Greek Citizen in the 5th Century BCE

PART A

a. What your occupation would have been?

If I would have been given the choice of choosing between Athens and Sparta living, I would prefer to live like Sparta. Spartan life was simple. The focus was on obedience and war. Slavery made this possible by freeing the young men from household and industrial duties and allowing them to focus on their military duties. Young boys were trained to bewarriors; young girls were trained to be mothers of warriors. For many years, Spartan armies provided much of the defense of the Greek lands. The Spartan heroism at the Battle of Thermopylae, during the Persian Wars, inspired all of Greece to fight back with all their might against the invading Persians. Athenian and Spartan fought side by side in the Battle of Plataea, which ended Persian invasions of Greece.

One way that Athens and Sparta really differed was in their idea of getting along with the rest of the Greeks. Sparta seemed content to keep to itself and provide army and assistance when necessary. Athens, on the other hand, wanted to control more and more of the land around them. This eventually led to war between all the Greeks. This was the Peloponnesian War. After many years of hard fighting, Sparta won the war. In true Greek spirit, Sparta refused to burn the city of Athens. Rather, the culture and spirit of Athens was allowed to live on, as long as the Athenians no longer desired to rule their fellow Greeks. In this way, the influence of Athens remained and grew stronger. Other city-states had the same kinds of temples, buildings, and meeting-places, but it was Athens that became most famous.

b. Your social and economic class?

my social and economic class is based no the fact that Sparta was the first democracy in recorded history, predating Athenian democracy by at least 50 and possibly 100 years. Furthermore, Sparta was the only Greek city-state to introduce land reform aimed at equalizing wealth among its citizens.

The Spartan public educational system, the agoge, trained the mind as well as the body, and Spartans were not only literate, but admired for their intellectual culture and verbal skills. Socrates himself says "the most ancient and fertile homes of philosophy among the Greeks are Crete and Sparta, where are found more sophists than anywhere on earth." (Plato, Protagoras, 343b:366.) Certainly, Spartan wit and mastery of rhetoric were so widely admired that ancient Greek scholars collected Spartan sayings, and the laconic style of speech was studied and imitated in intellectual circles.

Sparta was the capital city of the large, prosperous, and economically powerful city-state of Lacedaemon. The economy of Lacedaemon was diverse, based on a wealth of natural resources and abundant fertile land. While trading in luxury goods, self-sufficiency in grain gave Sparta a significant political advantage.

Sparta was the only Greek city-state in which women enjoyed elementary rights such as the right to education, inheritance, and property. Furthermore, Spartan women prided themselves on their intellectual accomplishments, possessed ...