Growing Up Heroic: Adventures in Greek Mythology
Lesson Two: Home and Community: Ancient Greece and You

Comparing and Contrasting: The Ancient Greeks and You

Who, Me?

What does ancient Greece have to do with me, you ask?

Heaps.

First, when we learn about other cultures, we learn about ourselves.

Second, our society is greatly influenced by ancient Greece, Athens in particular. Our theatre, politics, and educational theories are all descendents of the Athenian systems.

If you've always thought that the way you do things is the way everyone has always done them, you're in for a surprise, because they didn't. At the same time, you might also be surprised that people who lived 2,500 years ago are a lot like you.

In the last lesson, you learned about good stories. Well, here's another one. Listen along as you read:

  Cydippe, a priestess of the goddess Hera, was running late. She needed to get to the temple, five miles away, in order to perform a ceremony. But there was no transportation available except for the ox-cart, and the oxen were in a distant field. Cydippe's two sons, Cleobis and Biton, volunteered to pull the ox-cart. They sprinted the five miles, and she got there in time. Cydippe prayed to Hera to give her heroic sons the best gift possible. The guys went to sleep in the temple of Hera and never woke up. Cydippe was proud. Her children had died at the moment of their greatest glory. (Herododus)

Now, unless you are an ancient Greek, you probably don't understand why Cydippe was proud of her sons. No one wants their children to die, especially after they just showed their love and dedication? Have any of you ever heard the story of the Battle of Marathon? In this great battle, the Athenians are victorious over the much larger Persian military. They send a messenger named Pheidippides to tell Athens of the victory. He ran 26.1 miles back to Athens and delivered his message, and then died. He became a great hero, and we honor his effort today by running marathons of 26.1 miles. Pretty Hardcore, huh?

The short answer is that the Greeks are different from us. You will understand more and more why Cydippe was proud of Cleobis and Biton, as you go through this course. But notice also that all human beings have many things in common, especially that we live in families and rely on each other.

 (And hopefully you will also have learned something about yourself—maybe that you wouldn't have liked to be Cydippe, if given the chance).

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Introductory Activity: How Greek Are You?

Let's Analyze...

So, are you a Cleobis, Biton, or Cydippe? In other words, is your personality suited to living in ancient Greece? Do you practice the values and beliefs of the ancient Greeks?

It's time to analyze our own values and beliefs while examining the values and beliefs of the ancient Greeks.

Take the How Greek Are You? pretest below and find out. The questions listed below are vital to this study, because once you and your mentor determine what your prior knowledge, skills, and understandings are, then together you can tailor this course to your needs. In addition, these questions will help you decide which, if any, of the optional assignments to explore within this unit.

How Greek Are You? Survey

1. Take the How Greek Are You? Survey. Answer True or False for yourself.
2. As you go through this lesson, look for the beliefs and practices of the ancient Greeks. Whenever you find an answer to a question, mark True or False.
3. Take notes that offer details and justify your answer for the Greeks.
4. Record the page number where you found these details.
5. Remember that we are not evaluating the values and beliefs of the ancient Greeks at this stage. We are comparing and contrasting what we believe with what they believed, and we are gaining greater understanding of how the ancient Greeks lived.

Bonus question: Do you love eating garlic salad?

Okay, now you want to know your score, right? First, how about deciding which answers the ancient Greeks would give? The answers to all of these questions are contained in this lesson.

But to get them, you will have to research the rest of this lesson. (You'll learn more about how to do research on pages 3-5.)

Once you have researched this lesson and answered the questions as an ancient Greek would respond, you'll know how Greek you are. But if you're hankering for an official tally, your mentor has the rubric and will help you score the quiz at the end of your investigations. Good luck!

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Research: Compare and Contrast

"Learning through our differences" happens with myths, too. We now know that myths are good stories told in community. If we examine the community of the Greeks, to see what was important to them, we will be able to understand why they liked to tell the stories that they told. And in turn, we will also begin to understand why we like the stories we do.

This is called mutual illumination, and it is done with a skill known as comparison and contrast. It is one of the most effective ways by which researchers understand a topic or find a solution to a problem.

