Ancient Greece

C

Religion

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. (see Greek Mythology)

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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 (see Eleusinian Mysteries). 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.

D

Education

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.

IX

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.

A

Philosophy and Science

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.

B

Sculpture, Pottery, and Architecture

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. See also Greek Art and Architecture.

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