ECONOMY

Throughout its long history ancient Greece’s economy depended on agriculture and trade. Farmers worked small plots, rotating crops to try to preserve the land’s fertility and terracing rocky hillsides to create as much crop area as possible. Unpredictable rainfall posed the greatest hazard to successful farming. Farmers grew mostly barley and wheat, which were staple foods. The scarcity of good grazing land forced them to raise more small animals—such as sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens—than cattle. The best cash crops were grapes for wine and olives for oil, which were used in cooking and also as the base for soap and perfumes. Agricultural commodities were traded abroad. They were shipped in elongated clay storage jars called amphorae, which had spikes on the end for sticking them into a beach for loading and unloading.

Besides grain, oil, and wine, trade centered on natural resources such as metals and timber, luxury goods from jewels to spices, and craft products from painted vases to bronze mirrors. The Greeks traded ideas as well as goods across the water, acquiring an alphabet, architecture, and religious ideas from Egyptian and Middle Eastern civilizations such as Babylonia and Phoenicia. Traders plied the Mediterranean Sea from the Iberian Peninsula to Egypt looking for products that they could sell for high profits at home. Prized goods included such natural resources as iron for tools, silver for coinage, clay for pottery, marble for statues, and timber for houses and ships. These essential raw materials were relatively scarce, found only in isolated pockets. By the 6th century bc, Greeks in western Asia Minor had adopted the use of coins as money to make commerce easier between strangers, although barter never disappeared. Coinage gradually spread throughout the Mediterranean world as others realized the convenience of currency.

Most craft production took place in small shops employing a handful of workers. The largest known from the Classical period had 120 slaves manufacturing shields. Slaves worked side by side with owners and free laborers in craft shops and on farms. Paid labor was at least as important as slave labor in the Greek economy.

PEOPLE AND SOCIETY

The distinguishing features of ancient Greek society were the division between free and slave, the differing roles of men and women, the relative lack of status distinctions based on birth, and the importance of religion. Most surviving evidence about ancient Greeks comes from the Classical and Hellenistic city-states, but the same general pattern seems to have been true of earlier Greek civilization. Athens and Sparta, which had different systems, are by far the best-known city-state societies. Despite the relatively huge scale of Athens compared with most city-states, its way of life was more common in the Greek world than was Sparta’s special system.

Only free people could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. Compared with ancient Rome, Greece rarely linked social hierarchy (ranking people by importance) to political power. In most city-states, social prominence did not convey special legal or political rights. For example, being born into a distinguished family generally brought no special privileges. Sometimes particular families controlled public religious functions, such as the worship of an important god, but this monopoly ordinarily did not give its holders extra power in the government.

In Athens, the population was divided into four classes based on wealth, with some political offices reserved for members of the higher levels, although people could change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all men carried the title of “equal” if they finished their education. However, the Spartan “kings,” who served as the state’s dual military and religious leaders, came from two families.

Slaves had no power or status. They had no right to a family of their own, could not own property, and had no legal or political rights. The Greek philosopher Aristotle referred to them as “living tools,” and no free Greek is known to have ever advocated the abolition of slavery. By 600 bc chattel slavery (treating slaves as property) had become widespread in Greece. By the 5th century bc slaves accounted for as much as one-third of the total population in some city-states. People became slaves after being captured in war or seized by raiders, who then sold them. Children born to slaves became slaves themselves. Greeks took many slaves from non-Greek populations, but they also enslaved other Greeks in war. Greek slaves outside Sparta almost never revolted on a large scale because they were of too many different nationalities and too scattered to organize.

Most families owned slaves as household servants and laborers; even relatively poor people might own one or two slaves. Owners could beat and kill their slaves without penalty. However, hurting good workers made no economic sense because the master would be harming part of his property. To encourage slaves to work hard, owners sometimes promised freedom at a future date. Unlike in Rome, freed slaves in Greece did not become citizens. Instead, former slaves mixed into the population of metics—non-citizens, including people from foreign lands or other states, officially allowed to live in a city-state.

