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Points About Ancient Greek History

Major Topics in Ancient Greek History You Should Know

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• M.A., Linguistics, University of Minnesota
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Greece, now a country in the Aegean, was a collection of independent city-states or poleis in antiquity that we know about archaeologically from the Bronze Age on. These poleis fought among one another and against bigger external forces, especially the Persians. Eventually, they were conquered by their neighbors to the north and then later became part of the Roman Empire. After the western Roman Empire fell, the Greek-speaking area of the Empire continued until 1453, when it fell to the Turks.

The Lay of the Land - Geography of Greece

Greece, a country in southeastern Europe whose peninsula extends from the Balkans into the Mediterranean Sea, is mountainous, with many gulfs and bays. Some areas of Greece are filled with forests. Much of Greece is stony and suitable only for pasturage, but other areas are suitable for growing wheat, barley, citrus, dates, and olives.

Prehistory: Before Greek Writing

Prehistoric Greece includes that period known to us through archaeology rather than writing. The Minoans and Mycenaeans with their bullfights and labyrinths come from this period. The Homeric epics—the Iliad and the Odyssey—describe valiant heroes and kings from the prehistoric Bronze Age of Greece. After the Trojan Wars, the Greeks were shuffled around the peninsula because of invaders the Greeks called Dorians.

• What Are the Letters of the Greek Alphabet?
• An Introduction to the Development of the Greek Alphabet

Greek Colonies

There were two main periods of colonial expansion among the ancient Greeks. The first was in the Dark Ages when the Greeks thought the Dorians invaded. See Dark Age Migrations . The second period of colonization began in the 8th century when Greeks founded cities in southern Italy and Sicily. The Achaeans founded Sybaris was an Achaean colony perhaps founded in 720 B.C. The Achaeans also founded Croton. Corinth was the mother city of Syracuse. The territory in Italy colonized by the Greeks was known as Magna Graecia (Great Greece). Greeks also settled colonies northward up to the Black (or Euxine) Sea.

Greeks set up colonies for many reasons, including trade and to provide land for the landless. They held close ties to the mother city.

The Social Groups of Early Athens

Early Athens had the household or oikos as its basic unit. There were also progressively larger groups, genos, phratry, and tribe. Three phratries formed a tribe (or phylai) headed by a tribal king. The earliest known function of the tribes was military. They were corporate bodies with their own priests and officials, as well as military and administrative units. There were four original tribes in Athens.

• Archaic Greece
• Classical Greece

The Acropolis - Athens' Fortified Hilltop

The civic life of ancient Athens was in the agora, like the Romans' forum. The Acropolis housed the temple of the patron goddess Athena, and had, since early times, been a protected area. Long walls extending to the harbor prevented the Athenians from starving in case they were besieged.

Democracy Evolves in Athens

Originally kings ruled the Greek states, but as they urbanized, the kings were replaced by a rule by the nobles, an oligarchy. In Sparta, the kings remained, possibly because they didn't have too much power since the power was split in 2, but elsewhere the kings were replaced.

Land Shortage was among the precipitating factors leading to the rise of democracy in Athens. So was the rise of the non-equestrian army. Cylon and Draco helped create a uniform law code for all Athenians that furthered the progress to democracy. Then came the poet-politician Solon , who set up a constitution, followed by Cleisthenes , who had to iron out the problems Solon left behind, and in the process increased from 4 to 10 the number of tribes.

Sparta - The Military Polis

Sparta started with small city-states (poleis) and tribal kings, like Athens, but it developed differently. It forced the native population on the neighboring land to work for the Spartans, and it maintained kings alongside an aristocratic oligarchy. The fact that it had two kings may have been what saved the institution since each king could have prevented the other from becoming too abusive of his power. Sparta was known for its lack of luxury and physically strong population. It was also known as the one place in Greece where women had some power and could own property.

The Greco-Persian Wars - Persian Wars Under Xerxes and Darius

The Persian Wars are usually dated 492-449/448 B.C. However, a conflict started between the Greek poleis in Ionia and the Persian Empire before 499 B.C. There were two mainland invasions of Greece, in 490 (under King Darius) and 480-479 B.C. (under King Xerxes). The Persian Wars ended with the Peace of Callias of 449, but by this time, and as a result of actions taken in Persian War battles, Athens had developed her own empire. Conflict mounted between the Athenians and the allies of Sparta. This conflict would lead to the Peloponnesian War.

Greeks were also involved in ​the conflict with the Persians when they hired on as mercenaries of King Cyrus (401-399) and Persians aided the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War.

The Peloponnesian League was an alliance of mostly the city-states of the Peloponnese led by Sparta . Formed in the 6th century, it became one of the two sides fighting during the Peloponnesian War (431-404).

The Peloponnesian War - Greek Against Greek

The Peloponnesian War (431-404) was fought between two groups of Greek allies. One was the Peloponnesian League, which had Sparta as its leader and included Corinth. The other leader was Athens who had control of the Delian League. The Athenians lost, putting an effective end to the Classical Age of Greece. Sparta dominated the Greek world.

Thucydides and Xenophon are the major contemporary sources on the Peloponnesian War.

Philip and Alexander the Great - Macedonian Conquerors of Greece

Philip II (382 - 336 B.C.) with his son Alexander the Great conquered the Greeks and expanded the empire, taking Thrace, Thebes, Syria, Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Egypt, and on to the Punjab, in northern India. Alexander founded possibly more than 70 cities throughout the Mediterranean region and east to India, spreading trade and the culture of the Greeks wherever he went.

When Alexander the Great died, his empire was divided into ​three parts: Macedonia and Greece, ruled by Antigonus, founder of the Antigonid dynasty; the Near East, ruled by Seleucus , founder of the Seleucid dynasty ; and Egypt, where the general Ptolemy started the Ptolemid dynasty. The empire was wealthy thanks to the conquered Persians. With this wealth, building and other cultural programs were established in each region

Macedonian Wars - Rome Gains Power Over Greece

Greece was at odds with Macedonia, again, and sought the help of the budding Roman Empire. It came, helped them get rid of the northern menace, but when they were called back repeatedly, their policy gradually changed and Greece became part of the Roman Empire.

Byzantine Empire - The Greek Roman Empire

The fourth-century A.D. Roman emperor Constantine established a capital city in Greece, at Constantinople or Byzantium. When the Roman Empire "fell" in the following century, only the western emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed. The Byzantine Greek-speaking part of the empire continued until it fell to the Ottoman Turks about a millennium later in 1453.

• 30 Maps of Ancient Greece Show How a Country Became an Empire
• Rise to Power of Sparta
• Political Aspects of the Classical Age of Greece
• The Peloponnesian War: Causes of the Conflict
• Formation of the Delian League
• A Short Summary of the Persian Wars
• 7 Points to Know About Ancient Greek Government
• Major Events in Ancient History
• The Thirty Tyrants After the Peloponnesian War
• Biography of Alcibiades, Ancient Greek Soldier-Politician
• Timeline of the Persian Wars 492-449
• Greece - Fast Facts About Greece
• How Athenian Democracy Developed in 7 Stages
• The Start of the Persian Wars
• The Age of Pericles and Periclean Athens
• The Heroes of Ancient Greece and Rome

The Aegean Sea. Photo by Krista Rossow/National Geographic

The sea was never blue

The greek colour experience was made of movement and shimmer. can we ever glimpse what they saw when gazing out to sea.

by Maria Michela Sassi   + BIO

Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos , to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ ( polios ) and ‘blue-grey’ ( glaukos ) to deep blue and almost black ( kuaneos , melas ). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ ( ioeides ), ‘wine-like’ ( oinops ), or purple ( porphureos ). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.

Yellow, too, seems strangely absent from the Greek lexicon. The simple word xanthos covers the most various shades of yellow, from the shining blond hair of the gods, to amber, to the reddish blaze of fire. Chloros , since it’s related to chloe (grass), suggests the colour green but can also itself convey a vivid yellow, like honey.

The ancient Greek experience of colour does not seem to match our own. In a well-known aphorism, Friedrich Nietzsche captures the strangeness of the Greek colour vocabulary:

How differently the Greeks must have viewed their natural world, since their eyes were blind to blue and green, and they would see instead of the former a deeper brown, and yellow instead of the latter (and for instance they also would use the same word for the colour of dark hair, that of the corn-flower, and that of the southern sea; and again, they would employ exactly the same word for the colour of the greenest plants and of the human skin, of honey and of the yellow resins: so that their greatest painters reproduced the world they lived in only in black, white, red, and yellow). [My translation]

How is this possible? Did the Greeks really see the colours of the world differently from the way we do?

J ohann Wolfgang von Goethe, too, observed these features of Greek chromatic vision. The versatility of xanthos and chloros led him to infer a peculiar fluidity of Greek colour vocabulary. The Greeks, he said, were not interested in defining the different hues. Goethe underpinned his judgment through a careful examination of the theories on vision and colours elaborated by the Greek philosophers, such as Empedocles, Plato and Aristotle, who attributed an active role to the visual organ, equipped with light coming out of the eye and interacting with daylight so as to generate the complete range of colours.

Goethe also noted that ancient colour theorists tended to derive colours from a mixture of black and white, which are placed on the two opposite poles of light and dark, and yet are still called ‘colours’. The ancient conception of black and white as colours – often primary colours – is remarkable when compared with Isaac Newton’s experiments on the decomposition of light by refraction through a prism. The common view today is that white light is colourless and arises from the sum of all the hues of the spectrum, whereas black is its absence.

