Ancient Greece

Between 2800 and about 2300 years ago, in Greece and along the coasts of the Mediterranean, hundreds of independent cities flourished. Democracy was born in Athens, while Sparta trained its citizens to be soldiers. The Greeks joined forces to drive back the Persians, but then ended up fighting one another. This age produced philosophers, scientists, poets and artists we still study at school today. With Alexander the Great, Greek culture reached as far as Egypt and India.

The era on a line: 25 events

1. about 800 BC The first Greek city-states
2. about 776 BC The ancient Olympic Games
3. about 750 BC The Greek alphabet
4. about 700 BC Life in Sparta
5. about 600 BC Sappho, the poet of Lesbos
6. about 594 BC The reforms of Solon
7. about 585 BC Thales studies nature
8. about 530 BC Pythagoras at Croton
9. about 508 BC Cleisthenes and democracy
10. 490 BC The Battle of Marathon
11. 480 BC The Battle of Thermopylae
12. 472 BC The theatre of Aeschylus
13. 461–429 BC The Age of Pericles
14. 447–432 BC The Parthenon
15. 431–404 BC The Peloponnesian War
16. about 430 BC Herodotus writes the Histories
17. about 400 BC Hippocrates and medicine
18. 399 BC Socrates is condemned
19. about 387 BC Plato's Academy
20. about 335 BC Aristotle founds the Lyceum
21. 334–323 BC The conquests of Alexander
22. about 300 BC Euclid writes the Elements
23. about 295 BC The Library of Alexandria
24. about 250 BC Archimedes of Syracuse
25. about 100 BC The Antikythera mechanism

Did you know?

• The athletes at Olympia competed without any clothes on, and married women were not even allowed to watch the games.
• In Athens, to send a politician thought to be dangerous away for ten years, citizens wrote his name on a piece of broken pottery called an ‘ostrakon’: that is where the word ‘ostracism’ comes from.
• The Parthenon stayed almost undamaged for more than two thousand years: it was badly damaged only in 1687, when a cannonball set off the gunpowder stored inside it.

storiascopio.com/en/era/ancient-greece/ · free worksheet, you may photocopy it for your class

1. Put in order: write 1 next to the oldest and 5 next to the most recent.

• Pythagoras at Croton
• The Age of Pericles
• The Greek alphabet
• Socrates is condemned
• The Library of Alexandria

2. Choose the right answer.

1. What was the prize for the winners of the games at Olympia?

   • A racehorse
   • A gold medal
   • A sack of silver coins
   • A crown of olive branches

2. What did the Greeks add to the alphabet they borrowed from the Phoenicians?

   • Numbers
   • Vowels
   • Punctuation
   • Capital letters

3. At what age did Spartan boys leave their families to be brought up together?

   • At twenty
   • At fifteen
   • At two
   • At seven

4. What did Solon do for the debt-ridden farmers of Athens?

   • He enlisted them in the navy
   • He cancelled their debts
   • He sent them off to found colonies
   • He doubled their taxes

3. Match each person to what they did: write the right letter.

Storiascopio · texts by Ciro Simone Irmici, written with the help of AI and checked · sources in the online cards