Ancient Athens was a complex system, in many ways relatable, and
in other ways remarkably alien.
We must remember the context of ancient Athens; they lived
literally millenia before the concept of equal human rights; when
everywhere else in the world was ruled by tyrants, religious
godheads, and petty warlords. The idea that even a small group of
individuals could decide policy was alien to any sort of thinking;
the cultural capital of the world at that time was Egypt, which for
nearly 2000 years had been ruled by a single ruler, whose word was
absolute and his authority divine. Egyptian people would spend
their entire lives saving up for a lavish funeral, and spend their
free time memorizing religious verses to serve them in the
afterlife. All over the world, rulers envied the fanatical devotion
of the Egyptian people to their ruler and their religion, a
tradition which was virtually unchanged for nearly 2,500 hundred
years, and peoples from all over the world came to marvel at the
vast cities of mausoleums which the Egyptians constructed in honor
of their dead
However influenced by Egypt the Greeks were, their way of
thinking was completely different. The Greeks were
Hero-worshippers; they considered the ultimate glory to be great
accomplishments on Earth, and not veneration of an unseen deity. A
Greek was more likely to venerate Achilles or Herakles instead of
Zeus or Poseidon. In fact, popularly known stories of such Gods
were more of an afterthought in Greek religion than canon, because
a Greek was wholly unconcerned with the afterlife, and instead
focused on what he as a man could accomplish. For example, in
nearly 70 years, the Greeks perfected human anatomy in sculpture
making; a feat which the Egyptians failed at despite nearly 3000
years of making art.
In this way; Greeks are very similar to us. Religion was merely
an aspect of their lives; they spent most of it tending to their
business, engaging in spiritual or intellectual fulfillment,
attending or playing sports, or debating politics.
And boy, did the Athenians loved to debate politics. It was
considered proper for a man to debate politics at every
opportunity. As Athens was a direct democracy, ever citizen voted
on legislation, thus civic participation was encouraged among the
people. Strangers making small talk on the street were as likely to
comment about the hot button political issue as you would be making
small talk with someone about sports or the weather. Athenians even
came up with a word for people who had no interest in politics, or
people who only voted for pet projects; "Idiot".
If it wasn't politics, it was sports. Athenians, like all
Greeks, had a nearly religious devotion to athletics, and would
devote a portion of their time each week to exercising and engaging
in athletic competitions. Winners of one of the games, such as the
Olympics, were the recipients of great honor, and Athenians revered
those who excelled in athletics.
Of course, I refer to the men only. Women had no rights in
Athens. A woman was the property of her father until she was
married, where she would then become her husband's property.
Attending a religious ceremony or a funeral were the only reasons a
woman was allowed to leave her house. This is sharply contrasted
with Spartan women, who were not only allowed to live independently
of the men, but even own property, play sports, divorce their
husband, and participate in civil matters.
Slavery did exist in Athens, but as Michael Foucault pointed
out; people talk about things they are conflicted about. And the
issue of slavery was an ever present issue in our records of
Athenian thought. Remember that stoicism started in Athens, and
Stoicism preaches eternal brotherhood with all men. But the
conflict comes from reality; Greece was surrounded on all sides by
barbarians; whose raids could penetrate deep into Greece. It was
very common in Greek literature for slaves to be freed through acts
of virtuous behavior, thus Greeks would have at least held on to
some notion that slavery was a sort of "civilizing" process for the
barbarian. However, most Greeks were ultra-nationalistic and highly
xenophobic, and the controversy regarding slavery mostly stemmed
from the idea that it takes jobs away from honest, hard working
Greeks. Most of the farming done in the countryside around the city
was actually done by Athenian citizens, and slaves were either
servants, handmaidens, or prostitutes, or if they were particularly
unlucky, they served in mines or rock quarries. The slave trade was
profitable, and sometimes Prisoners of War could be turned into
slaves. However, city-states often kept Prisoners of war as
diplomatic bargaining chips, as fathers would go to understandably
great lengths and would pay vast sums of money to see their sons
safely home, and as city-states often had a small number of
citizens who were eligible to be soldiers, it was in the states
interest to have their soldiers returned to them, lest their
military become paralyzed for an entire generation.
Education was the cornerstone of any Athenian Citizen's early
life, and Athens was an epicenter of learning that continued for
nearly a thousand years after the end of the classical era. Whether
it was Plato's Academy or Aristotle's Lyceum, a young Athenian man
could expect to learn three disciplines; philosophy, literature,
and rhetoric. Philosophy was things regarding the world; religion,
mathematics, science, astronomy/astrology, and engineering.
Literature was things regarding the past, as the Greeks had no
written records of the earlier, Mycenaean era, which had collapsed
nearly 600 years before the start of the classical era, thus a
legend and a historical fact were virtually indistinguishable
(Aristotle even went so far as to say that poetry and literature
was superior to history since they depict man as he should and
could be, rather than as he is). Rhetoric is things that deal with
people, talking to them, getting them to see things your way,
obviously it was the craft of merchants and politicians. As I
mentioned, Athens was a direct democracy, thus skilled orators held
a considerable amount of political clout, making rhetoric a
critical area of study.
I've already typed a lot, so I won't go on. A good introduction
to ancient Greek way of life is wikipedia. Another good place to
continue would be to read some Greek plays, such as The Pot of Gold
or the Brothers Menaechmus. I know that suggestion may make you
squirm, but one thing that you will learn is how similar their way
of thinking is to ours when you realize how similar their sense of
humor was to ours. Even Shakespearean comedies can be difficult to
comprehend, but Ancient Greek comedies are slapstick, funny,
timeless, and simple, thus easy to get a good laugh out of.