Goethe considered the Newtonian theory to be a mathematical abstraction in contrast with the testimony of the eyes, and thus downright absurd. In fact, he claimed that light is the most simple and homogeneous substance, and the variety of colours arise at the edges where dark and light meet. Goethe set the Greeks’ approach to colour against Newton’s for their having caught the subjective side of colour perception. The Greeks already knew, Goethe wrote, that: ‘If the eye were not Sun-like, it could never see the Sun.’

Today, no one thinks there has been a stage in humanity when some colours were ‘not yet’ being perceived

Another explanation for the apparent oddness of Greek perception came from the eminent politician and Hellenist William Gladstone, who devoted a chapter of his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858) to ‘perceptions and use of colour’. He too noticed the vagueness of the green and blue designations in Homer, as well as the absence of words covering the centre of the ‘blue’ area. Where Gladstone differed was in taking as normative the Newtonian list of colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). He interpreted the Greeks’ supposed linguistic poverty as deriving from an imperfect discrimination of prismatic colours. The visual organ of the ancients was still in its infancy, hence their strong sensitivity to light rather than hue, and the related inability to clearly distinguish one hue from another. This argument fit well with the post-Darwinian climate of the late 19th century, and came to be widely believed. Indeed, it prompted Nietzsche’s own judgment, and led to a series of investigations that sought to prove that the Greek chromatic categories do not fit in with modern taxonomies.

Today, no one thinks that there has been a stage in the history of humanity when some colours were ‘not yet’ being perceived. But thanks to our modern ‘anthropological gaze’ it is accepted that every culture has its own way of naming and categorising colours. This is not due to varying anatomical structures of the human eye, but to the fact that different ocular areas are stimulated, which triggers different emotional responses, all according to different cultural contexts.

So was Goethe right that the Greek experience of colours is quite peculiar? Yes, he was. There is a specific Greek chromatic culture, just as there is an Egyptian one, an Indian one, a European one, and the like, each of them being reflected in a vocabulary that has its own peculiarity, and not to be measured only by the scientific meter of the Newtonian paradigm. The question then is: how can we hope to understand how the Greeks saw their world?

L et’s begin with the colourimetric system, based on the Color Sphere created in 1898 by an American artist named Albert Henry Munsell. According to this model, any colour sensation can be defined through three interacting aspects: the hue , determined by the position in the Newtonian spectrum, by which we discriminate one colour from another; the value or lightness, ranging from white to black; and the chroma , which corresponds to the purity or saturation of the colour, depending on the wavelength distribution of light. Fire-red and sky-blue are highly saturated, whereas grey is not at all.

Add to these the concept of saliency , that is, the capacity of a colour to catch visual attention, and the defective definition of blue and green that Gladstone interpreted as a symptom of colour-blindness can be explained since the linguistic definition of hue is proportionate to the saliency of a colour. That is why red, the most salient colour, is the first to be defined in terms of hue in any culture ( eruthros in Greek), while green and blue are generally first perceived as brightness because they are less salient colours, and are slowly focused as hues later. This means that in some contexts the Greek adjective chloros should be translated as ‘fresh’ instead of ‘green’, or leukos as ‘shining’ rather than ‘white’. The Greeks were perfectly able to perceive the blue tint, but were not particularly interested in describing the blue tone of sky or sea – at least not in the same way as we are, with our modern sensibility.

This model is helpful for describing the different ways in which a chromatic culture can segment the huge range of possible combinations of the three dimensions by privileging one or the other. A culture might emphasise hue or chroma or value, each with varying intensity. And so the Munsell model is useful in that it helps to demonstrate the remarkable Greek predilection for brightness , and the fact that the Greeks experienced colours in degrees of lightness and darkness rather than in terms of hue.

However, the Munsell model doesn’t completely explain how the Greeks perceived colour since it leaves out the richness of the ‘colour event ’ – the subjective, felt perspective of colour that Goethe so valued. For the Greeks, colour was a basic unit of information necessary to understanding the world, above all the social world. One’s complexion was a major criterion of social identity, so much so that contrasting light women and dark men was a widespread cliché in Greek literature and iconography, rooted in the prejudice that the pale complexion of women is due to their living in the darkness of the domestic sphere, whereas men are tanned and strengthened by physical exertion and outdoor sports. So the Greek word chroa/chroiá means both the coloured surface of a thing and the colour itself, and is significantly related to chros , which means ‘skin’ and ‘skin colour’. The emotional and ethical values of colour cannot be forgotten in trying to discern Greek chromatic culture.

Homer calls the sea ‘winey’, alluding not so much to the water’s tint as to the shine of the liquid inside a cup

Of use are two further parameters, in addition to the Munsell model and the subjective value of colour. There is the glitter effect of colour, which is produced by the interplay of the texture of the object and the light conditions, and there is the material or technological process by which a certain colour is obtained in the practice of painters and dyers. With these in hand, the full range of Greek colours will come into view – even the notorious ‘curious case’ of porphureos, the chromatic term most difficult to grasp.

Not only does porphureos not correspond to any definite hue, placed as it is on the borderline between red and blue (in Newtonian terms), but it is often applied to objects that do not appear straightforwardly ‘purple’, as in the case of the sea. (The fact that the sea can appear purple at sunset is not sufficient to explain the frequency of this epithet in Greek literature.) When the sea is called porphureos , what is described is a mix of brightness and movement, changing according to the light conditions at different hours of the day and with different weather, which was the aspect of the sea that most attracted Greek sensitivity. This is why Homer calls the sea ‘winey’, which alludes not so much to the wine tint of the water as to the shine of the liquid inside the cups used to drink out of at a symposium. As shown by the naval friezes and the aquatic animals painted inside many drinking vessels, vase painters turned the image around, so that the surface of the drink suggested the waving of the sea. Porphureos conveys this combination of brightness and movement – a chromatic term impossible to understand without considering the glimmer effect.

The material effect of shimmering under the light rays is well-caught by Aristotle within a discussion on the colours of the rainbow (one of them being violet). In his Meteorology , he states:

The same effect [as in the rainbow] can also be seen in dyes: for there is an indescribable difference in the appearance of the colours in woven and embroidered materials when they are differently arranged; for instance, purple is quite different on a white or a black background, and variations of light can make a similar difference. So embroiderers say they often make mistakes in their colours when they work by lamplight, picking out one colour in mistake for another.

The luminous quality of purple textiles is due to the particular manufacturing of porphura , the material from which the dye was drawn. Purple dye was produced as early as 1200 BCE in Phoenicia from urine, sea water, and ink from the bladder of murex snails. To extract the snails, the shells were put in a vat where their putrefying bodies excreted a yellowish liquid that would be boiled (the verb porphurō means ‘swirling’ besides ‘growing/dying purple’). Various nuances from yellow to green, to blue, to red could be obtained, depending on how much water was added and when the boiling process was stopped. The red and purple tones were greatly prized in antiquity because of the costliness of the process (one mollusc providing just a few drops of undiluted juice) and the colour did not easily fade – on the contrary, it became brighter with weathering and sunlight. This is why purple was associated throughout antiquity – and beyond – with power, prestige and glorious beauty, worn for centuries by Emperors and kings, cardinals and Popes.

So the curious case of porphura shows how the effects of movement, variation and luminosity went along with resonances of preciousness. (Gold was also appreciated for similar reasons, and it is not by chance that the heroes and gods from Homer to Philostratus are often attired in gold and porphura .) By moving beyond the Newtonian model, a clearer picture of the Greek chromatic world emerges. However, there is one lingering question about the Greek perception of colour: why, after all, did the Greeks value brightness so much? The philosophers that inspired Goethe offer a clue.

T he first pre-Socratic philosopher to mention colour was Parmenides, who wrote in the fifth century BCE that ‘changing place and altering in bright colour’ are among the characteristics that mortals ascribe to reality, ‘trusting them to be true’. Then came Empedocles, with a fragment that compares the mixing of the four elements that build the sensible world to the work that painters do when mixing different pigments in variable proportions:

As when painters decorate votive offerings – men through cunning well-taught in their skill – who when they take the many-coloured pigments in their hands, mixing in harmony more of these and less of those, out of them they produce shapes similar to all things, creating trees and men and women and beasts and birds and fishes nurtured in water and long-lived gods highest in honours

The effect of splendour was likely important to Empedocles’ concept of colour, as he explained the production of all colours through the mixture of two elements, fire and water, which correspond respectively to white (light) and black (darkness), and are considered the two extremes in the chromatic continuum.

Plato’s list of primary colours includes white, black, red, and the ‘brilliant and shining’ – to us, not a colour at all

During the second half of the fifth century BCE, Democritus argued that the nature of colours depends on the interaction between visual rays, daylight and the atomic structure of objects. He considered brilliance to be a factor as important as hue for defining colours. Moreover, in explaining the various colours as mixtures of a basic set of four (white, black, red and green), or as mixtures of the primary mixtures, he considered the mixture of red and white (corresponding to the golden and copper-colour) plus a small amount of green (adding a sense of freshness and life) to give ‘the most beautiful colour’ (probably gold). He regarded purple as a particularly ‘delightful’ colour, on the grounds that it comes from white, black and red, the presence of white being indicated by its brilliance and luminosity. The same appreciation of brilliance is found in Plato, whose account of vision in Timaeus is centred on the interaction of three factors, namely: the fire internal to the observer’s eye; daylight; and the ‘flame’ (that is, again, the light) transmitted by the coloured object. Plato’s list of primary colours includes white, black, red and, most remarkably, the ‘brilliant and shining’, which to us is not a colour at all.

