[bright string music]
- Rick Steves: From Egyptians to Minoans to Mycenaeans,
the march of progress was on,
and next, Athens would lead the way.
Rising up from the teeming heart of modern Athens,
the Acropolis hill shines like a beacon of civilization.
By the year 500 BC, here, in the city of Athens,
the Greek people were laying the foundations
of what we know as Western civilization.
Democracy, literature, theater, mathematics, science,
philosophy, and art all flourished in Greece
during its Golden Age, and this set the template
for centuries of European culture that followed.
Athens' Acropolis, literally its high city,
was a place of worship and a refuge in war.
And just below that, here in the agora, or market,
civic life flourished and Greek civilization thrived.
The agora had all the basic features of urban Greek life,
from shopping malls to temples.
This covered portico, or stoa, is totally rebuilt
so we can better imagine it in action.
Crowds would gather here to shop, socialize,
or listen to the great philosophers of the age.
Imagine four centuries before Christ,
hanging out in a place like this,
celebrating the rise of creative thinking.
You could bump into great philosophers
like Aristotle or Socrates.
Hey, know thyself.
But Socrates and Aristotle
and the brilliance of ancient Greece's Golden Age
didn't just pop out of nowhere.
Burdened with a rugged, isolating landscape
and endless intercity warfare, the Greeks spent centuries
floundering in an earlier dark age.
They had a warrior ethos, which you can see in their art.
Lots of battle scenes and conflict.
Scenes of wild satyrs chasing human women,
or of humans battling centaurs
reflected the Greeks' long struggle
to rise above their warring heritage.