Textbook Group project continued

More of the group project:


Vladimir Chervenkov, Ben Hannan, Aiden Stine, Chase Vogel
Mr. Schick
Honors Western Civilization
1 February 2018
An Overview of Ancient Greece
The world’s greatest civilizations have all been born near waterways, and Greece is not an exception. From the Mesopotamians, to the Egyptians, and to the Indians and Chinese, all were located on waterways. For example, the Chinese had the Huang He River, the Indians had the Indus River, and the Egyptians had the Nile. The Greeks, however had the Mediterranean Sea which was their form of trade, which kept them thriving. The Mediterranean, and nearby seas helped the Greeks to supply food as well, like fish. The Ionian, Adriatic, and Aegean Seas are all neighboring seas of the Ancient Greek land. The Aegean sea is the one where most of the thousands of the Greek islands are located. The largest island of Ancient Greece was Crete. Peloponnesus is not an island, it is actually connected to the mainland by a very narrow strip. The sea shaped the civilization. Greece is a mountainous peninsula. Mountains cover approximately three quarters of Greece making it a very mountainous peninsula, along with the over two-thousand islands. This combination shaped Greece’s culture. They had many skilled sailors and shipbuilders as well as farmers, metalworkers, weavers, and potters. Greece, however, had poor and limited natural resources which means that they had to trade and the sea helped with that.


City-States
Uniting all of the Greek city-states was a difficult task because all of the city-states saw themselves as independent. A city-state is a small, self-governing country. At the time,city-states included Athens, Sparta, Troy,and others. Polis was a Greek term for their city-states, and fundamental political unit
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The City-States of Greece at around 500 BCE
Too Lit to Politic
Athens Greece was the first place ever to have a Democracy, which was a big deal because the way that our Country is run Today, is based off of the success of the Greek Democracy. In a Democracy the power is given to the people and not just the government or the supreme leader. Although in Greek society you could only vote as a citizen, but in order to be a citizen in Ancient Greece, you had to be a male landowner, who was born in Greece.
Sparta had a separate type of government, they had several branches of government, a council of elders, five elected officials, and 2 kings. They were a very war centred Polis.
Go Big or Go Homer
Homer was a greek storyteller who was very famous for his story telling of  “The Iliad” and “ The Odyssey”. The Iliad was one of the last conquests of the Mycenaeans (Trojan war). The Odyssey was the story of odysseus and his attempts to return home after the trojan war, and constantly being thwarted by the god of the sea poseidon who was jealous of odysseus because many said he was more famous and powerful than the god himself. It contains 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter. Little is known of Homer's personal life, except that he was blind. His stories were known as epics sometime between 750-700 BCE. Homer would travel from city state to city state telling his epics about greeks gods. Storyteller such as homer caused myths og the gods to be created and many thought of them to be real. There is actually a question named after Homer. The homeric question. The questions is asking if homer was a actual person or a mythical character such as the gods. Many thought of Homer as a blind wandering minstrel and a heroic figure. One of Homer's famous epic the story of odyssey is thought to be a myth because how can a blind man remember all of these topics. In the story it took odysseus years to return home after fighting a war for years. There is also a enemy called polyphemus who is a cyclops or a huge person with one eye and this is thought to be fake because there is no such evidence that cyclops have ever existed. This is all apart of the Homeric question.Image result for homer
A sculpture of Homer, made in the Hellenistic Period of Greece (323 BCE)
The Rulers of Ancient Greece
Greece was ruled by tyrants. To the ancient Greeks, a tyrant was not such a terrible thing. The definition for Ancient Greece of a tyrant is someone, who is an aristocrat, that forms an alliance with hoplites to set up a tyranny. Hoplites were well-armed soldiers. The modern definition of a tyrant is someone who is not such a nice person. One of the Ancient Greek rulers was Draco. Draco ruled from 621 B.C. and had some harsh punishments. Under his rule, all Athenians are equal under the law. Death would have been the punishment for many crimes ranging in severity. For example, robbing a house and killing a man are both under the punishment of death. Debt slavery was allowed. Debt slavery was when you had to borrow money from someone and could not repay it. Instead of paying, you worked for them. The word “Draconian” means an overly harsh punishment for something.
Draco, depicted in the Supreme Court of the United States





Troy Story
The Trojan war was one of the most famous wars thought to be fought by the greeks in the 1200s BCE. The mycenaeans fought a ten year long war against Troy which is a trading city in Anatolia. According to legend a greek army had besieged and destroyed Troy because a Trojan prince had kidnapped Helen, the wife of a greek king. For many years historians thought that the stories of the trojan war were fake and just myths but excavations conducted in the north west of turkey during the 1830s conducted by a german archaeologist named Heinrich schliemann may reveal that the stories of the trojan war may be based on real events and real cities based on real people. Although the origin of the Trojan war remains unclear, but this attack on troy was certainly apart of the one of the last Mycenaean battle campaigns. A famous story of the war was that the greeks tricked the trojans used a large wooden horse to deceive the trojans and raided the city and captured it by hiding inside the horse.  


The Trojan Horse from the story of the Trojan War



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A map of the different Mediterranean cultures in the year 500 BCE

In the year 300 BCE, the Greeks took over a lot more land, now that they have established a stronger government

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