Aristotle differs from Plato on crucial points in metaphysics and psychology. Nevertheless, he shares Plato’s predilection for brilliant colours. In On Sense and the Sensible , he devotes a chapter to colour where he argues that the various colours arise from different proportions in the mixtures of white and black. These last two, moreover, correspond in his view to the fire and the water in the physical bodies, and determine the transparent medium as light and darkness respectively. Red, purple, green and dark blue, kuanoun, are primary mixtures of white and black, the remaining colours resulting from mixtures of the primary ones. Purple, red and green are ‘most pleasant’ to the eye as they are endowed with a peculiar reflectivity, which is due to the neat proportion of light and darkness in their composition.

Aristotle elaborates on the aesthetic assumptions of his predecessors and makes explicit statements on colour being an indicator of vitality and vigour, both in the world and in painting (which recalls the need to take into account the emotional meaning of a colour). Indeed, Aristotle describes the embryo’s development in his biological work On the Generation of Animals by an analogy with painting practice:

In the early stages [of the embryo’s formation] the parts are all traced out in outline; later on, they get their various colours and softnesses and hardnesses, quite as if a painter were at work on them, the painter being nature. Painters, as we know, first of all outline the figure of the animal and after that go on to apply the colours.

What is more visible in painting to Aristotle’s eyes, so as to help to explain the embryo’s growth, is how the pairing of line and colour works: first the drawing of an outline provides the essential features of an image, then comes colour to add ‘flesh’ and the beauty of life. It is most noteworthy that a similar attitude emerges from a number of ancient descriptions of the aesthetic effect produced by the colouring of statues, pervaded by the celebration of the brightening and enlivening properties of colour. For instance, the character of Helen in Euripides’ tragedy, in complaining about the devastating events caused by her beauty, wishes for her colours to be erased from a statue, so as to eliminate her fatal charm. The literary evidence has recently received striking corroboration on this subject from important archaeological reconstructions of ancient sculptural polychromy. The effect sought by applying the most brilliant (and saturated) colours was exactly one of splendour, along with energy, movement and life.

So Goethe was right. In trying to see the world through Greek eyes, the Newtonian view is only somewhat useful. We need to supplement it with the Greeks’ own colour theories, and to examine the way in which they actually tried to describe their world. Without this, the crucial role of light and brightness in their chromatic vision would be lost, as would any chance to make sense of the mobility and fluidity of their chromatic vocabulary. If we rely only on the mathematical abstractions of Newton’s optics, it will be impossible to imagine what the Greeks saw when they stood on their shores, gazing out upon the porphureos sea stretching into the distant horizon.

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

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Consciousness and altered states

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Tunde Aideyan

The scourge of lookism

It is time to take seriously the painful consequences of appearance discrimination in the workplace

Andrew Mason

Thinkers and theories

Our tools shape our selves

For Bernard Stiegler, a visionary philosopher of our digital age, technics is the defining feature of human experience

Bryan Norton

Family life

A patchwork family

After my marriage failed, I strove to create a new family – one made beautiful by the loving way it’s stitched together

The cell is not a factory

Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature. That’s why we need better metaphors to describe cellular life

Charudatta Navare

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Democracy (ancient greece).

Democracy in ancient Greece served as one of the first forms of self-rule government in the ancient world. The system and ideas employed by the ancient Greeks had profound influences on how democracy developed, and its impact on the formation of the U.S. government.

Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations

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The ancient Greeks were the first to create a democracy . The word “ democracy ” comes from two Greek words that mean people ( demos ) and rule ( kratos ). Democracy is the idea that the citizens of a country should take an active role in the government of their country and manage it directly or through elected representatives . In addition, it supports the idea that the people can replace their government through peaceful transfers of power rather than violent uprising or revolution . Thus, a key part of democracy is that the people have a voice.

The first known democracy in the world was in Athens. Athenian democracy developed around the fifth century B.C.E. The Greek idea of democracy was different from present-day democracy because, in Athens, all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government. If they did not fulfill their duty they would be fined and sometimes marked with red paint. The Athenian definition of “citizens” was also different from modern-day citizens: only free men were considered citizens in Athens. Women, children, and slaves were not considered citizens and therefore could not vote.

Each year 500 names were chosen from all the citizens of ancient Athens. Those 500 citizens had to actively serve in the government for one year. During that year, they were responsible for making new laws and controlled all parts of the political process. When a new law was proposed, all the citizens of Athens had the opportunity to vote on it. To vote, citizens had to attend the assembly on the day the vote took place. This form of government is called direct democracy.

The United States has a representative democracy. Representative democracy is a government in which citizens vote for representatives who create and change laws that govern the people rather than getting to vote directly on the laws themselves.

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Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy I

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Description

The essays in this volume treat a wide variety of fundamental topics and problems in ancient Greek philosophy. The scope of the section on pre-Socratic thought ranges over the views which these thinkers have on such areas of concern as religion, natural philosophy and science, cosmic periods, the nature of elements, theory of names, the concept of plurality, and the philosophy of mind.

The essays dealing with the Platonic dialogues examine with unusual care a great number of central themes and discuss them in considerable depth: problems in language and logic, myth, reason, hypothesis, eros, friendship, reason, morality, society, art, the nature of soul, and immortality. In addition, they offer fresh discussions on a number of basic morphological, methodological, and philological issues related to philosophical arguments and introduce new aspects for a critical reexamination of controversies surrounding the doctrines and the authenticity of certain Platonic works.

The essays on the philosophy of Aristotle are closely reasoned analyses of such basic themes as the universality of the sensible, the nature of kinesis, the problem of future contingencies, the meaning of qualitative change, the doctrine of phantasia, the essence of intelligence, and the metaphysical foundations for the ethical life.

The essays on post-Aristotelian developments in ancient philosophy offer challenging and well-documented discussions on topics in the history of ancient logic, categorical thought, the ethical doctrines of ancient Scepticism, epistemological issues in the physical theory of the Epicureans, and basic concepts in the metaphysics of the neo-platonists.

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Guest Essay

How a Few Days Sailing in the Aegean Changed My Mind About the Fundamental Nature of Things

By Adam Nicolson

Mr. Nicolson is an English author who writes about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. His latest book is “How to Be: Life Lessons From the Early Greeks.”

A few years ago, my wife, Sarah, and I went on a sailing trip on the eastern Aegean. It was heaven: the two of us out at sea, charting a course between Greek islands and the coast of Turkey, taking turns helming the boat and dozing below, surrounded by all the glittering blue of the sea.

As we hopped from port to port, I couldn’t help but notice that the names of many of the places we passed were familiar to me, as I had come across them in my work as a historian. Thirty or forty miles to the south of our boat was Miletus, the birthplace of some of the first recorded theorists of the physical world. Twenty miles to the east in Ephesus was the home of Heraclitus, the earliest person whose reflections on the interrelatedness of things have come down to us. Across a nearby peninsula, just 70 miles away, was Lesbos, the island of Sappho and Alcaeus, the greatest early lyric poets. To the south in Samos was the birthplace of Pythagoras, an early theorist of an everlasting soul.

It struck me that not so far out of view from the cockpit of our small boat was the whole province in which Greek philosophy had begun. Those gray-blue masses of island and mainland hid within them the thinkers’ cities.

There, afloat on the water, I began wondering about the relationship of places and ideas — how places can open up the way we think and feel and give access to minds, however distant and strange. I realized then that philosophy has a geography. To be in the places these thinkers knew, visit their cities, sail their seas and find their landscapes is to know something about them that cannot be found otherwise, and despite that locatedness and despite their age, the frame of mind of these first thinkers remains astonishingly and surprisingly illuminating today.

But why here and why then? Several centuries earlier, the great near-eastern civilizations of the Bronze Age, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, eastern Turkey and Crete, had all collapsed or nearly so. A wild and anarchic period of petty kings and sea pirates — the world, essentially, portrayed by Homer in “The Iliad” — had followed. But then, from about 650 B.C. onward, there was an emergence and a renaissance, as a constellation of independent harbor cities started to emerge in the eastern Aegean. They were mainly merchant oligarchies, often deeply skeptical of the virtues of monarchy, dependent more on trade than agriculture, absorbing the ancient wisdom from the earlier civilizations to the east but crucially not dominated by them. The trading Greeks could take what they wanted (math, astronomy, sculpture, temples, alphabetic writing, the making of gold and silver jewelry) but remain independent.

Above all, the Greeks were not subject to vast instituted kingly and priestly bureaucracies. A mental freedom coursed through their cities. They were adventurous, expert sailors and shipbuilders, sending expeditions out to the far north of the Black Sea and to the western end of the Mediterranean, taking olives and vines to southern France, bringing back shiploads of silver from the great mines of southern Spain, lacing the Mediterranean with the bright wakes their poetry celebrated.

Entrepreneurial qualities governed them: inventiveness, a sprightliness of mind, a new athleticism, a certain fluidity of thought, a desire to rule themselves, to generate their own systems of law and regulate their turbulent lives and to find justice by accommodating difference.

These harbor cities were the homes of the people generally considered to be the first philosophers, with lives dependent on the sea and on the connections the sea could provide. This version of Greece in the centuries between 700 and 500 was not land-based. It essentially existed at sea and, where it touched the land, it appeared and manifested itself as the cities from which these philosophers came.

