History Summarized: The Greek Age of Cities

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Ancient Greece created a social ecosystem of numerous independent cities to cater to my tastes specifically.

SOURCES & Further Reading:
“The Greeks: A Global History” by Roderick Beaton, 2021
“The Greeks: An Illustrated History” by Diane Cline, 2016
“Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece” by Donald Kagan & Gregory F. Viggiano, 2013
“Revolution” & “Tyranny” from “Ancient Greek Civilization” by Jeremy McInerney
“Dark Age and Archaic Greece” from “The Foundations of Western Civilization” by Thomas F. X. Noble
“Dark Age and Archaic Greece” & “The Greek Way of Waging War” & “Greek Language, Literacy, and Writing” from “The Greek World: A Study of History and Culture” by Robert Garland
I also have a degree in Classical Studies

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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44 thoughts on “History Summarized: The Greek Age of Cities”

  3. Thank you for releasing this. I am currently going on many tangents on ancient Greece due to a project for my historical fiction class and I keep finding myself wishing that I knew more about ancient Greece.

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  4. I hope OSP won't mind me recommending a blog that complements this video: A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, the series of "How to Polis" posts. More detail about how Greek cities were formed, economy, governance. (But alas not sports.)

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  10. Its kind of amusing how surprisingly decent a lot of what we could call dictators in modern times would be historically. The fact that you couldn't just outsource things throughout most of history meant there was some incentive for leaders to make things better for their people, by accident if nothing else. Like if your people are starving or destitute they can't really do much for you, so all but the dumbest and most impulsive of leaders is going to want their people to be doing well. Feudalism would often feature things like Universal Basic Income in the form of grain stipends given to everyone.

    its only with our modern sensibilities and our modern understanding of how greed can manifest that makes these systems seem inherently bad. Nowadays if you're greedy and in charge, you don't have any real incentive to improve the lives of your people. You outsource labour to other nations and can import anything you want with ease. Decisions have a benefit and a cost, and it used to be that the benefit and the cost were both localised, meaning generally speaking leaders would opt for things that benefit the local area more than they cost. But now the benefit and the cost do not have to be constrained to the local area and don't hit everyone in the area the same way they used to.

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  19. Hey Blue, I know this has nothing to do with the video your presenting. But I do have a question; as of the modern days and nothing to do with geography or politic's, what would you define as a collective of current culture? I get their's some people who think it's pop culture, and if would you agree to that, then is it really what defines our civilization as of this point? And if so, why are we doing such a horrible job protecting it? Having it being made and protected by a bunch of being who willingly destroy it so it can make them some money.

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  32. For a country whose founding leaders were well read in greek philosophy and government, I'm a bit puzzled why many people find it surprising that the United States has historically fiercely valued state autonomy over national authority

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  34. Still a complete crime against humanity that there's no way to wield a shield in Assassin's Creed Odyssey given how strategically useful it can be and how easy it would've been for Kassandra to get her hands on one with how ubiquitously they were used. I mean they even let us use one in Origins, the game JUST prior, and Ancient Egypt isn't nearly as famous for their shields like Greece was!!

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  35. Interestingly enough, the archaic names of πόλις (city-state) & πόλεμος (warfare, war) were πτόλις/πτόλεμος, and although πτόλις/πόλις is etymologised as being from the Proto-Indo-European *tpolh₁-i-/*tpelH- = fortification, city, with metathesis (cf. Skt. पुर् /puɾ/, fortress, stronghold, Lith. pilis, castle), πτόλεμος/πόλεμος is regarded of…unknown origin.

    Personally I find the relationship of πτόλις/πόλις with πτόλεμος/πόλεμος intriguing, perhaps ptolemos/polemos is the collective action undertaken by the ptolis/polis?

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  36. Polis (which is plural in modern Greek but singular in Ancient Greek) still existed after 500BC all the way to the unification under Macedonia, and even after that to a lesser degree. The big difference was that now there were alliances, spheres of influence and traditional rivalries, along with a much stronger feeling of being part of one nation.

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