Greek history

• The Greco-Persian Wars (480-490 BCE) were fought between the Greeks and the Persians.
• The Delian League was created by Athens to prevent Persians attacks. But the role Athens performed in the League created tension causing the Delian League to divide into two groups, one ruled by Sparta and the other one by Athens.
• The Athenian Council of 500 men was a deliberative body that proposed and reviewed issues that could be disscused in the Assembly.
• Spartan political system is an oligarchy. All of the 28 members of the council were elderly men, which proposed laws to the assembly.

  The assembly was composed by free men ovr 30 years with Spartan fathers. They could only vote yes or no to laws.
• Non-citizens are all women, slaves and foreigners or metics.
• Citizens are all free men that payed taxes and worked.
• Athens wasnt a true democracy because women, metics or forigners and slaves were excluded from political life.
• Agriculture was a very important economic activity. The most important products were cereals, grapevines, fruits and vegetables.
• The Greek territory was no more away than 90km from the sea, this made the commerce increase and more important. They sailed and traded.
• The agora was an open square used for markets, political meetings and social life.

  It included covered walways supported by columns, used for meetings, trading and shops.
• The theatre and the stadium were public buildings.
• The city centre was called acropolis.
• The greeks called themselves hellenes.
• The acropolis was built in high areas and was surrounded by walls for defence.
• When people left the acropolis and moved to lower areas, it became a sacred place for the temples of gods.
• When greci-persian war ended, Greece entered a period of great splandour under Pericle’s reign.
• As the consewuence of the division of the Delian League, Philip II of Macedon dominated all Greek poleis except Sparta.
• Hellenistic age (338-30 BCE)
• Archaic period (800-500 BCE)
• Classical period (500-336 BCE)
• Colonisation is when people migrate to new places and form settlements or colonies.
• Main geographical features of Ancient Greec territory:

  • Near to the sea. All poleis weren’t more of 90km away from the sea.
  • Mountainous. The relief of the land made agroculture difficult, and limited comunication, but also contribuited by forming city-states.
• In Athens there were no public schools, so children were educated at home by their private tutors between the ages 7-18. The the men had to complete their military service.
• The women educated children (boys & girls) at home until they were seven years.
• In Sparta, boys recieved state education between the ages 7-20, which was tough, and included military training. Girls did a lot of gymnastics.
• Doric order

  • no base
  • architrave capitel
  • stylobate (creptidoma)
  • cornice
  • pediment
  • triglyph and metope (freize)
• Ionic order

  • capitel with volutes
  • Base
  • shaft
  • pediment
  • entablature
  • creptidoma
• A temple is the house of a god, it was the most impprtant kind of building. This are their rooms:

  • Pronaos (the entrance)
  • Naos (where the statue was)
  • Opisthodomos (where offerings and treasures were)
• Parthenon, Erechtheion and the Athena Nike where the most important temples built during the 5th century.
• Greek sculptors followed a canon of beauty using proportional relationships among body parts.
• In the Archaic period, sculptures were rigid and schematic. They were normaly male athletes (kouros) and female figures (kore).
• In the classical period, sculptures were more natural. Some sculptors were Myron, Polykleitos, Phidias and Praxiteles.
• In the Hellenistic perios, the sculptures showed emotiona and feelings, and movement.
• The pottery in Greece was used for transport water (hydra), to store liquidas and grains (amphora), and to mix wine and water (krater).
• In pottery they also painted scenes with red over a black background, and or with black over a red background.
• Gods were immortal and had extraordinary powers, but they had the samee feelings of a human and looked like them.
• Heroes were beliecpved to be the children of godas and humans. They had the same feelings and looked like us, and also were mortal, but they could do extraordinary deeds.
• The myths are stories of gods and heroes.