about Greece in the ancient times

about Greece in the ancient times
I need the information about .Include the following points :1)what the food did they eat?
2）what clothes did they wear?3）what hobbies 4)what religion
5.ART 6.langue 7.shelter and rule
IN ENGLISH
DETAILS
我不是要翻译问题里的英文，因为那时我写的！我要的是the details about GREECE in the ancient times

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Nine equal horizontal stripes of blue alternating with white; there is a blue square in the upper hoist-side corner bearing a white cross; the cross symbolizes Greek Orthodoxy, the established religion of the country.
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Astronomy
Today's date is March 16, 2007. There is currently a Last Quarter Moon.
Location
Southern Europe, bordering the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea, between Albania and Turkey.
Climate
Temperate; mild, wet winters; hot, dry summers.
Terrain
Mostly mountains with ranges extending into the sea as peninsulas or chains of islands.
Elevation Extremes
Lowest point: Mediterranean Sea 0 m ... Highest point: Mount Olympus 2,917 m
Drama: The Greek Theatre and Three Athenian Tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE)
The first of the three classical playwrights of 5th-century Athens, Aeschylus was born near Athens in 525 BCE, in the village of Eleusis. His father was called Euphorion, and was of noble descent. As a young man Aeschylus would have been influenced by two historic events: the exile of Hippias, a dictator, in 510 BCE, and the establishment of democracy in Athens under Cleisthenes in 508 BCE.
Aeschylus was a soldier in his youth, and took part in the Persian Wars. His epitaph (self-authored as an entry for a contest in 489 BCE) depicts him fighting at Marathon in 490 BCE, a battle which is considered to be among the most important moments in Athenian history. At Marathon, the Athenians defeated the Persians and halted a Persian invasion. His brother, Cynegeirus, died fighting at Marathon. Aeschylus may also have fought at the battle of Salamis, a sea battle that defeated an even larger Persian invasion force.
His first win at the drama festival (City Dionysia) came in 484 BCE, although scholars do not know the name of the trilogy that won.We do, however, know the name of his winning trilogy for the festival in 472 BCE -- The Persians -- sponsored by Pericles himself, then an aspiring politician. The Persians deserves mention because the play is about the Persian defeat at Salamis, and it was unusual for the plays at the festival to deal with topics other than the pantheon of Greek myth. Aeschylus left Athens in 471 BCE to attend court at Syracuse, ruled by the tyrant Hieron, a famous patron of the arts. When he returned to Athens for the festival in 468 BCE, a twenty-eight year old named Sophocles, competing for the first time, won first place over the great Aeschylus.
Popular as he was, the Athenian dramatists often walked a fine line between innovation and irreverence. Aeschylus was prosecuted for revealing the mysteries of Eleusis in one of his plays. Although he was eventually proven innocent, this accusation remained a stain on his character. Driven from the city by growing social and political unrest, Aeschylus died far away from Athens, in Sicily, in 456 BCE.
A prolific writer, Aeschylus had written between seventy and ninety plays by the time of his death in 456 BCE. Only seven of his plays have survived: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers , and The Eumenides (these three plays compose the tragic trilogy known as The Oresteia ), The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Supplicants, and Prometheus Bound . Some scholars believe that Prometheus Bound may be wrongly attributed to Aeschylus. Most of his plays were written for the annual Athenian drama competition, the City Dionysia, which Aeschylus won thirteen times. At this festival, three chosen dramatists would perform three tragedies and a satyr play. The Oresteia is the only complete Greek tragic trilogy extant today.
Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE)
Sophocles' work is considered the pinnacle of Greek tragedy. Born in near Athens in 496 BCE in the town of Colonus, in his ninety-year lifespan he witnessed the rise and fall of the Athenian Golden Age. Sophocles was the son of a wealthy manufacturer. He grew up during the Persian Wars, and was chosen to participate in the victory celebrations for the Greek naval victory at Salamis in 480 BCE, an honor that suggests that the young Sophocles was particularly talented and handsome. Indeed, he is thought to have performed some of the roles in his early plays, but was unable to continue as an actor due to problems with his voice.
Sophocles was popular in Athens, and, perhaps as a result of the patriotism he developed as a young man, remained in Athens throughout his life despite multiple summons from local rulers to visit other cities and regions. A close friend of Pericles, he held several public offices throughout his life in addition to being a leading dramatist. Despite a reported aversion to politics, Sophocles did play a signifcant role in Athenian social and political life. In his old age he was honored with an important advisory position in the Athenian government to help deal with the aftermath of the disastrous military campaign at Syracuse. His public career seem to have started when he was elected treasurer of the Delian League in 443 BCE, and general of the Athenian army in 441 BCE. Under the command of Pericles, he participated in the military campaign against Samos. Sophocles was also a founder of the cult of the god Asclepius in 420 BCE, an activity which may have been connected to the establishment of a public hospital. He was also the father of two sons, one of whom went on to become a playwright. Sophocles died in 406 BCE.
