Section #2 Ancient Greece

Vocabulary•City-state – a community made up of a central city and surrounding villages

•Polis – the Greek term for a central city

•Aegean Sea – a branch of the Mediterranean Sea, lying between Greece and Turkey

•Oligarchy – a system of government in which a few powerful individuals rule

•Athens – the capital of Greece and once one of the largest ancient city-states

•Philosopher – a person who studies and thinks about why the world is the way it is

•Aristotle – a brilliant Greek philosopher of the third century B.C. who taught Alexander the Great

•Alexander the Great – a ruler of ancient Greece whose conquest of new lands led to the spread of Greek culture

Main Ideas•The Greek peninsula is very mountainous

•It has poor soil

•The Greeks were able to grow olives and grapes

•The greatest natural resource for the Greeks is water

•The water allows for fishing and trade

•As the population grew, city-states were formed

•City-states had their own laws and forms of government

•City-states were united by a common language, religious beliefs, and a similar way of life

•The Greeks built dozens of communities along the coastline of the Aegian Sea. This increased trade.

•City-states had oligarchies, tyrants, & democracies

•Athens was the largest and most important city-state

•Participation in government was limited to free adult males whose fathers had been citizens of Athens

•Women, slaves, and foreign residents were not allowed to take part in government

•Athen’s chief rival was Sparta

•Aeschylus, Sopholes, Euripides, wrote tragedies that are the basis for modern films and operas

•Aristophanes wrote plays that made fun of important citizens, generals, and politicians

•Great Philosophers – Socarates, Plato, Heraclitus, and Aristotle

•Alexander the Great – expanded the Greek empire and spread the Greek culture along the way