World History: Patterns of Interaction: Chapter 5

Some historians believe that Homer composed his epics, narrative poems celebrating heroic deeds, sometime between 750 and 700 B.C. The Trojan War forms the backdrop for one of Homer’s great epic poems, the Iliad.

The Greeks developed a rich set of myths, or traditional stories, about their gods.

At the agora, or marketplace, or on a fortified hilltop called an acropolis, citizens gathered to discuss city government.

Greek city-states had many different forms of government. In some, a single person, called a king, ruled in a government called a monarchy.

Others adopted an aristocracy, a government ruled by a small group of noble, landowning families.

When these groups became dissatisfied with aristocratic rule, they sometimes took power or shared it with the nobility. They formed an oligarchy, a government ruled by a few powerful people.

Powerful individuals, usually nobles or other wealthy citizens, sometimes seized control of the government by appealing to the common people for support. These rulers were called tyrants.

Athenian reformers moved toward democracy, rule by the people. In Athens, citizens participated directly in political decision making.

The Messenians became helots, peasants forced to stay on the land they worked.

The foot soldiers of this army, called hoplites, stood side by side, each holding a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. This fearsome formation, or phalanx, became the most powerful fighting force in the ancient world.

Greek sculptors also tried to capture the grace of the idealized
human body in motion. They wanted to portray ideal beauty, not realism. Their values of harmony, order, balance, and proportion became the standard of what is called classical art.

The Greeks wrote two kinds of drama—tragedy and comedy. A tragedy was a serious drama about common themes such as love, hate, war, or betrayal.

In contrast to Greek tragedies, a comedy contained scenes filled with slapstick situations and crude humor.

In this time of uncertainty, several great thinkers appeared.
They were determined to seek the truth, no matter where the search led them. The Greeks called such thinkers philosophers, meaning “lovers of wisdom.”