City-states and gods also legally owned slaves (the gods’ slaves were generally managed by the gods’ earthly intermediaries, temple priests). These public slaves enjoyed a measure of independence, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, for example, public slaves were trained to look for counterfeit coinage. Temple slaves worked as servants of the sanctuary’s deity. Sparta had a special category of slaves called helots, Greek war captives owned by the state but assigned to Spartan families. Helots raised food and performed household chores so that Spartan women could devote their time to raising strong children and men could devote their time to training as hoplite warriors. The helots lived harsh lives and often revolted. Spartans annually sent out a secret band of young men to murder any helots who looked likely to provoke rebellion.

The way of life in Greek city-states remained mostly the same for a long time. People in the urban center lived in low apartment buildings or single-family homes, depending on their wealth. Dwellings, public buildings, and temples were situated around the agora, where people gathered for conversation and to buy food and crafts at daily markets. Citizens also lived in small villages or farmhouses scattered around the city-state’s countryside. In Athens, more people lived outside the city’s wall than inside.

Houses were simple, containing bedrooms, storage rooms, and a kitchen around a small inner courtyard, but no bathrooms. Waste was dumped in a pit outside the door and then collected for disposal in the countryside. Most families were nuclear, meaning a household consisted of a single set of parents and their children, but generally no other relatives. Fathers were responsible for supporting the family by work or by investments in land and commerce. Mothers were responsible for managing the household’s supplies and overseeing the slaves, who fetched water in jugs from public fountains, cooked, cleaned, and looked after babies. Fathers kept a separate room for entertaining guests, because male visitors were not permitted in rooms where women and children spent most of their time. Wealthy men would frequently have friends over for a symposium, a dinner and drinking party. Light came from olive oil lamps, heat from smoky charcoal braziers. Furniture was simple and sparse, usually consisting of wooden chairs, tables, and beds.

Food was simple, too. The poor mainly ate barley porridge flavored with onions, vegetables, and a bit of cheese or olive oil. Few people ate meat regularly, except for the free distributions of roasted pieces from animal sacrifices at state festivals. Bakeries sold fresh bread daily, and small stands offered snacks. Wine diluted with water was the favorite beverage.

The style of Greek clothing changed little over time. Men and women both wore loose tunics, of somewhat different shapes to fit their body types. The tunics often had colorful designs and were worn cinched with a belt. In cold weather, people wore cloaks and hats, and leather boots replaced the sandals worn in warm temperatures. Women wore jewelry and cosmetics, especially powdered lead to give themselves a pale complexion. Men sported beards until Alexander the Great started a vogue for shaving.

Medicine was limited. Hippocrates, the most famous physician of ancient times, helped separate superstition from medical treatment in the 5th century bc. Doctors knew of herbal remedies to treat injuries and reduce pain, and they could do some surgery. But they had no cures for infections, and even well-conditioned people could die quickly from disease at any age.

Men kept fit by exercising daily to be ready for military service. Before mercenaries became common in the Hellenistic period, Greek armies consisted of citizen militias manned by ordinary citizens. Every city-state had at least one gymnasium, a combination exercise building, running track, bathing facility, lecture hall, and park, open only to males. Men who lived in the city went there for physical training, ball games, gambling, and relaxation. Women entertained themselves by visiting friends and attending public festivals.

City-state festivals provided the most exciting entertainment. Gods were honored with competitions in music, dance, drama, and poetry. Athens boasted of holding a festival nearly every other day. The huge Panhellenic festivals held at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia attracted spectators and professional contestants from throughout the Greek world. Athletes and musicians who won competitions became rich and famous. The most spectacular and expensive competition was chariot racing, which required excellent horses.

