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From the lens Answers to Your Questions About Ancient Greece.

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  • bloomingrose Apr 26, 2012 @ 3:38 pm | delete
    Back to pop a Squidoo blessing on this page: this is really excellent information. A teacher could make a whole unit just off of this lens.
  • JoyfulPamela Aug 11, 2011 @ 8:47 am | delete
    Oh, I'm so excited to find your pages!! As we are studying ancient cultures in our homeschool this year, this page and your others will be a fantastic resource for us. Thank you very much!! =D I'm adding this to our study lens. AngelBlessed!
  • Margo_Arrowsmith Apr 1, 2011 @ 11:59 am | delete
    1. I have been to that theater where you are pictured

    2. Angel Blessed and lensrolled to Born to Be Angelic and My Greek Odyssey
  • hotbrain Dec 11, 2010 @ 4:15 pm | delete
    What a great idea for a page! Angel blessed and enjoyed :)
  • WriterBuzz Oct 8, 2010 @ 4:29 am | delete
    Nice idea for a lens. Very informative. Gave you a quick thumbs up
  • AnneDam Aug 30, 2010 @ 5:16 am | delete
    I have a question,
    what were the political and economical benefits in ancient greece when people married?
  • Greekgeek Sep 2, 2010 @ 7:40 pm | delete
    Ooh, that's a good question, deserving an essay not a pat answer. Let me take a stab at it.

    Marriages were essentially political alliances between noble families, or between families of lower economic status, tying the fabric of the community together. Kinship with another family meant allies rather than enemies within the community. Aristocratic families regularly reinforced and renewed their alliances and obligations to each other through marriage. Marriage was always arranged by parents, or, if the man was over thirty, the bride's parents would negotiate with him directly.

    The most direct benefit, both political and economic, was children. One needed children to help with and inherit family businesses, farms and/or property, to keep property within the family, and to maintain the family line. Some families had special posts within the community that were hereditary, like the priests of certain cults (I think Eleusis was one). Children were also vital to the polis, which needed citizens.

    Who got the economic (from oikos, "household") benefit from the arrangement? The man would get a dowry (which he hoped was a rich one) from his young bride's family, and of course a woman to supervise his household slaves and maintain the house -- think of Penelope as an idealized version of what a man hoped for in a wife. Respectable women were not allowed outside the house much and couldn't work in public, so marriage for a woman was simply the only way she could survive. The bride's family would get someone to take their daughter off their hands so they no longer had to support her.

    As you can see, the bride's family didn't get as much out the deal, since they were paying to have a girl taken off their hands. That's why female infants were sometimes exposed at birth.. But still, daughters were a useful bargaining chip. Women were classified like slaves, as property, a valuable resource. Women did not have any say in their choice of "master" -- parents or husband -- they just prayed for a good one. If a wife failed to produce children, the husband would divorce her, which again shows what the basic goal of marriage was. The bride was at least somewhat protected from being divorced by the fact that her husband would have to repay the dowry if he got rid of her. It's hard to imagine putting up with a system like that, but girls were raised from birth with this as The Way Things Were; they knew of no other way to live, to marry, and to have a family.
  • Nickki101 Nov 24, 2009 @ 3:21 pm | delete
    thank you for studying all this info for us, you are a good person for that, sorry but i have on more question, are ancient greek houses still in use today, and if they are what for?
  • Greekgeek Nov 24, 2009 @ 10:32 pm | delete
    The short answer is: I don't know for sure!

    However, I can make some educated guesses. I know that lot of ancient Greek houses were made of materials like mud brick and wood that would've crumbled away by now. Some houses were made partly with stone, so it's possible they've been kept up and reused. However, I doubt it: that would be big news in archaeology, and I think I would've heard of such a house.

    However, I have heard of OTHER kinds of ancient Greek buildings surviving. Big, important buildings tended to be made out of stronger materials, so they were more likely to last. For example:

    1) The Parthenon, the big temple of Athena in Athens, was converted to a Christian church, then a Turkish mosque. I'm sure other Greek temples have gotten turned into churches.
    2) In modern times, the Stoa of Attalos -- an ancient Greek shopping mall in Athens -- has been rebuilt from ruins and turned into the Agora Museum, displaying artifacts found in nearby excavations.
    3) On the island of Naxos, if you look in medieval houses and walls around the main town, you'll see bits and pieces of beautiful white marble in walls, steps, doorways. They're chunks of an old Greek temple that used to stand at the edge of the harbor! So few pieces of the original temple are left standing that we don't even know what god the temple belonged to.

