I think most Americans know the broader definition of western civilization goes back through medieval Europe to Rome and, ultimately, to ancient Greece. But what is it we inherited from them? Why were they important? After finishing the Greek/Hellenistic half of the current book I'm reading (The Birth of Classical Europe), that's what I hope to sum up.
Let's start with context. 'Ancient Greece' is a widely-defined term to describe more than a 1000 years of history (~1100 BC-600 AD), so let's be more exact. 'Classical Greece' is the main time of interest, less than 200 years (~500-300 BC) between the overthrow of the last Athenian tyrant (510) and the Persian invasions (492-479) to the death of the conquerer Alexander the Great (323). This period saw a lot of war, with Persia and between the Greek communities, but it also included important political and cultural developments, and that's the focus here.
To start, let's get political. We can't discuss classical Greece without talking about the poleis. 'Polis' (poleis is plural), the word itself, translates to 'city.' The ancient urban city-states of Greece, many of which formed prior to 500 BC, were the basic organizational unit of government, there was nothing larger. Athens governed itself, Sparta governed itself, Thebes governed itself, etc. In 400 BC there were more than 800 distinct poleis on the Greek mainland and surrounding islands (TBoCE, p122). When Greeks defeated the Persians in two invasion attempts (first 492-490 BC included Marathon, second 480-479 BC included Thermopylae) it was through voluntary associations of these relatively small groups. Some were on the other side too, btw, and fought for the invaders. What defines the poleis, in looking back, was the nature of their decision making, as it was there that democracy and citizenship were invented. Not everyone that lived in these city-states were citizens with rights (it was connected with land-ownership, generally citizens were farmers), but those that were had direct political power. When we talk about a polis, we are more referring to a group of citizens than the buildings and location geographically.
To better understand the poleis, and their importance, I want to add a couple other components from a different book (Carnage and Culture, see other posts on Cannae and Rorke's Drift). A lot of the author's premise revolved an idea called 'civic-militarism,' basically if you want freedom and rights you'll willingly fight for them. There's not a more clear example of this than citizens of an ancient Greek city-state voting for war, as they weren't sending some other army to fight for them. Instead, they were picking up their own spears, leaving their own farms and risking their own lives in battle. We're pretty far removed from that today. Another piece is the manner in which the ancient Greeks actually fought. This was the origin of 'shock battle' where an army would meet its opponent directly, with no tricks, and for the purpose of setting disputes as quickly as possible, often in a single engagement. Those farmers wanted to get back to their land. The famous, and effective, Greek phalanx (fighting together in tight formation) was an outgrowth of this type of battle.
Following the second repulsion of the Persian Empire in 479 BC, the Greek world saw a series of hegemons, a new concept in Europe. Hegemony is when a state exercises military and political will over its neighbors without expressly controlling them (e.g. Napoleonic France was a European hegemon, the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been, more or less, a global hegemon). The first in Greece was the Delian League, a (not-so voluntary) group of city-states organized by Athens and formed to push the Persians out of the Aegean. It was primarily a navy. Their goal achieved, however, Athens kept using the League for its own purposes and built an economic empire on tributes from the other Greek states, especially the various islands. Their ambition led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) against Sparta, who then dominated the region for a time before the rise of Macedon (i.e. Phillip II and Alexander).
Let's talk more about Athens. Not only did the Athenians exert themselves over the rest of the Greek world, they also recorded much for posterity (the Spartans apparently left little). Between these it's no surprise that we, as modern observers, often think of classical Greece and Athens as the same thing. It's not true, but it's easy to do as much (most?) of what we learn about comes from Athens. For one example, the great buildings on the Acropolis like the Parthenon, constructed 447-432 BC, came from money of the Delian League. For another we know many details of the emerging Athenian democracy, spurred by newfound wealth in the 5th century BC. It was then that Athens expanded its citizenry beyond the city-center, bringing in the population from the outlying towns, and created an assembly as part of city government for the first time (see Cleisthenes). I'm most amazed with the tidbit Athens did away with elections and appointed officials by lot, that is, randomly from the citizenry. This was all revolutionary politically and involved huge participation from Athenian citizens. I'm kinda jealous of some aspects of this system, but it certainly wasn't perfect (women were excluded, widespread slavery...).
This is getting long, and has so far overwhelmingly been about the political (and to a much lesser extent, military) advancements at the beginning of western civilization. But classical Greece gave us much more than that. We also need to talk culture.
The classical period was the origin of so much, in art, architecture, language, philosophy and more. The Greeks had a great interest in the human body and their sculpture, for one, demonstrated impressive skill in recreating it with exactness. It's plain here that the Renaissance, ~2000 years later, was a rediscovery and expansion on art from the classical period. This was the advent of classical architecture, (think of stone, columns, squares/rectangles, elevated buildings...) seen most prominently in the Parthenon and other temples to the Greek gods that still impact our style today, in government buildings, on college campuses and even single family homes. The ancient Greek written alphabet and language, having been developed in the couple hundred years prior to the classical period, began to be put to good use. Playwrights wrote comedies and tragedies to be performed in front of crowds. Early historians provided some of the first written, as opposed to oral, and detailed-oriented histories (see Herodotus, Thucydides). And it was the heyday of Greek philosophy, encompassing the lives of Socrates (470-399 BC), Plato (420s-340s) and Aristotle (384-322), the forefathers of western thought. Back then philosophy and science were all blended together, and great thinkers of the day also produced continued advances in math between the lives of Pythagoras (580-500) and Euclid (b. 330?). It was quite the explosion of this new culture.
I'd be remiss without mentioning one last thing, sports and the ancient Olympic Games. The great-grandaddy of athletic competitions was not on the periphery of what it meant to be Greek, it was often at its very heart. Hosted at Olympia, held in honor of the gods and restricted to Greek citizens, the games went back to the 8th century BC (776?), basically to the Greek Dark Ages. It grew in popularity and prestige over time, and both connected the various Greek communities to their (religious, mythical) past, no small thing, and to each other in the present, seen in the growth of the monuments at Olympia itself. While communal Greek-ness was a real thing, people also naturally took pride when their city did well (just like us!). It was a quite the event by the classical period, often used by political forces for various means, and interestingly, due to its regular scheduling every four years, was useful in dating events of the distant past.
It's past time to wrap up. Our society today owes a considerable amount to classical Greece, from the rights of citizens, our manner of war and international dynamics to art, history, thought and sports. I liked this line from American writer Will Durant (found on Wikipedia), who wrote: 'excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture that does not come from Greece.'
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