Oct 17 2009
Where In Greece Would You Live?
Greek City-States Essay
After reading about Sparta, Athens, Corinth, Argos and Megara, I’ve decided that I would like to live in the city-state called Athens, which is also the capital of Greece. Since it is a center of art and science, I would chose to live there. I love art, and have fun in science too, and I also know that Athens is a strong city-state. I would want to live there instead of in other city-states because of these reasons. Although I do not like the fact that women are not given fair rights, all city-states do not give women very many fair rights either, I would be happy to at least be able to help my city-state, by sewing or cooking or raising a family. Another thing of which I think is good of Athens is that I would be able to see my husband and son/s more often and longer, because they would only have to be in the military for two years, where as in other places, like Sparta, they must stay longer. I also think it would be interesting and good to live in the capital city-state of Greece, since you are near most of the “action”.
I would not like to live in Sparta, since the city was never known by beautiful buildings and statues, and since it was based around the army. It would be absolutely horrible for me to almost never see my husband and son/s until they got out of the army at age 30. I would want to raise my son/s longer than seven years, when they went to the military. Once again, I would want more fair rights for women, more then just housekeeping, even though Sparta allows women to have more personal rights, yet still little political rights. Also, I wouldn’t want to have it possible that the slaves would turn against the city-states, even with the military, I’d feel safer without the treat. It would be a disaster for Sparta, and I would not want to be forced to move away for that reason.
Although the state-city of Corinth has good military laws in my opinion, such as that men and boys go to military school for only two years, like Athens, and also that if I had a son/s, he would get a good education. I also admire the fact that literature, culture, art, and business all flourish in Corinth, which I believe is good to have in a state, city or state-city. However, I really do not like how the city of Corinth is quite busy with their trading. Trading is good, in fact, it’s a good thing to have in a city-state in my opinion. Yet I dislike how it is so busy; I wouldn’t want to be so busy in Corinth every day of my life. I dislike how being so busy with trading causes, sometimes,people to hire others to fight for them. I think it would be better to have citizens be in the army, because I believe that would be safer than just simply hiring any person, yet of course with all the trading going on, it would certainly be difficult. But I did however like the fact that Corinth were problem solvers, which I believe is important to have in a city-state
For this reason, even though I believe that Corinth is quite a good city-state, I would not chose to live there for this reason.
The city of Argos is one city-state that I would not want to live in. I believe it would be difficult to live there with enough food for everyone, since it would be quite hard to raise crops in the climate that Argos has. Since in the winter the climate is cold and wet, food wouldn’t be able to grow since plants can not grow very well in cold weather. It would also be quite hard to grow food in the summer, when the climate is hot and dry. Your plants would have the danger of drying out. Because there could be a shortage of food, I would not want to live in Argos. Although I like how art was well developed and there were many fine musicians in this city-state, I wouldn’t like to live in Argos because of the possible food shortage and the fact that if forced to take sides, the majority would chose Corinth or Megara. I do like the city-state of Corinth, yet the city-state of Megara has some things that I dislike. I also believe that Argos has made some decisions in the past that I don’t like, including when Argos made a serious mistake after the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. When Athens and Sparta asked for supplies from Argos, Argos refused and then was held in contempt by other Greek city-states. Instead, I would have given some supplies to Athens and Sparta, even thought hey were my enemies. I would have at least thought it through a little more.
I think that my son/s would have good education in the city-state of Megara, and I like the idea of having your own type of money. However, I think it could cause problems for some people; some other city-states could want to have their own money, then others would make their own, and soon there would be no two city-states with the same type of money. I think this would be bad because it could cause learning all the different types of money difficult and confusing for some, and it would be complicated for one just to travel to a different city-state! If this did happen, people might not even want to travel to another city-state! I believe that you should have the same type of money in all the towns and city and states of one country.
As you can see, I would want to live in Athens, Greece, the capital city-state of Greece. Now the only thing left to do is pack my bags and go!
