30-Second Ancient Greece: The 50 Most Important Achievements of a Timeless Civilization, Each Explained in Half a Minute PDF
Preview 30-Second Ancient Greece: The 50 Most Important Achievements of a Timeless Civilization, Each Explained in Half a Minute
30-SECOND ANCIENT GREECE The 50 most important achievements of a timeless civilization, each explained in half a minute Editor Matthew Nicholls Contributors Emma Aston Timothy Duff Patrick Finglass Katherine Harloe Matthew Nicholls Kelli Rudolph Amy C. Smith Illustrator Nicky Ackland-Snow CONTENTS Introduction The Greek World GLOSSARY The Polis Athens & Sparta Persian & Peloponnesian Wars Warfare ‘Frogs around a pond’ Profile: Alexander Hellenistic Kingdoms Greece in the Roman World People & Society GLOSSARY Greeks & Barbarians Politics & Democracy Law Citizens Profile: Aspasia Home & Family Life Slavery Agriculture Trade & the Economy Myth & Religion GLOSSARY Gods Heroes & Demigods Myth Profile: Zeus Ceremony & Sacrifice Oracles Panhellenic festivals Afterlife Literature GLOSSARY Homer & Epic Poetry Tragedy Comedy Profile: Sappho History: Herodotus & Thucydides Oratory Philosophy: Socrates & Plato Philosophy: Aristotle Language & Learning GLOSSARY The Greek Language Linear B & the Alphabet Books & the Library at Alexandria Profile: Archimedes Inscriptions Mathematics Technology & Astronomy Medicine Architecture & Buildings GLOSSARY Early Greek Architecture Columnar Orders & Marble Sacred Architecture Profile: Phidias Towns Houses & Palaces Civic Architecture Entertainment Architecture The Arts GLOSSARY Visual Culture Pottery Vase Painting Archaic Sculpture Profile: Praxiteles Hellenistic Sculpture Painting Metalwork & Jewellery Resources Notes on Contributors Index Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION Matthew Nicholls The ancient Greeks thought of themselves as linked by language, religion and a complex web of ethnic and political ties, but they did not inhabit a nation state: the world that emerged from the Greek dark ages by around 800 BCE was a fragmented landscape of individual, competing city states (polis, plural poleis). These poleis filled the peninsula and islands of modern Greece, often competing over its limited agricultural land, but were also found across the Aegean Sea on the coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and in cities as far away as southern Italy and even France. Their capacity for both shared cultural identity and intense mutual competition spurred an extraordinarily fertile creative energy. The ‘Greek miracle’ of the Archaic and Classical periods, around 800–300 BCE, marked a profound moment in the development of civilization. The Greeks made huge strides in almost every field of human endeavour. They were enormously interested in the power of the spoken and written word, developing new literary forms (epic and lyric poetry, drama, history), which they wrote down with an alphabet developed through contact with the Levant. They experimented with new ways of organizing their societies (democracy, oligarchy, different sorts of empire, jury trials, the power of rhetoric), and thought about these deeply and systematically. They enquired profoundly into the human condition, whether through literature, philosophy, artistic representation (in painting, pottery and sculpture), or even sport. They built dramatic new architectural settings for these activities, from theatres and gymnasia to spectacular temples. This period of intense development reached one high-water mark in Athens of the 5th–4th centuries BCE, and much of our evidence is from this remarkable city. In many ways the achievements of Athens’ ‘Classical’ period – its architecture, sculpture, philosophy, drama and democracy – are what come to mind when we think of the ancient Greeks. Alexander the Great’s lightning conquests spread Greek culture further afield than ever before, ushering in the Hellenistic period. The ‘Panhellenic’ festivals of the ancient Greek world would often feature music and drama as well as athletics, wrestling and boxing, and were the inspiration for the modern Olympic Games. But Athens was one among many competing Greek poleis, and as its star faded, other centres of power – Thebes, Macedon, Alexandria – rose to prominence. The world of small, competing city-states (and Athens’ two centuries of experimentation with democracy) was disrupted by the ambition and resources of autocratic rulers who built larger, hegemonic power blocks. The greatest of these was the Macedonian Alexander the Great, whose conquests radically expanded the boundaries of the Greek world. The ‘Hellenistic’ kingdoms that succeeded his empire continued to spread Greek ideas across the Middle East, explaining why the greatest library of the Greek world was found in Egyptian Alexandria, and why Greek architectural forms are found as far away as modern Afghanistan. In time the Hellenistic kingdoms themselves fell to invasion as Rome eclipsed the political, but not the cultural, power of its Greek neighbours. Greek thought continued to exert a powerful influence over the Roman imagination; Rome took many of its gods, literary forms, architectural styles and artistic treasures from the Greeks. Today the influence of Greek ideas is felt in almost every sphere of intellectual and cultural life, in politics, economics, rhetoric, philosophy, democracy, technology, mathematics, drama and music – all terms derived from Greek words. As Shelley wrote in the preface to his drama Hellas, ‘We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.’ The stone-cut inscriptions that survive in many Greek sites tell historians a great deal about life in the ancient past.
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