Ancient Greek Legacies

Ancient Greek Legacies Throughout Ancient Greece there have been many legacies. The Olympic Games were created and become part of history. Architecture influenced modern buildings. During these times, different types of literature were produced. Three greatest legacies of Ancient Greece are literature, the Olympic Games, and architecture.
The Olympic Games was created because of a myth. It began when Oenomaus, the king of Olympia had a daughter named Hippodamia and wanted to compete with the person who wanted to marry his daughter in a chariot race. Pelops, the grandson of Zeus wanted to marry Hippodamia and challenged Oenomaus to a race. Pelops defeated and killed the king and also made Hippodamia his wife. Pelops wanted his victory to be remembered so he ordered that athletic games should be held every four years at Olympia to honour Zeus. The Olympics in ancient Greece was open to all city states and was held every four years and lasted for five days. Anyone who came to the Olympics was guaranteed safety regardless of conflicts or wars among the other city states. The modern Olympic Games take place in a different host city every four years and gives the local economy a huge boost. Furthermore, there are two types of games, one that is for the summer and one for the winter. They are held every two years and have different variety of activities in each season. In the summer Olympic Games activities include archery, boxing, gymnastics, handball, judo, rowing, soccer, and there are many more. The main track and field event is the Decathlon. The winter Olympics had activities such as bobsledding, ice hockey, luge, skating, skiing, tobogganing, and the Biathlon. I think the Olympic Games is one of the greatest legacies of Ancient Greece due to the fact that we still participate in it today every four years. All the countries around the world that want to take part in the competition come together in one city and compete, trying to be victorious. The Olympic Games is something that displays athleticism, and glory in one`s country. It’s a place where people come together for peace and unity.
Greek architecture in the classical periods was linked to harmony and unity. There were remarkable buildings constructed in Ancient Greece and that was the temples. Temples consisted of a long hall with rows of columns on the outside to support the roof. A triangular piece was put in at the front and back of the columns. This type of design was sometimes called post and lintel construction. The Greeks did not use the arch in their buildings. The key principles in Greek architectural design were symmetry and proportion. There were three different designs that were the main styles of Greek architecture, and they were Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The Doric style was plain and massive but was most favoured by the Athenians of the fifth century BCE. It was also used to construct the Parthenon. The Ionic style was curled out on both sides like a pair of ram’s horns. The Corinthian style was rich and ornate. In my opinion, architecture is an essential legacy because in Ancient Greece the Greek architecture is sometimes seen as the model or sample that is used today to construct the modern buildings in the Western world. An example is The Supreme Court of the United States, which uses the style of Corinthian architecture. There are many different forms of literature and there were different people that wrote these literature works. There was a writer who had great influence who was an epic poet from Chios, and his name was Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey were written by Homer during the Dark Ages and helped to create a “national literature” for the ancient Greeks. The poems became a unifying force in Greek culture. Epics were long poems telling stories of heroic deeds that often affected the fate of an entire city or people. Hesiod, a poet who lived just after Homer, produced a popular poem called Works and Days. In this poem he wrote about the daily life of a farmer in ancient Greece. Hesiod also wrote Theogony which described the creation of the universe and the history of the gods. Another form of literature was lyric poetry. Lyric poems are shorter and more personal than epics, expressing such as love. Most of them were written to be sung, accompanied by the lyre. Sappho and Pindar wrote lyric poems. The fable is another type of literature. Fables are short, concise tales that use animal characters to tell a moral. Many children still read Aesop’s fables, such as “The Hare and the Tortoise” and more. I believe literature was an important legacy because the influence on modern literatures has been tremendous. From Aesop we’ve inherited our modern form of fables. The literatures in Ancient Greece are well known by Romans as well as by people today. These works have been the model for writers of the same genres. Even today, some people choose to study these famous works.
During the time of Ancient Greece, many different legacies have been created. Many different forms of literature were written. The Olympic Games are celebrated every four years around the world. Some modern buildings are built similar to those in Ancient Greece. The Olympics, literature and architecture are the greatest legacies of Ancient Greece.