Athens has been around for 2,500 years. Athens is the capitol of Greece and largest city of Greece. Athens is on a small plain that lies southward to the Saronic Gulf, a branch of the Aegean Sea. Athens has an area of 427 sq. /km. (165 sq. /mi. ) and a population of 3,096,775. Athens is surrounded by mountains: Aigaleos to the west, Parnes to the north, Pentelikon to the northeast, and Hymettus to the east. All four of the mountains is made up of either marble or limestone. Athens has a typical Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers and mild winters.
It rains slightly. Most of the population religious beliefs is in the Greek Orthodox faith, and Athens is the seat of the Orthodox primate of Greece. Athens is also the primary financial and commercial center in Greece. Most of the country’s trade takes place at the port of Piraeus. Tourism is another important part of Athens today. It brought up with the first democratic government. Democracy means governed by the people. The United States started our government democracy from them. The difference is that our type of democracy is “representative” democracy.
That means that we take one person to represent all of our interest and thoughts. Athens(Greece) has a “direct” democracy which means that everybody gets to vote for them self(their own thoughts and interest). The Untied States follows Athens ideas on how each individual is important and everybody’s idea on freedom and self rule that was brought up by the Greeks. Architecture is another important quality that we got from Athens. There are many different buildings in the United States that have ancient architecture.
Greek architecture dominates the style of buildings in the government buildings of Washington D. C. and hundreds of other cities in the United States. Such as courthouses, libraries, university buildings, interior of theaters, opera houses, and many other types of buildings. Many different languages are from Latin. Such as French, Spanish, English, Portugese Italian and more languages. We got a lot of words from Athens government and entertainment. For example of government words, democracy, politics, tyrant, monarch and more.
For example of entertainment words, drama, tragedy, orchestra, harmony and more. They have also created school subjects such as philosophy, biology, , mathematics, geometry, zoology, and history. A cool word I like that they made up is Rhinoceros (in Greek it is rhinokeros). Many scientist have figured out a lot of stuff. There was Archimedes discovered the displacement of water-the principle of specific gravity. He discovered this getting into his bath tub and he was so excited he ran through the streets naked saying “Eureka, I found it”.
One of the greatest Greek scientist is Aristarchus. He discovered the heliocentric theory – were the earth rotates around the sun. The first Olympic games were held in Athens in 1896. Socrates, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and many others were born. Military was a big aspect of their life. When a boy turned six or seven he was put into the military. Athens had one of the greatest generals of the world. His name was Alexander the Great. He never lost a battle. He died of a fever. Now days there are a lot of sightseeing in Athens.
There is “The unknown soldier”, The Greek Parliament, The National Garden. One that is really important is the Panathinaikon Stadium. This is were the first Olympics were held in 1896. This is on Mets Hill. There is Lycabettus Hill were St. George’s chapel is. This has a great view to Athens city. Athens is a very important to our history because of all that it has done for us. For example if they never cam around the first democracy would of came around. In other words what would happen to the United States with out that type government. What if Aristarchus was never born in Athens.
Maybe he would of grown up differently and he would of never came up with the heliocentric theory about the earth revolving around the sun. If Archimedes never came up with the displacement of water theory. If they would of never came up with their architectural designs what would the United States Archives look like. Where would some of our words be in our English language or would we even speak English. If the word rhinoceros was made what would your nickname be. All these things are from Athens. This shows the importance of the city of Athens to the world now and then.
