The Greek City-States - Ancient History #02 - See U in History

The ancient era is filled with stories from major empires and kingdoms, like the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Hittites. But the history of ancient Greece took a different route. When we talk about Greece in ancient times, we are not simply talking about a kingdom, an empire, or a country, because they were not organized this way. Greece was formed by a large amount of city-states. Each city-state was like a tiny country. The Greek cities had total sovereignty over their territories because their governments were autonomous and independent. Therefore, a unified Greek state did not exist back then as it does now. Since each city was autonomous and independent, their customs and forms of government could be quite different between them. They could be organized as democracies, as had happened in Athens, where the power was in the hands of the citizens. It could also be an aristocracy, like in Thebes or Corinth, where the noblemen had the power. And there were also oligarchies, where a tiny group of citizens ruled everyone else, as it was the case of Sparta. The Greeks from this period did not proclaim themselves as Greeks, but as Hellenic. Based on Greek mythology, Hellenus was the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the survivors of the flood carried by Zeus and Poseidon. This way, the Greeks were direct descendants of Hellenus. Therefore, religion had a major role in the establishment of a common identity between Greek city-states. The same was valid for the Greek language, which, in spite of its variations, was shared by all Greeks. Among the different Greek city-states, some were more notorious than others. Among them, we have Athens, the birthplace of democracy and Western culture. Its name derives from the city's protective deity and the goddess of wisdom. The powerful Sparta, a city with a strong military culture, descended from the Doric invaders, who, according to legend, were the heirs of the great hero Hercules. The city of Thebes, founded where once was the Old Kingdom of Boeotia, was the home of the mythological kings Oedipus and Cadmus, the city's founder. The city of Corinth, in turn, had a strategic location, separating the peninsula of the Peloponnese from the rest of Greece. And, for that, the city was always involved in major clashes. We cannot forget the city of Olympia, home of the Olympic Games. This pan-Hellenic event was crucial to strengthen the cultural bonds between the different cities. The Greek model of city-states achieved major success. The cities were culturally and economically prosperous. However, their success brought a brand new problem over population. To fix the issue, the Greeks started to launch expeditions to colonize new lands. This movement became known as the Second Greek Diaspora, since the first happened after the Doric invasion. Thus, the Greeks scattered themselves throughout a major portion of the Mediterranean lands. Colonies were established in France, Spain, Africa, in the Italian Peninsula, and in the East. The Greek city-states founded where today we see Turkey's coastline, like for instance Samos and Miletus, developed themselves quite rapidly, taking advantage of new forms of knowledge brought from the contacts established with new cultures due to trade activities. These cities became immensely wealthy, and so they were a target for the powerful Persian Empire. The clash between the Greek city-states and the world's largest empire appeared to be unavoidable.