The document provides an overview of ancient Greece, highlighting its cultural, political, and geographical significance in the Mediterranean region. It details the evolution of Greek civilization from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods, discussing the influence of geography on societal development, the emergence of city-states, the foundations of democracy, and advancements in philosophy, science, and the arts. Additionally, it addresses the agricultural practices, trade dynamics, religious beliefs, and the educational systems of the Greeks.

1. Civilization
1400- 337 B.C.
Boutkhil Guemide
University Mohammed Boudiaf, M’sila
Algeria

4. INTRODUCTION
 Ancient Greece was a civilization that dominated much
of the Mediterranean thousands of years ago.
 At its peak under Alexander the Great, Ancient Greece
ruled much of Europe and Western Asia.
 The Greeks came before the Romans and much of the
Roman culture was influenced by the Greeks.
 Ancient Greece formed the foundation of much of
Western culture today.
 Government, philosophy, science, mathematics, art,
literature, and even sports was impacted by the
Ancient Greeks.
 Greece was one of the most important places in the
ancient world.
 The Greeks were great thinkers, warriors, writers,
actors, athletes, artists, architects, and politicians.
 The Greeks called themselves Hellenes and their land
was Hellas.
 The name ‘Greeks’ was given to the people of Greece

5. Geograph
yGreece is a
peninsula in
the
Mediterranean
Sea.
It is very close
to Egypt, the
Persian empire
(includes
Turkey) and

6. Greek geography

7.  Ancient Greece: A mountainous peninsula, 2,000 islands in the
Aegean and Ionian seas.
 The region’s physical geography directly shaped Greek traditions
and customs.
 The Sea shaped Greek civilization: The Greeks did not live on a
land but around a sea.
 The Aegean Sea, the Ionian Sea, and the neighboring Black Sea
were important transportation routes for the Greek people.
 As the Greeks became skilled sailors, sea travel connected Greece
with other societies.
 Sea travel and trade were also important because Greece lacked
natural resources, such as timber, precious metals, and usable
farmland.
 The Land: Rugged mountains covered about three-fourths of
ancient Greece.
 The mountain chains ran from northwest to southeast along the
Balkan
Peninsula.
 Mountains divided the land into a number of different region:
Significant influence on politics.
 Instead of a single government, the Greeks developed small,
independent communities within each little valley and its
surrounding mountains.

12.  The small streams that watered the valleys were
not suitable for large-scale irrigation projects.
 With so little fertile farmland, Greece was never
able to support a large population.
 No more than a few million people lived in ancient
Greece.
 A desire for more living space, grassland for
raising livestock, and adequate farmland may have
been factors that motivated the Greeks to seek
new sites for colonies.
 The Climate was the third important
environmental influence on Greek civilization.
 Greece has a varied climate, with temperatures
averaging 48 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and
80 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.
 In ancient times, these moderate temperatures
supported an outdoor life for many Greek citizens.
 Men spent much of their leisure time at outdoor

13. History
 Archaic Period: This period ran from the start
of Greek civilization in 800 BC to the
introduction of Democracy in 508 BC.
 The Olympic Games; Homer's writing of the
Odyssey and the Illiad.
 Classical Period: This is the time that most of
us think of Ancient Greece.
 Athens was governed by a democracy and
great philosophers like Socrates and Plato
arose.
 The wars between Sparta and Athens were
during this time.
 This period ended with the rise of Alexander
the Great in 323 BC.
 Hellenistic Period: The Hellenistic period

14. The Minoans lived
on the island of
Crete from about
3000 to 1100 BC.
Because of their
location, they were
excellent traders
The Minoans

15.  A large wave of Indo- Europeans migrated
from the Eurasian steppes to Europe,
India, and Southwest Asia.
 Around 2000 B.C.: The Mycenaeans,
Mycenae.
 After the Mycenaeans defeated the
Minoans, the culture of the islands
blended with mainland Greek culture.
 1400 B.C.: The Mycenaeans controlled
trade, spoke an early form of Greek, and
used writing.
 The Trojan War: (During the 1200’s B.C.):
The Mycenaeans fought a ten-year war
The Mycenaeans

