Ancient Greek ABC Book
Gracen Beilstein
P is for Philip II
- King Philip became the Macedonians king in 359 BC.
O is for Oracle
- King Philip created a strong army and planned to unite the Greek city-states under his rule and defeat the Persian Empire.
- An oracle is a sacred shrine where a preist or priestess spoke for a god or goddess.
- Philip made a strong army and defeated many of the Greek city-states and took control of them.
- After a couple of years Philip fought for the control of Amphipolis and ended up succeeding and even got many more victories over the next few decades.
- The most famous oracle was the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Its oracle chamber was located deep inside the temple.
http://www.biography.com/people/philip-ii-of-macedon-21322787#first-years-in-power
- In this specific oracle the room had volcanic smoke coming up from the floor which was from a crack in the earth.
Q is for Queen Hera
- Queen Hera is the Queen of the gods.
- She is the goddess of marrige.
- Queen Hera was actually known for her jealous and revengful nature against her husbands lovers and their illegitimate offspring.
R is for Ritual
- The people in ancient Greece would go to the oracle and talk to the preists about what they were having trouble with. The priests would then go tell the gods or goddesses any worries anyone had. The people beleived that the gods could give them advice for any of their problems and help them with it.
- A ritual is word or action that is part of a religious ceremony.
- Hera stayed faithful to her husband and eventually came to represent monogamy and fidelity.
- One of the Greeks rituals was that they worshipped the gods in temples or at home. They use praying as one of their rituals.
http://www.ancient.eu/Hera/
N is for New History and Science
- After these rituals the Greeks hoped that the gods would reward them.
- Greek philosophers tried to answer questions on how people can find peace within each other and many other questions.
http://quatr.us/greeks/religion/oracle.htm
- The main ritual for Greece was giving offerings to the gods most of them would be an animals given but some people also gave cooked foods and pottery for gifts too.
- They looked more closely at the concept that humans are the mesure of all things and they turned to philosophy, mathematics, and science to figure that out.
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/whic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?zid=0769e7eef519dffc52f95d3e0369f225&action=2&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CCX2897200404&userGroupName=tlc199095657&jsid=229cf80099679dcf7119f9ccbc6f98
- One new idea they came up with was to learn how to write down history so they started keeping track of it once they taught themselves to write.
S is for Sophists
M is for Myths
- Sophists are a group of philosophers.
- They also came up with new ideas to study science and history for example Herodotus wrote down history of the Persian Wars and Thucydides was a greek historian who wrote about the Peloponnesian War.
- A myth is a traditional story that expalins the practices or beleifs of a people, or something in the natural world.
- The sophists traveled from polis to polis. They made a living by teaching.
- The Greek city-states beleived many of the same myths.
http://www.ushistory.org/civ/5.asp
- They taught science, math and history but they mostly taught rhetoric which is speech and debate.
L is for Land and Sea Battles
- Greeks myths showed the religious beleifs of the ancient Greeks.
- Sophists were also known for how well they could speak to the people and could even convince people that up was down and that night was day etc...
- Xerxes invaded Greece with about 200,000 troops and thousands of ships. The Greeks city-states had to come together to fight off the Persians.
- Most of the Greeks stories or myths were about their gods and there are still some myths about the Greeks gods today.
- Themistocles directed the Greek navel forces and made a battle plan for the Greeks but they still couldn't fight off the Persians.
K is for the Hellenistic Kings
- A traitor on the Greeks side showed a trail that led the Persians right behinds the Greeks so that they could attack from behind.
http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%202%20GREEKS/Sophists.htm
http://greece.mrdonn.org/myths.html
- The kings usually would give jobs to the Greeks and Macedonias. This allowed them to keep control of the governments.
T is for Thucydides
- Thucydides was a famous historian in ancienet Greece and he was a general in the Peloponnesian War.
- The Greeks had a warship called the trireme which was a light wooden ship that had a battered ram at the bow of the ship which alwed it to disable enemies vessles. This special ship was very expensive to make and it was 35 meters long, a 5 meter beam, and there were 170 rowers on it.
