The Greek World

• Athens

  Direct democracy - only elite land-owning men could vote. Population between 3,000 - 500,000. Patron goddess is Athene. Extremely misogynistic. Best navy in the world at the time. Attic Greek.
• Sparta

  Anti-Athens. Women could hold unusually high roles, own property, leave the house, take part in sports with other women, and dying in childbirth was considered a high an honour as dying in battle. Greatest Greek land army. Men had to serve for ten years. Doric Greek.
• Corinth

  Really rich - the trade city, "Switzerland of the ancient world". Good at selling things, didn't like war very much. Doric Greek.
• Argos

  Democracy because Sparta killed all their nobles in a battle before the Second Expedition in the Graeco-Persian Wars. Worshipped Hera.
• The 'canon' of Homer

  The ancient Greeks thought that Homer was literally the best writer who ever lived. His stories and moral ideas were literally perfect - the moral lessons of the Odyssey and the Iliad were treated as fact/truth.
• Sparta's cult was to Castor and Polydeuces, the legendary heroic brothers who were inseparable - the Spartans had a diarchy - the idea was that they could not fall to tyranny as there were two kings.
• Poleis


  city states
• Doric Greek

  Doric was older than Attic, and most literatures wrote in Doric. Doric was considered by the Athenians as crude and, although it was still beautiful, it just wasn't as good as Attic.
• Attic Greek

  Attic was mostly used by all the famous classical people. It's 'flowery' - lot's of odd bits. It was highly defined and very complex - this promoted the stereotype that the Athenians were very pretentious and slightly stupid. Athenians really valued oratory because of their democracy. Some people thought thst speaking in Attic Greek was so beautiful that writing it down made it horrible.