Greek Influence On Western Civilization

A.

The geographical layout of the country of Greece is unique. It is a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea and this offers many assets including trade routes and sea life for sustenance. The geographical feature with the most impact on the area, though, is the rugged mountain range running down the middle of the country. Seventy to eighty percent of the land is covered in mountains. These provided both strengths and weaknesses. The mountains are large enough to provide natural fresh water rivers which provided good drinking water and also a natural defense against enemies. The narrow strips of land along the coastlines were not suitable for many crops, so the Greeks were limited in their food production. They became known for their olives

Two areas of influence include the literature and writing and its polytheistic belief system. The two often intertwine, in fact. Greece adopted the Phoenician script and developed their own alphabet from that around the eighth century BCE by adding vowels (Acrobatiq, 2014). The Greeks are well known for the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. Scholars disagree on whether or not Homer was an actual person or not. The Homeric writings are stories of the epic deeds of heroes and gods and goddesses and the influences they have on people of the world and natural events such as hurricanes and thunderstorms. Hessiod, Archilochus and Sappho were poets who followed and wrote in the style of Homer. Around the 5th century BCE historic writing began in Ancient Greece. Herodotus is the most well-known of the ancient historic writers and his works have influenced many historians to this day. As Greek culture spread throughout the area, so did its literature. Egypt had one of the largest libraries of Greek literature called the Library of Alexandria. It was known to contain over 500,000 papyrus scrolls containing the history, literature and philosophy of the Greeks. Unfortunately, this library burned to the ground around 53 BCE and all of the literature there was lost (Ancient Greece,

This expansion led to the greatest cultural influences in the empire, slavery. It is estimated that 1 in 3 people in now Italy were slaves and 1 in 5 across the empire were slaves. This forced labor situation formed the social and family structure. Businesses used slaves as did households. Some were used for the most menial of jobs, but they were used all across society except in public office. Slaves were taken as a conquest of war and also through private industry. The slave trade was active and strong during this time. As slaves were brought back to Rome and other large cities, they brought with them their home culture which influenced Roman culture. Slavery was considered moral and necessary and slaves became almost invisible to the average Roman. The early Romans did not believe in the natural right of an individual to freedom (Cartwright,