Although only men had the right to participate in city-state politics, women were citizens legally, socially, and religiously. Female citizens could own property and could go to court over property disputes. Nonetheless, ancient Greek society was paternalistic, with men acting as “fathers” to regulate the lives of women and safeguard their interests (as defined by men). All women were expected to have male guardians to protect them physically and legally. Women's important religious duties included control over cults reserved exclusively for them and paid service as publicly supported priestesses. Teenage women generally married men in their 20s.

Sparta had a distinctive way of life designed to produce a vigorous military. There, girls could exercise in the open so they could become strong and bear healthy children. Boys left home at age seven to live in public barracks and to begin about 12 years of rigorous physical and moral training under the strict guidance of older men. To make them tough, boys were sometimes required to steal food if they wanted to eat, but they were beaten if they got caught. They were never allowed to talk back, even in the face of humiliating insults and jokes at their expense. When they married, they were not allowed to live with their brides until they turned 30. Any boy who failed the training lost his political rights and endured constant public humiliation.

Traditional Greek religion was pagan polytheism, meaning that it included many gods and other supernatural beings. Greeks inherited many of their ideas about the gods from the Middle East. Their basic belief remained constant: People must honor the gods to thank them for blessings received and to receive blessings in return.

Greeks considered the gods human-like in form and emotions. The gods did not love all human beings; rather, they protected and benefited people and states who paid them honor and avoided offending them. People pleased the gods by sacrificing animals and other foods, decorating their sanctuaries with art, offering prayers, and holding festivals. The gods became angry when people performed sacrifices improperly, violated the sanctity of a temple, or broke their sworn word. Greeks believed that angry gods inflicted punishments such as famine, earthquake, epidemics, or defeat in war.

Greeks also believed that the vast difference in power between people and gods made the divinities’ natures and purposes hard to understand, but traditional stories about the gods provided hints. Some people did not believe all the mythological tales of monsters and divine love affairs with mortals, but everyone respected the myths as lessons about the gods’ awesome might, their inscrutability, and the precariousness of human life. For more direct information people could go to oracles, temples where the gods were believed to answer questions or deliver cures by various means. The priests at an oracle relayed a god’s message, or the visitor could gain clues in a dream as to what the gods wanted. Seers at oracles told prophecies about the future. Pilgrims from beyond the Greek city-states flocked to major oracles, such as at Delphi, to ask for divine advice about marriage, children, money matters, and even foreign policy. The responses were always riddles, because gods were too complex to reply clearly to mere human beings.

As Greek religion evolved, 12 gods emerged as the most important. These gods were believed to assemble for banquets atop Mount Olympus, Greece‘s highest peak. Their leader was Zeus, god of the sky. The other gods were Hera, Zeus’s wife and the goddess of marriage; Aphrodite, goddess of love; Apollo, god of the sun; Ares, god of war; Artemis, goddess of nature; Athena, goddess of wisdom and war; Demeter, goddess of grain and the harvest; Dionysus, god of wine and vegetation; Hephaestus, god of fire; Hermes, messenger of the gods; and Poseidon, god of the sea.

City-states built temples to honor the gods protecting their territory and people. Both Athens and Sparta honored Athena, but with different rituals and prayers. A temple was a house for a god and was not open to worshipers. Only priests and priestesses entered to take care of the god’s statue. The priests and priestesses were guardians only of ritual, not of correct religious thinking. Greek religion had no scripture or uniform set of beliefs and practices. Sacrifices of foods and animals, the main public religious activity, took place outside the front of the temple, where worshipers could gather to affirm their community’s ties to the divine.

Greek religion also had a personal aspect. Particularly important to individuals were so-called mystery cults. Through initiation into special knowledge provided by a god, worshipers could hope for protection in everyday life and a better chance of happiness in the afterlife. Otherwise, the dead could expect only miserable nothingness. The mystery cult of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, headquartered in the Athenian suburb of Eleusis, attracted initiates from all parts of the Greek-speaking world. Initiates had to purify themselves of wrongdoing to win entry. This religious emphasis on right conduct became more pronounced in the Hellenistic period as eastern cults, such as that of the Egyptian goddess Isis, won Greek converts.