Revered by modern scholars for his treatment of the individual and for the complex issues that his plays address, Sophocles was also revered by his contemporaries: he recieved the first prize for tragic drama over Aeschylus at the drama festival (the City Dionysia) held in 468 BCE, when he was twenty-eight years old. He wrote around one hundred and twenty-three plays for the Athenian theatre, and won twenty-four festivals -- he placed second in every festival that did not win. Only seven of his plays, however, have survived intact. They are (in the order in which they are thought to have been written): Ajax, Antigone , The Women of Trachis , Oedipus the King, Electra , Philoctetes , and Oedipus at Colonus. From the fragments remaining, and from references to lost plays in other works, scholars have discovered that Sophocles wrote on an enormous variety of topics. He also introduced several key innovations, including ending the tradition of writing trilogies on connected topics at the City Dionysia, introducing painted background scenery, changing the number of speaking actors from two to three, and enlarging the chorus from twelve to fifteen men.
Euripides (c. 485-406 BCE)
Euripides inclusion among the great Athenian dramatists is sometimes debated by scholars, who see his plays as irreverent misrepresentations of the Greek religion, filled with too many unrelated ideas. These scholars note that while Euripides' plays were included in the drama festival (the City Dionysia) twenty-two times, he only won five times. Euripides' supporters claim that he deserves mention along with Aeschylus and Sophocles because he was bold and irreverent: he was willing to look beyond religious orthodoxy to critique Greek culture and religion. Many of the protagonists in Euripides' plays are female, and through this less-explored perspective he was able to examine well-known stories in a completely new way. His supporters also point to Euripides willingness to enter into the psychology of his characters.
Born in Phyle, outside of Athens, legend tells us that Euripides was born on the same day as the great Greek victory at Salamis in 480 BCE. Eurpidies took part in the Sophist movement, an intellectual group who were known for their unorthodox and unsettling views. Eurpidies himself was apparently a curmudgeon, preferring to do most of his writing in a secluded cave on the island of Salamis. Unlike Sophocles, he was not interested in an official position in the Athenian state. He developed friendships Socrates and Anaxagoras, both unconventional philsophers, as well as the General Alcibiades. The sophist Protagoras supposedly recited a treatise that argued against the existence of the gods at Euripides' house.
Euripides left Athens in 408 BCE at the request of King Archelaus of Macedon, a famous patron of the arts. Although his reasons for leaving Athens at such an advanced age are unclear, Euripides' non-traditional, and sometimes heretical, ideas undoubtedly made him unpopular in the increasingly unstable Athens. Eurpides was known, for example, as an opponent of the Athenian democracy that had developed during his lifetime. Euripides died in Macedon around 406 BCE.
Although we only know eighty of their titles, Eurpides is thought to have written ninety-two plays, of which nineteen tragedies are extant today. Unlike Aeschylus or Sophocles, who are represented by only a few of their works, Euripides leaves a substantial dramatic legacy, including (in the order in which they are thought to have been written) the Medea , Hippolytus , Trojan Women, the Bacchae , and Iphigenia in Aulis.
Greek Cities
The following are raw research notes on the development of Greek Cities during the Ancient Greek period.