- Anyone who served in the government of the kings had to speak Greek.
- He acted like a reporter and would go around and see battle sites, and looked at documents. He only accepted actual eyewitnesses reporting events.
- He beleived that only humans affected history not gods.
http://www.ancient.eu/Greek_Warfare/
J is for Trojan horse
- The kings created new cities and military posts and encouraged the Greeks and Macedonias to live in the conquered land so that they could become architects, artists, engineers, and philosophers for the land.
- These kings imported many things to and from different countries and used their own money to build palaces,extravagant jewelry, and sculptures and they also donated to zoos, museums, and universites.
- Thucydides later wrote the book called "The History of the Peloponnesian Wars" and used all the information from his own experiances in war and eye witnesses.
- The Greeks wanted to get back at the Trojans so they built a giant hollow wooden horse to trick them.
- The Greeks had one soldier stay out of the horse and tell the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena.
http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/People/Thucydides/
U is for Odysseus
- The Trojans didn't want to upset Athena so they took it into the city of Troy and set it up in Athena's temple.
- One famous hero of the Trojan War was named Odysseus.
http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hellenistic-greece
- The book called Odyssey is about how Odysseus got home after going to Troy for the war and tells how he faced some witches, storms, and monsters along the way.
- The best Greek soldiers got inside the horse and hid in there until all of the Trojan's were alseep and then they snuck out of the horse and attacked the Trojan's and won the war!
- It is said the it took Odysseus 10 years to accomplish getting to Greece after the war in Troy.
V is for Socrates
- The NASA space mission named the mission the Ulysses mission which is after Odysseus' more known roman name and it was called this to represent his long journy from Troy to his home called Greece.
http://quatr.us/greeks/religion/myths/trojanhorse.htm
- Socrates was a sculpter but, he also loved philosophy and spent most of his time teaching.
- Socrates beleived that absolute truth and all real knowledge come from within each person.
- While Socrates was trying to search for truth he came up with a new method of questioning and it was called the Socratic method.
http://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/odysseus.html
W is for Hellenistic Writers
- Hellenistic rulers very strongly supported gifted writers.
- Socrates is best known for inventing the teaching practice of pedagogy which is the method and practice of teaching.
- Appolonius was one famous writer that wrote an epic poem called Argonautica which is one of the very little poems we have left since back then.
H is for Hippocrates
- Since the ruers supported the writers so much the poets and writers made a very large amount of literature buring the Hellenistic Era. Sadly though we have lost many of the writings and only a little have survived since then.
http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/People/Socrates/
- Art and literature in the Hellenistic era started revolving around exuberant because of the Greek language becoming the official language of the Hellenistic world.
- Hippocrate beleived that diseases came from natural causes and most people thought that evil spirits caused diseases.
http://ancient-greece.org/history/helleninstic.html
G is for Greek gods
X is for Xerxes
- Hippocrates acted like a doctor in that he traveled the world to help the sick and would then use ideas to diagnose different diseases.
- Xerxes became the king of Persia in 480 B.C.
- Many ancient and modern scholars said that Xerxes was a tyrant and that his rule over ancient greece was very harsh.
- The Greeks worshipped Greek gods and goddesses.
- He made a list of rules about how doctors should use their skills to help patients and those rules are listed in the Hippocratic Oath.
- He took his 200,000 soldiers and attacked Greece with thousands of warships and supply vessles.
- The Greek city-states had to band together so that they could fight off Xerxes abd his troops.
- All of the greek gods and goddesses were related to one another.
- Around 60 medical writings that bear Hippocrates name have survived, most of which he has not written.
B is for Babylon
http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/xerxes-I.html
- The Greeks beleived that the gods weren't all-powerful beings and that they acted like humans, meaning that they could marry and have children.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Hippocrates
Y is for Geometry
I is for Plato's Ideas
- Babylon was a Greek city-state.
