Ancient Greece was the birthplace of Western civilization with influential ideas in democracy, science, and philosophy. Greeks lived in mainland Greece and islands, engaging in farming, fishing, trade, and soldiering. The Trojan War began when Helen was taken to Troy, lasting 10 years until the Greeks won through trickery. Life was difficult with scarce resources, but Greeks established the first Olympic Games and had a pantheon of gods led by Zeus they believed watched over them. Theater and pottery flourished as art forms depicting Greek life and myths.

2. Ancient Greece
• Ancient Greece is called 'the
birthplace of Western civilisation'.
• Greeks created a way of life that
other people admired and copied.
The Romans copied Greek art and
Greek gods, for example. The
Ancient Greeks tried out
democracy, started the Olympic
Games and left new ideas in
science, art and philosophy.
• The Ancient Greeks lived in
mainland Greece and the Greek
islands.

3. What was Ancient Greece like?
• Ancient Greece had a warm, dry
climate, as Greece does today.
• People lived by farming, fishing,
and trade. Some were soldiers.
• Others were scholars, scientists
or artists.
• Many Greeks were poor. Life was
hard because farmland, water
and timber for building were all
scarce.

4. The Trojan War
• The Trojans lived in the city of Troy, in what is
now Turkey.
• a long poem dating from the 700s BC, and said
to be by a storyteller named Homer. The
Odyssey, also by Homer, is the tale of the
adventures of a Greek soldier named
Odysseus, after the war.
• The Trojan War began when Paris, Prince of
Troy, ran away with Helen, wife of King
Menelaus of Sparta.
• The Greeks sent a fleet of ships, with an army,
to get her back. The war lasted for 10 years. In
single combat, the greatest Greek warrior,
Achilles, killed the Trojan leader Hector.
• In the end the Greeks won, by a clever trick
using a wooden horse.

5. Life in Ancient Greece
• Many Greek parents wanted boy
children. A son would look after his
parents in old age. A daughter went
away when she married, and had to
take a wedding gift or dowry. This
could be expensive, if a family had
lots of daughters.
• A father could decide whether or
not the family kept a new baby.
Unwanted or weak babies were
sometimes left to die outdoors.
Anyone finding an abandoned baby
could adopt it and take it home.

6. Schools
• At 3, children were given small
jugs - a sign that babyhood was
over.
• Boys went to school at age 7.
Girls were taught at home by
their mothers. A few girls learned
to read and write, but many did
not.
• Most Greeks schools had fewer
than 20 boys, and classes were
often held outdoors.

7. What did Greek Children learn?
• Girls learned housework, cooking and
skills such as weaving at home.
• Boys at school learned reading, writing,
arithmetic, music and poetry. They wrote
on wooden tablets covered with soft wax,
using a pointed stick called a stylus. They
used an abacus, with beads strung on
wires or wooden rods, to help with maths.
• Part of their lessons included learning
stories and poems by heart.
• Boys did athletics, to keep fit and prepare
them for war as soldiers. They ran,
jumped, wrestled and practised throwing
a spear and a discus. They trained on a
sports ground called a gymnasium.

8. Fun Fact
• Children played Blind Man's Buff, and adults played this game too.

9. The Olympic Games
• The Olympic Games began over
2,700 years ago in Olympia, in
southwest Greece. The Games were
part of a religious festival.
• The Greek Olympics, thought to
have begun in 776 BC.
• The Games were held in honour of
Zeus, king of the gods, and were
staged every four years at Olympia,
a valley near a city called Elis.
• People from all over the world
came to take part.

10. Zeus
• Visitors to Olympia stared in
wonder as they entered the
great Temple of Zeus. Inside was
a huge statue of the king of the
gods, sitting on a throne. People
called it one of the Seven
Wonders of the World.
• It was built about 435 BC, and
no one who made the trip to
Olympia missed seeing it.

11. Events at the Games
• At the first one-day Olympic Games, the only
event was a short sprint from one end of the
stadium to the other.
• Gradually more events were added to make
four days of competitions. They included
wrestling, boxing, long jump, throwing the
javelin and discus, and chariot racing.
• In the pentathlon, there were five events:
running, wrestling, javelin, discus and long
jump.
• Winners were given a wreath of leaves, and a
hero's welcome back home. Winners might
marry rich women, enjoy free meals,
invitations to parties, and the best seats in the
theatre.
• The running track was much wider than a
modern one. Twenty people could run at once.

