1. Section 1 The Culture of Ancient Greece

2. The Greeks believed that gods and goddesses controlled nature and shaped their lives. Myths are traditional stories about gods and heroes. Greek mythology expressed the Greek people’s religious beliefs.

3. The Greeks believed each person had a fate or destiny and certain events were going to happen no matter what They also believed in prophecy, or prediction about the future. Many Greeks visited an oracle, sacred shrine where priests and priestesses spoke for the gods. The most famous was the oracle at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (DEHL*fy).

4. Greek poetry and fables taught Greek values and are the oldest stories in the Western world. The earliest Greek stories were epics, long poems about heroic deeds. The earliest Greek epics were the Iliad and the Odyssey, written by the poet Homer during the 700s B.C. He based them on stories of a War Greece had with the city of Troy (northwestern Turkey).

5. A fable is a short tale that teaches a lesson Aesop (EE*sahp)was a Greek slave made up many famous fables In most of Aesop’s fables, animals talk and act like people, and the story ends with a message, or moral One of Aesop’s best-known fables is “The Tortoise and the Hare”

6. Drama is a story told by actors who pretend to be characters in a story The Greeks performed plays in outdoor theatres and developed two types of dramas: comedies and tragedies In a tragedy, a person struggles to overcome difficulties, but fails, and has an unhappy ending. In a comedy, the drama has a happy ending

7. Aeschylus: first to introduce the idea of two actors; Orestia: the moral is to not seek revenge Sophocles: more actors, adds scenery; Oedipus Rex and Antigone Euripides: more down-to-earth plots; questioned traditional thinking Aristophanes: good examples of comedies; many were filled with jokes just like modern entertainment.

8. Greek art and architecture expressed Greek ideas of beauty, reason, moderation, balance, and harmony Greeks painted murals and pottery and also sculpted Architecture is the art of designing building structures The most important architecture were temples dedicated to a god or goddess: best-known is the Parthenon, dedicated to Athena The Greeks used three different styles of columns in their buildings: Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian