The Ancient Greeks

A World of City-States

Imagine a land of rocky hills, deep blue seas and scattered islands, where the sun beats down on olive groves and white stone temples. This was ancient Greece, the home of one of the most influential civilisations in all of history. Yet if you had travelled there 2,500 years ago, you would not have found a single united country called Greece at all.

Instead, the Greek world was made up of hundreds of separate city-states. A city-state, which the Greeks called a polis, was a city together with the farmland and villages around it. Each one had its own government, its own laws, its own army and even its own coins. The most powerful were Athens and Sparta, and they were as different from one another as two places could be.

Why so many small states instead of one big kingdom? Geography is part of the answer. Greece is broken up by mountains and surrounded by sea, so communities grew up cut off from one another, each fiercely proud and independent. The Greeks shared a language, gods and a love of competition, but they often went to war with each other too. In this book, you will explore their cities, their gods and myths, their games, their thinkers, and the ideas they left behind that still shape our world.

Athens: The Birthplace of Democracy

Of all the Greek city-states, Athens is perhaps the most famous, and for good reason. Athens gave the world an idea so powerful that we still use it today: democracy, a word that comes from Greek and means "rule by the people".

In most of the ancient world, ordinary people had no say in how they were ruled. A king or a small group of nobles made all the decisions. But around 2,500 years ago, the citizens of Athens began making decisions themselves. They gathered on a hillside called the Pnyx for an Assembly, where they could stand up, give speeches and then vote by raising their hands. Laws, wars and important choices were settled by the votes of thousands of citizens.

It was not a perfect system by today's standards. Only free adult men born in Athens counted as citizens who could vote. Women, enslaved people and foreigners were left out, and they made up most of the population. Even so, the Athenian idea that ordinary people, not just kings, should help govern themselves was revolutionary, and it inspired the democracies of the modern world.

Athens was also a city of beauty and learning. On a flat-topped hill called the Acropolis, the Athenians built a magnificent temple, the Parthenon, in honour of their patron goddess Athena. They wrote plays still performed today, created stunning art and pottery, and gathered to debate ideas. Athens proved that a city's true greatness could lie in its thinkers and artists, not only its soldiers.

Sparta: A City of Warriors

While Athens prized art, debate and democracy, the city-state of Sparta prized one thing above all others: military strength. Sparta built its entire society around producing the toughest, bravest, most disciplined soldiers in the Greek world.

Spartan life was hard from the very beginning. Boys were taken from their families at around the age of seven and sent to live in barracks, where they trained for years to become warriors. They were taught to endure cold, hunger and pain without complaint, to fight, and to obey orders without question. Spartan girls were also trained in sport and toughness, more than girls anywhere else in Greece, because Spartans believed strong mothers produced strong children.

Sparta could afford to make every citizen a full-time soldier because a large enslaved population, called the helots, did the farming and labour. This freed Spartan men to train and fight, but it also meant the Spartans lived in constant fear of a helot revolt.

The two great city-states, Athens and Sparta, were rivals. They sometimes united against a common enemy, most famously when they fought off a massive invasion by the powerful Persian Empire. But in the end they turned on each other in a long and exhausting conflict called the Peloponnesian War, which weakened the whole Greek world.

Gods, Myths and Temples

The ancient Greeks believed in many gods and goddesses, who they imagined looked and behaved much like humans, only far more powerful and immortal. These gods were thought to live high above the clouds on Mount Olympus, and so they are often called the Olympian gods.

At their head was Zeus, king of the gods and ruler of the sky, who hurled thunderbolts when angered. His brother Poseidon ruled the seas and caused earthquakes, while Hades ruled the gloomy underworld of the dead. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and war, Apollo the god of the sun, music and prophecy, Aphrodite the goddess of love, and Ares the fierce god of war. Each city honoured its gods with grand stone temples, festivals and sacrifices, hoping to win their favour.

The Greeks also told wonderful myths, stories about their gods and heroes that explained the world and taught lessons about courage, pride and fate. They told of the clever hero Odysseus, who took ten years to sail home after a great war, facing monsters and storms along the way. They told of strong Heracles and his twelve mighty labours, of the warrior Achilles, and of the Trojan War and the trick of the wooden horse. These thrilling tales, written down by poets like Homer, are still read and loved today.

The First Olympic Games

The ancient Greeks loved competition of every kind, and nothing showed this better than the Olympic Games. The first Games we know of were held in the year 776 BC at a sacred place called Olympia, as part of a great festival in honour of Zeus.

