Here are three maps of ancient Greece and some pictures of ancient Greek Cities:
ancient city of Mycenae:
ancient city of Olympia:
Athens (5th century BC):
Knossos:
click here for
Athens, the city of Democracy, was one of the most brilliant intellectual centres of the ancient world. Its economy was based on shipping with which tried to provide self-sufficiency to its citizens so that they would give more attention to their spirit. Great importance was given to the education which however was a privilege of only rich families. The education included gymnastics, music, mathematics, writing, reading etc.
Athens was, nevertheless, an open school where everyone could learn lots of thing. In the Market (Agora) used to be a lot of philosophers, Socrates for example, who made discussions with the passerbies on various subjects of philosophical content, existed the Ekklesia, in which all men Athenian citizens over twenty years old could participate and express their opinion, where a lot of discussions were made about subjects that concerned the administration of city, the exterior policy, the wars etc, and existed a lot of rhetors.
Consequently it was almost impossible for someone not to be educated in this brilliant source of education and knowledge. One of the greatest politicians of Athens was the well-known Pericles thanks to whom Parthenon was built. Pericles helped Athens to become the top cultural centre of antiquity.It is not a coincidence that all the 5th century was named "golden century of Pericles".
A drawback of Athens was the slanderers. As Aristotle said when he was asked by someone, Athens was extremely beautiful but there were lots of slanderers who unfortunately were everywhere. Indeed just a simple unimportant reason was enough to condemn someone in death. Lets not forget the condemnation in death of Socrates the reason of which was that he didn't believe in gods and that he corrupted the children, accusations that were made by his opponents. They used to accuse many men of letters was the disrespect to gods, in other words the non-participation to the biggest religious feasts. Anaxagoras, Protagoras and Aeschylus the tragic poet were accused for such a reason. Of course, behind the accusation of disrespect to the gods were hidden political reasons.
