Ancient Greece

Daniela Boccadisi

Global History

Ancient Greece highly influenced and contributed many attributes to Western Civilization. For example we recieved philosophy, geometry, sculpture, and the concept of idealism. Socrates, a greek philosopher was the creator of philosophy and is a huge legend today. Euclid, a mathematician who opened a geometry school. We get idealism from architecture like buildings, columns,and symbols of honors for gods. Sculpture was really important in Ancient Greece because it reflected natural poses, symmetry, a god and/ or godess,etc.They also greatly valued Athletics like the Olympics Western civilizations have impacted highly from Ancient Greece's beginings.

First, a Greek philosopher by the name of Socrates created the Socratic method of questioning and answering and was accused of corruppting youth and challenging the existence of gods. (Doc.1)Socrates said " The unexamined life is not worth living" or in other words if you live life not understanding and not asking questions then what would be the point of living at all. Socrates claimed in defense that he wasn't hurting society or he would be hurting himself. He was still found guilty and given the choice of exile or drinking hemlock. Socrates believed so much in his theory of questioning that he choose death. Plato, Socrates student still continued the philosophy and wrote a book called The Republic on a perfect society where there was no democracy and citizens would be categorized into three groups; farmers and artisand, warriors, and the ruling class.Then,Plato taught Aristotle who questioned the nature of the world and of human belief, thought and knowledge. Aristotle said "Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead"which by this quote he is saying that you are only smart when you are living and the reason that you are probably dead is because you were not very smart. Aristotle invented psychology, physics, and biology which is where we get the scientific method today.Philosophy is well known today and was majorly influenced by Socrates for being a brave, wise, and upright man.

Then, Euclid, a mathematician who opened a school for geometry that wrote the book The Elements. (Doc 4)Euclid's book consists of 465 different geometry propositions and proofs. Many Muslim and European Universities used his book for a while. His work is still how we solve and figure many problems to this day. A Hellenestic scientist named Archimedes who estimated the value of pi which is the ratio of the circumfrence of a circle to it's diameter. He was gifted in both geometry and physics. He came up with various machines and tools.

Afterwards,Greek artisans built a masterpiece of craftmanship and design to honor Athena that set standards for future artists called the Parthenon. Inside stood a 38 foot tall statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and the protector of Athens. It showed the ideals of clasical Greek balance and proportion in art. (Doc.5)The Parthenon's specific features that influeced