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.
