Ancient GreeceChapter 13 Section 1

Ancient Greece

The Big Idea

Through colonization, trade, and conquest, the Greeks spread their culture in Europe and Asia.

Main Ideas

• Early Greek culture saw the rise of the city-state and the creation of colonies.

• The golden age of Greece saw advances in government, art, and philosophy.

• Alexander the Great formed a huge empire and spread Greek culture into new areas.

• Greeks established colonies around the Black and Mediterranean seas.

• Trade between cities and colonies helped keep Greek culture strong all over Europe.

City-States • City-states were political units made up of a city and all the surrounding lands.

• Usually built around a hill called the acropolis that held a fortress, temples, and other public buildings

• Most people thought of themselves as residents of a city-state, not as Greeks.

Colonies

Main Idea 1:Early Greek culture saw the rise of the city-state and the creation of colonies.

Main Idea 2:The golden age of Greece saw advances in

government, art, and philosophy.

• The period between 500 and 300 BC in Greece was a golden age, a period marked by great achievements.

• The golden age began after the Greeks banded together to defeat the powerful Persian Empire.

• Athens, the city-state that had led the fight against Persia, became the cultural center of Greece.

– Famous politicians, artists, and thinkers lived in Athens.

– Leaders like Pericles supported the arts.

– Athens was the world’s first democracy. People elected their leaders and helped make government decisions.

Golden Age Achievements

Architecture

• Greeks built magnificent marble structures all over Greece.

• Most famous building is the Parthenon, a huge temple in Athens.

• Greek buildings were symbols of the glory of the cities in which they were built.

Art

• Greek art is still admired today.

• Greeks are most famous for their statues and carvings.

• They wanted their art to look realistic. Artists studied the human body to make their work as lifelike as possible.

Golden Age Achievements

Science

• Greeks wanted to learn how the human body works.

• Made advances in many fields:

–Medicine

–Biology

–Math

–Astronomy

–Other sciences

Philosophy

• Philosophers tried to figure out how people could be happy.

• Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were some of the most influential thinkers in world history.

• Their ideas still shape how we think today.

Literature

• Wrote timeless classics

• Created stories about great heroes and adventures, poems about love and friendship, and fables meant to teach lessons

• Created drama, or plays, as a form of popular entertainment

End of the Golden Age

• The golden age ended due to conflict between Athens and its rival city-state, Sparta.

– Sparta was a military city with a powerful army.

– Jealous of the influence Athens had over other city-states, Sparta attacked Athens.

• The war between Athens and Sparta ripped Greece apart. In the end, Sparta won.

• After the war, Greece was in shambles. Thousands of people had been killed and whole cities had been destroyed.

Main Idea 3:Alexander the Great formed a huge empire and spread Greek culture into new areas.

Alexander the Great conquered Greece in the 330s BC.

From Greece, he set out to create an empire. At its height, the empire stretched from Greece to India and included all of Central Asia and Egypt.

Alexander worked to spread Greek culture through his empire. As a result, a new culture formed that blended Greek and other cultures. Historians call this culture Hellenistic, or Greek-like.