For example, Sparta was ruled by two kings and a council of elders. It emphasized maintaining a strong military, while Athens valued education and art.
In Athens every male citizen had the right to vote, so they were ruled by a democracy. Rather than have a strong army, Athens maintained their navy.
Greek city-states likely developed because of the physical geography of the Mediterranean region. The landscape features rocky, mountainous land and many islands. These physical barriers caused population centers to be relatively isolated from each other.
The sea was often the easiest way to move from place to place. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.
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You cannot download interactives. Ancient Greek politics, philosophy, art and scientific achievements greatly influenced Western civilizations today. One example of their legacy is the Olympic Games. Use the videos, media, reference materials, and other resources in this collection to teach about ancient Greece, its role in modern-day democracy, and civic engagement.
The United States has a complex government system. One important tenet of this system is democracy, in which the ultimate power rests with the people. In the case of the United States, that power is exercised indirectly, through elected representatives. Although the U. The Greeks are often credited with pioneering a democratic government that went on to influence the structure of the United States. Every polis had its own citizen army, its own set of laws, and its own specific gods.
Every polis was also restrictive in its citizenship, it denied women what we would regard as basic human rights, and it practiced slavery. Athens was one of about 1, poleis the plural form of the word. The city-state that was most strikingly different from Athens was Sparta. However, we know much less about life in Sparta than we do about life in Athens.
He was incapable of imagining a life lived otherwise. In fact, no Greek ever bothered to describe what it was like to live in an ethnos. So, what did it mean to be a Greek who lived in a polis? It meant you spoke the same language as every other Greek, although in a unique dialect. It meant you shared common literature with other Greeks, at least as far as the poems of Homer and Hesiod were concerned.
It meant you worshiped the same gods as other Greeks, albeit in slightly different forms. So, although your city-state worshiped its own variety of gods, they derived from the same gods worshiped by all other Greeks.
This meant that you had the same beliefs as other Greeks did. Like all Greeks, you believed in the twelve gods who lived on Mount Olympus. This also meant you had the same level of knowledge as the other Greeks who lived in your polis. You also shared the same mental view. This meant, for instance, that you took slavery for granted and had an intense suspicion and dislike of non-Greeks.
Learn more about Greek religion. For most practical purposes, being an Athenian, a Spartan, or a Theban would have meant far more to you than being a Greek. You experienced a sense of connectedness to your fellow Athenians or fellow Spartans, or to whoever were your compatriots. There were many reasons for this. As a citizen of a polis , you would have experienced a much greater sense of exclusivity than anyone living in the west today.
In addition, the social and political structures of your polis would have bound you very closely to your fellow citizens and to your peers. And finally, you led a life that was much more like the lives of all your fellow citizens, simply because there were far fewer life-choices available.
Learn more about growing up in ancient Greece. One of the characteristics of a face-to-face society is that it puts a lot of emphasis on shame.
It is one of the ways in which it instills its value system into its citizens. Shame would have been one of the things that would have motivated you most strongly. As a Greek living in a polis, you could not honorably opt out of the army.
If you did opt out, you would be an outcast forever. The extent to which shame governed society in a polis can be found in a poem by the lyric poet Pindar. He describes the miserable fate of an athlete who let his city down.
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