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Life in Ancient Greece The life of the past was indeed quite different from life as we see and perceive it today. People were thinking differently, the cultures and behaviours were also different. However if we examine any time span we might find that still most of the people on the planet Earth, no matter what are the historical contexts and prepositions that surround them, are concerned with very universal things of the personal living. When I say universal, I mean something like having a decent way of living, healthy offspring, and merely being happy about the way they live, work, and leave the mark in the history. When approaching the assignment I thought about the time period that would be the best one to examine the living of the rural people during. There were many options but then I suddenly recalled the Olympic games, and the analogy has brought me to the Ancient Greece.
Coming to think about, I can hardly recall any other culture of the world that made that much for the development of the global civilizations. Greek culture has left a vivid sign in the cultures of the most of the nations, and in this work I will examine the conditions, which had led to it. I believe that analysing everyday living of Greek people can provide us with a valuable insight into many things and why these things are as we nowadays see them. Some people believe that no civilization has ever been able to compete with todays western culture and lifestyle. However, the ancient Greeks with their amazing ingenuity were able to develop an amazingly high standard of living for their time. Although the Greeks had little technology, they had a creativity that enabled them to live much in the same way as current civilizations founded over a thousand years later.
Don Nardo, the author of the book Life in Ancient Greece, described Greece as a warm, dry, and mountainous region about the size of New York State (10). The weather and topography of the region greatly affected the style of homes in Ancient Greece. Michael Poulton described these styles homes in his book Life in the Time of Pericles and the Ancient Greeks. Conditions were cramped in the cities and towns. Nearly all rooms opened into the central courtyard. Solid walls on the street side of the home provided security.
A single door to the home was locked and bolted. Since the Greeks spent most of their time outdoors, most homes had little luxury (Poulton 53). All homes contained little furniture. The master of a wealthy house may have a chair and a footstool while the women and children only used stools. The dining room included large, comfortable couches and small, nearby tables for eating. Other common household furniture included beds, chests, storage boxes, and large baskets for storage and shopping (Poulton 54).
Olive oil lamps of either pottery for poorer families or bronze and silver for richer families provided lighting in the home (Poulton 54). Water was scarce in ancient Greece and had to be piped in from springs in the surrounding hills. Few homes had wells, but most families sent their slaves to public cisterns or bought water from the water carriers. The Greeks often bathed in large, shallow bowls and used clay pots called chamber pots as toilets (Poulton 54). Nardo described the Greek family or oikos as consisting of parents, children, grandparents, servants, and slaves (Nardo 12).
Mst families consisted f parents and their children, but generally n ther relatives. Fathers were responsible fr supporting the family by wrk r by investments in land and commerce. Mother were responsible fr managing the households supplies and ver seeing the slaves, wh fetched water in jugs frm public fountains, cd, cleaned, and like after babies. Poulton declared the Greek mans main purpose as producing children, preferably boys. Since there was no social security or respect given to the elderly in ancient Greece, children were important to the care of their elderly parents (Poulton 58). A new baby was presented to the household gods.
The decorations on the doorframe indicated the sex of the baby (it is Ancient Greece, which gave the world a tradition to present the newborns cloths of particular colour: blue to the boys, and pink to girls); crowns of olive leaves symbolizing wealth and good fortune indicated a boy while wool symbolizing a life of housework and child rearing indicated a girl (Poulton 58). Louise Schofield, the editor of the book Ancient Greece, mentioned that children were considered infants until their third birthday. At a spring festival the toddlers were given miniature wine jugs to symbolize the end of their babyhood (Schofield 24). Author of the book Growing up in Ancient Greece, Amanda Purves explained that throughout their childhood, boys were encouraged to be brave and independent. She also indicated that many children even had their own slaves (Purves 7). Purves identified knucklebone's (a game similar to jacks), balls, and hoops as popular games and toys of the children in Ancient Greece (Purves 66).
Other popular toys were rattles, clay animals, yo-yos, and terra-cotta dolls (Donn 7). Pets including birds, dogs, goats, tortoises, and mice were also popular with ancient Greek children (Donn 7). Education was very important to each of the Greek city-states. Boys attended school from age seven to age fifteen, and the rich employed slaves as private tutors.
The Greeks taught the Iliad and the Odyssey to the children along with reading, writing, music, and physical education (Poulton 58). Anne Pearson, author of the book Ancient Greece, explained that the Greek referred to the teacher of reading, writing, and arithmetic as grammatistes and the music teacher as kitharistes (33). Students wrote with pointed sticks on wooden tablets covered with soft wax (Schofield 26). Poulton points out that because there were no public universities, the rural Greeks had to follow the trade of their father.
In the cities where public life was emphasized, rich families urged their children to attend private schools that taught the student how to deliver speeches and debate along with the fundamentals of city politics (Poulton 58). Another aspect of the young Greeks life was marriage. The ancient Greeks had a very different idea concerning weddings and marriages than modern standards. Before the Greek wedding, the bride would sacrifice her toys to Artemis, the virgin goddess, to symbolize the end of childhood. She would also take a ceremonial bath to wash off her old life (Purves 16). The brides age ranged between thirteen and nineteen years.
Her husband was usually around thirty years of age. Since the father arranged the marriages, the wedding itself could be the first meeting of the betrothed couple (Nardo 55). Having no public ceremony, the bride was led to her new home by her husband along with a procession of friends who showered the couple with fruit and grain for good luck (Purves 16). Women were not held in high regard in Ancient Greece. Women were not allowed to vote or take part in public affairs (Purves 7). Womens power was limited to day-to-day household matters.