12. Women and The Olympic Games
• Only men, boys and unmarried girls were
allowed to attend.
• Married women were not allowed into the
Olympic Games. Any women caught
sneaking in were punished! Women could
own horses in the chariot race though.
• Unmarried women had their own festival
at Olympia every four years. This was the
Heraia, held in honour of Hera, wife
of Zeus.
• Winners were awarded crowns of sacred
olive branches, the same as men. As a rule
Greek women did not go in for sport,
unless they were Spartans.

13. Fun Fact
• Horse races involved lots of falling-off, because Greek riders had no
stirrups. It was easier to drive a chariot.

14. Greek Wars
• The Greek states often fought each other.
Sparta and Athens fought a long war,
called the Peloponnesian War, from 431 to
404 BC. Sparta won.
• Only the threat of invasion by a foreign
enemy made the Greeks forget their
quarrels and fight on the same side. Their
main enemy was Persia.
• The wars against Persia lasted on and off
from 490 to 449 BC. The Persian kings
tried to conquer Greece and make it part
of the Persian Empire. In the end, it was
Greece which defeated Persia, when
Alexander the Great defeated the Persian
Empire in the 330s BC.

15. The battle of the Marathon
• The Battle of Marathon was a famous Greek
victory against the Persians. About 10,000
Greeks, mostly from Athens, fought an army of
20,000 Persians led by King Darius.
• The Greeks surprised their enemies by
charging downhill straight at the Persians.
• Marathon is remembered for the heroism of a
Greek named Pheidippides. Before the battle,
he'd run for 2 days and nights - over 150 miles
(240 km) - from Athens toSparta to fetch help.
• After the battle, he ran 26 miles (42 km) non-
stop to Athens, but died as he gasped out the
news of victory
• he modern Marathon race is over the same
distance as his epic run from Marathon to
Athens.

16. Fun Fact
• Greek ships usually carried 20 or more hoplites (soldiers) for deck-
fighting.

17. Gods
• The Greeks believed that gods and
goddesses watched over them. The gods
were like humans, but immortal (they
lived for ever) and much more powerful.
• A family of gods and goddesses lived in a
cloud-palace above Mount Olympus, the
highest mountain in Greece The gods
looked down to watch what people were
doing, and from time to time, interfered
with what went on.
• The gods did not always behave very well.
Their king, Zeus, was always being
unfaithful to his wife Hera. He appeared
on Earth as a human or an animal to trick
women he had fallen in love with.

18. Zeus and his Family
• Zeus was king of the gods. He threw thunderbolts
to punish anyone who disobeyed him. His brother
Poseidon was god of the sea. Another brother,
Pluto (also called Hades), ruled the underworld.
• Zeus had many children, among them Apollo,
Artemis, Athena and Ares.
• Apollo was the sun god, and the god of the arts,
medicine, music and poetry.
• His twin sister Artemis was goddess of the moon,
and goddess of childbirth, and of all natural things.
She is often shown as a hunter with a bow and
arrow.
• Athena was goddess of wisdom, and of crafts such
as spinning, weaving and pottery.
• Ares was the bad-tempered god of war - not even
his own father liked him!

19. Fun Fact
• The three-headed dog Cerberus guarded the gates to the
Underworld. Funeral mourners left honey cakes for him.

20. Greek Theatres
• Most Greek cities had a theatre. It was
in the open air, and was usually a
bowl-shaped arena on a hillside. Some
theatres were very big, with room for
more than 15,000 people in the
audience.
• All the actors were men or boys.
Dancers and singers, called the chorus,
performed on a flat area called the
orchestra.
• Over time, solo actors also took part,
and a raised stage became part of the
theatre.
• The actors changed costumes in a hut
called the "skene". Painting the walls
of the hut made the first scenery.

21. Fun Fact
• There were lots of deaths in Greek plays. But murders and other
killings almost always happened off-stage, out of sight of the
audience.

22. Pottery
• The Greeks made pots from clay.
• They made small pottery bowls and cups
for drinking, middle-sized pots for carrying
and cooking, elegant vases for decoration,
and large jars for storing wine and foods.
• Potters in the City states of Corinth and
Athens made beautiful pottery. They used
a watery clay mixture to make figures or
decoration on the clay before it was hard.
• When the pot was baked in a Kiln, the
areas painted with the clay mixture turned
black. Unpainted areas turned red-brown.
• Black animal figures are typical of
Corinthian pottery. Greek potters also
made pottery decorated with red figures
on a black background.