GREEK MYTHOLOGY & HISTORY

Greek Flag Ancient Greece, the cradle of western civilisation, was a land of small city-states whose people shared the Ancient Greek language and a set of religious beliefs. Here, for a brief moment in the long history of humanity, men of genius, men of spirit, men of vision lived, created and set foundations, more than 2,000 years ago, that they are still vital and inspiring today.

Before the Greeks came into the Mediterranean world, man was primarily oriented toward death and built his monuments in honor of death. The zigurats of Babylon and the pyramids of Egypt testify to the hold of death upon these early civilizations.

To the Greeks, however, life is the most significant fact in the world, and human life is the greatest wonder on earth. The Greeks were the first people to play. Their famous Olympic Games are witness to their boundless enthusiasm for living. Their art speaks of the pleasure they derive from the form of the human body. But the Greeks were also well known for their achievments in sciences such as Philosophy and Medicine.

Man was a miracle above the other creatures because he possessed what they called logos. Logos in Greek means a word by which a thought is expressed. It can also mean the thought itself, or reason. The Greeks were the first people to say that the world was knowable, because they believed in man's power of reason. They had no idea of changing their own life or the world around them through the knowledge acquired by reason. The world was something to be understood and admired as it was. Through understanding the nature of the universe and the nature of man, a Greek believes he has the key to understanding man's own place in the scheme of things.


Map of Greece