What we think of now as the mainland of Greece, then filled with communities of farmer-warriors, played essentially no part. Recorded philosophy was almost entirely a harbor phenomenon, a byproduct of trading hubs on the margins of Asia, on the islands and eventually in the rich lands of Sicily and southern Italy. Its creators were from the mobile edges, merchants in ideas, people from communities in which exchange was the medium of significance and for whom inherited belief was not enough.

Those mercantile qualities of fluidity and connectedness were precisely the governing aspects of the new thought. The philosophers’ emphasis was on interchange and, in Heraclitus in particular, the virtues of tension. Just as in a bow, he wrote, the string pulls against the frame and would collapse if either string or frame failed; a just society needs to be founded on a tension between its constituent parts. Everything flowed through everything else, multiplicity was goodness and singularity the grounds of either sterility or tyranny.

There is nothing stiff about this way of thinking. These early Greek forms of thought cross all the boundaries between poet and thinker, mystic and scientist, in a rolling, cyclical, wave-based vision of the nature of reality. The thinkers did not provide a set of rationalist solutions nor of religious doctrines but, again and again, explored the borderland between those ways of seeing. Possibility and inquiry, the effects of suggestion and implication, rather than unconsidered belief or blank assertion, were the seedbed for the new ideas.

This harbor mind holds lessons for us now. We may want fixed answers and rigid definitions. But vitality — and perhaps even health — lies in the ability to stay afloat, stay loose, stay connected, stay with the questions and entertain doubt as the unlikely bedrock of understanding. The only understanding is in the fluidity of mind.

Who would have guessed that a few days setting sail in the cool of a Greek morning, dropping anchor in sandy, clear blue bays and swimming in the shade of olive trees on shore with sheep bells ticktocking beside us, could have started to change my mind about the fundamental nature of things? But it did.

And if anyone asks me why I now think as I do, I can answer: Because I once went sailing in the sea where philosophy began.

Source photograph by Harvey Meston, via Getty Images.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Greek Gods Mythology

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The origins of the gods, the complex relationships of the gods, the impact on art, literature, and society.

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145 Ancient Greece Research Topics and Essay Ideas

🏆 best greek topics to write about, 💡 most interesting ancient greece topics for research, 📌 simple & easy topics about ancient greece, 👍 good ancient greece writing prompts, ❓ research questions about ancient greece.

