Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

38 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
marble and silver. To this day, Attica, the territory surrounding Athens,
continues to have extensive marble quarries, though its silver
mines are no longer active. Sparta’s agricultural land was so small
that, by the seventh century b.c.e. , it had conquered the rich plain
of Messenia, which lies to the west.
The prominence of the mountain ranges, combined with the difficulty
of land travel, helped to generate the fierce individualism that
is a hallmark of the Greek character. Another factor that played a
vital part in shaping the Greek character was the sea. The perilousness
and unpredictability of this element is a central motif in Homer’s
The Odyssey; it is due to the wrath of the sea god Poseidon that
Odysseus loses all his companions and is prevented from returning
home to Ithaca for nine years. It was precisely because they were
compelled to trade owing to their lack of natural resources that the
Greeks came to develop a flexible response to the challenges of the
outside world, whereas landlocked states that had no contact with
the sea were, by contrast, inherently conservative and backward.
This principle is neatly demonstrated by the difference in character
between Athens and Sparta, the two dominant powers in the Greek
world in the Classical Period. Whereas Sparta, an inland state,
remained conservative and unenterprising, Athens, whose power
and wealth were based on the sea, became the cultural leader of the
Greek world.
The climate of Greece has been likened to that of southern California.
The summers are hot and dry, whereas in the fall westerly
winds occur with frequent outbursts of rain. Twice as much rain
falls in the west of Greece as in the east. The coastal region is mild,
but snows lie in the mountains throughout the winter. The poet
Hesiod, a born complainer, found little to recommend it. In Works
and Days (line 639f.), he tells us that his father, who came from Asia
Minor, “settled near Mount Helikon [in Boiotia] in a wretched village
called Askra, bad in winter, oppressive in summer, good at no
time.” Objectionable though the climate was to Hesiod personally,
it is nonetheless sufficiently mild to enable the population to live
much of its life outdoors.
Only the region as far north as Thessaly was regarded as properly
Greek by the Greeks themselves. Macedonia, which lies above
Thessaly, was considered semibarbaric, notwithstanding the fact
that its inhabitants spoke Greek or a reasonable approximation
thereof. The Greek world was not, however, limited to the mainland.
As a result of the colonization movement, which is conventionally
dated 734–580 b.c.e. , it also came to include the Ionian cities