Essay About Greek Civilization.Knowing the customs and way of life of the Greek people is a good way to get closer to this culture to which we owe so much. We will see how they lived, what they did, and how they distributed the work within the Society.
In Greece education was essential for the little ones. Every day they went to the square to listen to the speech of the wise men.
The women were in charge of going out in search of water to take home in vessels called amphoras. .
The market was part of the daily life of the Greeks where you could buy agricultural products and imported objects. The “agora” or market square was considered the center of public life , where matters of interest to the entire community were discussed.
The temple was one of the main Greek constructions and had a religious function, as it housed the figure of God and the treasure of the temple. Among the most famous temples we have the Parthenon, the Erechtheon or Erechtheion, the Temple of Olympian Zeus or Olympusion, other outstanding Greek constructions are: the Mecropolis, theaters, and stadiums.
Greek architecture was Lintel, that is, it used supports (columns) that held horizontal or lintelled elements (entablature).
To understand Greek civilization we must understand the meaning of a single word “beauty”, it is the synthesis of this civilization, which was characterized by an intimate relationship between beauty and harmony.
The Greeks sought beauty in all arts and sciences, sculpture, painting, theater, history, oratory, literature, etc.
The stories of the poet Homer (The Iliad, The Odyssey) and the legends of the Minotaur are from that time.
One of the most important cities, Sparta , developed its military power and a conception of love for the State that was above any individual, reduced the defeated to slavery (helots) .War and the care of the State were the only motives of Education.
On the contrary, Athens, another of the important cities of Greece, lacked militarism and became the engine of the Greek world, developed the most perfect model of limited democracy and laid the foundations of today’s Western society, its inhabitants proclaim freedom Of the individual, the independence of powers and the equality among citizens, these single achievements, from 2500 years ago give us an idea of what we owe to Greek culture.
Greek culture was the basis of Latin culture and of all Europe.
2- The life of these communities
The Greeks lived in small villages dedicated to navigation, war and the trade of wine, oil, ceramics, which they exchanged with other peoples for wood, metals and marble.
The population was dedicated to agriculture, commerce and crafts. Thanks to navigation, they learned many things from the navigators with whom they maintained contact, becoming a bridge between East and West. In short, Greece is the cradle of all later Western civilizations.
3- The original cultures
The first inhabitants of the Aegean Sea basin were peoples who came from Asia Minor and settled on the island of Crete in the year 3000 BC. They are known as the Cretan or Minoan civilization, a word that was rescued from Minos, the mythological king who had the island of Crete.
Between centuries XIV and XIII a. of C: Greece suffered the invasion of the Achaeans, a people from Central Europe that practically wiped out the Minoan civilization, The Achaeans gave rise to the civilization called Mycenaean in honor of the city of Mycenae, famous for its large and beautiful palaces .
The memories of this time were collected by the great poet Homer, who in the Iliad narrated the struggle of the Achaeans against the city of Troy and in the Odyssey, the adventures of Ulysses.