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Greek City sates were small places, generally consisting of no more than a town and a few square miles of surrounding countryside.


Athens and Sparta
     -were about the same size as a couple of U.S.counties
     -were fiercely competitive
     -constantly fought each other
     -most important civic activity was worshipping a god or goddess


Athens
    - population may have reached as many as 250,00
    - Was built around a hill, at the top stood an acropolis
    - city of the goddess Athena(Athena's temple, Parthenon, overlooked the whole city)

acropolis- a combination of temple and fortress precinct

Greece was protected by many miles of land and sea. With no universal empire to keep them in order, the city-states were free to struggle among themselves. They occupied a land that was far less wealthy than Mesopotamia or Phoenicia. In their conflicts with one another, they could not afford professional soldiers or large cavalry forces.  Instead they came to rely mainly on infantry armies made up of their own male citizens. They equipped themselves with bronze helmets and armor, round shields, long spears with iron blades, and short iron swords.
    They fought in formidable shock units of several hundred men each know as phalanxes or "rollers. Poorer citizens fought as light armed infantry, harassing the enemy ahead of the phalanx's charge or covering its vulnerable flanks.

Each city state was believed to have been founded and developed by a family or clan descended from a divine or semi divine founder.

Government

Vocab
monarchy- government by kings
oligarchy- government by few
tyranny- the rule of a tyrant
democracy- literally, government by the common people)

Monarchy
Citizen armies gave way to new forms of government that distributed power more widely among male citizens.

Oligarchy
A minority of citizens dominated the government, and the power of the majority was limited in various ways. Many city states in mainland Greece were oligarchies, above all Sparta.

Tyranny
Self proclaimed dictator who held power partly by force, partly by exploiting internal divisions, and partly by providing efficient government.

Democracy
All government decisions were made by the majority of male citizens.

Sparta
Decedents of the Greeks who had conquered part of the southern mainland, the territory of Lanconia. By the 8th century B.C., they were a minority of landholders ruling over a majority of helots, decedents of earlier Greek immigrants.

Through the Laconian helots were the relatively well treated and even fought in the army, the Messenians were harshly exploited, never accepted their defeat, and often rebelled. To hold down the helots, the Spartan citizens had to accept a government system that put them under almost total domination by a few among themselves.

The Spartan government was a leading example of oligarchy


Spartan Life
Women were the organizers, they had to set up fairs, etc. but they didn't have power when it came t politics.
Boys were taken from their families at age 7 and they were taught manly behavior and reading as well as writing. They also had to undergo a life long routine of physical toughening and military training.

To protect their harsh and rigid way of life, the Spartans tried to seal off their city state from outside influences. Sparta had little contact with foreigners; it discouraged trade and showed visitors little hospitality.

The state did not control women as rigorously as men, and for long periods they lived apart from their husbands, so that they led relatively free and active lives.

Persian Wars
Persians conquered a realm that stretched from the border of India to the Nile and the Aegean. For the first time, a universal empire had come within striking distance of the Greeks, and the Persians were able to bring the Greek city states in the west of Asia Minor under their rule.

490 B.C. Persians lost the first battle to the Athenians at Marathon. Ten years later, in a sea battle off the island of Salamis near Athens, the Athenian navy smashed the Persian fleet. On land a small spartn force held up Xerxes' army in their renowned suicidal stand at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

After Athens was burnt down, Democracy came into effect with the new Athens. The leader of the democratic Athens after the victory over Persia, was an aristocrat named Pericles.

Assembly
Meetings were held once a week and there was usually less than 5 thousand citizens attending.
-The Assembly met in the marketplace of Athens(agora), later it met on the slopes of a nearby hill(the Pnyx)
-Voting was by a show of hands.

Aliens
The 50,000 or so resident aliens were a very varied group. Some were wealthy business men, or independent women like Aspasia, who socialized on equal terms with the "fine and noble" citizens. Many were owners of stores and workshops, hardly different from citizens in the same lines of business.

Slaves
They were the powerless and the unpopular