Expert: Maria - 7/18/2011

Question
Hi Maria. I have a big interest in Roman history through my coin collecting, but I Know nothing at all about the Ancient Greeks.Did they have famous leaders like Augustus,Hadrian,famous tyrants like Caligula and Nero? Where is the best place to start to learn about the Ancient Greeks? Did they have kings of some kind that controlled their people? I would like to collect some Greek coins, but dont really know where to start. Gary

Answer
Hello,

first of all I have to tell you that ancient Greek history is very different from the Roman one chiefly because ancient Greece was never united, but it was always composed by many city-states (πόλεις in ancient Greek, transliterated as “póleis”), i.e. “political systems consisting of an independent city with sovereignty over a fixed surrounding area for which it served as leader of religious, political, economic, and cultural life” with Athens, Sparta, and Thebes among the most important.

All city-states had collective governments, usually a narrow or broad oligarchy, apart from Athens which is generally considered the birthplace of democracy as well as the source of many of the West's intellectual and artistic conceptions.

So, incapable of forming any lasting union or federation, the city-states and then all Greece eventually fell victim first to the Macedonians in 338 BC and later to the Roman Empire in 146 BC.

The Romans in fact were a very united people, whose capital city Rome, founded in 753 BC, became the centre of the Roman monarchy (753 BC-509 BC) and then of the Roman Republic (509 BC-27 BC) and finally of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) with Octavian Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

The Romans gradually conquered in fact the Italian peninsula, extended their dominion over the entire Mediterranean basin, Asia Minor and Northern Africa, and expanded their empire into England and continental Europe.

The Roman Empire reached the peak of its expansion during the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD under the emperor Trajan who reigned from 98 to 117 AD.

In short, the most notable and important  features of the Romans were hard discipline, warlike spirit, military power, strong love for their homeland, organizing skills, legislative abilities, great art of government and  ability in civil / military engineering, so that the Romans succeeded in creating one of the most important empire of the antiquity just thanks to the above peculiarities, since such were the qualities that enabled them to conquer and rule many different peoples.

On the contrary the ancient Greeks lacked all these characteristics and thus did not have famous leaders like the Roman emperors Augustus, Trajan or Hadrian nor famous tyrants like Caligula and Nero, unless we refer to the three most important city-states, i.e. Athens, Sparta and Thebes.

That being stated, here are my answers to your questions:

-1st. QUESTION: “Did the ancient Greeks have famous leaders like Augustus, Hadrian, famous tyrants like Caligula and Nero? “

ANSWER: As leaders we can mention Themistocles and Pericles in Athens,  Epaminondas and Pelopidas in Thebes, Leonidas in Sparta, while as tyrants there were  Peisistratus who was three times tyrant of Athens from 560 BC to 527 BC and his eldest son Hippias who succeeded him.

In Athens Themistocles was the creator of Athenian sea power and the chief saviour of Greece from subjection to the Persian Empire at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC,  while Pericles  was largely responsible for the full development, in the later 5th century BC, of both the Athenian democracy and the Athenian empire, making Athens the political and cultural focus of Greece. His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447.

In Thebes Epaminondas (died 362 BC) and his friend Pelopidas ( died 364 BC) were two great military tacticians and leaders in the brief period (371–362) of Theban hegemony in mainland Greece.

In Sparta  Leonidas (died 480 BC, Thermopylae) was the  Spartan king whose stand against the invading Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece is one of the enduring tales of Greek heroism.


-2nd.QUESTION:”Did the Greeks have kings of some kind that controlled their people?”

ANSWER: Only Sparta for centuries retained as lifetime co-rulers two kings who arbitrated in time of war, whereas in Athens, Thebes and other  Greek city-states there was no king, but an oligarchy, i.e. a government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.


-3rd.QUESTION: “Where is the best place to start to learn about the Ancient Greeks? “

ANSWER: I think you could start from "A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture" by Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts

-4th.QUESTION:”I would like to collect some Greek coins, but don’t really know where to start".

ANSWER:  Maybe you could see at
http://forumancientcoins.com/catalog/roman-and-greek-coins.asp?vpar=54
http://www.fleur-de-coin.com/currency/greekcoinshistory.asp

Best regards,
Maria