Athens

'Acropolis' means high place. The acropolis was built in Athens on a large hill looking over the city.

Athenians choose officials by lottery because they believe this system was fairer than an election. In addition, election by lot helped to protect against one person gaining too much power in public office. Juries were chosen by lot on the day of the court case to try and defeat judicial corruption, as it would be difficult to bribe members when you didn't know who was going to be on the jury.

It shifted over time as did all the Greek city-states. Originally friendly with Sparta, this fell apart 50 years later. Athens also turned the anti-Persian Delian League into an empire of its own, living off it to finance its Golden Age. It fought Thebes, then allied to it, and sided with many other city-states when convenient.

The Ancient Greece world was comprised of over 2,000 independent city-states spread around the Mediterranean and Black Sea littorals, so there was no 'capital' as each was politically independent.

The Agora made a huge difference in the ancient Greeks life. They sold goods and bought goods in the Agora. The women collected water from the fountains, and people could communicate in shady parts of the Agora to get out of the scorching sun.

Spartan Women overall had a lot more rights, rather then the Athenian Women. The Spartan women could sell property, own small businesses, chat with other men (whom they are not related too), wear shorter dresses, and go around the city by themselves. The only thing they couldn't do was hold office, and vote. The reason why they could do all of these things is, because in Sparta the woman didn't spend as much time with their husband since they were always training for the next war. Rather then the Athenian men, they had much more time to socialize so they mentored the woman a lot more.

It was a direct democracy - no members of parliament to distort the public will. Decisions were made by the whole people in assembly, meting fortnightly. The council put matters before them, executed their decisions, and administered routine business between meetings.

In the law courts there were no judges and lawyers to muddy the waters. Large juries of several hundred decided on both guilt and punishment. The large juries were in effect equivalent to a modern opinion poll of what the citizens thought right.

All adult males were eligible to carry any political or public office (except generals, who were selected on ability for obvious self-protection reasons). The difference in ability of individuals was camouflaged/evened out by having panels of ten filling each office, in the expectation that at least one would have common sense. And it spread the money around, with half the populace on the public payroll.

All adult males served in the army and navy, meeting their mutual responsibility to protect themselves and the state.

It existed best when Athens had an empire it had made out of harnessing the other cities of the anti-Persian league and extorting money from them, which it used for its own benefit. This enabled the large numbers on the public payroll without crippling taxes.

clear thinking, arts and the science and of couure their education <ali>

Athens was a city-state. Therefore Athens was both a state and a city and thus the capital. The broader province of Athens (i.e. the rural areas) was and still is Attica.

An equivalent example was the city-state of Corinth or Sparta/Lakonia (both today exist with same borders and names as prefectures of Greece).

For the nearly 200 city-states exposed to Persian domination, protection (at a price). This benefit ceased when the Persians agreed to a peace which kept them out of the area, but Athens continued to levy the price and spend the money on a fleet not against the Persians but to continue collecting the money, by force if necessary, and spent it on its own city beautification and public service.

Athens led a league of 180 Greek city-states after the Persian invasion had been driven back to preserve the independence of those cities which had been under Persian rule. After the Persian Empire gave up trying to impose peace on these Greek cities, Athens kept control of them, turned them into an empire of its own. It lived high on the proceeds and kept a large fleet which forcibly collected the annual funds levied for defence against Persia, but now used by Athens for its own benefit.

Aspasia, (470-410 B.C.), the mistress of Pericles, ruler of Athens

The Ancient Greek men mainly pierced themselves. They did this in the Olympics to please the gods.

Under the Cleisthenes reforms of 507 BCE property owners who had a battle equipage (a panoply of arms). This was suspended during and after the Persian invasion, when the oligarchs took control again. It was restored in 460 BCE by Ephialtes, then after his assassination by the oligarchs, his deputy Pericles took over and eventually extended it to all adult males who were citizens.

Greeks and Romans were both warrior civilizations. However, they also both added much of value to the civilizations that came after them. Democracy, politics, even bathrooms and sewage lines, came from Greek or Roman civilizations.

Athens' right wing was led by Callimachus. Athens' left wing was covered by the Plataeans. Athens' center was led by Themistocles and Aristides.The Greek idea was to attack first and to cross the distance from the slopes to the Persians as fast as possible in order to beat the Persian cavalry and archers to it . ~ see related link below .

In the radical period introduced by Pericles all citizens voted in the Assembly each fortnight and the Council implemented their decisions. They also manned the juries of 500 which determined on legal matters. And the funds extorted from Athens' empire put half the citizens on the public payroll.

Persia gave the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta the money to build a fleet of warships equal to Athens', and to pay the crews at double the Athenian rate to attract the best sailors.

At the confrontation of the two fleets at Aigospotomai, Spartan commander Lysander waited until the Athenian ships crews were on shore buying their food from the local market and swooped on them, taking most on the beach before they could get to sea to fight.

With its fleet gone, Athens was besieged with no means of importing food, and eventually had to surrender.

They were founded by different tribes of nomadic Indo-European peoples - Ionians, Dorians and Latins. When they settled in their respective territories, they developed their own varieties of language, culture, and customs as agricultural peoples - the words of their languages which they share relate to hunter-gathering, and this commonality disappears in agricultural and citified terminology.

they wore clothes

At the peak of its empire, it extracted great contributions from the other cities and lifted living standards, putting half its people on the public payroll. For women, they were kept isolated at home in virtual purdah, for slaves it was very different with no rights or protection,

The Greeks developed two types of play writing: comedy and tragedy. The Greeks have also made many influential contributions in philosophy, music, mathematics, and science that created an impact on Western civilization, while at the same time simultaneously participating in the Peloponnessian wars and the Persian wars.

300 members of the population were chosen at random from the citizen's list( there were approximately 6000 full citizens at any given time in Athens