• Mesopotamian and Ancient Greek Civilizations Comparison Socially, the two civilizations were very different; the Greeks were known for their strong sense of democracy, while the Mesopotamians were ruled by kings and queens. The ancient Mesopotamian and Greek civilizations were two of […]
• Ancient Greek Mythical Characters The story of Icarus and Daedalus is told in a Roman source, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”; the Isle of Crete was blocked by the order of King Minos, but Daedalus wanted to return to his home, Athens. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Mathematics in Ancient Greek Architecture One of the pillars of the art of architecture has been mathematics, and the development of this science in Ancient Greece enabled Ancient Greek architects to create beautiful buildings.
• Art History: Female Figures in Ancient Greek Sculpture The development of female figures in ancient Greek sculpture was noticeable during those times; each period added something new; the influence of other countries and their cultures was reflected in almost each piece of work, […]
• The Concept of Deduction in Ancient Greek and Egyptian Mathematics The work of the famous and great Ancient Greek mathematicians has played a vital role in permeating every aspect, section, and part of life, especially from the sector of sending the rockets into space, accounting, […]
• The Role of Poets and the Place of Poetry in Ancient Greece The Muse is the giver of gifts and in this case it is the gift to create words that are melodious to the ear but at the same time the power to move the hearts […]
• Comparison Between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece’s Burial Rituals On the other hand, the burial rituals of the ancient Greeks in the period of 750BCE and 700BCE were affected by the age of geometry.
• BBC Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth The presenter of this video talks about the importance of theater culture to the people of ancient Athens. In the days of the ancient Greeks, the people of Athens learned the latest news from theatrical […]
• Suffering in the Ancient, Roman and Greek Periods It can be noted that in all cases suffering was seen as evil in some quarters of the ancient world as is seen today.
• Ancient Greek Culture, Philosophy and Science A few early Greek philosophers of the 6th century BCE began forming theories about the natural formations of the cosmos that went beyond the commonly held beliefs of the divine beings in the sky2.
• The Architecture of Ancient Greece Found in Los Angeles This paper is aimed at presenting an exploration of the reinterpretations of the stylistics period of the Ancient Greek epitomized in the architecture of the ancient Greece.
• Ancient Greek Philosophers: A Critical Evaluation of Their Impact on Modern Thought However, according to the article, it is imperative to note that neither reason nor the quest for evidence started with the ancient Greeks, but the pre-Socratic philosophers endeavored to identify a single underlying standard that […]
• Comparing and Contrasting the Confucius Ideas With Ancient Greek Thinkers As far as the body and the soul interacted, Plato also commented on the things that the soul could be influenced by the work or the actions of the body.
• Ancient Egypt vs. Ancient Greece In this paper, the researcher seeks to investigate the extent to which Ancient Egypt became Greek and the extent to which it remained the same during and after the rule by Ancient Greece.
• Mythology’s Role in the Ancient Greece – God Poseidon He was believed to be the creator and the controller of the sea therefore, people gave him respect and they make him to become angry. Poseidon was a god of the sea and therefore was […]
• Ancient Greek vs. Roman Sculpture in the Late Classical Period The left-hand drops her clothes onto the jar of water, the head is turned to the left, and the right hand is extended in front of the pudenda.
• The Ancient Greek Society: Role of Religion In the cultural sense, the phrase ‘ancient Greece’ refers to the way of life of the ancient Greek people as depicted in their mode of worship, language, governance, entertainment and their understanding of the physical […]
• Ancient Greek Civilization: Culture and Arts To begin with, the earliest period of Greek history was the Bronze, and it is characterized by the usage and production of essential tools and the formation of two civilizations, which further contributed to the […]
• Public Speaking in Ancient Greece and Roman Empire With this in mind, investigation of some main peculiarities of the development of art of public speaking public can help to understand its peculiarities better.
• Polytheism of Ancient Greek and Babylonians Compared Turning on to the cult and political organization the gods do participate in the political and governance structures of the societies.
• Ancient Greece Heroes: The Iliad and The Knight’s Tale It is rather tempting to see the later work as a reflection of the ancient Greek story, but Chaucer’s work is rather a re-evaluation of the old story.
• City States in Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy Similarities According to Spencer the invasion by the Dorians was one reason that strengthened the growth of the city states. In Italy, the city-states authority belonged to rich and the gentries.
• Ancient Greek History: Athens The works of these historians give an opportunity to state that in spite of the fighting and dying in wars, the Athenians contributed to the good of their polis.
• Deduction in Ancient Greece and Egypt Mathematics and the use of formulas have played an important role in the development of the modern world. The Golden Ratio concept was used in this part of the world.
• The Democracies of Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic Any democracy which, at least formally, is based on the power of the majority, equality of citizens, protection of their rights and freedoms, a system of separation of powers, and electability of authorities implies a […]
• Culture of Ancient Greece in The Odyssey by Homer The Odyssey is one of the oldest and most well-known epics in the world. This can be attributed to Homer’s ability to describe the culture and life of the people of the ancient era with […]
• The Ancient Greek Culture Impact on Western Civilization The most significant public structures in the city were gathered around the temple in the city’s center, which served as the power headquarters.
• Art of Ancient Greece: The Diadoumenos Statue The marble statue of the Diadoumenos depicts an athlete with a victory armband and is a reconstruction of the original based on Roman marble spears. Polykleitos’ sculpture is a typical example of the classical period […]
• Ancient History of Greek Civilization In ancient Greece, the body was the material means of constructing and transmitting social values; the body’s visual representation exemplified the moral codes of the time.
• The Art of Ancient Greece: The Marble Head of Athena The art of Ancient Greece played an essential role in the development of the culture and art of humankind. In Greece, the first principles of democracy in history were formed within the framework of a […]
• Democracy in Ancient Greece and Today From the lecture, I discovered that the word democracy partly originates from the word demes which means the small division of the bigger sections that Athens was divided into during the ancient time.
• Venus de Milo, Sculpture of Ancient Greece Art The statue also depicts the story of the Judgment of Paris. The findspot of the figure of the goddess is still unknown, and it cannot be said where exactly it was found.
• The Impact of Ancient Greek Civilization and Architecture on Modern Culture The connection between ancient Greek architecture and modern culture in the United States is evident because of the presence of similar constructions and continuous use of terms that originated from that civilization.
• Visual Arts: Ancient Art of the Greeks Ancient art plays a significant role in helping the individuals of the current generation explain the civilizations of the ancient past. Fresco painted the Bull-leaping fresco from Knossos art to depict the civilizations of the […]
• History of Ancient Greek It was the accuracy and correctness of the prediction that daunted astronomers for years to come. This event hailed a new set of astronomers who tried to figure out the means to predict such future […]
• Art History: The Prehistoric Aegean, Ancient Greece The relationship between curvilinear forms in Minoan art and the primary role of nature is that nature provided the curvilinear shapes and forms that formed the basis for the artwork.
• The Mindset and Ancient Greek Philosophy Metaphysics studies the nature of reality, the structure of the world, the origin of man, God, truth, matter, mind, the connection between mind, body, and free will, and the correlation between events.
• Ancient Greek History: The Most Important Events of the Period Ancient Greece was home for most of the famous personalities of the ancient world. The introduction of Olympic Games was one of the most significant events in Ancient Greek History.
• Ancient Egyptian and Greece Literature The history of literature began in the Bronze Age with the invention of writing in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. In Egypt, hieroglyphs and the similarity of drawings were used for writing.
• Scientific Approach to Magic in Ancient Greece 2 The dual attitude towards magic in Ancient Greece is deeply rooted in those people’s focus on knowledge and the use of the scientific method that was born during that period.
• Women in Ancient Greek and Roman Art The ancient Greek and Roman art, both textual and visual, are a rich source of information on the social history of women in these cultures.
• The Ancient Greek and Republican Roman Architects The ancient Greek and Roman architects sought to express cultural and aesthetic perspectives guided by the adoration of classical qualities such as maturity, moderation, order, balance, and harmony.
• Ancient Greek Mythology: Deities of the Universe Hades is the eldest son of Kronos and Rhea, the god and the guardian of the Underworld, the realm of the dead.
• Democracy Emergence in Ancient Greece and Why Plato Was Opposed to It The result of this war was the defeat of Athens by Sparta at the end of the fifth century which led to the overthrow of many democratic regimes.
• The Hetaerae Women of Ancient Greece In the Greek society, the hetaerae women consisted of women who were liberal and commanded great influence in the society. The hetaerae women were noble in one aspect of the other.
• Oedipus the King and Ancient Greek Culture Oedipus consults the servant who was sent to abandon him as a child and it is revealed that he was the child of Laius and Jocasta.
• Origin of the Olympics in the Ancient Greek Society It exhaustively explains the importance of the Olympic Games to the Greek society in the ancient times and the significance they played in shaping the locals lives.
• Western Civilization: Ancient Greek Theater However, the modern theater has become more commercialized and has become a potential arena of political, social, and cultural discourses, increasingly involving the masses.”Theatre, which had been dominated by the Church for centuries, and then […]
• Democracy and Dictatorship in Ancient Greece and Today Recalling the speech of Thucydides, democracy is when the power is in the hands of not a minority but of the whole people when all are equal before the law when political life is free […]
• Machiavelli: Modern Philosophy Against Ancient Greek The main purpose of current research is to understand the main points of significant departure Machiavelli’s model of politics, state, and ethics comprehension from Ancient Greek philosophy represented in the works of such thinkers like […]
• The Changes of the Ancient Greeks’ Conceptions of Heroism Through the Times According to the primary task of the essay, it is necessary to say, that the characters of Iliad, Odysseus, and the conclusions by Socrates belong to various epochs of Greek history.
• The Culture of Ancient Greece The Archaic period and the Classical periods are separated by the Persian Wars and the reign of Alexander the Great is taken as separating the Classical from the Hellenistic periods.
• Ancient Greece: Relief of the Temple of Artemis The statute represented on the relief of the Temple of Artemis is one of the typical examples of Ancient Greek sculpture.
• Ancient Greek Sports: Boxing, Wrestling, Running So, one can conclude that the cruelty of a blow increased, and for this reason, ancient gloves can be regarded to be offensive weapons.
• Ancient Greek and Roman Myth Characters Romulus is the legendary founder of the city of Rome, a son of Rhea Silvia the Vestal and Mars the God of War.
• Ancient Greek Temples Architecture This temple was built using the Ionic order and formed the Seven Wonders of the World. Another known and oldest temple that used this order is the Apollo Bassae constructed in 420 BC.
• Ancient India and Greece Sculptures Comparison As far as the key differences between the Ancient Indian and the Ancient Greek sculptures are concerned, the concept of aesthetics deserves to be mentioned.
• Ancient Greek Philosophy: Socrates and Plato Comparison Being the most praised Socrates pupil, he devoted a lot of his works to Socrates figure, trying to investigate his point of view and present it to the audience.
• Ancient Greek Art and Sculpture It is possible to trace this change through examining two sculptures pertaining to different periods of Ancient Greek art. Of course, to understand art, it is necessary to understand the epoch.
• Greek City-States – Ancient History Using the case of the early Greek poleis, this paper shows that commercialisation and changing attitudes about leadership have changed the nature of states.
• The Philosophy of Ancient Greece Overall, it is possible to argue that the philosophy of ancient Greece is mostly associated with the names of such prominent thinkers as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
• History: Ancient Greek Olympics Hence, the myth concerning the emergence of the Olympic Games involves Zeus. The Olympic Games owed their integrity and significance to religion.
• Ancient Greek Civilization History He criticized the government for tyranny and as a result, he is considered the father of democracy in Greek Sacred disease refers to epilepsy.
• Infanticide in Ancient Greece In most ancient societies, children were the property of the parents, and those children who the parents deemed unfit were killed or sold into slavery.
• Ancient Greek Democracy That Still Makes People Strive for Perfection Thus, Greek dreams of a perfect society where everyone is happy resulted in the creation of the first democracy in the world.
• Music in the Ancient Greece The history of music in ancient Greece dates back to the 6th century BCE when the first music lessons were introduced in the learning institutions. The ‘clappers’ were the other category of music instruments that […]
• Transformation of the Ancient Greece Art At first, it is necessary to examine the sculptural works which belong to the archaic period of the Greek culture. The techniques that one can see in the sculptures of the Archaic Period were rejected.
• Ancient Art of Rome and Greece The Augustus has a visual texture of smoothness on the body parts, but a rough texture on the clothes adorned on the image.
• Concepts of Ancient Greek Culture In particular, one can speak about the establishment of a civic state, the adoption of new approaches to education and science, the development of new artistic forms, and more critical attitude toward those people who […]
• The Ancient Greek Play Antigone by Sophocle In the play, it is evident that pride is used by people to create laws that challenge the divine law from gods.
• The Evolution of the Division of Labor Theory Starting From Ancient Greek Economists to the Present The theories of other great economists on the division of labor theory will also be explored and finally comparing them to the modern theory of division of labor.
• Gods and Humans: Myths of Ancient Rome and Greece Remembering the main idea of the myths which is to portray the creation of the specific natural phenomena via the God’s actions, the relationships between people and Gods cannot be rejected in the book.
• Pride in Ancient Greek This paper discusses the character and behavior of two Heroes in the Iliad with the aim of explaining the Geeks’ concept of pride.
• Women’s Roles in Ancient Greece and Rome
• Water and Womanhood in Ancient Greece
• The Significance of Honor and Respect in Ancient Greece
• The Goddess of Love, Desire, and Beauty, Aphrodite, was Worshipped by Ancient Greece for Many More Reason
• Humanity As In Ancient Greece An Analysis Of Greek Influence And Literature
• Women in Time: Ancient Greece and 19th Century Norway
• To What Extent Has the Theater of Ancient Greece Changed the Acts of Modern Day Theater
• The History and Use of Pantomime in Theatrical Dance from Ancient Greece to Ballet D’Action
• Types Of Governments Of Ancient Greece And Rome
• How the Texts of Architects Vincent Scully and R.E. Wycherley Depict the Culture of Ancient Greece
• The Worship of the Roman Dionysos in Ancient Greece
• Women in Lysistrata and Women of Ancient Greece
• The Study of Behaviorism in the Ancient Greece in the 19th and 20th Centuries
• The Importance Of Hospitality In Ancient Greece Versus The Dark Ages
• What Role Did Socrates Play in Ancient Greece
• The Value of the Individual, Virtue, Honor, Humanity, and Love in Ancient Greece
• The Importance of the Fertility Goddesses Demeter and Persephone in the Society of Ancient Greece
• The Strict Laws and Penalties in Ancient Greece Market Places and the Male Domination in Greek Societis
• The Topic Of Fate Of Ancient Greece During The Golden Age
• Women of Ancient Greece and Rome
• Things Fall Apart:The Cultures of Ancient Greece and The Lower Niger
• The Forms in Which Theater and Drama Took in Ancient Greece in the 5th Century
• The Importance of Athletics in Ancient Greece and the History of the Olympics
• How Did Ancient Greece Influence Western Civilization
• Feminism And The Power Struggle Of Women In Ancient Greece
• The Influence and Effects of Geography on the Economic, Religious, Philosophy, Art and Literature Advancement of Ancient Greece
• The Portrayal and Views on Women in Ancient Greece
• The Perception of Gender in the Literature of Ancient Greece and Middle Age
• The Impact Of Freedom On Ancient Greece And Modern America
• The Insignificance Of Women And Ancient Greece
• The Olympic Games: its Origins, Sources and Images in the Art of Ancient Greece
• Exploring the Integrity of Gender Distinctions Made in the Literature on Ancient Greece
• What Features of Modern Europe Have Been Traced Back to Ancient Greece and Rome
• The Role Of Women In Ancient Greece As Depicted In Homer’s The Odyssey
• The Prejudiced Attitude on the Role of Women in Ancient Greece
• The Question of Infanticide in Ancient Greece Based on Several Texts
• The Role of Gods and Their Human-like Personalities in Ancient Greece
• The Roles of Women in Ancient Greece and the Reasons for their Subordina
• The Legend of Oedipus the King of Thebes in Ancient Greece
• The Relationship Between Slave and Master in Ancient Greece
• The Music of Ancient Greece and the Instruments We Still Use Today
• The Significance of the Tragic Plays Written by Sophocles in Ancient Greece
• How Did Ancient Greece’s Geography Affect Its Civilization?
• What Role Did Socrates Play in Ancient Greece?
• How Has the American Society Been Influenced by Ancient Greece?
• What Was Greek Law?
• Why Was Ancient Greece the First Civilization to Develop Democracy?
• What Role Did Tribalism and Racism Play in Ancient Greece?
• How Did Ancient Greece Influence Western Civilization?
• What Were the Characteristics of Oligarchy and Democracy in Ancient Greece?
• Who Did the Ancient Greeks Worship?
• What Was the Importance of Religion in Ancient Greece?
• Who Was a Citizen in Ancient Greece?
• What Were the Ancient Athenians Like?
• Was Greek Law Formally Written Down?
• What Rights Did Women Have in Ancient Greece?
• Who/What Are the Main Legends and Myths About?
• What Is the History Behind the Olympics Games?
• Who Were Slaves in Ancient Greece?
• What Did the Theaters Look Like in Ancient Greece?
• Who Were the Famous Mathematicians or Philosophers of Ancient Greece?
• What Was “Medicine” Like in Ancient Greece?
• How Were Plato’s Divisions Different From Athenian Democracy?
• What Are the “Famous” Wars From Ancient Greece?
• How Did Athenian Democracy Differ From Modern Democracy?
• What Were the Major Ancient Greek City-States?
• Exactly What Was the Oracle at Delphi and How Did It Work?
• What Were the People Like in Ancient Greece?
• Why Did Greece Spread So Far West and South?
• What Was the New Idea of Male Homosexuality About in Ancient Greece? How Was It Derived?
• What Was the True Name of Ancient Greece?
• How Were the Ancient Greeks Influential?
• Chicago (A-D)
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Essay on Greece

