Book Review: The Golden Days of Greece by Olivia Coolidge

Olivia Coolidge has written this simple yet interesting book on the glorious days of ancient Greece. This book is divided on seventeen chapters. Greece was a small rocky country. Greeks had been great sailors. They ate raisins. Olives, bread, goat’s milk cheese, fish and vegetables. They drank wine mixed with water. The Greeks gave names to their Gods. Zeus was the god of the sky and the father of all. Poseidon was his brother and was the god of sea. Apollo was god of the sun and Artemis was his twin sister.

Greeks were a group of wandering people who entered from the north, where it joins the rest of Europe. The first group arrived in 1900 B.C. they were called Achaeans. The Dorians arrived seven hundred years later. Dorians learned to use iron, which was more common than tin. When the Dorians with their iron swords swept over Greece about 1200 B.C., they came by land and sea from the North. Some lucky cities like Athens were never conquered. After burning others, the Dorians wandered on. In yet other places, mostly in the Peloponnese, which is the southern part of Greece, they settled down.

Greeks knew that life was hard for many, and they were content if they had good health, good children, good neighbors, and good luck. They wanted to be citizens whose memory was kept alive, even after death, by their own people. They did not think that great wealth made men happy, and they were not impressed by kings. In the fourth chapter on the Olympic Games the author writes that Olympic games were held in honor of Zeus in the territory of Elis, a city of the Peloponnese. These Olympic festivals came after every four years, and the period between one and the next was called an Olympiad. The Greeks did not allow boys to be naughty and it was important that a child should be never out of sight.

Most famous of the Dorians who settled in Peloponnese were the ones who lived in Sparta. The Spartans, as the Dorians liked to call themselves, were few in number. The Spartans liked sports useful in war such as the brutal boxing. Every Spartan owned a certain number of farms. Then people who lived on them were called a man’s Helots and were almost his slaves. A great deal of time was spent in keeping fit. Spartans did not trade or use money, so that there was no business to be done. Their clothes and armor were made by their women, their Helots, and other subjects who paid them tribute. It was really no wonder that the Spartans became the best soldiers in Greece. The Athenians, who were so proud of their own city, liked the Spartans for doing their duty.

In 490 B.C., the Persian King Darius sent a fleet to conquer some of the islands and then go on the attack the Athenians. The Athenians sent to the Spartans for help.  By the battle of Marathon, the Athenians saved themselves without Spartan help. A few years later King Darius of Persia died. He was succeeded by his son Xerxes. King Xerxes had a huge empire. Xerxes led his army to the narrow channel which divides Asia Minor from Europe in the northeast corner of the Aegean. Herodotos, the historian says that Xerxes made offerings and prayers for his efforts preparation for the war. The Spartans joined to fight against the Persians under Leonidas. The fighting broke out. Spartans fought till the last man. Some of the other Greeks surrendered but not the Spartans. When Aristodemos returned back to Sparta, nobody would speak to him for the rest of his life ashe was the only one who came home alive.

Just before the Persian attack the Athenians had discovered silver mines in their land. Their leader Themistocles advised them to put the money into building warships. The Greeks and the Persians fought. Many of the Persians fought bravely. Xerxes’s fleet was shattered and he decided to go back to Asia He divided his army and left many of his men to winter in Northern Greece. The Athenians had beaten the Persians by sea. It was now the turn of the Spartans to beat them on land. Aristodemos was the bravest on the Spartan side and he died on the field. Spartans refused any reward for Aristodemos as they did not believe in forgiving his mistakes of the past.

After the defeat of the Persian army Sparta and Athens went in different directions. Athenians became head of a great fleet to which other cities or islands gave ships or money. The league against Persia had in twenty years become the Athenian Empire. The Athenian assembly was an assembly of all the citizens.  The Assembly passed laws but for daily business they had a council of 500. They were not elected. They were simply chosen from all the citizens. It stayed in office for one year and was divided into ten groups of fifty. The president of the group of fifty which was in office was the President of Athens. The Athenians had no income tax but the rich people undertook unpaid jobs for their city. Further in chapter eight the Athenian ruler Pericles is discussed. His rise to power and reforms are discussed.

In Athens many of the slaves were prisoners of war. This included Persians, Ethiopians and Indians. Other captives were Greeks from other cities and Egyptians. Parthenon and Dionysus were discussed in separate chapters. Greek Gods, theatre, arts, sculptures, drama and poets are also discussed.

In the twelfth chapter life and death of Socrates is discussed. He was born in the year 469 in Athens and gave people a new way of understanding and questioning things. Many people objected to this. He was tried and then he had to drink the cup of poison.  His work, however, did not die as Plato’s writings made the name Socrates famous forever.

In chapter thirteen Plato is discussed. Plato was born in 429 B.C. He was thirty by the time Socrates died. People admired Plato for his qualities. He was strong and athletic. Taught by Socrates, Plato found that before he could think of being a statesman or a poet, he had to know more about truth. Plato turned away from Politics for a time and he began to write about Socrates. He wrote the speech of Socrates at his trail as far as he remembered it. Then he wrote talks which Socrates had, or might have had, with other people. Plato was trying to show the world what Socrates had been like, but to do so he put much of himself into these dialogues. Plato’s school was called academy.

The next two chapters discussed Xenophon and the strong king Philip. Philip was the youngest brother of Perdiccas and Alexander. He gained a Greek education, and a chance to study under two Theban generals who were the greatest military leaders of their times. Philip spent three years in Thebes and returned to Macedonia to start taming the wild tribesmen and forming an army drilled in the tactics of the great Thebans. In 359, when Philip was twenty-three years old, Perdiccas died. Macedonians rallied around Philip as they needed a strong leader.

Philip was athletic, handsome, and a fine rider. The victory of Chaeronea made Philip master of Greece. Philip was willing to be friends if the Athenians were willing to be become his allied, actually his subjects. Philip was forming a league of states to force internal peace and military union upon the Spartans, as he was facing refusal by the Spartans to enter their land. Philip had now announced a great campaign against Persia. The time was perfect as Artaxerxes III had just been murdered and the empire was in confusion.  Troops were raised from all the states when Philip was celebrating his daughter’s marriage to hone of his neighbors who was the king of Epirus.  Philip chose to walk alone in the wedding procession when he was struck down by one of his nobles who had a grudge against him. He was forty-six and so perished the strongest man that Greece had ever seen.

The second last chapter is regarding Alexander, Philip’s son. Alexander was twenty years old when has father was murdered, the only son of queen Olympias. Aristotle tutored Alexander. Aristotle himself had come to Plato’s Academy when he was seventeen and he had proved himself the best in Plato’s Academy.  Alexander later captured Egypt. He governed the people of the east with his Macedonian generals and also included Persian nobles. Victory followed him wherever he went. In 323 he was back from India in Babylon, preparing for the attack on Arabia when he fell sick of a fever along with the battle wounds. He died in the palace of the kings of Babylon on June 13, 323 B.C. He was only thirty-two years old.

The death of Alexander without an heir created confusion. Although his wife Roxana was expecting a child but an infant was useless in a time of serious confusion. Alexander’s generals carved up his empire. Egyptian, Macedonian and Asiatic areas of separate kingdoms came in place. Later Romans captured Greece.  The thoughts of the Greeks combined with the laws of the Romans have given us many of our own traditions. The beliefs and ideas of the Greeks still shape our world.