In the years between 600 BC and 200 BC Greek civilisation and culture reached its height.
In the years between 600 BC and 200 BC Greek civilisation and culture reached its height.
More than 2,000 years later the ideas the Greeks developed are still at the centre of our way of life.
For example, each episode of EastEnders has its roots in the dramas created by ancient Greek writers.
The very idea of sport — of individuals or teams competing against each other for glory — has come down to us from the Greeks.
And our politics, music, buildings, medicine and science are based on ideals hammered out by the Greeks centuries before the birth of Christ.
The Greeks were perhaps the most inquisitive race that has ever lived.
They wanted to know how the world worked; what man’s role in it should be; did God exist, why did evil exist — and many other seemingly unanswerable questions.
Some of their greatest thinkers spent their lives trying to solve these problems.
The Greek word for these men was philosopher, or “lover of wisdom.”
Chief among them was Plato. He was born in 429 BC and spent most of his life teaching in Athens.
As a young man he was deeply influenced by the philosopher Socrates, who said that young people must think for themselves and challenge traditional beliefs.
This made Socrates unpopular in conservative Athens and in 399 BC he committed suicide by drinking poison after being found guilty of corrupting the nation’s youth.
Plato left Athens in disgust and spent the next decade travelling around the Mediterranean.
In 387 BC he returned home and set up the Academy — the first ever European university.
Here he taught mathematics, science and morality.
Among his students was a brilliant young man called Aristotle, himself destined to become one of the greatest philosophers.
When Plato died in 347 BC he left behind a body of written work that detailed his thoughts on a range of subjects from politics and education to art and the nature of friendship.
Many of his views on religion had a huge influence on the development of Christian thinking.
Most of Plato’s works are complex.
Perhaps the most confusing is his Theory of Forms.
In simple terms, Plato believed everyday objects are copies of a perfect version of that object which exists in an alternative world.
For example, all the bananas of our world are imperfect imitations of the true banana that was created by God and exists in the “perfect” world.
Olympic cheating
The ancient Olympics were as blighted with tales of cheating and match-fixing as modern sporting events have become. In theory, the games at Olympia were all about amateurism, with the victors taking home nothing more than a crown of olive leaves. But in reality there was real money at stake because Olympic champions brought glory to their home town.
It was common for victors to have all their food provided for the rest of their life, to be given cash, to be exempted from taxes or to be given top jobs. One grateful city built a wrestling champion his own private gymnasium. Because of this, many of the athletes competing in the games were full-time sportsmen who employed their own trainers — and some were willing to cheat their way to the coveted Olympic crown.
The earliest recorded cheat was Eupolus of Thessaly, who bribed boxers in the 98th Olympics. Callippus of Athens paid off his competitors in the pentathlon during the 112th festival. Two Greek boxers, Didas and Sarapammon, were fined for fixing the outcome of their match at the 226th Olympics.
Rome and the Gauls
About 400 BC the Celtic tribesmen known as the Gauls began migrating south from their homes near the River Danube in search of new land.
Ten years later they invaded Roman territory — defeating a Roman army in battle before storming into the city.
Only a strongly fortified settlement on the Capitoline Hill in the centre of Rome was able to hold out.
The Gauls laid siege to the hill — and one night tried to sneak in while the Roman defenders were asleep.
But, according to legend, some geese being kept nearby began honking when they spotted the strangers and their noise woke the guards, who drove the Gauls back.
The Gauls stayed in Rome for seven months — leaving only after they were paid a huge ransom in gold.