Athinais And Sparta ; The Culture Essay, Research Paper

Athinais

Athinais was one of the first city states. Each of these independent provinces consisted of a metropolis and the part that surrounded it. Athens had a male monarch, as did other Greek provinces. Harmonizing to tradition, the first male monarch of Athens was named Cecrops. Kings ruled the city state until 682 B.C. Get downing that twelvemonth, elected functionaries called archons headed the authorities of Athens. The general assembly, which consisted of all grownup male citizens of Athens, elected the archons to annual footings. After their term of office, the archons joined the Areopagus, a council of elder solons. The Areopagus judged slaying tests and prepared political affairs for the ballot of the general assembly.

Hippias fell from power in 510 B.C. , and Cleisthenes, the caput of a taking household, became the most powerful solon in Athens. About 508 B.C. , the Athenians adopted a new fundamental law proposed by Cleisthenes, which made the province a democracy. This fundamental law was an unwritten one, but it stayed in consequence with small alteration for 100s of old ages. The fundamental law kept the thoughts of Solon, but it besides provided for new conditions that had developed since Solon & # 8217 ; s regulation.

Until Cleisthenes & # 8217 ; clip, citizenship in Athens had been based on blood relationship to the four Ionic folks that had originally settled Attica. A adult male had to belong to a family ( brotherhood ) to be a citizen. Under Cleisthenes & # 8217 ; system, all work forces 18 old ages of age and older were registered as citizens and as members of the deme ( small town or town ) in which they lived. In clip, rank in the demes became familial, and so a adult male might belong to a deme in which he did non really unrecorded. Cleisthenes divided the demes into 30 groups called trittyes, which, in bend, were divided into 10 new folks. Each of the 10 folk was made up of 3 trittyes from different parts of Athens. Thus, members of each folk came from assorted households and different parts of the city state.

Athinais led the imperium into the Peloponnesian War ( 431-404 B.C. ) against Sparta and its Alliess. Sparta won this war and remained the most powerful Grecian province until 371 B.C. , when it was defeated by Thebes.

Athinais ne’er regained its political leading. But the metropolis remained Greece & # 8217 ; s rational centre. Peoples still came to Athens as a centre of civilization under Macedonian regulation, and subsequently under Roman regulation. For 100s of old ages, affluent Roman households sent their boies to Athinais to finish their instruction. However, Athens lost its place as a cultural centre in A.D. 529, when the Byzantine emperor Justinian closed the metropolis & # 8217 ; s schools of doctrine.

From approximately 1100 to 1400, during the Middle Ages, Athens declined even further. As the power of Byzantium weakened, assorted Italian and other European swayers occupied the ignored metropolis. In 1456, Athens fell to the Ottoman Empire. The Islamic Ottomans did little to reconstruct the Christian metropolis to its former glorification.

In 1833, after the Greek War of Independence, Athens became the capital of the new land of Greece. The first male monarch, Otto I, or Otho I, and H

is advisors were German. They used modern Western European ideas–such as public squares and consecutive streets–in their urban planning designs along the northern and eastern inclines of the Acropolis. The population grew to about 500,000 by the mid-1920’s.

Sparta

The people belonged to three categories. The Spartans themselves were descended from the Dorians, a people who invaded the Grecian peninsula in the 1100 & # 8217 ; s B.C. They were the governing category of Sparta and were the lone 1s who had full rights of citizenship. They enslaved the earlier Grecian peoples of Laconia, the Achaeans and Ionians. These enslaved Greeks, who were called serfs ( marked HEHL uhts ) , outnumbered the Spartans. Some of the non-Spartan Greeks escaped captivity. They were non citizens, but they lived in Sparta as free people. This group was known as the perioeci ( marked pehr EE EE sy ) .

The Numberss of the three categories varied widely during Sparta & # 8217 ; s long history. Some governments estimate that at the tallness of Spartan power there were approximately 25,000 citizens, an unknown figure of perioeci, and every bit many as 250,000 serfs.

Every Spartan male belonged to the province from the clip of his birth. A male child was left to the attention of his female parent until he was seven old ages of age, when he was enrolled in a company of 15 members, all of whom were kept under rigorous subject. From the age of seven, every male child had to take his repasts with his company in a public dining hall. The bravest male child in a company was made captain. The others obeyed his bids and dullard such penalties as he decided they should hold.

As a consequence of this system, the Spartan work forces became tough, proud, disciplined, and noted for stubborn conservativism and for brevity and straightness of address. From childhood, life was one uninterrupted test of endurance. All the gentler feelings were suppressed.

Spartan adult females, on the other manus, lived the freest life of any adult females in Greece. As misss, they engaged in sports, and as adult females, they ran their ain families. They engaged in concern, and many became affluent and influential. Aristotle tells us that adult females owned two-fifths of the land in Sparta.

The Dorians who settled in Sparta extended their control over all Laconia at an early day of the month. In the 700 & # 8217 ; s B.C. , they conquered Messenia, the rich agriculture part to the West of Mount Taygetus. Sparta failed to suppress the metropoliss of Arcadia but forced them to come in the Peloponnesian League. The members of the conference were obliged to follow Sparta in war. By 500 B.C. , this conference included most metropoliss in southern and cardinal Greece.

Sparta conquered Athens, the leader of the powerful Athenian Empire, in the hard-fought Peloponnesian War. In 404 B.C. , the Athenians were forced to accept a mortifying peace pact. But the leading won by Sparta was ephemeral. The Spartans ruled over the other Grecian provinces so cruelly that they revolted and threw off the Spartan yoke. At the conflict of Leuctra, in 371 B.C. , Sparta lost everlastingly its claim to domination in Greece. But it remained powerful for the following 200 old ages. In 146 B.C. , Sparta came under the control of Rome.