    I'm betting that some of the stones of modern Greek buildings are recycled from old Greek houses and other temples.

    Hope that helps. Great question! :)
  • Rae May 21, 2009 @ 8:56 pm | delete
    Thanks for the obvious tedious work in preparing and providing the wealth of information here. I will be going to Greece for the first time in Sept and have begun to lean the history and more on these pages. The best I have seen yet.
    Again thanks for sharing your knowledge.
  • Greekgeek Feb 28, 2009 @ 12:45 am | in reply to school kid | delete
    Argh, it's far too late to help you with schoolwork -- I'm sorry, I've been doing my own lately, writing a dissertation! But just in case anyone else asks: I don't know THAT much about ancient sports, except that in Greece they were often done as part of religious festivals, and they rotated between 4 different cities, one each year. Olympus was the most important, so that's why the Olympics were/are every 4 years! There were foot races, discus throwing, wrestling, boxing, chariot races... that's what I remember off the top of my head. Athletes got honored with statues and inscriptions, and sometimes left offerings in temples thanking the gods for their victories, so that's how we know about them. Also people talked about sports then as now, so you read about great charioteers and racers in classical Greek literature, in comic plays, etc.

    Here's a link that may help: The Ancient Olympics
  • unknown Jan 11, 2009 @ 4:57 pm | delete
    how long was pluto of aincent greece how long was he a god?
  • Kitsune64 Oct 4, 2008 @ 3:24 am | delete
    Fantastic lens, with a lot of great information. I especially like the maps. Nice job!
  • school kid Jun 15, 2008 @ 12:19 am | delete
    do you know much about the aincent sports and how we today know of them?
  • isabella May 7, 2008 @ 2:41 am | delete
    5 * for this lens,too. We are waiting for this lens at the Greece headquarters!
  • Greekgeek Mar 9, 2008 @ 6:36 pm | delete
    jane: hearthfire is the central fire kept inside the home before electricity. Most meals were cooked over it, and it provided warmth and light. A fireplace is one kind of hearth fire, and even though it's just a luxury nowadays, think how families gather around it on cold, dark days, even hang stockings on it at Christmas. A hearth is an old symbol of "home sweet home," plus it's what people used to cook before stoves were invented, so it makes people think of a good home-cooked meal.
  • jane Mar 9, 2008 @ 5:33 pm | delete
    what is a hearthfire?
  • Greekgeek Feb 29, 2008 @ 6:08 am | delete
    Uri -- cross fingers -- with a little help from friends in the SquidU lounge, I think I've fixed it. Thank you very much for alerting me to the problem!

    jersychick-- I'm so sorry. I've thunk and I've thunk, and I've done some searching, but all I can come up with is "division of labor by gender." I have a feeling there's a term from anthropology that I'm forgetting, but I'm stumped!
  • Uri Feb 27, 2008 @ 1:53 pm | delete
    The list of Greek/Roman names got mixed up towards the end.
  • jersychick16 Feb 25, 2008 @ 10:32 pm | delete
    what is the term described as a society where peoples roles are based on whether they are men or women?
  • Greekgeek Feb 15, 2008 @ 2:22 pm | delete
    Sam: The olives are ground up and mashed into paste by millstones, then the paste is squeezed by some kind of press to get out the oil and water. That liquid is put into some kind of container where you can skim the oil off the top of the water. [url=http://www.oliveoilsource.com/mill_and_press_facts2.htm#separating]Here is a great website[/url] about how olive oil is made today which has pictures of some old (although probably not classical) equipment. The machines used today are more complicated and efficient, but the ancient Greeks followed the same steps using simpler equipment.
  • sam Feb 14, 2008 @ 3:20 pm | delete
    how did the greeks get oliveoil?
  • Hobgoblin Feb 7, 2008 @ 9:15 am | delete
    Cool lens. I found it very informative. Sort of a 101 things you wanted to know about Greece but were afraid to ask:-) Good work.

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Greekgeek

Storyteller, former Latin teacher, student of mythology and the ancient world: I've worn many hats, but always I've dabbled in computers and the web.

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