Ancient GreeK

Ancient god of facts today we are taking a true me to ancient Greece I mean not really I'd need a time machine for that Plus Jared Butler would probably kick me down a well as soon as I got there so not great sorry to disappoint but how did the Spartans train their soldiers why were Athenian voters covered in red paint and how do I become a Greek god honestly I'll do the paperwork and everything even though I'm not Greek to utter 3 those questions are going to be answered so coat yourself in olive oil and grab a phalanx of your closest mates because it's time for 101 facts about ancient Greece number one this video may well be about ancient Greece but Greece itself as a unified country didn't really exist that is until philip ii of macedon swept through on his horses and conquered everybody in the third century number two the ancient test of the ancient Greeks were the Minoans they were around between 2600 BC and 1100 BC or as experts call it a really long time ago number 3 the Minoans were named after the mythical King Minos of Crete most of the stories about his rule are thought to be fictional mainly because of things like his son apparently being the Minotaur kind of stretches the realms of believability if you ask me number 4 around 1100 BC the Minoans were wiped out from the myceneans who became the preeminent civilization in Greece until the end of the Bronze Age in the 8th century number 5 the myceneans did a bunch of cool stuff actually like making terrible looking suits of armor and forming one of the very first alphabets on record called the linear' be not that kind of B number 6 though we know the myceneans disappeared suddenly at the end of the 8th century BC experts aren't entirely sure why they did the top theories that they were killed out by tribe could the Dorian's but others blame the sudden collapse on earthquakes disease and of course aliens remember what I said earlier about the realms of believability yeah let's smash those shall we number 7 most of what people associate with ancient Greece like philosophy democracy hoplite warfare comes from the Classical period the Classical period by the way is between the 5th and 4th centuries BC number 8 throughout this period Greece was actually made up of several independent city-states most famous of these are Athens Corinth Phoebus and of course the crazy crazy Spartans number nine Athens were named after the Athena supposedly because the goddess gifted them with an olive tree it's that all it takes to get a city named after you sounds like a great deal I'm gonna throw some olives at Ipswich and see they named themselves after me now number 10 Athena was the goddess of wisdom and one of the Greek pantheon of Olympian gods how brainy was she well she was literally born out of Zeus his head because I guess that's how Greeks thought smart people were made whereas actually you know it was as you can probably imagine Greek alphabet myths got pretty weird it sent it around the worship of one family of gods all of whom lived together on Mount Olympus mmm I smell a sitcom number 12 unlike the perfect deities worshipped in most religions the Greek gods were basically a bunch of super-powered frat bros Zeus in particular like to shape-shift into animals like bulls and swans and then make sweet sweet love to mortals number 13 weird side fact for you the daughter of Swann Zeus actually ended up being Helen of Troy you know the woman so beautiful she helped cause the Trojan War apparently Swann plus woman equals beautiful who'd a thunk Greek numbers 14 Zeus though wasn't only the god of playing the field hanno apollo once promised Cassandra the ability to see the future if she slept with him but he gave her the power first so then she refused to sleep with him in somewhat of an overreaction in return Apollo cursed her so that she could see the future but if she told anybody nobody would ever believe her which you think she be able to see that coming no number 15 we're not sleeping around the gods love to dish out extreme punishments for instance a human called Arachne once beat Athena in a weaving competition our react nice prize was well you can I can guess from the name but she was turned into a spider by Athena what a sore loser number 16 another harsh punishment came from the aforementioned minor tour King - once pray to Poseidon god of the sea for a bull to sacrifice to him the God obliged what - like the Bulls so much he decided to keep it this ticked Poseidon right off number 17 so beside indeed what anyone would do cursed his wife to fall in love with the bull and conceived a child with it that child was the Minotaur who - ashamedly hid in his labyrinth number 18 in case you're wondering how a woman in a bull were able to do the deed the Greek inventor died Ellis fashioned her a hollow bull shaped wooden frame the Queen crawled inside lured the Bulova and yeah we'll leave the rest to the old imagination just don't leave it there too long she might come back when you least expect it number 19 perhaps the harshest punishment dished out by the gods was given to Tantalus after trying to feed his son to the gods Tantalus was trained up by Hades with some just food and water that would disappear after he reached turrets he was also constantly starving but could never starve to death so basically