GREECE - IMPORTANT CONCEPTS
Lesson 1
1. What is the Peloponnesus?
2. What natural barrier covers nearly three-fourths of the Greece?
3. What did their early farmers grow and what livestock existed there?
4. What did the majority of the people who lived near the Mediterranean do for a living?
5. What three products did Greek merchants trade?
6. How did geography affect the way people lived in ancient Greece?
7. What early people built the palace at Knossos and the other cities in Crete?
8. Give examples of how the Mycenaean borrowed the culture from the Minoans?
9. How were the Mycenaeans judged (or measured according to the text)?
10. Who was Homer?
11. Identify Homer’s famous epics and describe the plots.
12. How did Homer keep the memory of Mycenae alive?
Lesson 2
1. How did a polis or city-state develop in Greece around 800 BCE?
2. What was the purpose of an agora?
3. What two city states became the most powerful?
4. What features did all of the city states share? How were they different from one another?
5. Explain Spartan life.
6. What Athenian leader brought democracy to Greece, and what is a democracy?
7. Why did the Spartans believe they needed a strong army?
8. Who was Thucydides?
9. How did Cleisthenes change the democracy in Athens?
10. Why did all Greeks consider themselves Hellenes?
11. Describe the first Greek Olympics?
12. In what ways is the ancient Greek alphabet similar to today’s alphabet?
Lesson 3
1. Explain the Persian Wars.
2. Who was Xerxes?
3. What was the Battle of Salamis?
4. What caused the city-states to band together?
5. How did Pericles improve Athenian democracy?
6. What was the most remarkable building constructed in Athens during the Golden Age?
7. Who is a famous Greek historian?
8. Name three styles of Greek columns and make a small drawing of each. Label them.
9. Who was Aristophanes?
10. Who was Sophocles?
11. What happened to Athens as a result of Pericles’s death?
12. Who was the famous ancient Greek teacher?
13. Who was a famous student of this Greek teacher?
14. What brought about the end of the Golden Age of Athens?
Lesson 4
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Who was Phillip II?
Who was Aristotle?
Who was Alexander the Great, and where was he born?
What ruler united Greece and Macedonia?
How many continents did Alexander’s conquests cover?
What was Alexander the Great’s goal before he died?
Why did Alexander’s empire break up after he died?
What is the difference between the Greek form of democracy and the American form of democracy?
Who borrowed (cultural borrowing/cultural diffusion) their ideas from the Greeks to build their own civilization?
Explain the contributions of Alexander the Great, and explain how he got the people that he conquered to accept his rule.