How much do you know about the nitty-gritty of research and comparison and contrast, especially in how you differ from others? Take this pretest and find out.

Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind when taking a pretest:

• Don't worry if you don't know the answers to these pretest questions. An "I don't know" or an incorrect answer simply indicates an area of study that you should pursue.
• In that spirit, you shouldn't retry questions for the pretests but simply give each question one good try. A pretest is a snapshot of what you know at a certain moment in time; it is not a final judgment of your abilities or potential. Instead, it is a temporary measure of your current knowledge, skill, and understanding.
• Do not leave the computer while taking a pretest, since the software for this course does not save your work. If you think you might have to leave your computer, schedule the pretest for another time when you can work uninterrupted until you finish it.
• You will need to skip to the last page of the lesson to print your score report for each pretest or quiz. If you know that you will be able to sit for long enough to finish the entire lesson, you can wait until the end to print all of your pretests and quizzes at once. See the final page of this lesson for the score reporting function.

This test assumes that you will rely on your own personal knowledge and not use any additional sources (such as print, CD, online dictionaries, or any other reference source). 

How did you do on the research, comparison, and contrast pretest? Do you need to brush up on your skills?

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Let's Do Some Research

Research identifies information on a subject and then uses that information to answer questions or solve problems. It's a key skill needed for navigating historical material.

To do research, first determine the question you want to answer. Sometimes the question is factual: "Who was the most powerful Greek god?" Sometimes it may look for reasons: "Why did the Greeks believe in many gods?" Sometimes it might be large and exploratory: "How did having many gods affect the Greek way of life?" Other times it might be compare and contrast: "What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in a culture where there are many gods, versus a culture where there is only one god?"

An Example of Research

A student wants to learn something about the divine twins Castor and Pollux from Greek mythology. He has heard that they are the names of stars in the constellation Gemini (the Twins). So, are they stars? Is this their true nature, or are there other stories about them?

From researching multiple sources, the student gathers this data: Castor and Pollux are popular characters in Greek mythology, and there are lots of stories are told about them. Below are four stories that the student discovers:

• Castor and Pollux are the sons of Tyndareus of Sparta and are buried in Sparta.
• Castor is a son of Tyndareus, and Pollux is a son of Zeus. Pollux is immortal; Castor is mortal.
• Castor and Pollux are both divine—gods who save sailors from disaster at sea.
• Castor and Pollux become stars in the constellation Gemini (the Twins) at their deaths.

All of these stories come from primary sources of Greek mythology.

What's going on? No one agrees about the twins! The student quickly concludes that there was no one true nature of Castor and Pollux. The student then changes his question: "Why did Castor and Pollux have such various stories told about them?" And begins the research process again.

With research, sometimes there is a right answer, but other times our research only leads to more questions.

Research can be about almost anything, as long as it is of interest to the researcher. Studies have shown that the more we investigate and use our brains, the healthier we are. And of course, discovering new things is fun.

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Let's Try a Research Activity: The Childhood of Zeus

Ready to go on an Internet scavenger hunt?

The Internet can be a fabulous research tool. There are many treasure troves of information on the World Wide Web.

However, the Internet is also full of many perils, such as wildly inaccurate information that must be closely vetted. Therefore, we recommend that you do the following search with your mentor on hand.

Let's say you want to know more about the god Zeus, whom the Greeks called "the father of gods and men." If you put the name into a search engine, you will receive over 24 million hits, instances where his name is mentioned on the Internet.

Instead of researching general information about Zeus, you will be researching how Internet authors use and cite sources in information about Zeus. Your task is to find out how Internet authors cite their sources for the childhood of Zeus.