16. Trojan War

18. Greek Culture Declines Under
the Dorians Not long after the Trojan War, Mycenaean
civilization collapsed.
 Around 1200 B.C.: Sea raiders attacked and
burned many Mycenaean cities: The Dorians
 The Dorians spoke a dialect of Greek.
 The Dorians were far less advanced than the
Mycenaeans.
 The economy collapsed and trade eventually came
to a standstill soon after their arrival.
 The Greeks lost the art of writing during the
Dorian Age.
 Epics of Homer: Lacking writing, the Greeks of
this time learned about their history through the
spoken word.
 The greatest storyteller was a blind man named
Homer.

20. Soon after the Trojan
War, civilization in
Greece collapsed.
People no longer traded
for food and other goods
beyond Greece and
poverty was everywhere.
The Dark Ages took place
The Dark Ages of Greece

21. Rule and Order in Greek
City-States 750 BC: The Greeks began sending out colonies in
all directions, settling the coasts and islands of the
Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.
 600 BC: Greek city-states could be found: From the
coasts of Spain in the west to Cyprus in the east,
and as far north as present- day Ukraine and
Russia and as far south as the Egypt and Libya.
 The rise of city- states:
 The city- state (polis): The fundamental political
unit in ancient
Greece.
 A polis was made up of a city and its surrounding
countryside, which included numerous villages.
 Most city- states controlled between 50 and 500
square miles of territory.
 They were often home to fewer than 10,000
residents.

22.  Greek Political Structures:
 Greek city-states had many different forms of
government.
 In some, a single person, called a king, ruled in a
government called a monarchy.
 Aristocracy, a government ruled by a small group of
noble, landowning families.
 These very rich families often gained political power after
serving in a king’s military cavalry.
 Later, as trade expanded, a new class of wealthy
merchants and artisans emerged in some cities.
 When these groups became dissatisfied with aristocratic
rule, they sometimes took power or shared it with the
nobility.
 They formed an oligarchy, a government ruled by a few
powerful people.
 In many city-states, powerful individuals, nobles or other
wealthy citizens, sometimes seized control of the
government by appealing to the common people for
support.

23. Athens Builds a Limited
Democracy The idea of representative government began to take root in some
city-states, particularly Athens.
 Athenians avoided major political upheavals by making timely
reforms.
 Athenian reformers moved toward democracy, rule by the
people.
 In Athens, citizens participated directly in political decision
making.
 The first step toward democracy came when a nobleman named
Draco took power.
 621 B.C.: Draco developed a legal code based on the idea that all
Athenians, rich and poor, were equal under the law.
 Draco’s code dealt very harshly with criminals, making death the
punishment for practically every crime.
 It also upheld such practices as debt slavery, in which debtors
worked as
slaves to repay their debts.
 594 B.C.: Solon made far- reaching democratic reforms:
 No citizen should own another citizen,
 Solon outlawed debt slavery.
 He organized all Athenian citizens into four social classes

24.  500 B.C.: Cleisthenes introduced further
reforms.
 He broke up the power of the nobility by
organizing citizens into ten groups based on
where they lived rather than on their wealth.
 He also increased the power of the assembly by
allowing all citizens to submit laws for debate
and passage.
 Cleisthenes then created the Council of Five
Hundred which proposed laws and counseled
the assembly.
 Council members were chosen at random.
 The reforms of Cleisthenes allowed Athenian
citizens to participate in a limited democracy.
 However, citizenship was restricted to a relatively
small number of Athenians.
 Only free adult male property owners born in

25.  Direct participation was the key to Athenian
democracy.
 In the Assembly, every male citizen was not only
entitled to attend as often as he pleased but also
had the right to debate, offer amendments, and vote
on proposals.
 Every man had a say in whether to declare war or
stay in peace.
 Basically any thing that required a government
decision, all male citizens were allowed to
participate in.