Students are often asked to write an essay on Greece in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Greece

About greece.

Greece is a country in Europe. It is famous for its ancient history. Many old buildings, like the Parthenon, can still be seen in the capital, Athens. Greece is also known for its myths and legends.

Greece is in the southern part of Europe. It has lots of islands, about 2000! The biggest island is Crete. The country is also very mountainous. The highest mountain is called Mount Olympus.

Greek culture is rich and old. It includes great stories, like those about Hercules and Zeus. The Greeks also started the Olympics. They love drama and invented theatre.

Greek food is tasty and healthy. Popular dishes include moussaka, souvlaki, and tzatziki. Olives, feta cheese, and pita bread are also common. Greek people love to share food with friends and family.

Modern Greece

Today, Greece is part of the European Union. It’s a popular place for tourists who enjoy the beautiful beaches, warm weather, and historical sites. Greece has a strong economy, with shipping and tourism being key industries.

250 Words Essay on Greece

Greece is a country in Southeast Europe. It is known for its rich history and beautiful landscapes. The country has lots of islands, about 2,000, but only 168 of them have people living on them. The capital city is Athens.

History of Greece

Greece has a very long history. It is known as the birthplace of democracy and the Olympic Games. Many famous thinkers, like Socrates and Plato, were born here. These people helped shape the way we think about the world today.

Greek Culture

Greece is famous for its culture. This includes its music, dances, and food. Greek food is very tasty and healthy. It includes dishes like moussaka and souvlaki. Greek music and dances are also very popular. They are part of many celebrations.

Landmarks in Greece

There are many famous landmarks in Greece. These include the Acropolis in Athens and the Palace of Knossos in Crete. The Acropolis is a hill with many ancient buildings. The most famous one is the Parthenon. The Palace of Knossos is an ancient palace from the time of the Minoan civilization.

Greece is a wonderful country with a rich history and culture. It has many beautiful places to visit and delicious food to try. It has also given the world many important ideas and traditions.

500 Words Essay on Greece

Introduction to greece.

Greece is a country full of history and culture. It is located in southeastern Europe, at the crossing point of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The country is famous for its ancient history and its impact on the world.

The Land and Climate

Greece has a mix of mountains and sea. The country is covered by a lot of mountains, and it also has many islands. The largest island is Crete. The climate in Greece is mostly warm. It has hot summers and mild winters. This type of climate is called Mediterranean climate.

Historical Significance

Greece is known for its rich history. It is the birthplace of democracy, the Olympic Games, and many famous philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Many important ideas about science, art, and philosophy started in ancient Greece. These ideas still influence us today.

Today, Greece is a modern country with a strong culture. The capital city is Athens, which is one of the oldest cities in the world. Greece is part of the European Union, which is a group of 27 countries in Europe that work together.

Greek culture is famous around the world. Greek food is very popular, with dishes like moussaka, souvlaki, and tzatziki. Greek music and dance are also well-known. The Greek people are known for their hospitality and love for life.

In conclusion, Greece is a country with a rich history and culture. It has made a big impact on the world, from ancient times to today. From its beautiful landscapes to its tasty food, Greece is a country that everyone should learn about.

The essay above is a simple and easy-to-understand introduction to Greece. It covers the geography, history, modern life, and culture of Greece. It is suitable for school students and anyone who wants to learn more about this fascinating country. The word count is exactly 500 words, making it a concise and informative read.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Apollo’s Iconography: Greek Mythology’s Symbols

This essay about the symbols associated with Apollo in Greek mythology explores how these icons reflect his diverse roles as the god of the sun, music, healing, and prophecy. It highlights four main symbols: the lyre, representing Apollo’s patronage of the arts; the laurel wreath, symbolizing victory and eternal glory; the radiant sun, denoting his connection to light and life; and the bow and arrow, illustrating his dual nature as a bringer of disease and a healer. These symbols are not just emblematic of Apollo’s dominion but also offer insights into ancient Greek values, the interplay between the divine and the mortal, and the complexity of the gods themselves. Through an examination of Apollo’s iconography, the essay reveals the deep spiritual and cultural significance of these symbols in ancient Greek life, showing how they articulate a nuanced understanding of divinity and the natural world.

How it works

Apollo, a deity of immense complexity within the ancient Greek pantheon, has been venerated through an array of symbols that encapsulate his diverse attributes and powers. As the god presiding over the sun, music, healing, and prophecy, among other realms, the symbols associated with Apollo epitomize the breadth of his influence and the profundity of his significance in ancient Greek civilization. This discourse delves into the principal symbols attributed to Apollo, unraveling their significances and the insights they offer into ancient Greek spirituality and worldview.

Foremost among these symbols is the lyre, representing Apollo’s dominion over music and the arts. Mythology recounts how Hermes fashioned the lyre and bestowed it upon Apollo, cementing a bond between the two deities. The lyre not only symbolizes the harmony and order that music imparts to both divine and mortal realms but also venerates Apollo as a patron of artistic endeavors, inspiring poets, musicians, and artisans throughout antiquity.

Equally consequential is the laurel wreath, emblematic of victory, purity, and eternal renown, intimately tied to Apollo through the myth of Daphne. Following Daphne’s metamorphosis into a laurel tree to evade Apollo’s advances, the god honored her by donning a wreath of laurel upon his brow, declaring it his sacred plant. This tale encapsulates themes of unrequited affection and the perpetuity of honor, encapsulating the intricate interplay between divine desire and mortal destiny.

Apollo’s association with the sun finds representation through depictions of radiant beams emanating from his countenance or the presence of a luminous halo, underscoring his role as the bestower of light and vitality. This solar aspect illuminates Apollo’s ability to nurture and annihilate, embodying the life-affirming warmth of the sun alongside its searing, inexorable heat. The solar symbol underscores Apollo’s stewardship over the rhythms of nature and the onward march of time, positioning him as a sentinel of harmony amidst chaos.

The bow and arrow, emblematic of both the hunter and the healer, signify Apollo’s dual aptitude to inflict pestilence and infirmity or to proffer succor and safeguard against them. This duality inherent in Apollo’s persona reflects the ancient Greeks’ conception of divinity as possessing both benign and wrathful attributes. The bow and arrow emblemize the abruptness of divine retribution and the inevitability of demise, as well as the prospect of compassion and deliverance.

Collectively, these symbols of Apollo weave a tapestry rich in divine attributes, mirroring the multifaceted nature of the god himself. They serve as conduits to apprehending ancient Greek ethos, beliefs, and the manners in which the divine was invoked in everyday existence. Through the lyre, laurel wreath, effulgent sun, and bow and arrow, Apollo emerges not merely as a deity to be venerated but as a presence intricately interwoven with the fabric of human existence, influencing everything from artistic creativity to the natural order of the cosmos.

In summation, the enduring symbols of Apollo furnish a portal into the ancient Greek psyche, unveiling a civilization profoundly attuned to the intricacies of the divine and the natural realm. These emblems, enshrined within myth and expressed through art and ceremony, articulate a nuanced perspective of divinity, wherein gods are as manifold and paradoxical as humanity itself. Through the legacy of Apollo’s symbols, we glean insights into an ancient culture that persists in captivating and enlightening our comprehension of the human condition and the enigmas of the universe.

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Endangered Greek dialect is ‘living bridge’ to ancient world, researchers say

Romeyka descended from ancient Greek but may die out as it has no written form and is spoken by only a few thousand people

An endangered form of Greek that is spoken by only a few thousand people in remote mountain villages of northern Turkey has been described as a “living bridge” to the ancient world, after researchers identified characteristics that have more in common with the language of Homer than with modern Greek.

The precise number of speakers of Romeyka is hard to quantify. It has no written form, but has survived orally in the mountain villages around Trabzon, near the Black Sea coast.