Strategies for Your Search

1. Type "Zeus + childhood" into your search engine.
2. Click on three to five Web site links that look promising. Reject sites that do not clearly list who their authors are. This Web site about Zeus seems to have interesting information, but a researcher cannot tell who the authors of this are and why anyone should consider them authorities on the subject.
3. Search for information about the childhood of Zeus at these sites. Decide on one detail or piece of information that interests you (such as "a band of young men, the Curetes, drowned out the baby Zeus' crying by banging on their shields and dancing").
4. Find one source where the information is provided without any references to primary or secondary texts.
5. Find one source where the information is taken from a primary, ancient text—actual Greek myths or ancient books about Greek myths. Your mentor will be able to verify this.
6. Find one source where the information is taken from a secondary source, such as a modern book or article, but where there is no footnote or quotation for that exact detail.
7. Find one source where the information is footnoted or directly quoted from a modern book. Some Internet search engines let you search actual scholarly books that will have footnotes in them.
8. To find the sources for a certain article without reading the entire page, go to your Internet browser menu and click on "Find in this page." A window will open, and you can type into the query box the word source, reference, or bibliography. Footnotes will be little numbers on the ends of sentences.¹ The numbers correspond to the notes at the bottom of the page.
9. Report your results, starting with the detail you chose. Do the authors report your detail word for word, or are there differences? Report these.
10. Write down the Internet addresses where you researched your detail. Then substantiate your claims by writing down the Web sites' references, footnotes, or lack thereof pertaining to your detail.
11. To conclude, ask yourself why an Internet author might decide not to cite his or her sources, and write your answer in complete sentences.

¹This is an example of a footnote.

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Home and Community in Ancient Greece

 We are now going to upload to your brain a fair amount of data on how the ancient Greeks lived their lives. Maybe you already know a lot about this topic. Find out by taking this pretest.

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For Polis, see Mall

The best way to learn about how ancient Greeks lived would be to take a time machine back to the year 500 BCE And when one is invented, you can be sure this course will be revised to include a link on how to register for a trip. For now, you are going to need some imagination.

So sit back and fire up those imagination synapses.

First, think of a shopping mall. Make it someplace big, with a huge parking lot, strolling crowds, a spacious food court, indoor and outdoor stores, a movie theater with twenty screens, and working fountains with loose change in the basins.

Got it?

Now imagine that instead of metal, glass, and brick, the mall is made from stone, mortar, and rough-hewn wood. Instead of attractive stores with soaring façades on a wide "main street," conjure up one- and two-story apartment houses lined up on narrow alleyways. The parking lots are farmed fields. Instead of a food court, sausage and anchovy vendors bunch themselves in the center of town. Instead of a movie theater, there is a a semi-circular outdoor amphitheater—or perhaps just the grassy slope of a hillside with a single olive tree at the foot of it. And, instead of a fountain, there is a well with a shrine to the local spirit of springs or a shrine to the local hero, the ancestor of the most prominent clan in the town.

Everyone strolling in the mall actually lives in the mall 365 days a year. And everyone in the mall is the only large group of people living within a twenty mile radius. This place is not as exciting or glamorous as a modern-day mall with all its bright lights, displays, variety of shops, and things to buy. Most of this mall would have been people's houses. But there was a family business in almost every house.

The mall-town you're imagining is a typical ancient Greek community—a polis (city).

More and more malls today are being built to look more like ancient polises—large open air areas with squares and fountains, restaurants with outdoor seating, and community venues.

Activity: Drawing Parallels, a Story

When you imagine a Greek polis being like a modern shopping mall, you're comparing, or seeing, how two things, events, or situations are like each other. If you were to investigate how they are not like each other, that would be contrasting.

You are drawing parallels when you show that two things, events, or situations are similar to each other but have differences.

Think about the story of Cydippe, Cleobis, and Biton quoted at the beginning of the lesson. Can you imagine a modern situation that is similar to that one? You don't have to have literally pulled your mother in ox-cart. Parallels are about similar situations; they are not completely alike situations.

• Write in your journal the account of a situation in which you or someone else helped your mother, father, teacher, or other relative or friend, and were rewarded or recognized for it. What similarities and differences are there between your event and the story of Cydippe, Cleobis, and Biton?

• Write the account, as if it were a story, with a beginning, middle, and end; then list, in the form of notes, the similarities and differences between your story and that of Cydippe, Cleobis, and Biton. If you can't think of any time that is even remotely like that story, brainstorm with your mentor or parents, and if all else fails, make one up from your imagination.

Remember the SCCOR elements of a good story from Lesson 1, as you think about what to put in your story.