Athens developed as small farming villages around a defended hilltop fortification. (9C)
Greek soil was not good for growing excess crops. The Greeks developed a strong export industry of pottery, metal work and wine. (5C)
"A tremendous stimulus to this commerce was the invention of coinage, not only the use of metal as a stand of value, long familiar in the Middle and Near East, but the practice of stamping the pieces of metal officially, to guarantee not only their weight but their purity." (pg. 166) (5C)
Money allowed them to accumulate wealth on a greater scale. Now a trader did not have to trade for bulky goods which would need to be stored. Instead he could trade for coinage which is easily stored and accumulated. (5C)
The Near East cities were ruled from the top down. In Greece the assemblies, which were elected by the population is where the power was derived. There is no trace of a popular sovereign type of government before the Greeks.(5C)
Most Greek cities were isolated geographically. Their growth came in the form of trade, especially sea born trade. (5C)
Athens had a large citadel on the Acropolis. It also had a meeting place and market known as the Agora. The Agora was the center of city life where all political, social and economic forms centered on. (5C)
Greeks developed colonies to expand their political as well as gain support for much needed surplus food supplies. A second way to extend influence was that of conquering other cities. (5C)
"The city was synonymous with civilization and in opposition to barbarity and chaos. Two of the accusations which Homer levels at the uncivilized Cyclopes were that they had no assemblies for making laws and that they had no sense of community beyond their immediate family. Both of these qualities were considered crucial for orderly urban life. Thucydides equated urban life with stability, security and prosperity." (pg. 1) (10C)
"Furthermore, the city was the agency though which the Greco-Roman way of life was disseminated throughout the Mediterranean, Europe and the Near East." (pg. 1 )(10C)
"To the Greeks the polis needed not definition. The city was essentially a community of citizens sharing common political, religious and social traditions." (pg. 1) (10C)
"When after the sack of Athens, the Greek commanders met to decide where to oppose the Persian fleet, Themistocles argued vehemently that they should fight at Salamis and not at the Isthmus of Corinth. During the debate the Corinthian general, Adeimantos, tauntingly replied that a people without a city had no right to vote and even suggest that Themistocles should not participate in the discussion until he had regained his city. In reply Themistocles said that the Athenians had a far greater city than the Corinthians in two hundred fully manned warships." (pg. 2) (10C)
"When considering town planning it is usual to think in terms of the 'Hippodiamian?grided cities which were a widespread feature of the Greaco-Roman world." (pg. 6) (10C)
Statement about Rome and Athens: "Both cities were characterized by cramped, overcrowded conditions. The streets were narrow, insinuating themselves between irregular blocks of housed and public buildings. An ancient traveler to Athens was amazed that such a badly arranged city with its haphazard and irregular streets, its lack of water and its mean houses could be the most famous town in Greece." (pg. 11) (10C)
At times the irregular pattern of cities was an advantage during times of war. In Argos an attack was defeated when the attacker cavalry became disoriented and confused in the city's irregular street patterns. When the king called for support the additional troops added to the confusion and congestion and made it difficult to maneuver. The attacking king was killed and the attack failed even after it had breached the walls of the city's defenses. (10C)
"Undoubtedly the Near East remains the most likely area from which the Greeks developed regular town planning. Certainly there was a long, if not widespread, tradition of regular planning there." (pg. 31) (10C)
"By far the most important area of a Greek city was the Agora, which served as the political, religious, social and economic focal point of the community." (pg. 153) (10C)
Athens was also located in a geographic advantageous place. It had steep slopes to the north, east and south, allowing only the west to be a good side for an invading army to attempt to attack. There was available water and near by agricultural land which supported large olive groves. In the middle of the city was a fortified citadel, the Acropolis. (pg. 45)(14C)
Greek cities were for a good part of their history independent and competitive with each other. Athens won an unexpected battle against the Persians at Marathon. After that battle the Greeks realized that the Persian Empire would launch an all out attack on the peninsula so they formed an alliance to defeat these foreign invaders. In preparation Athens developed a very large war fleet to counter the Persian attack. The Athenians abandoned the city with the exception of a small suicidal force on the Acropolis for religious reasons. After defeating the Persians, first on water then on land, the Athenians returned to their city to rebuild. They rebuilt the city in much the same manor, not imposing a planned grid, but instead following the organic plan that had developed over the ages. (14C)
Athens, after its defeat by Sparta and consequential take over by Alexander The Great, stopped any major development and was put on the back burner of the empire抯 plans. With the emergence of the Roman empire the city once again was in the lime light. Not with buildings, or in development but it became a center for learning. Many rich Roman aristocrats sent their children to Athens to be educated and it became a mecca for philosophical thought and education. (14C)
Greek cities benefited by a very close supply of marble to build it抯 public buildings. In comparison, their private houses were very basic rudimentary structures. (8C)
"The supreme period in Athenian history is know as the Periclean Age, after their most famous leader, Pericles, who dominated the assembly from 461 to his death in 429. His policy made Athens the undisputed artistic center of Greece." (pg. 23) (8C)
Greeks were defeated in 338 by Philip II of Macedonia. His son Alexander The Great secured the Greek peninsula and then used the Greek concept of cities to try to expand his empire down into Egypt. Alexander included in all the new colonies which he developed an Agora and an Acropolis. (8C)
"A small state, about the size of Yorkshire of Connecticut, with a population of some 200,000 free men, made contributions to thought, literature, and the fine arts on an unprecedented scale with so sure a touch that much of it has never been replaced or surpassed." (pg. 10)(3C)
"The Social life was the real basis of Athenian Democracy and of its two great ideals, equal laws and free speech." (pg. 13)(3C)
Mycenae was one of the earliest major Greek cities. It was built on a hill top with good geographical defenses. To the South the hill was steep with a deep ravine for good protection. The city developed large walls to protect its more exposed Northern side. The city had natural spring water accessible from within the walls for times of trouble. (14C)