2.1 Classical Greece

• History
• Middelbare school

2. The Time of Greeks and Romans

The Greeks 1: Classical Greece

What you will learn in 

this lesson

• What "united country" means
• What "disunited country" means
• Why it is difficult to tell if Greece was a united or a disunited country
• That Greece had both uniting factors and disuniting factors
• You can tell what these factors were.

Greece: One country 

or many countries?

Greece was a different country than Egypt.

Egypt was a united country. This means that there was one ruler (pharaoh) who ruled the whole country. All the people in Egypt felt that they were Egyptians, that they belonged to the same country. They spoke the same language and obeyed the same laws.

Greece was different. Because there are so many mountains, bays and islands, the Greeks did not have that much contact with each other. 

So their cities developed separately. Each city had its own ruler, its own laws.

They were small countries as well as cities. That is why we call them: city-states.

Sparta

Knossos

Olympia

Pella

Troy

Delphi

Mount Olympus

Athens

Persian Empire

Aegean Sea

Mycenae

Ionian Sea

Macedonia

Greece

Greece developed differently than Egypt.
This had nothing to do with the geography of Greece.

1. true
2. false

Athens was the capital city of ancient Greece

1. true
2. false

in other words: united or disunited?

Some historians say that Greece was disunited: it was not one country, but a collection of different countries.

Other historians say that Greece, despite the different city-states, was still one united country.

Let’s look at both views:

reconstruction of the Acropolis in Athens, 

painted by Leo von Klenze in 1846

a united country is a country with one government that makes laws for the whole country

1. true
2. false

a modern example of a united country is France

1. true
2. false

uniting factors

Historians have reasons for seeing Classical Greece as one country. 

Important factors unified the Greeks:

• They shared a language. People had different accents in different parts of Greece. They wrote their letters slightly differently. But all Greeks could understand each other. 
  

• They shared a religion. They believed in the same gods and goddesses, and worshipped them in the same way. Several large religious festivals were held each year at particular places in Greece. People from all over Greece came to them. The most famous of these religious festivals was the Olympic Games.
  

modern reconstruction of the statue of Zeus in the temple at Olympia

disuniting factors (I)

There were also important factors which suggest Greece was not united.

• People lived in city states. They saw themselves as belonging to those city states. So they called themselves Athenian or 'Spartan, not Greek. A city state was a city, usually walled, and the farmland around it. City states varied in size. Athens had 250,000 people at its largest. Some city states had only a few hundred people. 
  

    The Greek word for city state was POLIS.

modern reconstruction of a Greek polis

disuniting factors (II)

• City states had their own armies, laws, taxes and money. They also had their own government. The Greeks were the first people to write and debate about the best way to rule a country. City states had different ways of ruling. Some were run by kings, others by a small group of powerful men. From 462 BC the city state of Athens was a democracy.

•  City states often fought each other. In all city states, armies were made up of male citizens. They had to stay fit and train for war. Small city states often made an alliance with a large one, for protection or because they were forced to do so. 
  

Athens and Sparta were the largest, most powerful, city states and were often at war. 

modern reconstructions of Greek soldiers, called hoplites

Word Duty

Lesson 2.1:

• city state
  
• democracy
  
• citizens
• alliance

all these words are in the glossary in your textbook

What you learned in 

this lesson

If you can answer these questions in your own words it means you have understood this lesson.

1. What "united country" means
   
2. What "disunited country" means
   
3. Why it is difficult to tell if Greece was a united or a disunited country
   
4. That Greece had both uniting factors and disuniting factors
   
5. You can tell what these factors were.
   

congratulations