SPARTA
Spartan boys entered military training (the agoge) at this age.
What is seven?
Athens built these massive fortifications (some 40 feet tall) connecting the city to its ports so it couldn't be captured by a land siege alone.
What are The Long Walls?
This is the name for the type of Athenian warship rowed by about 170 oarsmen.
What is a trireme
This king of Ithaca, known for his cunning, is the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.
Who is Odysseus?
This king of the gods is Athena's father, and she is said to be his favorite child.
Who is Zeus?
This is the name for enslaved people in Sparta who farmed the land and outnumbered Spartans about 10 to 1.
Who are the Helots?
Athens depended heavily on importing this resource because Attica's land was rocky and hard to farm.
What is Grain (food)
Spartan mothers were said to tell their sons to return from battle with this, or on it.
What is their shield?
This goddess of wisdom and strategy is Odysseus' protector and helps guide him and his son throughout the epic.
Who is Athena?
Athena sprang fully grown and already wearing armor from this part of Zeus's body.
What is his head?
This is the name of the alliance of city-states led by Sparta, which included Corinth, Megara, and Thebes.
What is The Peloponnesian League?
These silver mines, about 40 miles south of Athens, funded much of Athens' wealth and navy.
What are the Laurium silver mines?
This is the name for a foot soldier who fought with a shield, spear, and helmet.
What is a hoplite?
Odysseus blinded this one-eyed giant, a son of Poseidon, which caused the sea god to curse his journey home.
Who is Polyphemus (the Cyclops)?
In the myth of Persephone, this is the reason Persephone must spend part of every year in the Underworld, even after Demeter convinces Zeus to let her return to the surface.
What is eating pomegranate seeds while in the Underworld (eating the food of the dead bound her to it).
Sparta is protected on multiple sides by this geographic feature, which made invasion difficult.
What are the Taygetus mountains / Peloponnese mountains?
This deep-water sea was important to Athens for trade and travel by ship.
What is The Aegean Sea?
In Athens, this group of wealthy citizens owned large estates and held the most political power.
Who are the Aristocrats?
In one trick to escape the Cyclops's cave, Odysseus tells Polyphemus that this is his name, so that when the Cyclops cries for help, the other Cyclopes think no one is attacking him.
Who is "Nobody" (Outis)?
Persephone's mother is this goddess of the harvest and agriculture, whose grief over her daughter's absence is said to cause winter.
Who is Demeter?
During this conflict, Sparta defeated the Messenians even though Sparta was outnumbered ten to one.
What is the second Messenian War
This is the name of the alliance of city-states led by Athens, which Athens taxed to help pay for its navy.
What is The Delian League?
The Athenian practice of voting to exile a citizen for 10 years by writing his name on a pottery shard — giving us the modern English word for excluding someone from a group.
What is an Ostracism (from ostrakon — a pottery shard)
This is the name for the Greek concept of hospitality — the sacred duty to be generous and respectful to guests and strangers.
What is Xenia?
Athena is the goddess of wisdom and war, and is also the patron (protector) goddess of this Greek city.
What is Athens?