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Community Togetherness, Not Country Living

Most Greeks did not to live in small villages dotted around the countryside; they tended to live a polis: a conglomerations of people, often behind defensive walls, with adjacent fields. They lived in the polis and commuted to their fields every day. At peak work season, they might set up in a country house for a few weeks.

Greeks grew up in community. It wasn't just that everyone knew everyone, and if a child threw a rock through a window (crash!) down the street, his mother would know about it before he came home. It was that people lived on top of each other, crowded together, mostly in small houses with shared walls.

The majority of polis residents would either be related or have connections that went back hundreds of years. A lot of older cities are like this. Have you ever been to an old part of a city like Philadelphia? The houses are right next to each other, and the houses are next to the street. This is true for most old cities. It is a little hard for us to imagine because our houses, apartments, and towns are spread out, and we have more elbow room! 

Life in ancient Greece was one big group activity. Do you have lots of friends now? Think about having 36 cousins who live within a couple of blocks of you, and they're always around.

Lack of Privacy

There was no such thing as privacy; there wasn't even a word for it. You were seldom alone, and when you were, it was considered a strange situation. Shepherds were often alone with their flocks, watching the animals on isolated hillsides and valleys between mountains. In popular stories, shepherds would often get visited by gods and goddesses, have visions, or find unwanted babies in baskets. Shepherds were often considered to have talent as poets and to be just a little, shall we say, special, if not crazy.

So if you like your time and space alone, you probably wouldn't do so well in ancient Greece, unless you got a job as a shepherd.

Consider how this togetherness affected stories. Unless you count the imagination itself, there was no low-tech equivalent of televisions, DVD players, laptop computers, nor of anything, to help the Greeks enjoy stories by themselves. So every myth told was told in front of a group—maybe as small as the oikos itself, maybe as big as the whole polis.

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Your Oikos Is My Oikos

Oikos (plural, oikoi) is the ancient Greek word for household. It's italicized because it is a foreign word. We'll use oikos in this course because it describes something very specific to ancient Greece.

We think of a household as a family maybe with a mother, father, and a couple of kids. But the Greeks thought of the oikos as not only the nuclear family but the whole extended family, including grandmothers and grandfathers, unmarried aunts, slaves and other servants, young married couples without an oikos of their own, and anyone else that depended on the father of the household for his or her life. It also included any land that they owned, plus houses, animals, and other property.

The Kurios

The leader of the oikos was the father, also known as the patriarch or, in Greek, kurios. The father in the household had absolute power. In addition to being able to boss around everyone in the oikos, he was able to determine whether his children lived or died. So if you were a kid in an oikos, you did what you were told!

That doesn't mean that the kurios went around ordering his children to be killed if they didn't take out the garbage on time. The Greeks loved their children, too! But if a father decided the family couldn't afford to have another mouth to feed, he might have a newborn baby put out on a mountainside or in a forest. The Greeks felt that if the gods wanted to save the baby, they could. That's why there are a large number of stories in Greek mythology about unwanted babies who are found on places such as mountainsides and who grow up to become important.

There must have been plenty of oikoi where the father was very nice, kept all his children, and let other people in the oikos make some decisions. But the family was not a democracy, and things that we would consider "unfair" the Greeks often didn't worry about or talked about in stories only.

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The Kurios, continued

The job of the kurios was to manage the "outdoor" affairs, which included the farm, business affairs, and any civic duties he might have, such as voting, holding political office, serving on committees, or being in military service.

This excerpt from the Oeconomicus by Xenophon, a philosophical dialogue on how to live one's life, outlines the typical day of a wealthy kurios.

"Why then (Ischomachus replied), my habit is to rise from bed early enough that I may still expect to find at home this, that, or the other friend, whom I may wish to visit. Then, if anything has to be done in town, I set off to transact the business and make that my walk; or, if there is no business to do in town, my serving-boy leads my horse to the farm; I follow, and so make the country-road my walk, which suits my purpose quite as well, or better, Socrates, perhaps, than pacing up and down the stoa. Then when I have reached the farm, where, possibly, some of my men are planting trees, or ploughing up fallow ground, sowing or getting in the crops, I inspect their various labors with an eye to every detail, and, whenever I can improve upon the present system, I introduce reform. After this, as a rule, I mount my horse and take a ride. I put him through his paces, suiting his exercise, as far as possible, to those he'll face in war—in other words, I avoid neither steep downhill nor sheer uphill, neither trench nor streambed, only giving my utmost attention that my horse will not come up lame while exercising him. When that is over, the boy grooms the horse, and leads him homewards, taking at the same time from the country to town whatever we may chance to need. Meanwhile I am off for home, partly walking, partly running, and having reached home I take a bath and give myself a rubdown with olive oil; and then I eat—a meal which leaves me neither empty nor too full, and will suffice to last me through the day." (Xenophon)

