City-States Ancient Greece | Daily Bellringer

Today we're looking at Greek City States. Hello, welcome to the Daily Bellringer World History. Please don't forget to subscribe and take a look at the questions down in the description. Also, don't forget to check out DailyBellringer.com where you'll find more resources that go with many of the Bellringer videos. The ancient Greek civilization grew to power and influence from roughly 2000 BC through 300 BC. Located on the Balkan Peninsula and surrounding islands in the Mediterranean Sea, ancient Greece was not necessarily one country as it is today. Rather, it was a collection of individual communities or towns that basically operated as their own individual countries. The geography of the region cut each community off from each other due to mountainous terrain and separation by water. The individual communities came to be known as city states, or the Greek word polis, which is where we get the root word for the term politics today. Each city state developed its own culture, traditions, religious practices, economic systems, and form of government. Each city state ruled itself as basically its own little independent country. Despite each state being politically independent from the others, Greek city states did worship many of the same gods and shared the use of the same Greek language. Most city states were designed with an acropolis at the city center. The word acropolis means high city and was where the government buildings and temples were located. For example, in arguably the most well-known city state, Athens, the Parthenon, a temple to the Greek god Athena, sat atop the acropolis. Surrounding the acropolis would be people's homes, farms, and markets for trade. Around many city states would be a wall to protect from threats from outside of the city. In ancient Greece, there were over 1,000 city states scattered throughout the peninsula and hundreds of islands. Some of the most powerful and well-known city states were Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Rhodes, and Thebes. As mentioned earlier, each of these city states developed different cultures and governments. For example, Sparta developed a culture that was very focused on the military and warfare. Where most city states began military training for citizens at the age of 18, Sparta began the training at the age of six. Sparta was ruled by an oligarchy, which is a government where only a small group holds the power. In Sparta, there was a senate of 30 retired soldiers that controlled the city state and then two kings that maintained power during the times of war. Athens, on the other hand, was the cradle of culture, art, education, and philosophy. Athens became renowned for their great institutions of learning and great thinkers such as Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. Unlike Sparta, where children learn military skills, in Athens, children memorized poetry, learned to play musical instruments, and studied reading and writing. Athens was also the birthplace of democracy, which is a political system in which the people have the power through voting or elections. In fact, the term democracy is actually two Greek words with demo being the word for people and kratos the word for rule. So, the word literally means people rule. Athens was a democracy for only a short 100-year period as for most of its history it had a king or monarchy like most other city-states. Democracy was an experiment to see if people could indeed rule and control their government. It eventually failed in Athens, but it planted the seed of democracy that has become the dominant political system in the world today. The citizens of each city-state were exclusively adult men. In city-states such as Athens, they had the right to vote and the right to a trial. Then there were non-citizens, which included women and children. Women had few if any rights in city-states with the exception of Sparta, where most of the men were off fighting wars, so women took on the role of business owners and shopkeepers. Then lastly, enslaved people. Most homes had enslaved people working in their homes. Slavery was not based on skin color, but rather enslaved people in ancient Greece were enslaved when their people were conquered by another, generally through military campaigns. On occasion, different city-states would work together to deal with a common enemy and did establish trade routes connecting between city-states, especially by sea. But eventually the city-state's biggest problem became overpopulation and over time Greeks began to venture elsewhere to establish new city-states outside of what today would be Greece. This migration of Greeks became known as the diaspora, which means spread of people from a common homeland. Different Greek colonies were established in present-day France, Spain, Northern Africa, and further east to present-day Turkey. The spread of Greek people also meant the spread of Greek ideas and culture. So, with that, hopefully you learned something, and thanks for watching!