Manners & Customs
Most Greeks, like most other people throughout history, lived in families with a mother and a father and their children. Usually men got married when they were about twenty-five or thirty years old (as they do today), but women got married much younger, between twelve and sixteen years old....
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In the ancient Mediterranean world there was hardly room for choice: not only was marriage destiny, but so was death. The identity of the Classical Greek world is established through the traditional sacrifices and rituals that were practiced in these times of bliss and mourning. The sacred wedding and the dramatic funeral compliment each other in c...
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Children lived with their mothers in the women's quarter until they were 7 years old. They slept in wicker baskets or wooden cradles.The children played with balls, miniature chariots, rattles, yo-yos, rocking horses, and dolls and animals made from clay. Many had pets. They especially liked dogs. Other pets included ducks, quail, birds, goats, tor...
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The Greek Gods were much more down-to-earth and much less awesome than the remote gods of the East. Because they were endowed with human qualities and often represented aspects of the physical world--such as the sun, the moon, and the sea--they were closer to man and to the world he lived in. The Greeks, therefore, could find spiritual satisfaction...
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It was very important to the Greeks to be buried in their homeland by their close family. (4) The rituals accompanying death were often expensive, and over time laws were enacted that limited the cost of funerals. Although women were a crucial element of the rituals, only women who were closely related to the deceased or over the age of sixty were ...
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Crete, Mycenae and Dorians, Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiod and Homeric Hymns, Aristocrats, Tyrants, and Poets, Spartan Military Laws, Athenian Political Laws, Aesop`s Fables, Pythagoras and Early Philosophy. Sanderson Beck...
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Manufacturing absorbed small numbers of workers who operated with little mechanical assistance. Of these, a significant number must have been slaves, since no free man worked for wages unless driven to it by poverty. It has been estimated that only about 500 potters and painters were active in 5th century Athens at a time when the city supplied mos...
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Economy, (Includes map of Mediterranean). When Mycenaean society broke up around 1100 BC, the commercial routes that had linked mainland Greece with the rest of the Mediterranean were severed. After a period of prolonged recovery, the Greeks began colonizing the shore regions of the Mediterranean and Black seas. This movement (ca. 750-550 BC) was p...
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Education in schools in ancient Athens was at first limited to aristocratic boys. By the 4th century b.c. all 18-year-old males spent two years in a gymnasion, a state school devoted to the overall physical and intellectual development of a young man. More advanced education in philosophy, mathematics, logic and rhetoric was available to the aristo...
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Greek women had virtually no political rights of any kind and were controlled by men at nearly every stage of their lives. The most important duties for a city-dwelling woman were to bear children--preferably male--and to run the household. Duties of a rural woman included some of the agricultural work: the harvesting of olives and fruit was their ...
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