Christianity took root among Greeks after emerging from Palestine in the 1st century ad. The New Testament of the Bible was written in Greek, as was a great deal of later Christian literature. Since Christians frequently disagreed with one another about doctrine and ritual, the Byzantine emperors continually tried to enforce uniformity on believers, sometimes by force. The Hellenistic eastern church in Constantinople also developed bitter disputes with the popes in Rome, culminating in the Great Schism, the division of the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054.

Except at Sparta, education remained private for most of Greek history. During the Hellenistic period, some other city-states established public schools. Only wealthy families could afford to pay teachers. Their sons learned to read, write, and quote famous literature. They were taught to sing or play a musical instrument, and they trained for athletics and military service. Greek sons were studying not for jobs but to become effective citizens. Daughters of wealthy families learned to read, write, and do simple arithmetic so they could manage a household, but they rarely received education past childhood.

A small number of boys continued school beyond childhood. As teenagers, they studied philosophy as a guide to living a moral life, and rhetoric as a tool for making persuasive speeches in court and the political assembly. Especially in democracies of the Classical period, this training in persuasive public speaking was crucial for an ambitious young man. The better speeches a man gave, the more influence and status he could attain. A significant part of a wealthy teenager’s education involved a mentor relationship with an elder. The boy learned by observing his mentor talking politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties, working out with him in a gymnasium, and attending symposia with him. Sometimes this led to an intimate physical relationship, which was socially acceptable in some city-states but not in others. The richest pupils continued their education at a university in a large city. These universities were organized by famous teachers. Athens had the best universities, including the Lyceum and the Academy.

Poorer children received no formal education. They learned a trade to help support their families and might learn to read and do some mathematics from their parents, enough to help them work as carpenters, stone masons, or merchants. Most poor people were illiterate, unable to do much more than sign their names. Difficulty in reading did not stop people from getting information. They would find someone to read aloud any writing they needed to understand. Greeks were very comfortable absorbing information by ear; even literate people usually read out loud. Greeks were very fond of songs, poems, speeches, stories, plays, and lively conversation, all of which formed part of an informal education.

ARTISTIC AND SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENTS

Applying enormous creativity to the inspiration that they took from Egypt and the Middle East, Greek thinkers, artists, and authors produced brilliant works that remain famous to this day. Above all, Greeks were curious and open to innovation, so long as it did not threaten to anger the gods or cause social unrest. Artists in vase painting and sculpture and authors of literature introduced fascinating changes to traditional models.

Philosophy and science developed because the most powerful Greek thinkers were skeptical about appearances, insisting that hard work was needed to discover the underlying reasons for things in nature and people's real motives. They also thought there was beauty in the search for truth, whether moral or scientific. This belief encouraged them to persevere despite difficulties. Scientific investigation, for example, was limited by a lack of technology. Scientists and doctors could only wonder about things too small to see with the naked eye, and they could not do experiments that required measurements of very small amounts of time or distance. Therefore, they had no choice but to make ideas and theory more important than practical applications.

The first Greek philosophers were interested in theoretical science. They lived in the Ionia region of western Asia Minor and learned from earlier Middle Eastern thinkers, especially those from Babylonia. The Greek philosophers Thales and Anaximander, who lived in the 6th century bc, reached the revolutionary conclusion that the physical world was governed by laws of nature, not by the whims of the gods. Pythagoras, who also lived in the 6th century bc, taught that numbers explained the world and started the study of mathematics in Greece. These philosophers called the universe cosmos, meaning “a beautiful thing,” because it had order based on scientific rules, not mythology. Therefore, the philosophers believed in logic. Their insistence that people produce evidence for their beliefs opened the way to modern science and philosophy.