With its remaining speakers ageing, the dialect is now threatened with extinction, leading a University of Cambridge academic to launch a “last chance” crowdsourcing tool to record its unique linguistic structures before it is too late.

The Crowdsourcing Romeyka project invites native speakers across the world to upload a recording of themselves talking in the language. Ioanna Sitaridou, a professor of Spanish and historical linguistics, said she anticipated that many were likely to be in the US and Australia, as well as spread across Europe.

“There is a very significant diaspora which is separated by religion and national identity [from the communities in Turkey], but still shares so much,” she said.

Sitaridou has established that rather than having developed from modern Greek, Romeyka descended from the Hellenistic form of the language spoken in the centuries before Christ, and shares some key features with ancient Greek.

An example is the infinitive form of the verb, which in Romeyka still uses the form found in Ancient Greek. So while speakers of Modern Greek would say “I want that I go”, Romeyka preserves the ancient form “I want to go”. This structure had become obsolete in all other Greek varieties by early medieval times.

As a result, Sitaridou has concluded that “Romeyka is a sister, rather than a daughter, of modern Greek”, a finding she says disrupts the claim that modern Greek is an “isolate” language, meaning it is unrelated to any other European language.

Modern Greek and Romeyka are not mutually intelligible, says the academic; she suggests that an apt comparison would be speakers of Portuguese and Italian, both of which derive from Vulgar Latin rather than from each other.

Though the history of the Greek presence in the Black Sea is not always easy to disentangle from legend, the Greek language expanded with the spread of Christianity. “Conversion to Islam across Asia Minor was usually accompanied by a linguistic shift to Turkish, but communities in the valleys retained Romeyka,” Sitaridou said.

In contrast, Greek-speaking communities who remained Christian grew closer to modern Greek, especially because of extensive schooling in Greek in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The 1923 treaty of Lausanne saw Turkey and Greece exchange their Christian and Muslim populations, but because the Romeyka-speaking communities in the Trabzon region are Muslim, they remained in their homeland.

As a result of extensive contact with Turkish, cultural stigma and migration, however, the language is now endangered, according to Sitaridou. A high proportion of native speakers in the region are over 65, and fewer young people learn the language.

Does she think the online initiative could help save Romeyka as a living language? “Obviously I love all languages and I would like to see them preserved,” she said. “But I’m not one of these people who think languages have to be preserved at all costs. And at the end of the day, it’s not exactly down to me. If the speakers decide to pass it on, great. If the speakers choose not to pass it on, it’s their choice.

“What is very important for these [minority] languages and for these speech communities is to keep for themselves a sense of belonging and who they are. Because it connects them to their past, whatever way you see your past.

“When speakers can speak their home languages they feel seen and thus they feel more connected to the rest of society. On the other hand, not speaking the heritage or minority languages creates some form of trauma which … undermines integration.”

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Greek, Jewish, Puerto Rican: Biden has history of claiming to be 'honorary' member of numerous ethnic groups

President Biden has a long history of attempting to tie himself to a variety of ethnic groups and cultures.

Biden reminded guests at the White House for a Greek Independence Day celebration this week of his claim that he inherited the nickname "Biden-opoulos" in his home state of Delaware.

Attributing his early political success to the Greek community, Biden said one of the things he "learned early on was that I had a very close relationship with the Greek American community — for real, in the heart and I mean real — and the church there as well."

Biden said he believed "every Greek American in Delaware voted for" him during his 1972 campaign for the Senate.

"By the way, as some of the Delawareans would tell you, that’s where I acquired a nickname I’m very proud of: I am Joe 'Biden-opoulos.' That’s the nickname I got," he said.

It wasn't the first time Biden mentioned his Greek-inspired nickname. During a 2009 White House event, then Vice President Biden said he was "an honorary Greek."

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Biden's remarks to Greek Americans gathered in the East Room of the White House are in line with his previous attempts to relate himself to ethnicities and communities from all across the world. 

In September 2022, during a reception at the White House to celebrate the Jewish New Year, Biden told the group Jewish Americans at the Rosh Hashanah that he "went to shul" more than them. Shul is the Yiddish word for synagogue.

"You all think I'm kidding. He can tell you I'm not. I'm not," Biden said to laughter at the time, pointing at a rabbi from Wilmington, Delaware.

"I'm a practicing Catholic, but I'd go to services on Saturday and on Sunday," he added. Biden then reaffirmed that he was not kidding about the statement.

Biden has also claimed during his presidency to have been raised by the Puerto Rican community .

While discussing Hurricane Fiona response and recovery efforts from Puerto Rico in October 2022, Biden declared that he was "sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically."

WASHINGTON POST REPORTER ADMITS BIDEN ‘STRETCHES THE AVAILABLE FACTS’ ABOUT HIS BACKGROUND, BUT LETS IT SLIDE

At the time, Biden also claimed Delaware has "a very, in relative terms, large Puerto Rican population in Delaware — relative to our population."

Biden has also attempted to make headway with Black voters in America in recent years by claiming he came "out of a Black community."

"I come out of a Black community, in terms of my support," Biden said during a presidential primary debate in November 2019. "If you notice, I have more people supporting me in the Black community that have announced for me because they know me, they know who I am."

While responding to the criticism over his remarks, Biden said a few months later, "I'm not saying, 'I am Black.' But I want to tell you something — I have spent my whole career with the Black community."

Some months later, in May 2020, Biden went on to claim that Black voters "ain't black" if they have a hard time determining whether to support him or his political rival Donald Trump. He later walked back that comment , claiming he "shouldn’t have been such a wise guy" or "so cavalier."

But it doesn't stop there. Biden, who was born in Philadelphia and moved to Delaware at the age of 10, has also attempted to connect with Italian and Polish communities by touting his Irish ancestry and Catholic religion.

Biden said in 2020 that he "grew up in a heavily Irish Catholic community in Scranton, Pennsylvania," as well as a "heavily Italian Polish community in Claymont, Delaware."

Biden's connection to Ireland is something that he has mentioned often.

"We Irish are the only people who are nostalgic for the future," Biden said in 2021 ahead of a virtual meeting with Micheál Martin, who served at the time as Ireland’s taoiseach.

Original article source: Greek, Jewish, Puerto Rican: Biden has history of claiming to be 'honorary' member of numerous ethnic groups

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Death, burial, and the afterlife in ancient greece.

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Achilles Painter

Painted limestone funerary stele with a woman in childbirth

Painted limestone funerary stele with a seated man and two standing figures

Terracotta krater

Attributed to the Hirschfeld Workshop

Marble statue of a kouros (youth)

Terracotta pyxis (box)

Attributed to the Penthesilea Painter

Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl

Marble grave stele of a little girl

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl

Painted limestone funerary slab with a man controlling a rearing horse

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

Marble grave stele with a family group

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant

Attributed to the Tithonos Painter

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier and two girls

Terracotta bell-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)

Attributed to the Persephone Painter

Marble akroterion of the grave monument of Timotheos and Nikon

Attributed to the Sabouroff Painter

Terracotta funerary plaque

Attributed to the Phiale Painter

Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)

Attributed to the Meidias Painter

Department of Greek and Roman Art , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2003

The ancient Greek conception of the afterlife and the ceremonies associated with burial were already well established by the sixth century B.C. In the Odyssey , Homer describes the Underworld, deep beneath the earth, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon , and his wife, Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures—the “shades” of all those who had died. It was not a happy place. Indeed, the ghost of the great hero Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather be a poor serf on earth than lord of all the dead in the Underworld ( Odyssey  11: 489–91).

The Greeks believed that at the moment of death, the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind. The deceased was then prepared for burial according to the time-honored rituals. Ancient literary sources emphasize the necessity of a proper burial and refer to the omission of burial rites as an insult to human dignity ( Iliad  23: 71). Relatives of the deceased, primarily women, conducted the elaborate burial rituals that were customarily of three parts: the prothesis (laying out of the body ( 54.11.5 ), the ekphora (funeral procession), and the interment of the body or cremated remains of the deceased. After being washed and anointed with oil, the body was dressed ( 75.2.11 ) and placed on a high bed within the house. During the prothesis, relatives and friends came to mourn and pay their respects. Lamentation of the dead is featured in Greek art at least as early as the Geometric period , when vases were decorated with scenes portraying the deceased surrounded by mourners. Following the prothesis, the deceased was brought to the cemetery in a procession, the ekphora, which usually took place just before dawn. Very few objects were actually placed in the grave, but monumental earth mounds, rectangular built tombs, and elaborate marble stelai and statues were often erected to mark the grave and to ensure that the deceased would not be forgotten. Immortality lay in the continued remembrance of the dead by the living. From depictions on white-ground lekythoi, we know that the women of Classical Athens made regular visits to the grave with offerings that included small cakes and libations.

The most lavish funerary monuments were erected in the sixth century B.C. by aristocratic families of Attica in private burial grounds along the roadside on the family estate or near Athens. Relief sculpture, statues ( 32.11.1 ), tall stelai crowned by capitals ( 11.185a-c,f,g ), and finials marked many of these graves. Each funerary monument had an inscribed base with an epitaph, often in verse that memorialized the dead. A relief depicting a generalized image of the deceased sometimes evoked aspects of the person’s life, with the addition of a servant, possessions, dog, etc. On early reliefs, it is easy to identify the dead person; however, during the fourth century B.C., more and more family members were added to the scenes, and often many names were inscribed ( 11.100.2 ), making it difficult to distinguish the deceased from the mourners. Like all ancient marble sculpture, funerary statues and grave stelai were brightly painted , and extensive remains of red, black, blue, and green pigment can still be seen ( 04.17.1 ).