- Another form of geometry was called solid geometry. A scientist named Archimedes studdied solid geometry.
- One form of geometry in ancient greece was called plane geometry which was one branch of mathematics. This shows how points,lines, angles, and sufaces all match up to each other.
- One of Plato's ideas was called the Republic and it showed what his plan was for an ideal government and society.
- The Greeks used geometry to figure out and prove if things were true.
Z is for Zeus
- Zeus was the king of the gods.
- He was the god of sky,rain, and lightening.
- Archimedes stddied different ball-lke shapes and he figured out how to measure pi which is a number that is used to measure the area of circles.
- In 323 BC, Babylon was under the control of a guy who was known as Alexander the Great.
- The idea was that he organized the society into 3 different groups.
- His idea was that in order to have the best government you would have the more gifted people running it.
- Zeus was said to have been a great punisher. Those who did wrong or didn't obe't obey the gods would be severely punished.
- The 12 most important gods lived on Mount Olympus and the Greeks were not scared of their gods because they acted like children by playing games and doing tricks.
http://quatr.us/greeks/science/math/
- Even thoguh Zeus made some bad punishments he was also a peace maker and he is famous for bringing together Apollo and Hercules after they had been fighting over the first lyre.
- Babylon was polytheistic, meaning everyone beleived in more than one god.
http://www.ancient.eu/zeus/
http://www.ancient.eu/babylon/
- The idea was that the groups would be split up as kings in the first group, warriors in the second, and the rest of the people were in the third.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881990.html
http://www.bible-history.com/babylonia/BabyloniaHistory_of_Babylonia.htm
- Babylon declined after Alexander the Great died in 323 BC.
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/view-government-408433
A is for Aeschylus
- Aeschylus was the first Greek dramatist.
- He was a tragic poet, meaning he wrote about tragic stories.
F is for Fable
- A fable was a story that is supposed to teach a lesson to the people.
- He is said to have written about 90 plays, but only 7 have survived.
- Fables were usually allegorical myths told from person to person for entertainment but, also for teaching a moral or lesson.
- In some fables animals would speak and act like people.
- One of his plays was three plays in one and it talked about revenge and murder. This gave a message to the Greeks because he was trying to prove that good always triumphs evil in the end.
E is for Epicurus
- Fables were usually meant to be funny and represent human strengths and weaknesses. At the end of every fable there was usually a moral or useful truth.
http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/People/Aeschylus/
- Epicurus founded a philosophy called Epicureanism in ancient Greece.
http://www.ancient.eu/article/664/
- Epicurus was a philosopher that taught at a school called the Garden.
- Epicurus beleived that the way to be happy was to avoid pain and for him, pleasure meant spending time with family and friends.
http://quatr.us/environment/cavalry.htm
D is for Drama
- The Greeks were the first to create and perform drama.
C is for Cavalry
- Drama is a story that is told through a seris of words and actions played by characters.
- In greece the actors would perform on stage as entertainment.
- After a little while there was a maximum of only 3 people on stage at a time.
http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Theatre_History/Theahis_2.html
- Epicurus taught his students how to be happy even through hard times and how to always keep a positive attitude.
- Cavalry was a part of the army in which the soldiers rode on horses.
- Cavalry was the strongest force for the Greeks.
- The richer men are usually the ones on horseback becasue they were the ones that could afford a horse.
Table of contents
- They were not able to use a horse until it was fully grow because it would have to be strong enough to carry a man with all of his armor on.
N New History and Science
O Oracle
P Philip II
Q Queen Hera
R Rituals
S Sophists
T Thucydides
U Odysseus
V Socrates
W Hellenistic Writings
X Xerxes
Y Geometry
Z Zeus
A Aeschylus
B Babylon
C Cavalry
D Drama
E Epicurus
F Fable
G Greek gods
H Hippocrates
I Plato's Ideas
J Trojan horse
K Hellenistic Kings
L Land and Sea Battles
M Myths