Philosophers called Sophists upset many people in the 5th century bc by teaching relativism, the belief that there is no universal truth or right and wrong. The most famous Sophist was Protagoras, who said, “Man is the measure of all things.” Socrates (469-399 bc) insisted that the Sophists were wrong and that well-informed people would never do wrong on purpose. His pupil Plato (428-347 bc) became Greece’s most famous philosopher. Plato’s complicated works argued universal truths did exist and that the human soul made the body unimportant. Plato founded an academy in Athens that remained in business until ad 529. His pupil Aristotle (384-322 bc) turned away from theoretical philosophy to teach about practical ethics, self-control, logic, and science. Alexander the Great (whom Aristotle once tutored) sent him information on plants and animals encountered on the march to India. Aristotle's works became so influential that they determined the course of Western scientific thought until modern times.

Hellenistic philosophers concentrated on ethics, helping people achieve tranquility in a period of change when things seemed out of their control. In the 3rd century bc, Epicurus taught that people should not be afraid because everything, including our bodies, consists of microscopic atoms that dissolve painlessly at death. Zeno of Citium, who also lived in the 3rd century bc, founded Stoicism, which taught that life was ruled by fate but that people should still live morally to be in harmony with nature.

The Golden Age of Greek science came in the Hellenistic period, with the greatest advances in mathematics. The geometry theories published by Euclid about 300 bc still endure. Archimedes (287-212 bc) calculated the value of pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) and invented fluid mechanics. Aristarchus, early in the 3rd century bc, argued that the earth revolved around the sun, while Eratosthenes accurately calculated the circumference of the earth. Also in the 3rd century bc, Ctesibius invented machines operated by air and water pressure; Hero later built a rotating sphere powered by steam. These inventions did not lead to practical uses because the technology did not yet exist to produce the pipes, fittings, and screws needed to build powerful machines. Military technology vaulted ahead with the invention of huge catapults and wheeled towers to batter down city walls. Finally, medical scientists made many discoveries, such as the significance of the pulse and the nervous system.

Greek sculpture and architecture originally followed Egyptian and Middle Eastern models. Statues of the Archaic Period stood stiffly, staring forward, and temples were rectangular boxes on platforms with columns. Later architecture retained this basic plan, although buildings became much bigger. The style of sculpture and pottery, however, changed dramatically over time.

Sculpture was always painted in bright colors, but over time its poses became more lively and lifelike. By the Classical period, Greeks were carving statues in motion and in more relaxed stances. Their spirited movement and calm expressions suggested the era's confident energy. Statues of gods could be 12 m (40 ft) high and covered with gold and ivory, such as Phidias's Athena in the Parthenon temple at Athens. The female nude became popular. Praxiteles's naked Aphrodite of Cnidus became so renowned that the king of Bithynia offered to pay off the city's entire public debt if he could have the statue. Cnidus refused.

Hellenistic artists began showing emotion in their statues. A 3rd-century bc sculpture from Pergamum showed a defeated Gaul escaping slavery by stabbing himself after having killed his wife. New subjects departed from traditional notions of beauty by representing drunkards, battered boxers, and elderly people with wrinkles.

Greeks painted pottery and turned an everyday item into art. Mycenaean vases featured lively designs of sea creatures and dizzying whorls. Dark Age potters stopped drawing animals, using only geometric patterns. Artists of the Archaic Age, inspired by Middle Eastern pots, reintroduced beasts and people on Greek vases. From then on, vase painters portrayed mythological and everyday scenes with increasing realism. When they switched in the late 6th century bc from black on red painting to red on black, they could add tiny details that made their pictures come alive.

Greek large-scale architecture began with the Minoan and Mycenaean palaces. These multistory buildings had many rooms centered around courtyards. Balconies provided space for viewing festivals in the open areas below. Architects in the later city-states designed public structures, such as stoas, government buildings, and temples. Stoas were sheltered walkways placed around the agora to provide shade for conversation. Temples were the largest buildings in the city-state. Athens's Parthenon became Greece‘s most famous building for its size, many columns, and elaborate sculptural decoration. Hellenistic kings outdid the Athenians by erecting huge temples. The temple of Artemis at Ephesus is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Greek literature began in the Mycenaean Period as stories told aloud. Mycenaeans used their pictorial script (Linear B) only for accounting. Fighting from 1200 to 1000 bc destroyed Greek knowledge of writing, until they adopted an alphabet from Phoenicia in the 8th century bc to record the exciting poetry of Homer. His epics The Iliad and The Odyssey became Greece’s most famous literature. The epics told about the Trojan War and the suffering it caused its heroes and its victims. People loved the stories for their fabulous descriptions of action and for their lessons about the effects of anger and mercy. Hesiod, a poet of the 8th century bc, also became a lasting favorite with his long stories of how the world began and how justice was the proper guide for life in business and farming. Somewhat later, lyric poets spun short tales of passion and emotion that people loved to sing.

Great literary innovations in drama were produced in Athens in the 5th century bc. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the most famous authors of tragedies. They based their plays on myths that presented moral issues, especially the danger of hubris (arrogant overconfidence). Their plots often involved fierce conflicts in families or dangerous interactions between gods and humans. The story of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, was one of the most famous tragedies.

Plays were performed outdoors at festivals honoring the god Dionysus in a competition sponsored by the city-state. Thousands of people packed the theater. Each author presented three tragedies, followed by a semicomic play featuring satyrs (mythical half-man, half-animal beings). Actors wore colorful costumes and masks; a chorus danced and sang as part of each play.

Comedies also were performed in these competitions. These plays displayed remarkable freedom of speech in criticizing public policy and making fun of politicians. Their plots could be fantastic, for example having a character fly up on a dung beetle to ask the gods for peace. Their language featured jokes, puns, and obscenities. The most famous comic playwright was Aristophanes, who wrote some comedies with powerful women as main characters. Greek comedy in the 4th century bc changed from political commentary to social satire. Authors such as Menander produced comedies that provided insights into human weaknesses and the complications of everyday life.

Greeks began writing about history in the 5th century bc. Herodotus and Thucydides wrote long works that stressed eyewitness evidence, the multiple causes of events, and judgments about people's motives. Thucydides, followed by Aristotle, developed political science by analyzing how states operated. Hellenistic Greek writers made history more personal and began composing biographies.

THE LEGACY OF ANCIENT GREECE

 The enduring legacy of ancient Greece lies in the brilliance of its ideas and the depth of its literature and art. The greatest ancient evidence of their value is that the Romans, who conquered the Greeks in war, were themselves overcome by admiration for Greek cultural achievements. The first Roman literature, for example, was Homer's Odyssey translated into Latin. Greek art, architecture, philosophy, and religion also inspired Roman artists and thinkers, who used them as starting points for developing their own style of work. All educated Romans learned to read and speak Greek and studied Greek models in rhetoric. Stoicism became the most popular Roman philosophy of life.

Arab philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists who became the leading thinkers of medieval times studied the works of Aristotle and other Greek sources intensely. During the European Renaissance from the 14th to the 16th centuries, people from many walks of life read Greek literature and history. Writing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, English playwright William Shakespeare based dramas on ancient Greek biographies. Modern playwrights still find inspiration for new works in Athenian drama. Many modern public buildings, such as the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., imitate Greek temple architecture. Although the founders of the United States rejected Athenian democracy as too direct and radical, they enshrined democratic equality as a basic principle. It was ancient Greeks who proved that democracy could be the foundation of a stable government. Pride in the cultural accomplishments of ancient Greece contributed to a feeling of ethnic unity when the modern nation of Greece was carved out of the Ottoman Empire. That pride still characterizes modern Greece and makes it a fierce defender of the Hellenic heritage.

Reliance on logic, allegiance to democratic principles, unceasing curiosity about what lies beneath the surface of things, a healthy respect for the dangers of arrogant overconfidence, and a love of beauty in stories and art remain incredibly important components of Western civilization. Ancient Greece contributed all of these things.