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This page deals with the civilization of Classical Greece. Other pages deal with the Minoan civilization which preceeded it, and with the Hellenistic civilization which followed it.
Overview and Timeline
The civilization of Ancient Greece emerged into the light of world history in the 8th century BC. Normally it is regarded as coming to an end when Greece fell to the Romans, in 146 BC. However, major Greek (or "Hellenistic", as modern scholars call them) kingdoms lasted longer than this. As a culture (as opposed to a political force), Greek civilization lasted longer still, continuing right to the end of the ancient world.
Timeline of Ancient Greece:
776 BC: Traditional date for the first Olympic Games
c. 750: Greek cities start planting colonies on other Mediterranean coasts, adapt the Phoenician alphabet for their own use, and later adopt metal coinage from Lydia, in Asia Minor
594: Solon gives Athens a new constitution; this is the start of the rise of democracy in Greece
490-479: The Persian Wars - Athens and Sparta lead the Greeks in defending their land against invasion from the huge Persian Empire
447: Work begins on the Parthenon in Athens, then at the height of its glory
431-404: The Second Peloponnesian War - Athens is defeated by Sparta, which now becomes the leading power in Greece
399: The Athenian philosopher Socrates is condemned to death for questioning conventional ideas
338: King Philip II of Macedon defeats the Greek city-states and imposes his dominion on them.
This is the event which traditionally draws the curtain on "Classical Greece" and starts the "Hellenistic Age". Then comes the Hellenistic period, opening with the conquests of Alexander the Great, and ending with the conquests of the different Hellenistic states by Rome (146-31 BC).
The history of Ancient Greece falls into four major divisions. The Archaic period , when the civilization's main features were evolving, lasted from the 8th to the 6th centuries BC. Classical Greece flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC. This was marked by the period of the Persian Wars (c. 510-479 BC), the Golden Age of Athens (c. 479-404 BC), and the later Classical era (404-338 BC).
Greek civilization had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire. Indeed, some modern scholars see the Roman era as a continuation of the same civilization, which they label "Graeco-Roman". In any case, the Roman conquest carried many features of Greek civilization to far-flung parts of the Mediterranean world and Western Europe. Through the mediation of the Romans, therefore, Greek civilization came to be the founding culture of Western civilization.
Geography of Ancient Greece
The geographical coverage of Ancient Greek civilization changed markedly during its history. Its origins were in the land of Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea, plus the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). This is a landscape of mountains and sea. Land useful for farming is found in valley bottoms, hedged in by steep slopes, or on small islands, confined by water. As a result, ancient Greece consisted of many small territories, each with its own dialect, cultural peculiarities, and identity. Cities tended to be located in valleys between mountains, or on narrow coastal plains, and only dominated a limited area around them. These "city-states" were fiercely independent of each other.
From about 750 BC the Greeks began sending out colonies in all directions, settling the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. By around 600 BC Greek city-states could be found, "like frogs round a pond", as one Greek writer put it, from the coasts of Spain in the west to Cyprus in the east, and as far north as present day Ukraine and Russia and as far south as the Egypt and Libya. Sicily and Southern Italy above all became a major locus for Greek colonization, and this region was known to the Romans as "Magna Graeca".
Later, the conquests of Alexander the Great took Greek civilization right across the Middle East. There it mingled with the more ancient cultures of that region to form a hybrid civilization which scholars label "Hellenistic" civilization. This is described in a separate article; here we shall focus on the original Greek civilization.
Ancient Greek Society
The ancient Greeks certainly thought of themselves as 'one people' - they had the same religion, language and culture. Every four years all Greek city-states sent their young men and women to compete in the Olympic Games. Politically, however, Ancient Greece was divided amongst several hundred independent city states (poleis). These city-states fiercely defended their independence from one another. Political unity was not an option, unless imposed from outside (which first occurred when Philip II, king of Macedonia, conquered the city-states of Greece in the mid-4th century BC.)
