Greece had a ton of city-states. They all differed in sizes, strength, education, war, locations, and citizenship/rights. Two very strong city-states were Athens and Sparta, two large city-states, each with different kinds of culture and stuff like that. Some other important cities in Ancient Greece are Thebes, Corinth, Argos, and Syracuse. Inside these city-states was a marketplace called agoras,
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Sparta the City-stateAround 650 B.C Sparta rose to become a strong and dominant city-state. They were known for supreme strength and war. Sparta had a certain battle technique called phalanx. Phalanx was a technique where when the warriors were out numbered, they would link arms and let the other army come at them. All of the Spartan warriors would die, but the hometown would be safe. They only had little education, just the basics of reading and writing. The government they had differed. They had monarchy, oligarchy, and republic. The also had a diarchy, which was two strong men pulled from the two most prominent families. Those men would become leaders and rule. Many people think that Sparta was named after the great warrior Spartacus. But that's not true. Sparta was originally founded by Lakedaimonia, the son of Zeus.
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AthensAthens was mainly focused on the education and wisdom of a civilization. Athens had a very strong navy. That was a big advantage on their part, since Greece was a peninsula. Athens was also famous for their acropolis, a citadel, usually placed on a hill. Athens was believed to have started as early as 7000 BCE. The city was named after Athena, after a contest between her and Poseidon. As legend says, Poseidon struck a rock and water came gushing from it. He said that they would never suffer from a drought. Athena put a little seed and an olive tree grew. The people, thinking that Athena's gift was more valuable, named the city after her. Athens had to turn to trade, because their soil was not very fertile for farming. It was mostly sea trade though.
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Other City-StatesThebes was an important city-states as well. Thebes was constantly changing alliances in the Greek wars. Throughout history, Thebes was aligned with Athens against Sparta, until they switched and sided with Sparta instead. But, once again, Thebes switched and went against Sparta, defeating the Spartan warriors and setting many of the slaves free. Argos was one of the oldest city-states in Greece, but still important. They were strongest under the power of Greek tyrant Pheidon in the 7th century BC. During his rule, they introduced a measuring and weights system that was called Pheidonian measures. They also intoduced silver coins. |