Ancient Greece

The Women of Athens

Compared to the women of Sparta, the status of an Athenian woman in Greek society was minimal. By comparison to present day standards, Athenian women were only a small step above slaves by the 5th century BC. From birth a girl was not expected to learn how to read or write, nor was she expected to earn an education. On reading and writing, Menander...

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Burial Rituals and the Afterlife of Ancient Greece

As seen in the literature of ancient Greece, tombs and rituals of the wealthy were extravagant. Gold and jewels were essential grave offerings of respectable and honored tombs, perhaps used as a way to display wealth and status. It seems the wealthier you were the more elaborate your final resting place. The ancient Greeks had distinct methods of b...

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Women In Sparta

By 600 BCE Sparta had conquered her neighbors in the southern half of the Peloponnese. The vanquished people, called Helots, were required to do all of the agricultural work on land owned by the victors, making Sparta self-sufficient in food and ruler of a slave population seven or eight times as large. Not needing to import anything allowed Sparta...

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Roles of Men, Women, and Children

Men, women, and children in ancient Greece had different roles and responsibilities. Let's look at the roles you and your friends and family would have had if you had lived in ancient Greece. Men in Greece wore special clothes. Every Greek man owned several chitons, long, rectangular pieces of cloth with holes for the head and arms. The chitons wer...

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Children of Ancient Greece

Babies born in ancient Greece often had a difficult time surviving. Many died in the first couple days of life; therefore, babies did not receive names until the seventh or tenth day of life. If a baby was born deformed, it might have been abandoned on a mountain (female babies were abandoned more often than males). Sometimes abandoned babies were ...

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Death and Funeral in Ancient Greece

The Funerals. An Athenian's Will.--All Menon's patient's are to-day set out upon the road to recovery. Hipponax, his rival, has been less fortunate. A wealthy and elderly patient, Lycophron, died the day before yesterday. As the latter felt his end approaching, he did what most Athenians may put off until close to the inevitable hour--he made his w...

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Ancient Greece Daily Life

How would you have behaved if you had lived in ancient Sparta? (Lie, cheat, steal, because that is the Sparta way!) Or in ancient Athens? Or in Corinth, Argos or Megara? The ancient Greeks were very proud of their city-state! They were also proud of being Greek. The ancient Greeks were thinkers. They loved to talk. They honored their gods and respe...

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Greek Approach To Women's Illness, Pregnancy And Childbirth

It is tempting to credit the medicine we are taking when an illness is cleared up, forgetting that the condition might have gone away by itself regardless of what we did. This is undoubtedly the key to the popularity even today of so many "folk medicines" that researchers insist do nothing at all except make money for the manufacturers, and there w...

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Women in Athens

All ancient societies drew a distinction between the free and the slave, even if slaves were few in number. Ancient Egypt saw very little difference in law between men and women, while Athens (and most other societies) did. Athens also drew a sharp distinction between citizen and resident alien, between legitimate born and the illegitimate, and bet...

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Ancient Greek Medicine

Medicine was very important to the Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek Culture was such that a high priority was placed upon healthy lifestyles, this despite Ancient Greece being much different to the Greece of the modern World....

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