The man was not expected to take a big role in raising the children, doing the dishes, changing diapers, or any household chores. His job was to make sure the oikos had enough food and money to keep it going and to show that he was an important member of the polis.

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The Role of the Wife

The wife in the oikos, who was often much younger than the kurios (more about that in Lesson 6), tended to the "indoor" duties, which meant children, cooking, housekeeping, and textiles, a business that most Greek families engaged in. It also meant managing household workers. Depending on the wealth of the family, an oikos could have child-care workers (nannies), a cook, a cleaning woman, a personal assistant for the wife, even a person to run errands such as delivering messages or buying groceries.

Here is something of what Xenophon has to say about the duties of the wife and mother:

Listen along as you read:

  "While in creating the body of woman with less capacity for strenuous physical work," I continued, "The gods would seem to have imposed on her the indoor works; and knowing that the gods had implanted in the woman and imposed upon her the nurture of new-born babies, they gave her a larger share of affection for the new-born child than they bestowed upon man. And since they imposed on woman the guardianship of the food and other things brought in from outside, the gods in their wisdom, perceiving that a fearful spirit might help her keep and manage household possessions better, gave the woman a larger measure of prudence than they bestowed on man. Knowing further that he to whom the outdoor works belonged would need to defend them against armed attackers, they endowed the man in turn with a larger share of courage.

And seeing that both husband and wife alike feel the need of giving and receiving, the gods gave them memory and carefulness between them for their common use, so that you would find it hard to determine which of the two, the male or the female, has the larger share of these. So, too, the gods gave them for their common use the gift of self-control; and the gods might give one of the two a little more than the other, depending on where it is needed. And for the very reason that their natures are not exactly the same, they stand in greater need of one another; and the married couple is made more useful to itself, the one fulfilling what the other lacks. <Xenophon>

Women were not allowed to vote, have a career outside the home (unless they were poor or did not have a husband), or generally do most of the things that men did. Men spent their days outdoors and women spent their's indoors; there was not as much mixing of the sexes as there is today.

Although some scholars disagree, it is likely that it was during festival, especially during religious ceremonies and storytelling, that men, women, boys and girls were in the same place.

It is important to note that this was the way that women lived in ancient Athens, which was a very patriarchal place. Ancient Sparta, a rival city-state, treated their women much differently, allowing them to join the military, to choose whom they would marry and when, and to inherit property.)

My oikos is not your polis

Time for a quick check on your command of the vocabulary of community. Do you know your oikos from your polis? Find out.

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Slavery

Xenophon makes clear that the ideal oikos in ancient Greece had male and female helpers. These were slaves or people who were bound by law to live with, do the work of, and obey the kurios who had bought them. The Oeconomicus describes a kurios with quite a bit of money, enough to own a horse, many slaves, and numerous possessions. The average Greek household had between one and three slaves. One or two helped the father with the farm chores, and one helped the mother with cooking, cleaning, and child-care.

Because farms were mostly small in ancient Greece, there were no plantations like those that were common in the American South before the Civil War. Only large-scale business people, such as an owner of a silver mine, could afford or would have the need for a hundred slaves or more.

The ancient Greeks owned slaves because they believed they needed them to make their homes and businesses run, not because they were lazy themselves. They treated their slaves as well as possible and gave them the opportunity to buy their freedom through the small salary they made by working.

Anyone in the ancient world could become a slave. Some slaves were born into slavery from slave parents, but many became slaves most often as a result of having their city taken in war. Some slaves would have been kidnapped in childhood, taken where no one knew them, and sold. It was illegal to do this, but there were no police to enforce the laws.