26. Agriculture
 The Greeks were primarily an agricultural
people: They practiced the agriculture of the
ancient Mediterranean region, involving the
cultivation of grains, vines and olives, and the
keeping of sheep, goat and cattle.
 Farms were very small– mere plots of land of
a few acres.
 Aristocrats and other landowners would own
larger farms, worked by slaves.
 The main challenge facing Greek farmers was
that there was too little good farming land in
Greece and the Aegean Sea.
 This forced them to take to sea-borne trade.
 They were a source of the social tensions
between rich and poor which led, in Athens,

27. Trade Many Greek city-states were located by the sea.
 From an early stage in their history, therefore, many Greeks looked
to the sea for their livelihood.
 For a period of about 150 years after 750 BC, many city-states sent
out groups of their citizens to found colonies on distant shores of the
Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.
 These established strong trading ties with their mother city.
 Athens, the largest Greek city-state of all, was only able to feed her
large population through trade.
 The poor soil of Attica was ideal for growing olives on, and so from
an early date the Athenians concentrated on growing olives for
export. They imported almost all their grain from other states.
 The Athenians built up a large merchant fleet, and their city became
the leading commercial center of Greece.
 At the height of its glory, almost a third of its population may have
been made up of “alien” businessmen and their households, mostly
Greeks from other cities.
 The wealth that this commerce brought Athens enabled it to become
the leading city of Greece, both in politics and culture.
 Athens also became the major banker to the Greek world.
 In the fifth century BC the Athenian coinage became the
international currency of the Mediterranean.

28. Greek religion was polytheistic.

29. Religion The Greeks worshipped a pantheon of gods and
goddesses, headed by the chief of the gods, Zeus. Other
gods included Hera, Zeus’s wife; Athena, goddess of
wisdom and learning; Apollo, god of music and culture;
Aphrodite, goddess of love; Dionysus, god of wine;
Hades, god of the underworld; and Diana, goddess of the
hunt.
 Each city-state had its own festivals.
 The most famous of these were the Olympic games, held
in honor of Zeus every four years (starting traditionally
in 776 BC).
 There were much fewer events than in a modern
Olympics, and there were competitions in music and
poetry as well as in athletics.
 The winner of an Olympic event was awarded an olive
wreath and won great honor in his home city.
 The Greeks often consulted oracles– priests or
priestesses at certain shrines who uttered messages
from the gods.

30. Education Most Greek cities did not have publicly-funded schools.
Education was a private affair.
 Wealthy families would put a boy under the care of a slave who
would accompany him everywhere. The boy would attend a small
school run by a private teacher, who would have a few pupils in
his charge. Here, the boy would learn to read and write, and do
arithmetic. Later, they learned to sing and play music.
 After the age of 12 boys focused on physical education. They
trained in such sports as the throwing the discus and javelin,
running and wrestling.
 Some wealthy families would also have their girls educated. They
would be taught to read, write, and play music; and they were
also given also some physical education.
 After school, older boys underwent military training. The family
bought armour and weapons for them, and the young men
learnt how to fight effectively in military camps. From this age
they were expected to serve in the state’s army, if needed.
 For boys from wealthy families, training in public speaking
would round off their education. In Athens, some of the first
higher education institutions recorded in history were founded:
Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lycaeum. Here, courses

31. Culture
 Literature
 Homer: The Iliad and the Odyssey were composed around 750
BC in oral form before being written.
 Hesiod (7th century BC):“Works and Days” portrays the tough
life of an ordinary farmer;
 Sappho (6th century BC)
 Pindar (late 6th century – early 5th century BC).
 The Greeks were the first to pioneer the art form of drama: This
had its origins in the dances and songs of sacred rites, and was
always associated with religious festivals.
 Greek drama included both tragedy and comedy: It reached
maturity in 5th century Athens.
 Aeschylus (525-456 BC) reduced the importance of the chorus,
and increased the role of individual actors and dialogue.
 Sophocles (496-406 BC)
 Euripides (484-406 BC) used dialogue to portray deep human
emotions.
 The Greeks also pioneered the writing of history as not merely
the chronicling of events, but in striving for accuracy, objectivity
and meaning in their accounts.
 Herodotus (c. 485-425 BC) is known the “father of history”, and