Every four years, athletes travelled from city-states all across the Greek world to take part. During the Games, a sacred truce was declared, and wars were paused so that everyone could compete and watch in peace. Events included foot races, wrestling, boxing, the long jump, throwing the discus and javelin, and thrilling, dangerous chariot races. Athletes competed not for money but for honour and glory, and winners were crowned with a simple wreath of olive leaves and treated as heroes back home.

The Olympic Games were so important that the Greeks even used them to measure time, counting the years in four-year blocks between each Games. The ancient Games continued for over a thousand years. They were eventually stopped, but the idea never died. In 1896, the modern Olympic Games were revived, and today athletes from across the entire world still gather to compete, just as the Greeks did so long ago.

Great Thinkers and Big Ideas

Perhaps the greatest gift the ancient Greeks gave the world was a new way of thinking. The Greeks were among the first people to ask deep questions not by simply blaming the gods, but by using reason, observation and logic to find answers. This way of thinking is called philosophy, a Greek word meaning "love of wisdom".

Three Athenian thinkers stand out above the rest. Socrates spent his days questioning people about what they truly knew, believing that asking good questions was the path to wisdom. His student Plato founded a famous school and wrote down many of these ideas about justice, truth and how a society should be run. Plato's own student, Aristotle, studied almost everything, from animals and plants to politics, logic and the stars, laying foundations for many sciences.

The Greeks also made great strides in mathematics and science. A mathematician named Pythagoras is remembered for a famous rule about triangles still taught in schools. Hippocrates is often called the father of medicine for trying to find natural causes for illness rather than blaming the gods. Greek thinkers even worked out that the Earth was a sphere. Their curiosity and their belief that the world could be understood through careful thought helped lay the foundations of all modern science.

Daily Life in Greece

Most ancient Greeks were not warriors, philosophers or kings, but ordinary people living everyday lives. Many were farmers who grew grain, grapes for wine and olives for oil on the rocky hillsides. Others were traders, sailing the seas to swap goods, fishermen, potters or craftworkers.

Greek houses were usually simple, built around an open courtyard, with separate areas for men and women. The men often spent time in the public spaces of the city, gathering in the marketplace, called the agora, to shop, talk politics and trade news. Women generally managed the home and children and had far fewer rights and freedoms than men. Children played with toys, dolls and games, and boys from better-off families went to school to learn reading, writing, music and sport, while most girls were taught at home.

The Greeks loved the theatre, and watching plays was a popular event. They built great open-air theatres carved into hillsides, where audiences enjoyed exciting tragedies and funny comedies. Food was simple for most people, based on bread, olives, cheese, vegetables, fish and wine. Through all of this ran the Greek love of beauty, balance, competition and conversation.

The Lasting Legacy of Greece

Eventually, the independent Greek city-states grew weaker through their endless wars. They were united by force under Alexander the Great, a brilliant young general from the kingdom of Macedon in northern Greece, who went on to conquer a vast empire and spread Greek culture as far as Egypt and India. Later, the rising power of Rome took control of the Greek lands. Yet even as Greek power faded, Greek ideas only spread further.

The Romans admired the Greeks so much that they copied their art, gods, buildings and learning, carrying Greek ideas across their huge empire. Through them, Greek thinking reached far into the future and into our own time. Today we still use Greek ideas about democracy and government, Greek words in science and medicine, Greek shapes and columns in our grand buildings, and Greek myths in our books and films. The Olympic Games still bring the world together.

For a small land of rocky hills and quarrelsome city-states, ancient Greece left a mark on the world far larger than its size. Its love of questions, beauty and freedom changed history forever.

What We Learned

We have travelled back 2,500 years to the sunlit hills and seas of ancient Greece.

We discovered that Greece was not one country but many proud, independent city-states. We compared Athens, the birthplace of democracy and a home of art and learning, with Sparta, the city of fierce, disciplined warriors. We explored the Greeks' many gods, their thrilling myths, and the first Olympic Games held in honour of Zeus. We met great thinkers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who began the search for truth through reason, and we glimpsed the daily lives of ordinary Greeks. Finally, we saw how Greek ideas spread across the world and still shape our lives today.

The ancient Greeks asked the biggest questions of all, and the answers they began to find are still with us.

Want to keep exploring the ancient world? Marvel at the astonishing buildings of the past in The Wonders of the Ancient World, or discover the mighty civilisation that admired Greece and conquered it in The Ancient Romans.