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Children

As you might expect, children were mostly "seen and not heard" in ancient Greece. Xenophon makes no mention of what they should do in an oikos. But we know that children, when old enough, shared in the duties of the oikos. Girls helped with textiles, and boys helped with farm work.

Families with enough money to afford a teacher (there were no public schools) would teach both their boys and girls how to read and write. One of the main pieces of curriculum in the ancient world was memorizing the Iliad, the poem the Greeks loved the best. In English there are enough lines in this poem to fill a two-hundred page book. So it was a pretty big job. But students did it.

It was only when children's bodies began changing and moving into puberty, that adults began to notice of them. The main difference between children and teens is the ability to have children. Teens and adults can do it—children can't. And the Greeks were very concerned with who made babies with whom. In Lesson 5 we'll start to study the special status of teenagers in ancient Greece, including the important ability of procreation.

Shame Culture

Do you have a little voice inside you that tells you to do the right thing, even when people are not watching?

The Greeks didn't have that voice, or they didn't need to listen to it much, because they had their whole community to tell them when they were doing wrong and to tattle on them to their parents.

This type of society is called a shame culture. The society works on the principle that it is the worst thing in the world to be shown up, lose face, shamed, or disrespected in front of other people. The best thing would be for people to talk about you forever and worship you as a hero. As a child, you did the right thing so that people in the community wouldn't talk about you as a mischief-maker. When you got older, you did the right thing so that people would respect you and not take advantage of you.

The Greeks were an unsentimental people. They lived in a dangerous world, where war, famine, disease, and even pirates could change their lives in a minute. They had to lean on each other for support. There wasn't a police force, national army, health care plans, or even reliable supermarkets—those things that make life so easy for us now. In a world like ancient Greece, you had to have a good reputation so that people would help you and wouldn't think you were weak and attack you.

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Journal Entry: A Day in the Ancient Life of...

This is your main journal assignment for this lesson. 

Now that you have learned something about life in ancient Greece, it is up to you to put yourself in the shoes of an ancient Greek young person.

Imagine that you are an ancient Greek—the same age as you are now. What would your life be like? What would your normal day be like?

Write an account of a "day in my life," similar to the one given by Xenophon about the kurios you read about on the previous page. Start with waking up and end with going to bed, in between include all the details. 

Make sure you include something that was unusual or exciting.

Here are some starters, if you are stumped:

• "Today my favorite cousin, who is a mischief-maker, persuaded me to go into town and forget about our farm chores..."
• "Today I began work on a new rug with my mother..."
• "Today my teacher made us memorize 200 lines of the Iliad..."
• "Today we went into the center of town for a festival. A rhapsode was there..."

You can keep your personality or invent a different one.

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Home, Community, and Stories

Take a breath and pat yourself on the back. You've learned quite a bit about ancient Greece in this lesson.

As we learned at the beginning of the lesson, we can predict what kind of stories a culture will tell based on a culture's likes and dislikes, on the way its people live their lives, and on what they consider valuable.

We know that the ancient Greeks

• lived in a difficult world,
• were always in community and with their families,
• leaned on their family and community for support,
• gave the power in the family to the father,
• considered men to be "outdoor" folk and women to be "indoor" folk,
• did good to their friends and evil to their enemies, and
• considered what other people said about them to be all important.

So, we can predict that the stories they tell will have

• lots of families and family members in them,
• men as main characters more than women, and
• characters in them that are interested in glory or a good reputation.

And something else that is all-important:

• The main characters in the stories will very often want to be with their families rather than be "great heroes" without families.
• Main characters who do not value family will often fail to accomplish their goals.

This is different from some American stories, where it seems that the point is to accomplish the goal and the family is always second or sometimes not there at all.

Pay close attention to these last two points. They will come up again and again. You might want to put them into your notes or your journal with a big circle around them.

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Final Activity: Finding Parallels with Modern Film

Now that you know what it was like to live in an oikos in an ancient Greek polis, you're ready to use your newfound knowledge in comparison with a work of art, a film.