32. Art, Architecture, Sculpture,
and Painting Greek architecture is known for its grace
and simplicity.
 The finest buildings the Greeks erected were
their temples; and the most famous of these
is the Parthenon, in Athens.
 The centre of each temple was space known
as the “cella”, the statue of the god.
 In front of the cella was the porch, and both
porch and cella were surrounded by a
colonnade of columns. Each column was
topped by a “capitals”, a carved block of
stone. On top of these rested the
“entablature”, a band of carved stone on
which, in turn, rested the roof.

33. GreekInvention
 The Greeks invented the
crane.

34. GreekArchitecture
 Greeks invented
arches and
columns.
 This obviously took
advanced
mathematics.

35. More GreekArchitecture

36. The Roman Coliseum has a
strong Hellenistic influence.

37. What buildings in the USA have a
Hellenistic influence?
Lincoln Memorial

38. Philosophy
 The earliest school of Greek philosophers were those of the
Ionian tradition (7th-5th centuries BC).
 Ionia was in what is today western Turkey, and it is tempting
to see the influence of the ancient Middle East on their work.
 The Pythagoreans were another group of early Greek
thinkers (6th-5th century BC). They formed a curious
combination of philosophical school and religious
brotherhood. They believed that all things could be explained
by numbers.
 By the 5th century, Greek thinkers such as Parmenedes
(c.504-456 BC) were advocating the idea that reason is the
best way to reaching truth.
 The Sophists – “teachers of wisdom” – were travelling
teachers prominent in the 5th century. They preferred to
study man and worldly problems rather than speculate
about universal truths. In fact, some claimed that truths
were only meaningful when placed in a particular context,
and seen from a particular point of view. They rejected the
notion of the supernatural and universal standards of

39. Mathematics and Science
 For the Greeks, science was indistinguishable from philosophy
 Thales of Miletus is usually regarded as the first prominent Greek
mathematician, and he is credited with developing the
methodologies of observation, experimentation and deduction.
 Thales’ younger contemporaries, Pythagoras and his school,
developed geometry as a branch of knowledge. They uncovered
Pythagoras’ theorem, that the sum of any three angles of a triangle
is equal to two right angles.
 In medicine, the Greeks dissected animals to refine their ideas on
anatomy. They located the optic nerve and recognized the brain as
the locus of thought. They discovered that blood flows to and from
the heart.
 Hippocrates (c.460-377 BC) argued that diseases had natural
causes, and that they therefore could be treated by natural means.
He advocated rest, proper diet, and exercise for a healthy life; he
knew the uses of many drugs, and he helped improve surgical
practices.
 In astronomy, the first three-dimensional models to explain the
apparent motion of the planets were developed in the 4th century
BC.
 Aristotle advanced the scientific method by his insistence on

40. Technologyresults from necessity
 SinceGreek coastal cities were
sandwiched between the ocean
and the sea, they developed an
awesome navy for trading and
fighting.

41. Technology results from scarcity
All cities need
fresh water.
This is a Greek
aqueduct,
basically a
brick water
pipe.

42. Terracing saves water and
soil in mountainous
environments

43. GreekInventions
 The Greeks
invented dice.

44. The Greeks were the original
Olympiads.
Their scientists studied the best
way to perform sports

45. GreekMilitary
 This is a catapult, a
Greek invention.
 It could throw 300
pound stones at
walls and buildings

46. Alexanderthe Great
 Alexander was not
from Athens, but
Macedonia.
 Alexander was a
brilliant military
strategist.
 His favorite book
was Homer’s Iliad

47. Alexander conquered the Persian
empire and controlled the largest
empire the world has ever seen.

48. Alexander spread Hellenistic
culture throughout Asia.
 Hellenistic is a fancy
word for Greek.
 Alexander spread
Greek technology
and ideas
throughout his
empire