Macedon

   Philip established Macedonian dominance over Thessaly ( 352 BC) and
   Thrace, and by 348 BC he controlled everything north of Thermopylae. He
   used his great wealth to bribe Greek politicians, creating a
   "Macedonian party" in every Greek city. His intervention in the war
   between Thebes and Phocis brought him great recognition, and gave him
   his opportunity to become a power in Greek affairs. Against him the
   Athenian leader Demosthenes, in a series of famous speeches (
   philippics) roused the Athenians to resist Philip's advance.

   In 339 BC Thebes and Athens formed an alliance to resist Philip's
   growing influence. Philip struck first, advancing into Greece and
   defeating the allies at Chaeronea in 338 BC. This traditionally marks
   the start of the decline of the city-state institution, though they
   mostly survived as independent states until Roman times.

   Philip tried to win over the Athenians by flattery and gifts, but these
   efforts met with limited success. He organized the cities into the
   League of Corinth, and announced that he would lead an invasion of
   Persia to liberate the Greek cities and avenge the Persian invasions of
   the previous century. But before he could do so he was assassinated (
   336 BC).

The conquests of Alexander

   The statue of Alexander the Great in Thessaloniki sea front.
   Enlarge
   The statue of Alexander the Great in Thessaloniki sea front.

   Philip was succeeded by his 20-year-old son Alexander, who immediately
   set out to carry out his father's plans. When he saw that Athens had
   fallen, he wanted to bring back the tradition of Athens by destroying
   the Persian King. He travelled to Corinth where the assembled Greek
   cities recognized him as leader of the Greeks, then set off north to
   assemble his forces. The core structure of his army was the hardy
   Macedonian mountain-fighter, but he bolstered his numbers and
   diversified his army with levies from all corners of Greece. He
   enriched his tactics and formation with Greek strategem ranging from
   Theban cavalry structure to Spartan guerilla tactics. His engineering
   and manufacturing were largely derived of Greek origin – involving
   everything from Archimedal siege-weaponry to Ampipholian
   ship-reinforcement. But while Alexander was campaigning in Thrace, he
   heard that the Greek cities had rebelled. He swept south again,
   captured Thebes, and razed the city to the ground. He left only one
   building standing, the house of Pindar, a poet who had written in
   favour of Alexander's ancestor, Alexander the First. This acted as a
   symbol and warning to the Greek cities that his power could no longer
   be resisted, whilst reminding them he would preserve and respect their
   culture if they were obedient.

   In 334 BC Alexander crossed into Asia, and defeated the Persians at the
   river Granicus. This gave him control of the Ionian coast, and he made
   a triumphal procession through the liberated Greek cities. After
   settling affairs in Anatolia, he advanced south through Cilicia into
   Syria, where he defeated Darius III at Issus ( 333 BC). He then
   advanced through Phoenicia to Egypt, which he captured with little
   resistance, the Egyptians welcoming him as a liberator from Persian
   oppression, and the prophesized son of Amun.

   Darius was now ready to make peace and Alexander could have returned
   home in triumph, but Alexander was determined to conquer Persia and
   make himself the ruler of the world. He advanced north-east through
   Syria and Mesopotamia, and defeated Darius again at Gaugamela ( 331
   BC). Darius fled and was killed by his own followers, and Alexander
   found himself the master of the Persian Empire, occupying Susa and
   Persepolis without resistance.
   Map of Alexander the Great's Greek empire.
   Enlarge
   Map of Alexander the Great's Greek empire.

   Meanwhile the Greek cities were making renewed efforts to escape from
   Macedonian control. At Megalopolis in 331 BC, Alexander's regent
   Antipater defeated the Spartans, who had refused to join the Corinthian
   League or recognize Macedonian supremacy.

   Alexander pressed on, advancing through what are now Afghanistan and
   Pakistan to the Indus river valley, and by 326 BC he had reached
   Punjab. He might well have advanced down the Ganges to Bengal had not
   his army, convinced they were at the end of the world, refused to go
   any further. Alexander reluctantly turned back, and died of a fever in
   Babylon in 323 BC.

   Alexander's empire broke up soon after his death, but his conquests
   permanently changed the Greek world. Thousands of Greeks travelled with
   him or after him to settle in the new Greek cities he had founded as he
   advanced, the most important being Alexandria in Egypt. Greek-speaking
   kingdoms in Egypt, Syria, Persia and Bactria were established. The
   knowledge and cultures of east and west began to permeate and interact.
   The Hellenistic age had begun.

Society

   The distinguishing features of Ancient Greek society were the division
   between free and slave, the differing roles of men and women, the
   relative lack of status distinctions based on birth, and the importance
   of religion. The way of life of the Athenians was common in the Greek
   world compared to Sparta's special system.

Social Structure

   Only free people could be citizens entitled to the full protection of
   the law in a city-state. In most city-states, unlike Rome, social
   prominence did not allow special rights. For example, being born in a
   certain family generally brought no special privileges. Sometimes
   families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did
   not give any extra power in the government. In Athens, the population
   was divided into four social classes based on wealth. People could
   change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all male citizens
   were given the title of "equal" if they finished their education.
   However, Spartan kings, who served as the city-state's dual military
   and religious leaders, came from two families. Slaves had no power or
   status. They had the right to have a family and own property, however
   they had no political rights. By 600 BC chattel slavery had spread in
   Greece. By the 5th century BC slaves made up one-third of the total
   population in some city-states. Slaves outside of Sparta almost never
   revolted because they were made up of too many nationalities and were
   too scattered to organize.

