Greek Culture pgs. 209-216

Read Pages 209-216 in your history book. Complete the fill in the blank as you read. Like other people of the ancient world, the Greeks believed in Gods and Goddesses. The Greeks, however, did not think of their Gods as all-powerful beings. Zeus was the king of the Olympian Gods, while Athena was the Goddess of wisdom and crafts. Apollo was worshipped as the God of the sun and poetry. Festivals honoring the Gods and Goddesses were an important part of Greek life. Each city-state scheduled public feasts and sacrifices. The Greeks believed that each person had a fate or destiny. Certain events were going to happen no matter what they did. They also believed in prophecy, or a prediction about the future. Greek poems and stories are some of the oldest literature in Western civilization. For hundreds of years, Europeans and Americans used ancient Greek works as models for writing their own literature. The first Greek stories were epics. Two great epics of ancient Greece were the Iliad and the Odyssey. The poet Homer composed them during the 700s BCE. According to Greek stories, a prince of Troy falls in love with Helen, the wife of Greek king, and kidnaps her. The kidnapping angers the Greeks, who attack Troy in revenge. The Trojans think they have won the war and that the horse is a victory prize from the Greeks. The Trojans roll the giant horse into the city. The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus, a Greek hero of the Trojan War. It describes his long trip home after the fall of Troy. Greeks believed the Iliad and the Odyssey were more than stories. They looked at the epics as real story. A fable is a short tale that teaches a lesson. In most of Aesop's fables, animals speak and act like people. These stories are often funny and show human weaknesses and strengths. Aesop's fables were told during the time that is known as the Golden Age of Greece. During this period, art, philosophy, architecture, and literature flourished. For 200 years, Aesop's fables were a part of Greek oral tradition. This means that the stories were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. The ancient Greeks created and performed the first dramas. A drama is a story told mainly through the words and actions of a cast of characters. Aeschylus was the earliest Greek dramatist. One of his dramas is a set of three plays called the Oresteia. Sophocles was a great Athenian writer. In his plays, Sophocles accepted suffering as real part of life. He also stressed courage and understanding. Another leading Greek dramatist was Euripides. Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides wrote about ordinary human beings in realistic situations. In early Greek dramas, a group of performers, called chorus, presenting the story through singing and dancing. The ancient Greeks excelled in arts and architecture. They created works that expressed the ideals of reason, balance, and harmony. Sculpture decorated many Greek temples. The human body was the favorite subject of Greek artists.