American InterContinental University
The early Greek and Roman empires or civilizations shared a lot of similarities in geography for they both are Mediterranean countries. They had similar religions also. These are some of the cultural aspects that are compared and contrasted.
Early Greek and Roman Civilizations
The following are examples of cultural elements of comparison and contrast: geography, government, economy, art, philosophy, religion. Furthermore, the graph below will go into more detail in all of the subjects discussed above. | Greece| Roman|
Geography| Some of the Greek poleis or city states as they were called where naturally separated by the sea from the mainland. Now the mainland was very mountainous. | Geographically, Rome was built on seven hills on the east bank of the Tiber River. The lower lying areas were prone to flooding.| Government| Greek governments were divided in groups by the great Aristotle, and are still used today by historians, into monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies, and democracies.| Rome was ruled by kings at the beginning of their time. Then it became a republic with emperors of royal blood and a senate and an assembly.| Economy| The Greeks since their poleis where unreachable by land they were reached by sea. Thus in the early part of the history of Greece the main source of economy was through fishing and trading. Later led onto agriculture and the growing of wheat.| Romans where known for their trading and were also known for taking slaves from all of the wars that they had from the expansion of their empire. Therefore, the people of Rome had grown a custom to slave labor.| Art| The Greeks where known for the art form of perfecting the human body. They were known for sculptures and other famous art works known as ideal artistic form of art.| The Roman people were engineers. Concrete was one of the greatest inventions by the romans. They were able to make great expanded forms of architecture.| Philosophy| Philosophy or ‘love of wisdom’ was the enriched need of knowledge without the use of history. Some of the greatest thinkers came from ancient Greece mainly from Athens. | Roman philosophy was borrowed from the Greeks philosophy and the concepts of ethical and political.| Religion| The religion of the Greeks where that of gods for every aspect of life. For example, there were gods for things like the sea ruled by Poeidon and the underworld ruling over the dead ruled by Hades. Then the all mighty Zeus ruler of all gods and of mankind.| Roman also believed in gods for every aspect of life. Therefore they borrowed the Greeks gods and just renamed them. |
So in conclusion, as we can see that the Greeks and the Romans had many similarities. Reasons of this may stem from the fact that the Romans develop from the Greek colonies and also the Etruscan settlements. This may be the reason why the philosophy and the religion of the Greek and Romans are very similar. As you can also see though both civilizations had their differences in how their civilizations were maintained and ran in everyday life and morals.
Miller, Lee, Patrick., Reeve, C.D.C. (2006). Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc Sayre, Henry. (2010). Discovering the Humanities. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Hall