Opting out of society was really not an option. ibid.
Ancient Greece was a civilisation built on the backs of slaves. ibid.
This great icon standing heroically on the Acropolis alone against the sky dominates the city of Athens today just as it did when it was first built over two thousand years ago: this is the Parthenon. Michael Scott, Who Were the Greeks? II
Herodotus: common blood, common language, common shrines and rituals and common rituals – to Hellenikon – the Greek Thing. ibid.
The ancient Greek world wasn’t monochrome, it was technicolour. ibid.
Socrates: he relentlessly questioned the people of Athens ... ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’. ibid.
We are all Greeks. ibid.
The Trojan Women director Michael Cacoyannis … One of the most shocking stories ever written. Dr Michael Scott, Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth I: Democrats, BBC 2013
Love, War, Sacrifice, Fear, and Death …. Utterly gripping today. ibid.
Ancient drama changed our world. ibid.
The story of theatre is the story of Athens ... One of the greatest shows on Earth. ibid.
Drama was perhaps the biggest innovation of them all. ibid.
Oedipus the King by Sophocles: It tells the story of Oedipus – a man who is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. ibid.
They poked fun at contemporary Athens. ibid.
Today just 32 of them survive in full ... Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides … ibid.
The Athenians abandoned their city and took to their ships leaving only a few men barricaded on the Acropolis. The Persians ransacked the city. ibid.
Comedy was irreverent, rude and bawdy. ibid.
Theatre was an institution that plugged into religious, civic, political, military aspects of ancient Athenian society … [an] essential part of Athenian life. ibid.
Drama – that most Athenian of inventions – would thrive, spreading throughout the Greek world and beyond. Dr Michael Scott, Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth II: Kings
The 4th century reads as a depressing catalogue of battles, wars and fractured alliances. ibid.
Theatre had become a central part of any Greek community. ibid.
That Roman influence is very discernible ... They adopted Greek art, architecture and culture. Dr Michael Scott, Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth III: Romans
Seneca wrote nine tragedies which retold stories from Greek myth. ibid.
Great Athens is home to almost four million people … an intoxicating mix of ancient and modern. Michael Scott, Ancient Invisible Cities s1e2: Athens, BBC 2018
The Acropolis – a sacred hill in the centre of Athens …. Sitting in the shadow of the Parthenon is a small temple. ibid.
In 490 B.C. Athens was a Greek city state surrounded by rivals. ibid.
The Athenian navy was 200 warships strong. ibid.
The Greeks: a people glorious and arrogant, valiant and head-strong. These were the men and women who laid the very foundations of western civilisation. Empires Special: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation: Revolution, PBS 2000
They would vanquish armies, navies, empires many times their size, and built an empire of their own which stretched across the Mediterranean. ibid.
Cleisthenes would set his fellow Greeks on the path to empire. ibid.
To the east lay the Persians. ibid.
In Cleisthenes’ time there were over a thousand of these city states. ibid.
Ancient tales and myths: the country was continually criss-crossed by hundreds of travelling bards. ibid.
Images of heroes are found all over Greek art. ibid.
The Iliad and the Odyssey composed by the legendary poet Homer – these works tell of might battles and epic struggles. And at their heart lie the heroes. ibid.
Achilles was the archetypal Greek heroes. ibid.
Athens’ first great artistic legacy – the vase. ibid.
The Olympic Games were founded in 776 B.C. ibid.
The people had turned on their rulers and seized power for themselves. ibid.
Athens will be pitted against the greatest power of the day – the tyrannical Persian Empire in a contest spread across land and sea that will last over a decade. Empires Special: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation II: Golden Age
Themistocles: a military genius of the ancient world. And Pericles: a visionary whose legacy still shapes the world today. ibid.
Even as he ran, Pheidippides must have imagined the horror his fellow Athenians now faced. ibid.
Themistocles convinced the Athenians to build the greatest naval force in Greece. And not a moment too soon. ibid.
By 450 B.C. this [Delian] League had more than two hundred member states but Athens was the undisputed leader. ibid.
Pericles announced a glorious new vision to the Athenian Senate. Pericles turned his attention to the Acropolis. ibid.
Parthenon: twenty thousand tons of perfectly proportioned marble carved to sub-millimetre accuracy ... There isn’t actually a single right-angle in the entire temple ... An astonishing testament to the achievements of Athenian democracy. ibid.
A man who seemed to embody all the Athenians’ achievements: Pericles. Empires Special: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation III: Empire of the Mind
Socrates: how could the Athenians come to execute one of their most brilliant minds? ibid.
Pericles intended to vanquish Athens’ last great rival – the city state of Sparta. ibid.
Socrates walked the streets of Athens barefoot clad only in a dirty robe ... Socrates was interested only in the mind. ibid.
A revolution in thinking that had been gathering strength across the Greek world. ibid.
The birth of science: the first great Greek scientist – a man named Thales – wrote the first book on navigation. ibid.
The Sicilian Campaign: They [Athenians] had been the victims of one of the greatest defeats in ancient history. Over 50,000 men had been killed or taken prisoner. ibid.
Now they had a fleet paid for with Persian gold. With Athens’ navy decimated by the defeat in Sicily, the Spartans could now blockade the Athenian harbours. The great grain convoys from Egypt and the colonies could no longer get through. ibid.
The court found Socrates guilty with the penalty of death. But Socrates reacted with calm and serenity. ibid.
He believed that man should question the world around him. It was a sight they would never forget. ibid.
Athens was never again a great imperial power. But neither did her democracy lapse into mob rule. Instead, she became a city of intellectual enquiry. A haven of study and discussion. ibid.
They gave us literature and drama. Art. And monuments which still take our breath away. And ultimately these Greeks taught us how to reason and think. Two and a half thousand years later their astonishing achievements continue to shape our world. ibid.
The Greeks believed that around their country there were several places that were gateways or portals to the dead. Dr Marvin Mayer
Hades is the realm of the dead, and the Greeks believed that when they died they went down into Hades. Hades most likely could be seen as a kind of literal place underground. Dr Marvin Meyer
The real bad sinners go to Tartarus. Dr Marvin Mayer
Two hundred years ago workmen were swarming over the Acropolis, the rock that dominates the ancient city of Athens. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Elgin Marbles, BBC 2012
One of the greatest international controversies of the last two centuries. ibid.