Polis

the Greek city is very much a history of rituals that helped the polis to maintain a balance between its nucleated centre and its rural periphery. These rituals defined the community and kept the polis embedded in the land that was believed to sustain it.” Based on the knowledge provided by the quotation, one can see how important myth was to the communities in ancient Greece. Rituals based off myth was needed to sustain the polis. It made the cities and surrounding areas in ancient Greece…

idea of the oligarchs vs. the democrats which Socrates played a major role in. Socrates was known to be a supporter of oligarchy which is a system of government where only the best few rule and made all the decisions for the polis: oligarchs were however unpopular with the polis because it was quite tyrannical and they were more in favour of democracy. An example of where Socrates presents his favour towards oligarchy is revealed when he questions the jurors using an analogy of horses “Do you…

that desires such riches? Or is pleonexia the driving force behind a person’s desire to live well? After analyzing both philosophers, it is my belief that the desire of wanting to live well is the superior reason as to why people disobey and destroy polis. After all, as beings, competition amongst one another to achieve a greater good, whether for personal or public gain, is…

interests and the interests of his polis, emphasized by his position as King of Thebes, causes a tragic realization and emphasis on the many values of the people of his time and culture. The biggest issue Oedipus is faced with is his importance to his polis. With the polis being an essential part of Greek identity, Oedipus holds the issue of the ensuing plague as a high priority. This traces to the Greek importance of harmony and order for without these in the polis the Greek people are very…

has been debated for many years but the clear answer is and always will be Athens. Their advancements in art, science and government make them a far better polis than Sparta. Without Athens we would not be where we are today. Athens left an everlasting effect on the world, while Sparta did not. This essay will prove that Athens is the better polis. Athens and Sparta were very similar in many ways but they had one major difference that divided them in history, government. Spartans focused mainly…

In Books II-IV of Plato’s Republic, Socrates creates an ideal polis, and in doing so finds justice in the soul. The two foundational principles of the ideal city that Socrates creates are self-sufficiency and one-person-one-art, referred to today as specialization. Individual people are not self-sufficient, so the citizens of the city must take up a profession and trade with each other. Socrates and his companions are successful in their search for justice, and are able to reach the answer by…

Ancient Greece during the archaic and the classical period consisted mainly of small towns that were called “Polis”. The majority of these “Polis” or towns controlled small regions of land and were populated by some hundreds of citizens. However, the two largest “Polis” known as Athens and Sparta were much more powerful and influential than the rest. In a nutshell, Athens was a democratic and trade focused government while on the other hand Sparta was a military focused society with an oligarchy…

Spartan Women by Sarah B. Pomeroy, is a book on the roles of women in Sparta. The book revolves the daily lives of Spartan women and goes in depth about the elite and lower classes. The women of Sparta are commonly believed to be unimportant and to have an insignificant role in society. Most primary sources were not from Sparta itself and were usually written by other people such as Plutarch and Xenophon. Pomeroy work on ancient Greek history has led her to try and better understand the women…

Greece (600-200 B.C.) is often credited with ideas of government advancements as well as philosophy achievements. Ideals of freedom began emerging from the polis. The polis held much more importance than a location; rather it was the center of humanistic thought. The time period offered rationalism, humanism, and democracy based from the polis influence. As a result, both humanism and rationalism lead to the widely accepted belief that the human mind contained the highest and some of the most…

just in different ways. The Greeks had a worldview of idealized realism while the Romans preferred a more pragmatic realism. The governments were also related especially by the term: polis. The Greeks were all under one polis as equals in a direct democracy while the Romans considered their empire to be one huge polis. The Roman based their culture on the Greeks, so naturally, there would be some similarities. The remains of the Greek times surrounded the Romans. The Romans, in my opinion, were…