The Ancient Greeks

The book I read to research this post was The Ancient Greeks for Dummies by Stephen Batchelor which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The ancient greek civilisation lasted for 2,500 years & died out around the time of Jesus which was as a result of a roman invasion. The ancient greeks are thought to have descended from the minoan civilisation which was the 1st organised civilisation originating around 7,000 BC. Eventually the minoans were invaded by the athenians. The greeks gave us the 1st history book The Pellopennessian War written by Thucydidine who was a high ranking athenian army officer who actually fought in that war hence historians know all about that war. There was actually 2 wars between Sparta & Athens & what started it was a slaves uprising in sparta hence they asked the athenians for help but most of the soldiers they sent sympathised with the pelots or slaves & they made it quite clear to the spartans who decided to deal with the slaves themselves. The first war was won by athens but sparta won the second war. It's interesting that sparta had the greatest army in the ancient but athens had what was thought to be an indestructible navy. A lot of people regard the athenians as being the 1st democracy in the world although only a minority were represented. Much of the ancient greek history is unknown & called the dark ages because it was only later on that writing was developed. The film 300 is based on the battle of Thermopyllae when the persians tried to invade & while some aspects of the film are made up it does a good job of depicting the horror & cruelty of that time.