4.1 Who Were the Ancient Greeks?

Who were the ancient Greeks that one hears so much about? How is it that a group of relatively isolated people, new to urban life, would invent Democracy, remove the religion from philosophy and apply math to music? How could a small group of people bring about ideas that would change the world? They created a new way of viewing the human being and redefined what it meant to be human. All of this took place over the relatively short period that Athens was a successful democratic city-state. The foundation of the fifth century Athenian culture, however, developed earlier in the Cycladic culture, the Minoan culture and the Mycenaean culture.

Before delving into the nature of fifth century Athens, it is important to look back on the people from whose lives Greek culture emerges. These people, over a long period of time, formed a loosely knit group that lived in small communities and were tied together, mostly through language and shared religious ideas. They lived on and around the Aegean Sea between 3200 and 1050 BCE. They provided the foundation on which the Classical fifth century Greeks built their civilization.

Three major civilizations dominated the Aegean Sea during the Bronze Age. The study of these cultures can be a challenge as they shared ideas through trade. The sharing continued when the Mycenaean culture conquered the Minoan culture. Each group would have lasting influence on the redevelopment of the Greek identity. Many of the stories of ancient Athenian culture were borrowed from these earlier civilizations. Some of the myths reflect relationships between these early cultures that provided benefits and/or created tensions. As such, many are tales that warn against such dangers as pride and the foolishness of trusting strangers. The Iliad, perhaps the most famous ancient Greek epic poem, may have been created as a validation of the Mycenaean campaign against Troy. It also may have been meant as a warning about the cost of war.

Amateur adventurists and the booming art market of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries corrupted much of what has been found in the way of Bronze Age artifacts and building ruins. However, connections to the later fifth century Greeks can be seen and will be explored in the next sections of the text.

Note the timeline above. It covers the period between the legendary War with Troy, now believed to have been an historic reality, and the fall of Carthage, which is often considered to be the end of Greek domination and the beginning of Roman domination. The names of the various time periods have been included so you can revisit this as you read about the different eras.

References:

1. “Ancient Greece Map” by Piotr Siwerski is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4, https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/5a40b02e-19cc- 4d4d-90d7-0434a88f551d

2. Photo by jas-mo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND, 2.0 https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/dea9742f-5228-43c6-bf43- 917d0a08c596

3. T. Kate Pagel, PhD “Who Were the Ancient Greeks?” Humanities: New Meaning From the Ancient World. Colorado Springs, CO: Pikes Peak Community College, 2019, CC BY-NC 4.0 License.