   Most families owned slaves as household servants and labourers, and
   even poor families might have owned a few slaves. Owners were not
   allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Owners often promised to free
   slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. Unlike in Rome,
   slaves who were freed did not become citizens. Instead, they were mixed
   into the population of metics, which included people from foreign
   countries or other city-states who were officially allowed to live in
   the state.

   City-states also legally owned slaves. These public slaves had a larger
   measure of independence than slaves owned by families, living on their
   own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, public slaves were
   trained to look out for counterfeit coinage, while temple slaves acted
   as servants of the temple's deity.

   Sparta had a special type of slaves called helots. Helots were Greek
   war captives owned by the state and assigned to families. Helots raised
   food and did household chores so that women could concentrate on
   raising strong children while men could devote their time to training
   as hoplites. Their masters treated them harshly and helots often
   revolted.

Way of Life

   A Nubian slave of Ptolemaic Egypt (Louvre museum)
   Enlarge
   A Nubian slave of Ptolemaic Egypt (Louvre museum)

   For a long time, the way of life in the Greek city-states remained the
   same. People living in cities resided in low apartment buildings or
   single-family homes, depending on their wealth. Residences, public
   buildings, and temples were situated around the agora. Citizens also
   lived in small villages and farmhouses scattered across the state's
   countryside. In Athens, more people lived outside the city walls than
   inside (it is estimated that from a total population of four hundred
   thousand people, 160,000 people lived inside the city, which is a large
   rate of urbanization for a pre-industrial society).

   A common Greek household was simple if compared to a modern one,
   containing bedrooms, storage rooms, and a kitchen situated around a
   small inner courtyard. Its average size, about 230 square metres in the
   4th century, was much larger than the houses of other ancient
   civilizations.

   A household consisted of a single set of parents and their children,
   but generally no relatives. Men were responsible for supporting the
   family by work or investments in land and commerce. Women were
   responsible for managing the household's supplies and overseeing
   slaves, who fetched water in jugs from public fountains, cooked,
   cleaned, and looked after babies. Men kept separate rooms for
   entertaining guests because male visitors were not permitted in rooms
   where women and children spent most of their time. Wealthy men would
   sometimes invite friends over for a symposium. Light came from olive
   oil lamps, while heat came from charcoal braziers. Furniture was simple
   and sparse, which included wooden chairs, tables, and beds.

   The majority of Greeks worked in agriculture, probably 80% of the
   entire population, which is similar to all pre-industrial
   civilizations. The soil in Greece is poor and rainfall is very
   unpredictable. Research suggests the climate has changed little since
   ancient times, so frequent weeding and turning of soil was needed. Oxen
   might have helped with ploughing, however most tasks would have been
   done by hand. The Greek farmer would ideally plan for a surplus of
   crops to contribute to feasts and to buy pottery, fish, salt and
   metals.

   Ancient Greek food was simple as well. Poor people mainly ate barley
   porridge flavoured with onions, vegetables, and cheese or olive oil.
   Few people ever ate meat regularly, except for the free distributions
   from animal sacrifices at state festivals. Sheep when eaten was mutton:
   " Philochorus [3rd c.] relates that a prohibition was issued at Athens
   against anyone tasting lamb which had not been shorn. Bakeries sold
   fresh bread daily, while small stands offered snacks. Wine diluted with
   water was a favoured beverage.

   Greek clothing changed little over time. Both men and women wore loose
   peplos and chitons. The tunics often had colourful designs and were
   worn cinched with a belt. People wore cloaks and hats in cold weather,
   and in warm weather sandals replaced leather boots. Women wore
   jewellery and cosmetics - especially powdered lead, which gave them a
   pale complexion. Men grew beards until Alexander the Great created a
   vogue for shaving.

   Medicine in Ancient Greece was limited if compared to modern medicine.
   Hippocrates helped separate superstition from medical treatment in the
   5th century BC. Herbal remedies were used to reduce pain, and doctors
   were able to perform some surgery. But they had no cure for infections,
   so even healthy people could die quickly from disease at any age.

   To keep fit and to be ready for military service, men exercised daily.
   Almost every city-state had at least one gymnasium, a combination
   exercise building, running track, bathing facility, lecture hall, and
   park. In most cities (other than Sparta) gymnasia were open only to
   males, and exercise was taken in the nude. City-state festivals
   provided great amounts of entertainment. Gods were honoured with
   competitions in music, drama, and poetry. Athenians boasted that their
   city hosted a festival nearly every other day. Huge Panhellenic
   festivals were held at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and Isthmia. Athletes and
   musicians who won these competitions became rich and famous. The most
   popular and expensive competition was chariot racing.

Education

   For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta.
   During the Hellenistic period, some city-states established public
   schools. Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Boys learned how
   to read, write and quote literature. They also learned to sing and play
   one musical instrument and were trained as athletes for military
   service. They studied not for a job but to become an effective citizen.
   Girls also learned to read, write and do simple arithmetic so they
   could manage the household. They almost never received education after
   childhood.

   A small number of boys continued their education after childhood, one
   example is the Spartans (with military education). A crucial part of a
   wealthy teenager's education was a loving mentor relationship with an
   elder. The teenager learned by watching his mentor talking about
   politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties,
   exercising with him in the gymnasium and attending symposia with him.
   The richest students continued their education to college, and went to
   a university in a large city. These universities were organized by
   famous teachers. Some of Athens' greatest universities included the
   Lyceum and the Academy.
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