Rise Of The Greeks example essay topic

Perhaps what would make one believe that the Greeks "said it all" is that, in our eyes, their culture seems to mimic our modern society in a number of ways. When a contemporary westerner thinks of ancient history, the Greeks and Romans are what most often come to mind. Everything happening before the rise of these empires is lumped together in one dark and primitive period. To us, the rise of the Greeks symbolizes, in turn, the rise of logic and reason over superstition and tyranny. To say that the Greeks "said it all" is preposterous. It implies that civilization as we know it started with them, which is simply not true.

There is scarcely an aspect of civilization that was not first developed by earlier civilizations. Even such concepts that most credit the Greeks on developing such as literature, medicine, and most of all, philosophy, were developed before them. Often, as in the case of medicine, it was developed to quite an advanced level. For example, the Assyrians developed more than eight hundred types of medicine stemming from their concentration on warfare. Even philosophy, perhaps the Greeks most lauded effort, did not begin with them. The most obvious example of this is the Bible.

Some may not realize that the Bible is also a literary testament in its own right. The Greeks, as did other civilizations, tended to write only about the lives of the upper class. Historians have learned far more from the Bible about the lives of common people from the bible than from any text from the Greeks or Romans. Furthermore, the Greeks have the advantage of extensive written records to give the impression that they did, indeed, say it all. There are fewer written documents from pre-Greek civilizations, as assumedly they relied on the oral passing down of information from one generation to the next. What is most impressive of the developments from early civilizations is simply that they came from virtually nothing but timely observation spanning over thousands of years.

To the Greek's credit, theirs was a spectacularly inquisitive society that spawned many great ideas. They made remarkable achievements in the artistic realms of drama and playwriting, sculpture, painting, the aesthetic aspects of architecture and developments of lyric poetry. Also, although they certainly didn't follow though with the ideals they created by putting men to death by expressing opinions, and although only a very tiny portion of men (not womyn) could actually vote, they can also be credited with the concept of democracy and other such ideals. Even though one cannot fairly say that they "said it all", it is, in fact, fair to say that the Greeks did much to at least begin concept of 'humanity' in our current sense of the word.