The City-State
A typical Greek city was built around a fortified hill, called an "acropolis". Here was located the city's chief temple, the city's treasury, and some other public buildings.
At the centre of the city was the "Agora" - the central space where public meetings were held, and where traders set up their stalls. The agora was often flanked by colonnades.
Most industrial production took place in small workshops. Family members plus some slaves would make up the workforce in most of these. However, one workshop in Athens for manufacturing shields was said to have 120 workers, mostly slaves. Different trades were concentrated in different parts of the city, but mostly near the agora, the main trading centre in the city. Potters, blacksmiths, bronze workers, carpenters, leather workers, cobblers, and other craft workshops would all have their own streets or (in large cities) districts.
As a city outgrew its local water supply, water was brought in from neighbouring hills by means of channels cut in the rocks, and clay pipes. These fed fountains, from which the poorer people could collect water; and also private wells situated in the larger houses.
The city was surrounded by high, wide walls. In later times these were made of stone, brick and rubble. Towers were built at regular interval, and fortified gateways pierced the walls to allow roads to pass through.
Outside these wall was another public space, the gymnasium. This is where athletes trained; covered porticoes allowed training to continue in bad weather, and also provided shaded areas for activities such as music, discussion and social meetings. Many gymnasia had public baths attached.
Also outside the walls would be the theatre, built into a hillside and semicircular in shape. The audience would sit on the tiered seats looking down on to a space called the "orchestra", where the performances took place. This space would be backed by columns and behind them, small buildings where actors changed clothing and masks, and for the props.
Surrounding the city was the farmland of the city-state. Many of the citizens lived within the city walls and walked out to their fields each day to work. Those whose land was further away, however, lived in the countryside, in the hamlets and villages which doted the landscape, and walked into the city for special occasions. They were as much citizens of the city-state as those who actually lived in the city itself.
In many cases this farmland only stretched for a few miles before sloping upwards to the hills and mountains which divided one city-state from the next. Here, with the land less suitable for growing crops, grain fields and olive groves gave way to pasturage for sheep and goats.
Many Greek city-states were situated on the coast, or on a small island. The city itself would often be located some distance inland, centred on a hill where the acropolis was built for defence. On the seashore would be a harbour, consisting of wooden quays for loading and unloading ships, and beaches were the ships could be drawn up onto dry land for repair. In many cases there would also be ship-sheds, where the city's war galleys were housed when not in use.
(Click here for how these city states came into being.)
Agriculture
Like all pre-modern societies, the Greeks were primarily an agricultural people. They practiced the agriculture of the ancient Mediterranean region. involving the cultivation of grains, vines and olives, and the keeping of sheep, goat and cattle.
Farms were very small - mere plots of land of a few acres. Aristocrats and other landowners would own larger farms, worked by slaves; but an estate of 100 acres was considered large.
The main challenge facing Greek farmers was that there was too little good farming land in Greece and the Aegean. This forced them to take to sae-borne trade on a scale unmatched by most other ancient peoples. However, land shortages continued to be a problem throughout the ancient times. They were a source of the social tensions between rich and poor which led, in Athens, to the rise of democracy, and in several other cities, to violent clashes between the different classes.
Trade
Very many Greek city-states were located by the sea. Also, many of them, confined as they were by steep hills and mountains, or by the sea itself (if they were on islands), suffered from a shortage of agricultural land. From an early stage in their history, therefore, many Greeks looked to the sea for their livelihood. For a period of about 150 years after 750 BC, many city-states sent out groups of their citizens to found colonies on distant shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. These established strong trading ties with their mother city. Greek traders soon dominated maritime trade of the Mediterranean, edging out the Phoenicians who had preceded them.
Some Greek cities became large and wealthy trading centres. Athens, the largest Greek city-state of all, was only able to feed her large population through trade. The poor soil of Attica (the area of Greece where Athens wa
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