They spent most of their time in the womens quarters at home managing the household slaves, making and mending clothes, weaving and spinning wool, supervising the children, and overseeing the preparations for banquets and parties (Nardo 17). Women were allowed to go to the market or agora, the theatre, and religious festivals accompanied by a male relative or family servant (Nardo 17). Spartan women and hetaera, high-class prostitutes, were the only exceptions to the subservient role of women in ancient Greek society. They had more freedoms, spoke their mind, and were better educated than most women (Nardo 18).
Casual when entertained themselves by visiting friends and attending public festivals. City-state festivals provided the mst exciting entertainment. Slaves were a very vital component to the ancient Greek lifestyle. Slaves were often prisoners of war, orphans, pirates captives, or children of slaves and often well educated.
The city employed slaves as policemen, junior civil servants, and silver miners. Contractors, businesses, and households also employed slaves (Poulton 59). Most household slaves were treated well and could even save their small wages to buy their freedom. However, the slaves working in silver mines suffered under terrible conditions (Schofield 31).
The rich men of the city often owned farms or silver mines operated by slaves and servants. Living off the proceeds, they spent most of their time participating in political and social affairs (Schofield 30). Beauty and cleanliness were also very important to the ancient Greeks. Men, women, and even children were expected to look beautiful (Purves 14). Therefore, both men and women bathed often, using olive oil to remove the dirt from their bodies (Purves 12).
Men exercised frequently to maintain an adequate fitness level for athletics and military service. Every city-state had at least ne gymnasium, a combination exercise building, running track, bathing facility, lecture hall, and park, pen nly t males. Men wh lived in the city went there fr physical training, ball games, gambling, and relaxation. Following exercise, the men would rub olive oil into their skin to keep it supple. Women wore perfumed oils but avoided the sun since pale skin was favoured (Pearson 40). Some Greek women even wore make-up (Purves 14).
Men and women also cared about their hair and clothing. They always kept their hair clean and neatly trimmed (Nardo 49). Many also perfumed their hair. Women spent much attempting complex hairstyles, many involving popular headbands (Purves 14).
The Greek also admired the blond look. But since blond hair was rare, many attempted bleaching their dark hair (Nardo 8). The Greeks most common clothing was the chiton made of a single rectangular piece of linen or wool fitted around the body with brooches, pins, and belt-like cords (Nardo 48). Because of the warm climate, many Greeks went barefoot or wore leather sandals (Nardo 49). Meals were lazy affairs in Ancient Greece. Often men reclined on couches, women sat on stools, and children ate standing up or sitting on the floor (Purves 20).
Containing little meat, their diet mainly consisted of grains, fruit, and vegetables (Nardo 42). The Greeks liked their meals served steaming hot and used bread to hold the food to prevent the burning of their fingers (Nardo 43). The Greeks favoured wine with dinner. Even children were permitted to drink wine.
The wine, however, was only one part wine and two parts water (Nardo 43). The Greeks ate very light meals. Breakfast consisted of a single piece of bread dipped or soaked in wine. For lunch, cheese, olives, figs, dates, grapes, or currants replaced the bread (Nardo 42). Supper was served in the late afternoon and was generally more substantial, consisting of a thick porridge served along with vegetables (Nardo 43). Bakeries sld fresh bread daily, and small stands feed snacks.
Mst people als raised chickens and ate eggs regularly. In sme f the larger Greek city-states, meat could be purchased in ck shp's. Meat was rarely eaten, and was used mostly fr religious sacrifices. The Socratic quote, Bad men live to eat and drink, good men eat and drink to live, describes the Greek view of the purpose of food (quoted in Nardo 42). The rich men of the city-states had many popular pastimes. Many chatted, argued, drank, raced horses, and spent time at the sports centre exercising and showing off (Poulton 58).
Some men also enjoyed participating in and watching boxing and wrestling matches (Purves 70). The Olympic games was another popular event with the men of the Greek city-states. Because the athletes competed naked, the women and children could not attend the games (Purves 72). Gds were hundred with competitions in music, dance, drama, and petry. Athens basted f holding a festival nearly every ther day. The huge Panhellenic festivals held at olympic, Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia attracted spectators and professional contestants frm thought the Greek world.
Athletes and musicians wh wn competitions became rich and famous. The mst spectacular event was chart racing, which required excellent horses. Dinner parties were another popular pastime that involved only men. Men would eat and drink, discuss politics and philosophy, tell jokes, riddles, and stories, and would be entertained by hetaera, high-class prostitutes. The theatre was a popular family pastime. The family would watch tragedies by Euripides and Sophocles, and comedies by Aristophanes in an amphitheatre (Purves 67).
Theatre was one of the greatest inventions of the Ancient Greece and till today it remains an interesting depiction of the life of the ancient people. The high standard of living of Ancient Greece is even more impressive when one considers that the civilization existed in fifth century BC. Although the society had its faults, such as slavery, one cannot help but notice the many strengths of the society. The Greeks managed to form stable governments, an education system, housing, and food for the people. An intelligent person cannot help but admire the Greek mind and its ability to stretch and create. Bibliography Nardo, Don.
Living in Ancient Greece. San Diego: Green haven Press, 2004. Pearson, Anne, Nick Nicholls. Eyewitness: Ancient Greece. St.
Louis: Judas House, 2000. Poulton, Michael. Life in the Time of Pericles and the Ancient Greeks. Dublin: Dublin Publishers, 1999. Purves, Amanda. Growing up in Ancient Greece.
Dallas: Wayland, 2001.
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Research essay sample on Life In Ancient Greece
