30-Second Ancient Greece: The 50 Most Important Achievements of a Timeless Civilization, Each Explained in Half a Minute

221 Pages·2016·63.13 MB·English

by  Matthew Nicholls

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.