The Greek people had many different languages and religions. How did geography influence the development of ancient Greece? Rich farmland led to dependence on agriculture. Excellent harbors encouraged seafaring trade.

Barley was used to make porridge or to make flour so that the Greeks could have bread to eat. Barley was also a big ingredient in wine. Olives were used to make oil such as olive oil and the oil was used for both cooking and for burning lamps so that the Greeks could have light.

The Ancient Greeks used farming strategies like crop rotation, and fields were left fallow (without crops) to allow the soil to recover and build up moisture. They sometimes dug trenches around trees to catch rainwater for the crops. The Ancient Greeks used mostly basic tools for farming.

Helot, a state-owned serf of the ancient Spartans. The ethnic origin of helots is uncertain, but they were probably the original inhabitants of Laconia (the area around the Spartan capital) who were reduced to servility after the conquest of their land by the numerically fewer Dorians.

Their biggest enemy were the Persians, who came from an area around modern day Iran. The Persian kings tried to conquer Greece a few times between 490 to 449BC, but the Greeks managed to fight them off. In the end, it was the Greeks who conquered Persia, when Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Empire in the 330s.

While the Athenian city-state enjoyed a period of democracy, Sparta was a military culture. Although Athenian citizens enjoyed certain freedoms during the time of their democracy, the idea of who made up of a citizen was very strict. Basically, the two city-states didn’t understand each other.

The natural geographical formations of ancient Greece helped form three distinct regions-the Peloponnese, Central Greece, and Northern Greece. The Peloponnese is situated on the southernmost area of the peninsula. It is attached to central Greece by a small strip of land called the Isthmus of Corinth.

The primary causes were that Sparta feared the growing power and influence of the Athenian Empire. The Peloponnesian war began after the Persian Wars ended in 449 BCE. The two powers struggled to agree on their respective spheres of influence, absent Persia’s influence.

Athens lost its dominance in the region to Sparta until both were conquered less than a century later and made part of the kingdom of Macedon.

The Peloponnesian War was a war fought in ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta—the two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece at the time (431 to 405 B.C.E.). The war featured two periods of combat separated by a six-year truce.

Sparta is far superior to Athens because their army was fierce and protective, girls received some education and women had more freedom than in other poleis. First, the army of Sparta was the strongest fighting force in Greece. This made Sparta one of the safest cities to live in.

Athens was forced to surrender, and Sparta won the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Spartans terms were lenient. First, the democracy was replaced by on oligarchy of thirty Athenians, friendly to Sparta. The Delian League was shut down, and Athens was reduced to a limit of ten triremes.

Chapter 4 The Ancient Greeks

Sparta was leader of an alliance of independent states that included most of the major land powers of the Peloponnese and central Greece, as well as the sea power Corinth. Thus, the Athenians had the stronger navy and the Spartans the stronger army.

The Spartans valued discipline, obedience, and courage above all else. Spartan men learned these values at an early age, when they were trained to be soldiers.

Slavery was an accepted practice in ancient Greece, as in other societies of the time. Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 5th and 6th centuries BC, with an average of three or four slaves per household, except in poor families.

Hoplite Fighting The Spartans fought in the hoplite style which was the hallmark of ancient Greek warfare. Their massed ranks of men wore body armor and helmets. They carried round shields fixed by a pair of straps to their left arms.

Depending on the type of Spartan the height of a Spartan II (fully armoured) is 7 feet tall (spartan 3) 6’7 feet tall (spartan II) 7 feet tall (spartan 4), and have a reinforced endoskeleton.

During the Punic Wars, Sparta was an ally of the Roman Republic. Subsequently, Sparta became a free city under Roman rule, some of the institutions of Lycurgus were restored, and the city became a tourist attraction for the Roman elite who came to observe exotic Spartan customs.

Leonidas