he was there pretty much forever number 20 however the Real Housewives of Mount Olympus weren't the first gods in creek mythology as origin gods tend to be across different cultures the first girl to Creek mythology but broad archetypes of a natural phenomena specifically they were Uranus or the sky and Gaia who was the earth number 21 the story of Greek myth tends to really kick off when your anus in Gaia starts sleeping together yep the entire sky started sleeping with the entire earth pretty metal am i right but Uranus hated the monstrous children they had created and so hid them deep down inside Gaia number 22 one of those children Chronos wasn't too pleased that his siblings being rammed underground he got his revenge by castrating Uranus who I must remind you is the sky and replaced him as king of the gods that's gotta hurt both physically and you know mentally number 23 unfortunately Cronus wasn't much better as a father scared of being toppled as top god he ate his children as soon as they were born Fair Play really his partner Raya perhaps unsurprisingly got fed off of this behavior and swapped the babies used for a rock before he got eaten I guess babies and rocks taste the same the more you know number 24 Zeus grew up and eventually fed Cronus a meal that forced him to throw up his siblings Hades and Poseidon the three then fought a war against Cronus defeating him and cut him into little pieces that were spread across the underworld so there you have it the Olympian gods that you know and love are the stomach children of the man who castrated the sky number 25 but perhaps the most unusual of the Greek deities was Dionysus the god of wine and fertility fittingly for a God of all those things festivals dedicated to him involved getting wasted and carrying around large mortal penises so you have clearly much better than you know Eastern stuff number 26 they also involved putting on theatrical performances offering featuring the God Himself and these plays didn't have to show Dionysus in a positive light either as stuff anita's the frogs depicts Dionysus as a coward who is constantly outwitted by his slave or watch out or he'll pour wine all over you from the sky and then but fertilised you number 27 as you might be able to tell from the penis carrying festival just mentioned Greek worship was largely performative religious rituals for instance most often took the form of sacrifices number 28 but the Greeks also had an excuse as for why only the worst cuts of meats were burnt for the gods they claimed that Prometheus of one strict Zeus in Tubac seeing the worst meats meaning that they could enjoy the nice parts number 29 quick sidenote Prometheus also famously stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind cheers bro for that Zeus chained him to a rock in Hades and had eagle's poked out his liver every single morning every evening it would grow back so again he would never die from this they really loved the whole perpetual punishment thing didn't they number 30 though for us the Olympics are many a chance to what Usain Bolt zoom past everyone without breaking a sweat for the ancient Greeks it was originally a religious festival dedicated to the worship of his use number 31 the first sporting event added to the ancient Olympics was actually a foot race between young women competing for the job of Priestess of Hera not sure why priests s needed a good 100-meter time but cha whatever number 32 over the years other events were gradually added these included boxing pentathlon distance running and chariot racing yep that's right chariot racing we've got to find space to put that back in modern games maybe we could kick out rhythmic gymnastics or dress arch I mean that's not race arch dancing horses are cool number 30 spray one of the more intense sports featured in the ancient games was Pankratz on this martial art allowed everything except biting and gouging and it only ended when one fighter submitted passed out or died number 34 in one particularly brutal plan Crotty on finale are rich in a fig alia died in the final battle but still managed to win that's because as he died he broke his opponent ankle forcing them to submit from the pain number 35 one Olympic athlete wrestler Milo of Croton is credited with the idea of inventing progressive resistance training he apparently carried a calf on his back with the weights getting heavier as the bull grew up away it was alive oh my god that's even more difficult number 36 while most of the events were a way of athletes to show off how jacked they were the Chariot Racing was a great way to show how much money you had and seen the in politician al-kabir DS was famously so desperate to show off our minted he was he paid to enter three chariot into one Olympic race he came first second and fourth number 37 well the Olympics were on all the Greek state to breed a peace treaty the idea was to allow everybody to travel to the games without being attacked ah that's nice number 38 this peace treaty was taken so seriously that even when Athens and Sparta force against each other in something called the Peloponnesian War they made peace specifically for the games number 39 speaking of Athens the city's most famous for inventing democracy you see Athens owed its success to a trireme Navy which took thousands of volunteers to row as such it seemed only fair to let them in on state decisions number 40 of course one Athenian democracy was revelatory and world-changing it's worth mentioning that it wasn't a total democracy slaves and women for example could not vote meaning it was not a true democracy number 41 to encourage Democratic involvement the city sent slaves are on the marketplace with a robe dipped in red paint anyone touched by the Rope in the red paint's had to go and vote as the People's Assembly the meaning of life Athens his passion for people power took some pretty unusual forms such as the city's annual ostracism in the ostracism citizens could vote to kick any person out of the city for a full decade provided at least 6000 people voted the person with the most votes would be forced to leave for 10 years they should bring that back anybody who stops the myth of a London Street should be ostracized for a hundred years number 43 another Athenian innovation were law courts use juries jurors could volunteer to work and were paid a fixed sum to every day they spent in court number 44 by some estimates as much as 80% of Athens's population were slaves these slaves will usually defeated military enemies and could do everything citizens could do except vote number 45 at the height of its power in the 4th century BC Athens also had an empire called the Delian League it was made up of athens the region of Attica and a series of Athenian colonies oh and the flash oh no way that's a different league number 46 a bard from democracy the most famous Athenian export was probably philosophy yes that's right that thing your friend with a beret keeps going on about the city was home to such noted thinkers as Socrates Aristotle and crazies of Athens bust the name number 47 but for sheer entertainment points the prize goes to Diogenes this Athenian philosopher like to challenge society by doing unacceptable things like you know touching himself in public and urinating on people who annoyed him I know plenty people who do that now and they're not philosophers trust me number 48 Athens its main enemies router's democratic history were the insane military state of Sparta you know the badasses from 300 the two cities were the most powerful in Greece and had completely different philosophies for instance Arno from Jared Butler that Spartans like kicking people in Wales number 49 although Sparta was arguably the most powerful of the ancient Greek States very little remains of their culture murder because what Athenians focused on writing stuff down the Spartans had other pursuits such as killing everything number 50 in fact smarter didn't even build city walls why because the shields of their soldiers were the walls yeah I know it doesn't work but tell that to Sparta they're scary number 51 you probably know that life in Sparta was pretty tough but the hardship actually started from de una or won as it's known immediately after birth Spartan babies were inspected and those with disabilities were thrown off Mount t'ai cheetah's number 52 the survivors entered spars this incredibly intensive military training system the ACOG at the age of five from then on they would be taught in weapons carrying basic reading and writing and oddly enough dancing I missed that scene in 300 number 53 at the age of 12 the Spartans were taken into the wilderness for further training there they had to survive without shoes enough food and only one item of clothing that item was a cloak that was deliberately too thin winter and too thick for summer god that's evil it's evil number 54 the Spartan youths were deliberately given too little food for comforts this was to encourage them to learn how to steal and hunt skills that they might need on a military campaign or playing Skyrim either way number 55 apart from military training the Spartan boys went through numerous exercises designed to toughen them up one game involved having the kids tried to steal cheese while being flogged oh I remember that game from our childhood too actually I thought it was weird back then but now I know it's normal number 56 when they reach the age of 18 spartans were considered to have finished their training however they had to live in the barracks until they reached the age of 30 even if they were married number 57 speaking of marriage spartan weddings were a little kooky the wife would be dressed in boys clothing and half their head shaved the husband would then rush into the ceremony and kidnap her although hang on wait this happen every time surely then everyone in the ceremony would know what happened so it's not really that much of a surprise or a kidnap because they know it's gonna happen number 58 the reason behind these unusual nuptials is thought to be the Spartan men more more comfortable being with men in fact an ox parts and soldiers were encouraged to take male lovers as young as 12 number 59 taking on male lovers was thought to help soldiers bond with each other I guess it did in a way after all trust is pretty important when your method of warfare is standing in formation holding each other's shields not even ISM also I definitely didn't see this in 300 number 60 all that training and man love must have paid off though the Spartans were famously fearsome warriors and would never drop their shield and flee in fact there was a common saying in Sparta come back with your shield or on it now kiss me you fool maybe not the last bit but you know artistic license number 61 the most famous Spartan clash is the bus of Thermopylae which took place in 480 BC when 300 Spartans and 7,000 other Greeks held off the Persian army of 300,000 number 62 when the Persian army at Thermopylae threatened to fire enough shadows to block out the Sun the spartan king leonidas simply replied then we'll fight in the shade oh my goodness number 63 here's another awesome spartan line just because it's cool before philip ii of macedon began his invasion of greece in 350 BC he sent a Spartans and letter walling them if I win this war we will be slaves forever the Spartans sent a letter back with one word if before nintendo64 the spartans actually lost a lot at Thermopylae however they held up Xerces and the Persians long enough for the rest of Greece to piece together a larger army and finally defeat the Persians at the Battle of Marathon number 65 despite having the best army around the Spartans were famously reluctant to fight that's because they constantly feared that the helots are local people they had enslaved would revolt in their absence number 66 terrified by the fact that the helot sound numbered them 20 to 1 every year the Spartans would ceremonially declare war on their slaves during this time the Spartans secret police the crypt ear would appear outside random houses and killed the helots there blimey that's intense like the purge number 67 despite sharing a few things like religion for example Sparta and Athens were for the most part antithetical to each other and as anyone who remembers the cold war will know two powerful states having vastly different ideologies can turn pretty nasty number 68 between 431 BC and 404 BC Athens and Sparta fought each other in a conflict known as the Peloponnesian War both sides drank their empires into the fighting effectively turning the war into a Greece white struggle number 69 gaya when the ancient Greeks sports they did so using hoplite warfare hoplites were armored soldiers armed with a stabbing spear a shield and a short sword number 70 these soldiers would line up in a rectangular box formation known as a phalanx after this the two sides would then crash into each other pushing and shoving to try and topple the other it's like a big old tug of war except except pushing instead of tug tug Duggan number 71 hoplite shields were designed to half cover the man holding them and half cover the man to the left obviously that means the guy on the rightmost end only had half protection as they shoved hoplite phallanx this would drift to the right trying to protect the half wonderful soldiers on the end haha that's quite nice really isn't it number 72 all that armor was pretty pricey meaning the warfare was something of an elite activity this helps to explain why so many of Greece's states were oligarchies where only the rich had power number 73 the clunky nature of hoplite warfare meant that even in the biggest battles body-count were kept pretty low as soon as one side realized they were likely to lose they would just drop their shields and run away leaving the heavily armored enemy soldiers too heavy to catch up number 750 for this death liked form of war suited the lowly populated Greek states quite well even at their peaks Athens only had 60,000 citizens and Sparta only had 40,000 number 75 but unfortunately it also made them incredibly easy to beat when in the mid 300s BC the aforementioned guy named philip ii of macedon brought his 3,000 cavalry men down to the Greek mainland and just ran circles around the cumbersome Greeks number 76 anyway back to the Peloponnesian War for the first 10 years the war was somewhat unsatisfactory the spartan army was far superior and couldn't breach athens walls athens navy allowed them to pirate around the edges of sparta however they could not face Sparta's army oh dear bit of a stalemate going on number 77 this uneven situation led to Sparta troops invading the land around Athens and trying to siege the city but since Athens shipped its food and goods in an way the whole thing was pretty pointless number 78 that's not to say the Athenians didn't suffer in 430 BC a plague broke out in Athens killing between 1/3 and 2/3 of the population as well as Athenians top general Pericles number 79 though no one knows what specifically caused the plague it's not exactly surprising the Greeks were advanced in many ways but hygiene was not one of them Greek women for example wore crocodile dung as a shadow and most Greeks use stones to wipe themselves after going to the toilet ouch stones I even think that off-budget toilet paper number eighty on top of that doctors thought the best way to tell if a painter was healthy was to taste their earwax vomit or urine the idea was that a trained doctor could tell if a bodily substance tasted odd and then prescribe a cure wait that doesn't happen these days a very nice doctor tasted my urine the other day aren't you he wasn't in any way number 81 rich Greeks were also known to by the sweat of the successful athletes spraying and rubbing it all over themselves the thought was that doing so but allowed them to take on the strength of the athlete always sure these are the guys who invented Western philosophy number 82 regardless Athens soon recovered from the disease and won a major victory that's bacteria that's slack teria by the way not bacteria they're the Athenians force 300 spartans to do the unthinkable surrender number 83 that loss led to the piece of mickey ass despite the ambitious name it was only seven years until the war restarted number 84 in 415 BC Athens made a huge mistake when they democratically voted to invade Sicily in the middle of the war al-kabir deez you know the chariot guy convince voters that the expedition would be an easy military victory and would provide the city with untold riches you can see where this is going already can't you number 85 in fact the expedition was a disaster Sparta rocked up to help Sicily and a series of military defeats and storms led to the entire Fenian fleets being destroyed realizing he probably wouldn't be welcome back in Athens al Kabeer days defected to Sparta number 86 sensing that Athens was weak Sparta did something even more and thinkable than surrendering they teamed up with Persia in return for promising Persia all of Athens colonies Sparta were gifted with enough money to build a navy and blockade Athens number 87 led by Lysander the Spartans won a series of naval victories and eventually forced Athens to surrender in 404 BC sparse his allies current and Themis demanded that athens be destroyed and all of its people destroyed all but in a rare show of clemency the spartans refused number 88 however they did put an end to the athens democracy and installed a pro spartan oligarchy called the thirty tyrants geez who's that PR guy but these tyrants only ruled for eight months before volt kicked them out and reinstated an independent Athenian democracy number 89 despite their short rule the thirty tyrants were brutal through violence and suppression the tyrants are thought to have killed 3,000 people or 5% of Athens population number 90 many historians believe that the popularity of the Peloponnesian War in Athens can be reasonably accurately traced back through the comedies of Aristophanes around the piece of Nicky s Aristophanes released the upbeat comedy piece but when the war was going badly he wrote the more aggressively anti-war satire as the Arcadians and lysis strata number 91 the reason historians had to use comedies for this was that ancient Athenian tragedies were typically not set in Athens they were thought to be too serious and negative to be set within the city and the playwrights wanted to give the audience a sense of distance number 92 many athenian tragedies are set in phoebus a rival of the city that includes the famous Sophocles plays Antigone and Oedipus Rex you know that's the one with the I stabbing and the mum stuff number 93 little sneaky factory you hear sliding into DMS ancient Greek theater only ever utilized three actors all of whom would wear giant masks with exaggerated expressions on so even those that the back could tell how they were supposed to be feeling number 94 Athens Spartans and the rest of the Greek states continued their independent existences until the 330s BC that's when you know who philip ii of macedon decided to expand his empire into southern greece with his huge Calvary and girthy armies he was able to sweep through the tiny city-states 95 Athens and Thebes were both defeated by the Macedonians at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC but fearing their awesome reputation Philip steered clear of Sparta even his son the arrogantly named Alexander the Great never attempted to conquer it number 96 Philip probably needn't have worried so much tough though the Spartans were their ability to wage war had been severely undercut by population decline the strict testing needed to be a Spartan warrior added to the lack of time spent around women meant that fewer and fewer warriors were being created the citizen population of Sparta may of CHOP to slowest 8,000 people number 97 dwindling numbers made controlling the hell even harder and Sparta suffered a series of slave revolts that further sapped its energy number 98 Sparta may have lasted longer than Athens but it suffered a faint arguably more humiliating when the Romans rolled into Greece in 195 BC they teamed up with Athens in a number of other Greek States to defeat Sparta in the lasso nion Wars number 99 Sparta lost the war and though it was never formally invaded it lost all independence and became just another part of the Roman Empire more embarrassingly the Romans were so taken with the strange ways of the Spartans that they allowed them to keep their customs as a sort of theme park Roman tourists were traveled to Sparta to watch them train fight and just generally be weird people geez that's a humiliating fates but not as bad as the whole living forever and being punished thing that was in their mythology I guess this is 100 oh one flats though Athens tried lamely to revolt in 88 BC Greece remained firmly part of Rome for the rest of ancient history on the plus side though the Romans appreciated the Greeks greatly thinking of them as a cultured and intelligent people and as the way as we close the doors on ancient Greece Bosch was more of a book closing really oh well that was 101 facts about ancient Greece I do hope you enjoyed it did you learn anything let me know in the comments below.