What it was like to be an Ancient Greek_SAMPLE by Collins

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First published in 2025

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ISBN 978-0-00-870054-6

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With love to Rosy, my favourite classicist

A HIGHLY ADVANCED SOCIETY

Who Were the Ancient Greeks?

Around 3,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks created one of the world’s most advanced and impactful civilisations.

More than seven million people occupied large areas of rocky, mountainous land in southern Europe, which they named Hellas. About half of them lived on the mainland in an area that is now known as Greece. The remainder built their homes along the coastline and on hundreds of small islands in what is now Italy, Turkey and north Africa.

At this time, the Greeks called themselves Hellenes. They organised themselves into individual city‑states rather than forming one large nation or an empire.

Each state, known as a polis , was run separately from the others. The people living in them all shared a similar culture and they spoke the same language, but each polis had its own customs and laws and rulers.

The largest and richest of these states included Athens, Corinth, Delphi, Sparta and Thebes. These cities fought many violent battles with each other until Athens and Sparta gradually emerged as the most powerful. These two rival cities were at war for decades, and Athens eventually came out on top. It was the most important city in Hellas when the states finally came together in the fourth century bce . Athens became

the magnificent capital of Greece just over 2,000 years later.

Alexander the Great was their most famous leader, ruling from 336 to 323 bce . Under him, the Greeks established themselves as the dominant power in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa. At one point, his enormous empire stretched from Egypt to India.

Alexander was a superb military commander but a ruthless dictator. His armies conquered so much new territory that it was difficult to rule or defend these areas properly. This meant his empire didn’t last very long. However, even when it began to break up, Alexander’s conquests across the world meant that many aspects of the Greeks’ language, art and ideas spread far and wide.

This is important because the ancient Greeks were highly advanced and sophisticated compared to other countries of the world. Most

of them worked as farmers and fishermen to feed their families, but others studied hard to become brilliant astronomers, navigators and philosophers.

Some Greeks worked as expert traders and teachers, artists and athletes – even scientists, although the Greek language didn’t have a word to describe what we think of as science today.

The ancient Greeks’ finest artworks and their greatest inventions were later copied by the Romans when they began to establish their own empire. This was even larger than Alexander’s and based in the same area.

The Romans weren’t the only people to admire the wisdom and learning of the ancient Greek civilisation. Their knowledge and culture spread so widely that the ancient Greeks still influence how we live our lives today, and in some surprising ways.