The Humanities: Greece and Rome Comparison Essay

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Updated: Feb 7th, 2024

Table of Contents

Introduction
Similarities between ancient Greece and Roman
References

Introduction

The ancient Greece and Rome had some things they shared in common, while on the other hand, they had some differences. These two countries arce Mediterranean countries. This essay people will be focusing on both aspects.

Similarities between ancient Greece and Roman

Some of the similarities between the two nations are economics. The economy of both the countries was mainly the agriculture (Benton & DiYanni, 2005). Both countries were also working on mines. Greece had wheat-producing farms, and on the other hand, Roman used to farm as well as importing wheat from other places. Both countries relied on slave labor for their farm activities.

The table below shows some of the differences of the two countries.

Ancient Greece features	Ancient Roman features
Geographical Terrains: The Greek Cities were separated by hills, and They were surrounded by water sources	Rome was inland, and lacked natural hilly borders. Its main advantage was the rich fertile soils
Art and architecture: The Greek art is known to be of high quality and more superior to Roman art (Witt, et al., 1997). The artists concentrate on producing ideal artistic form. For instance, Venus de Milo	The Roman art and architecture is of a relatively low quality. The Roman artists concentrate on producing realistic portraits for decoration. For instance, fresco
Government: The ancient Greeks had many various kinds of government. This was possible due to the presence of various city-states. Each city-state had its own government. The Greek government was sub divided into four sub groups. Such divisions included monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies and democracies. Different city-states were using different systems. The city-state of Athens came up with the first democratic government, and other city-states started imitating the same.	The roman government was known due to its usage of different mixtures of democracy and a republic. The most interesting part of the roman government was that most of their ideas were borrowed from the ancient Greeks. The roman state was known as the republic. There was an establishment of one-man rule in this roman government, but only worked until the commencement of the first century B.C (Cunningham & Reich, 2006). During the time of initiating the republic, the most powers were designed with the popular assembly. The ancient Romans did not embrace the idea of giving a chance to one man to come up with all the laws. They wanted this duty to de allocated to several bodies.
Religious beliefs: Due to the presence of various city-states, there were varieties of beliefs in Greek. The Greek religion was polytheistic, although there were also some factors of reality in it. The Greeks used to see the earth as a flat disk floating on ocean, and as a living thing. The earth was seen having a body and spiritual part.	The ancient Romans were also polytheistic, and hence why they believed in many gods like the earth, sea, skies and other aspects of nature. Most of the ancient Romans did things to please these gods. Ancient Romans believed that their daily activities were greatly influenced by the gods (Witt, et al., 1997). The ancient Roman religions were mainly depending on spirits. Romans used to perform some rituals and practices to please their gods.
Philosophical:The ancient Greek philosophers came up with the ideas of different subdivisions of philosophy like idealism, epistemology, rationalism, and empiricism (Benton & DiYanni, 2005). The Greek philosophy originated from Western coast, the place that is occupied by Turkey.	The most crucial and only philosophy in Rome was stoicism that came from Hellenistic Greece. The major constituent of the roman literature was the stoic ideas. Almost every practice of religious in Rome was mainly based on stoicism.

References

Benton, J. R., & DiYanni, R. (2005). Arts and culture: An introduction to the humanities, vol. 1 (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cunningham, L. S., & Reich, J. J. (2006). Culture and values: A survey to the humanities (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage/Wadsworth.

Witt, M. F., Brown, C. V., Dunbar, R. A., Tirro, F., & Witt, R. G. (1997). The humanities: Cultural roots and continuities (5th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

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