The Great City of Athens
Why wouldn't you live in Athens?
Here in Athens we have yearly festivals for several occasions, such as religious occasions, drama, and even athletics! Our rich, patriotic citizens pay for these festivals. The archons, are assigned to planning out the festivals. Every year they manage to make each festival more amazing than the one before, if that is even possible. Our yearly festivals are a fun place to bring the family, party, and play games.
Athens is a rich and beautiful city; in fact, Athens is the largest city in Greece. Athens is a rich city due to our trade. Athens gained control of a region called Attica. Attica has many valuable sources that are needed for trade. Attica provides us with silver, lead, and marble.
Parthenon
Like I said before, Athens is a beautiful city! Many tourists come and go to see the sites we have locked up here. Greece was known for its beautiful construction and detailed art.
Our city's most famous building is the Parthenon. You can find this building on a rocky hill called the acropolis. This building was built as a temple dedicated to the city's protector-goddess, Athena.
Greek Drama
The Greeks invented what we know as drama today by writing plays to be performed on stage. There are many famous Greek playwrights such as Aeschylus, who wrote more than 80 plays. Only 7 of those plays can be found today. Another great dramatist is Sophocles who wrote over 100 plays including his most famous Oedipus.
Drama has played a major role in the history of Greece for hundreds of years. Public drama is more than just entertainment for us, we see it as a way to educate the public about issues confronting Athenian society. Drama is very important to the Greek culture, so important that some shows citizens are paid to attend.
Athenian Golden Age
The city of Athens possessed great wealth and led to an age of great drama, architecture, science and much more. During the golden age the Athenian Empire was led by Pericles. Pericles desired strengthen the empire by reaching three particular goals.
Pericles strengthened the democracy. He required public officers be moved to paid positions. He then strengthened the commercial empire, he did this by strengthening the navy to defend and expand the trading network that spread Greek culture throughout the world. Last, he used the money from the Delian League to build the Parthenon. This effort was to beautify the city-state.
Athens vs. Sparta
Interested to know why Athens is a much better city-state than Sparta? Well, where do I begin. For one thing, Athens is the largest city AND the capital of Greece. In my opinion Athens is a large, beautiful, rich, wondrous city that just can't be beat.
Athens' society is much better than Sparta's. Sparta had a militaristic society. Athens was known for their intellect and the want to do great things. Athens has many famous philosophers, historians, mathematics, and scientists. Athens also highly succeeds in the arts, known for their beautiful construction and detailed paintings.