History

History
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The Minoans and Myceneans were the two earliest civilizations that developed in Greek. The Myceneans were the first people to speak the Greek language which makes them the first Greeks and they lived on the mainland Greece. The Minoans, on the other hand, lived in the Greek islands and constructed a vast palace on the Crete island. The Myceneans were many than the Minoans, while the latter was approximately 30,000, the Minoans were about 10,000 (Whitley, 2001). The Minoans community began to weaken around 1450BC due to unclear causes which made the Myceneans take over the islands where they adopted most of the Minoans’ writing and culture. The Mycenean civilization followed the fall around 1250 also due to unclear causes. After the fall of the Myceneans, Greece entered into the dark age which was a period characterized by famine and decrease in population throughout the land.
The Aegean Sea contains around two hundred islands which were occupied by the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greeks relied on the Aegean Sea for trade and provision of necessary commodities that they needed. With time, more need in the business and merchandise arose, and they began colonizing other islands to obtain products such as figs, grapes, and wine. They dominated the sea through the trade, but it was also by the sea that the empire fell. The Persians had a vast empire that covered the land from Egypt to India (Whitley, 2001). Due to Greece’s success and need to extend the empire more, the Persians decided to attack them with use of their vast army, but they were defeated through the Greek’s use of smart techniques like warships that were easily maneuverable and were used to sink the massive Persian ships.

Men in the ancient Greek were considered of a higher social class while women were of lower social status. The community was entirely male-dominated including praying to the gods. Men prayed while standing while women knelt to express a close relationship with the gods. The duty of a man was to provide food for the family through farming and herding animals. Women worked as housewives, and their work was to stay at home, give birth to babies and take care of the property (Whitley, 2001). Women were not allowed to participate in the public, but they were only allowed to do so while accompanying their husbands. The ancient Greece cities formed an army force by the name phalanx, and only men were allowed to participate.
Early Greece philosophy started in the Miletus with the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales. Some of the most significant Greek philosophers include Socrates, Plato, and Aristoteles. Same sex relationships in ancient Greece allowed intimacy between older men and young boys. The ancient Greeks did not identify the sexual desire by gender but by the role each person played. The role here was either active or passive. Those in a higher social class, i.e., older men were considered more active while the young boys in the lower social class were considered passive (Whitley, 2001). The lyric poetry of ancient Greece had a body that was called the Greek lyric. It was written in the ancient Greek dialects. Culturally, the lyric poetry is the product of social and political setting of the Greek city-states. The reason for conceptualizing democracy was to resist and end the harsh and ironical rule of the king of the Hippa’s.
Many known personalities from the ancient Greek have made the modern world know about the history. That is from the high intellectuality that they showed through theater and other related forms of art. The famous personalities performed at prominent halls such as the Acropolis which are well known even in the modern times. Herodotus is known as the father of history through his ability to preserve it through writings (Whitley, 2001). That shows high intellectual capability considering the advancements of the time and the ability to write that they exhibited. The Greeks reasoned out the four pillars of medicine which when imbalanced would lead to severe health consequences. Through philosophy, Greek scholars such as Pythagoras tried to keep the order of the universe chaos through mathematics and music showing a high level of intellectuality. Tools used to study the universe were not much advanced, but through them, they were able to make significant discoveries and conclusions.
Socrates is well known for developing a critical method of inquiry and developing a conclusion to determine whether a statement is correct or wrong. According to him, a statement is considered right if it cannot be proved wrong and vice versa. Plato was a disciple of Socrates who was executed for failing to obey the gods and corrupting the youth. Plato was born of the elite political family and thus had the opportunity to learn many subjects (Whitley, 2001). He later started an academy where other people could widely learn varieties of subjects and disciplines. Plato was followed by Aristotle who is a significant figure identified through his numerous contributions to subjects such as math, metaphysics, biology, physics and many others. He was the first philosopher to have ever classified the knowledge of a man into the specific discipline which are mathematics, biology, and ethics.
The leading thinkers and most famous who came after Pythagoras were Plato, Socrates, and Aristoteles. These thinkers had one motive of obtaining the meaning of life and also developing conclusions about who we are. They came up with the mode of education that we have now of attending schools to receive teachings (Whitley, 2001). Socrates started by developing a conclusion that about a statement and Aristoteles introduced the logic of determining whether a statement is valid through looking at its content. Alexander the Great succeeded his father in 356BC, but before that, he had been a student of Aristoteles. He was able to expand his kingdom and make it great through the knowledge acquired from the thinker. The philosophers were able to contribute to strengthening their empire through the knowledge gained from the thinker. That made them be seen as more elite by the neighboring empires who could not be able to make such conclusions.
The ancient Greeks explored the land from Greece to Egypt for trade which made them leave an impact on every place that they passed through. Hellenism is coined from the word Hellas which is the ancient name for Greece and its culture known as Hellenism. The interactions of the Greeks and the traders that they met on their way was the primary cause of the spread. Its spread was supported by Alexander’s the great period which made the empire stronger and superior. Through the spread of Hellenism, the Jews who conceptualized Christianity also felt the impact in various ways (Whitley, 2001). Their worship in places like synagogues was also affected where the Greek architecture was now used to construct them rather than the architecture that they had initially developed.
The knowledge from the ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristoteles attracted many people even from other communities such as Cicero who was a Jew. He signed many treaties which aimed at discovering who the Romans are and their real identity. The Jews overthrew the Etruscans rule to develop their government where they could select representatives to represent them (Whitley, 2001). They had a well outlined social structure of the elites and the ordinary people. No relations that existed between the two and the classes dictated which position a man could hold in the newly established government system. The lower social class remained lower while the upper social class maintained their position.
Similar to the Greeks, the Romans colonized the communities around the Mediterranean Sea to become the superpower community and to spread the Latin language which at the time was only spoken in Rome. The empire was however compromised and fell due to the invasion by tribes such as the barbarians and also overreliance on slave labor which could not sustain all their needs during the war (Whitley, 2001). They overspent trying to obtain slaves which strongly favored their fall. The expansion of the Roman empire and its success was mainly supported by their imitation of the Greek’s literary intelligence. Cesar also launched the currency trade which contributed significantly to the empire’s financial strength and the ability to obtain resources that other empires could not.
Reference
James Whitley. (2001). The archaeology of ancient Greece. Cambridge University Press.