Watch My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding. Then compare the life of the main character, Toula, with that of women in ancient Greece. Here's how:

• On the surface, Toula lives a completely different life from women in ancient Greece, because in ancient Greece they didn't have cars, skyscrapers, telephones, electric lights, etc. You should not be concerned with these surface features.

• You will be concerned with parallels. (To review the definition of a parallel, see your research handout or the parallels activity on page 7.) What in Toula's life is like women's life in ancient Greece, but not exactly the same?

• For example, what about Toulaʻs job in the family restaurant? On the surface, she is not like an ancient woman, because she doesn't work with textiles. But her job is like that job, because she is working in a family business with her female relatives.

• What about real differences? Slavery's one for sure. Toula's family owns no slaves. That would be illegal.

This activity will be similar to the one in the last lesson. Make a list of elements that could be similar or different, and for each one, write in complete sentences if there is a parallel. Here are some examples of elements you can use in your list:

• kurios, oikos, polis, nuclear family, extended family, community, marriage, family business, children, school, women and "indoor work," men and "outdoor work," shame culture

You should include no fewer than ten elements in your report.

• On the left-hand side of the list, write the element.
• In the center, put "yes" if there is a parallel, and "no" if there isn't.
• On the right-hand side of the list, paraphrase or summarize the event or situation that shows the parallel or doesn't.
• Also on the right-hand side, explain in no more than two or three complete sentences why there is or is not a parallel.

The best way to research this movie is to see it once all the way through. Then watch it again, pausing so that you can skip from chapter to chapter as if you were reading a book. Quoting from the primary source—using the movie's own words—is recommended, but you can also paraphrase and summarize.

 Example:

Challenge: The Movie Review

If you would like to complete a deeper analysis, take your list and write a movie review of My Big, Fat ,Greek Wedding for the ancient Greeks. In your review, you will be suggesting to the ancient Greeks whether they would like or dislike the movie, and why. In order to do this, you have to be pretty sure of the data given to you about the Greeks in this lesson. So review with your mentor first before embarking on the project. You may want to tailor the movie review to individual people in the audience. Would the kurios like it? How about his wife? His children? His slaves?

To see samples of good movie reviews, work with your mentor to locate quality reviews in print and Web sources. Study these reviews carefully; a lot of analysis of many different cinematic elements is required.

And if you're ready for a greater challenge, you can write a review for ancient Greeks of an American movie you choose yourself. You'll want to choose a movie that has at least some of the elements of ancient Greek culture listed above, so discuss your choice with your mentor first, brainstorming the elements that are present before starting the review.

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Challenge Activities

Big Ideas Activity: Ethos

The passage from the historian Herodotus quoted at the beginning of the lesson is often considered to be emblematic of the Greek ethos, or national character. The ethos or "spirit" of a nation is a kind of summary of all the values that that nation holds dear.

America has an ethos as well. Our Declaration of Independence states that all people are endowed with the inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We hold dear that everyone should have an equal chance for a good life—a "happy" life.

The Greeks had an idea about happiness, too. The historian Herodotus used the story of Cleobis and Biton to illustrate what it means to be happy, which is part of the Greek ethos.

Herodotus included two other stories about happiness, all told by the wise man Solon to the foreign Croesus, when Croesus asked "Who is the happiest man in the world?" Your mentor has the link to the text of Solon's accounts. Read through them.

• What is the common thread or repeated message among all three?
• What lesson is Solon trying to get across to Croesus by telling these stories?
• How is this part of the Greek ethos different from the American idea of happiness?
• Why might the Greeks have latched on to their idea?

You may write a formal response to these questions, or discuss it with your mentor.

Disciplinary Hat: Design Your Own Polis

Put on lots of hats this time. You can be an architect, civil engineer, and a designer.

Take a field trip to your large local mall to create your own polis. What would go where? Make a big map with drawings of the architectural features.

• Would there be an amphitheater?
• Would there be a large temple, like the Parthenon on top of the Acropolis? Or a series of smaller shrines?
• Where would the people live? If you want, you can even label the buildings with specific oikoi.
• Use the parallels in your mall to create an ancient oikos.

Many universities have amphitheaters for their drama schools and history departments. Check your local schools out and go on a field trip to get the idea of scope and perspective, if you can!

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