Many of the finest Attic grave monuments stood in a cemetery located in the outer Kerameikos, an area on the northwest edge of Athens just outside the gates of the ancient city wall. The cemetery was in use for centuries—monumental Geometric kraters marked grave mounds of the eighth century B.C. ( 14.130.14 ), and excavations have uncovered a clear layout of tombs from the Classical period, as well. At the end of the fifth century B.C., Athenian families began to bury their dead in simple stone sarcophagi placed in the ground within grave precincts arranged in man-made terraces buttressed by a high retaining wall that faced the cemetery road. Marble monuments belonging to various members of a family were placed along the edge of the terrace rather than over the graves themselves.

Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/hd_dbag.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Garland, Robert. The Greek Way of Death . Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Grant, Michael, and John Hazel. Who's Who in Classical Mythology . London: Dent, 1993.

Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 3d ed., rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Howatson, M. C., ed. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature . 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Pedley, John Griffiths. Greek Art and Archaeology . 2d ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

Pomeroy, Sarah B., et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Robertson, Martin. A History of Greek Art . 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Additional Essays by Department of Greek and Roman Art

• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Classical Cyprus (ca. 480–ca. 310 B.C.) .” (July 2007)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Antonine Dynasty (138–193) .” (October 2000)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Ancient Greek Dress .” (October 2003)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Geometric Art in Ancient Greece .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Flavian Dynasty (69–96 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Julio-Claudian Dynasty (27 B.C.–68 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Augustan Rule (27 B.C.–14 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Severan Dynasty (193–235 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Roman Egypt .” (October 2000)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Roman Copies of Greek Statues .” (October 2002)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques .” (October 2002)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Boscoreale: Frescoes from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Early Cycladic Art and Culture .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Geometric and Archaic Cyprus .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Scenes of Everyday Life in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Greek Art in the Archaic Period .” (October 2003)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Symposium in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Roman Painting .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Tanagra Figurines .” (October 2004)
• Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Augustan Villa at Boscotrecase .” (October 2004)
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Greek PM: New Unique Experiences Key to Extending Tourist Season

Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaking at the “EU Tourism: Resilience in the Era of the Climate Crisis” forum on Rhodes. Photo source: Press Office of the Prime Minister

Extending the tourism season is one of Greece’s biggest challenges , said Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during the opening this week of the “EU Tourism: Resilience in the Era of the Climate Crisis” forum held on Rhodes .

Addressing the event, which was organized by HOTREC with the support of the  South Aegean Region and included the participation of the country’s travel and tourism bodies , Mitsotakis underlined the need to develop a new model of tourism that focuses on sustainability particularly in view of an accelerating climate change and its imminent impact.

In this direction, Mitsotakis also stressed the importance of tapping into Greece’s cultural wealth to create special interest tourism products which will contribute to the extension of the tourism season.

“Extending the season means you spread tourists out over more months. Hotels work for eight or nine months instead of six. The same is true for restaurants and all service providers,” said Mitsotakis, adding that efforts are being made to create unique experiences that would attract tourists to Greece all year round and help ease congestion during peak months.

“I can tell you that in Greece, more of this is happening. The season is starting earlier , it’s finishing later,” he said.

“Greece is already attracting more than 30-32 million visitors a year. Again, it’s not about the numbers. At the end of the day, it’s about how much people spend in Greece. You could envision a future where you have fewer tourists spending more , and maybe it would be economically, certainly environmentally, better off,” he said.

Photo source: Press Office of the Prime Minister

As part of efforts to extend the season, Mitsotakis said developing new experiences was key. “Not enough people come to Greece for what Greece has to offer culturally. Most people come for the beach and for the summer experience. We can do much more in terms of developing our cultural heritage and connecting it to our tourism product by offering integrated experiences. If tourism is about unique experiences, there is a lot Greece can do,” he said.

In this direction he went on to add that Greece can do more in terms of introducing the world to the country’s special interest forms of tourism.

Lastly, looking ahead, Mitsotakis said he envisions travelers who visit or who plan to visit Greece to think of the country “as the best destination in the world”.

During the “EU Tourism: Resilience in the Climate Crisis Era” forum, European tourism bodies signed a joint declaration pledging to take actions to address arising challenges. The declaration was signed by   Airports Council International Europe (ACI Europe) ,  Airlines for Europe (A4E) ,  Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) ,  European Travel Agents’ and Tour Operators’ Association (ECTAA) , European Exhibition Industry Alliance (EEIA),  European Regions Airline Association (ERA) , HOTREC, IAAPA (the global association for the attractions industry), IRU (the world road transport organization representing buses, coaches, trucks, and taxis) and the European Federation of Rural Tourism (Ruraltour).

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On Ikaria, the Greek island where people "forget to die," as one centenarian told longevity expert Dan Buettner , is one of a handful of Blue Zones around the globe where people live an inordinately long time. 

In 2009, Greek physicians and researchers found that 13% of Ikarians in their study were over 80, compared to about 1.5% of the global population and about 4% in North America and Europe. People on the island were 10 times more likely to live to 100 than Americans .

I have deep family roots on Ikaria, and for almost two decades, I've been running a cooking school out of the kitchen and garden of my village home. My pantry is culled from the traditions of the Mediterranean: chock-full of all the things that have long given food its flavor in this part of the world.

Here's what's in an Ikaria-inspired pantry:

Beans and legumes

These are among the seminal ingredients of the Ikarian way of eating. Adding them to your everyday meal plan is proven to increase longevity and can help you phase meat out of your diet. Try:

• Broad beans (aka, fava beans)
• Gigantes (giant beans)

I couldn't imagine my life or kitchen without garlic! It's the ultimate flavor-packing, health - providing natural ingredient. There's a virtual pharmacopeia of goodness in every clove.

Modern-day Ikarians swear by it. My daughter makes a preventive infusion of raw garlic, mountain or sage tea, ginger, and honey, which she consumes when the temperature drops or she feels a cold coming on — advice taken from our friend, Yiorgos Stenos, 91.

Garlic makes almost everything taste better. It sweetens up as it softens and cooks, lending an almost caramelized flavor to so many different foods.

Whole grains are an integral part of the Ikaria diet. Here are a few different types to keep on hand:

• Pasta, especially whole wheat pasta and gluten-free, high-protein, bean-based pastas, such as chickpea and lentil pastas

On Ikaria, myriad herbs grow wild and most of us can grow a few pots of fresh herbs at home, even if it's just on the windowsill. I use herbs with abandon in many of my recipes.

Most families have a cupboard packed with dried herbs, the therapeutic qualities of which are contained in the knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Basic dried herbs include: 

Nuts are an important ingredient in many of my plant-based recipes and traditionally are an important ingredient in Greek regional cooking. They grow abundantly throughout the country.

Here are a few of the most popular — and healthiest:

• Sesame seeds and tahini

Olives have been a staple in the Greek diet since prehistoric times, and they're one of the many preserves I always keep stocked.

In Greece, they're traditionally eaten on their own or in salads. I love to pair them with pantry staples like beans or pasta and other grains.

Olive oil is the defining food of the Mediterranean diet and an absolute must in the pantry. 

Many of the health benefits associated with the Mediterranean diet, and, by extension, the Ikaria diet, are attributed to the health properties of olive oil . I only use extra virgin oil, which simply means the oil is unrefined.

On Ikaria, many people, myself included, use sea salt that collects in the small natural salt basins that have formed along the island's rocky coastline over eons. It tastes better than regular table salt, which comes from mines and is heavily processed.  

This is one of my personal favorites. Consuming honey daily is one of the longevity secrets of the islanders. Honey is antibacterial , rich in antioxidants including flavonoids , and — unlike white sugar or artificial sweeteners — helps the body to regulate blood sugar levels . Many people here eat a spoonful every morning . 

You can add a liberal drizzle to your tea or a breakfast smoothie bowl, or whisk it into dressings.

Dried fruits

Figs and raisins are two dried fruits I always have on hand to use in all sorts of savory dishes, especially in salads and rice dishes.

Yogurt is a fermented food that has been part of the culinary tapestry of the Eastern Mediterranean for thousands of years. The traditional yogurt on Ikaria is produced with goat's milk and has a delicious sour flavor and creamy texture.

If goat's milk yogurt isn't to your liking, you might prefer the Greek yogurt commonly found in American supermarkets, which is similarly rich in probiotics.

Feta and similar cheeses

Almost all the cheese Ikarians make and eat is produced with goat's milk or sheep's milk, like feta. Much of it is naturally fermented.

Over the years of teaching mostly Americans who come to my classes, I've had many guests who are lactose intolerant but are able to enjoy the island's traditional goat's milk cheeses and even a glass or two of fresh goat's milk without a problem.

Diane Kochilas is the host and co-executive producer of " My Greek Table ," runs the Glorious Greek Cooking School on her native island Ikaria, and is the author of 18 books on Greek cuisine, including most recently, " The Ikaria Way: 100 Delicious Plant-Based Recipes Inspired by My Homeland, the Greek Island of Longevity ."

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From " The Ikaria Way: 100 Delicious Plant-Based Recipes Inspired By My Homeland, the Greek Island of Longevity ," by Diane Kochilas, Copyright © 2024 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.