Most aristocracy were wealthy enough to employ a large number of hired laborers, sharecroppers, and even slaves to tend their vast estates.

• As a result, they would have more time for other pursuits.

• The drinking party, or symposia, was the focal point of aristocratic social life.

• This was no ordinary drinking session designed to erase inhibitions and generate forgetfulness.

• In reality, the Greeks nearly always mixed their wine with water, and one of the players' aims was to drink as much as the others without becoming inebriated.

The symposium was a well planned affair, with a "monarch" appointed to control the schedule of proceedings and determine the night's wine and water combination.

• Only guys took part, and they ate and drank while reclining on the couch.

• The symposium was a well planned affair, with a "monarch" appointed to control the schedule of proceedings and determine the night's wine and water combination.

• Only males attended, and they ate and drank while reclined on sofas along the room's walls.

• The rituals started with prayers and libations to the gods.

There were usually games, such as dice or kottabos, in which wine was flung from the cups towards various targets.

• Occasionally, dancing girls or flute girls provided entertainment.

Aristocratic participants sometimes contributed their own entertainment in the form of music, poetry, or even intellectual debates.

• These took the shape of contests, with some type of award for the winner, because aristocratic ideals continued to stress competitiveness and the drive to win.

The majority of the evidence, which comes from the legislation, philosophical and moral works, and knowledge about everyday living and societal structure, reveals that women were barred from most parts of public life.

• They were unable to vote, participate in political assemblies, occupy public office, or engage in any direct political activity.

• Because Athens was one of the few locations in the ancient world where male residents of all classes had these civic obligations and possibilities, women's exclusion was all the more striking.

According to the same sources, in the intimate elements of life, women were always under the jurisdiction of a male guardian—a father, a spouse, or some other male figure.

Pericles' life did not follow his own script.

• After divorcing his first wife, he began a relationship with a lady who was, in her own way, as exceptional as the great Athenian leader.

• Aspasia, a young woman from Miletus who had come to live in Athens, was his partner.

The ancient literature refer to her as a hetaira, a high-class courtesan who served men with sensual and other forms of amusement.

• She definitely possessed a sharp and vibrant brain, and she may have been educated in the latest ideas and debate methods in her own Athens, the birthplace of the Greek Enlightenment.

• Socrates believed it was worthwhile to speak.

According to some historians, the proportion of slaves to free citizens in the American South before to the Civil War was comparable to that of ancient Athens, where slaves made up less than one-third of the entire population and three-quarters of free Southerners owned no slaves.

• Because slavery was so vital to the economy of the South, historians believe it was as significant and repressive in ancient Athens.

• This argument has a number of flaws.

First, before to the Civil War, the cotton states of the American South were dominated by a single cash crop that was ideally adapted for exploitation by huge populations of slaves.

• In Athens, on the other hand, the economy was heterogeneous, the crops were diverse, and the land was underutilized.

Religion was more of a civic than a private affair in Athens, as it was in the other Greek states.

• Participation in the ceremonies of the national religion was a question of patriotism and good citizenship, not of faith. It has little to do with morality in its most basic form.

• Over time, poets and philosophers advanced ethical and moral ideals that, for certain peoples, such as the Hebrews and Persians, were the work of religious prophets and were fundamental to their religious beliefs.

• However, Greek religion prioritized not moral behavior to orthodox belief, but the faithful performance of rites designed to gain the favor of the gods.

Slaves worked in greater numbers in industry, particularly mining.

• Nicias, a wealthy Athenian in the fifth century B.C.E., possessed a thousand slaves that he farmed out to a mining contractor for profit, but this is by far the biggest number reported.

• The majority of production was done on a modest scale, with firms employing one, two, or a handful of slaves.

• Slaves worked as artisans in practically every trade, and, like agricultural slaves on small farms, they collaborated with their owners.

• A large number of slaves worked as household servants or as herders. Publicly owned slaves worked as cops, jail guards, clerks, and secretaries.

The number of slaves in ancient Greece and their significance to Greek civilization are contentious issues.

• We don't have any meaningful data for the total number of slaves.

Famous instances of such blasphemy and punishment happened in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E.

• In 415, several persons vandalized the Hermes sculptures that could be found on every street in Athens.

• Others were accused of insulting the holy secrets of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone's devotion.

Suspicions quickly developed that the objective of these sacrilegious actions was to destabilize Athenian democracy, and the culprits were executed.

• In 399 B.C.E., the philosopher Socrates was sentenced to death for not worshiping the state's gods and for creating new divinities.

• This was linked to the additional allegation of corrupting the adolescents, both of which were thought to be detrimental to Athens' well-being.