Greek art and architecture (F1, F2)

Seeing that I've probably written about every Greek god and goddess you can think of, I'm going to write about Greek culture, art, and rulers throughout Greek history. This is a little different than my usual blogs, but the unfortunate case of limited choices is the reasoning for this change in the regular blogs I used to post.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Greeks, at least in my eyes, is all of the art and architecture. The Greeks, especially the Athenians were remembered for their styles in art and architecture. One of the most popular and well-known pieces of art is the Greek Parthenon. This Parthenon was built by the Ancient Greeks to show their worship to one of their Greek deities, Athena. (See I'm incorporating Greek mythology into this!). Athena is a Greek goddess, the daughter of Zeus. She is the wisest out of all of the Greek deities because she was born by the splitting of Zeus's head by the metal working god, Hephaestus. Athena and Poseidon fought over who was going to be the patron deity of the Athenians. It's pretty obvious who won out of the two gods seeing that ATHENs and ATHENa are extremely similar in their spelling. If you didn't get it, Athena became the patron deity for the Athenians and they named their capital after her, Athens. They built this out of marble, and it is slowly deteriorating due to the acid rain in the region. It took the Greeks a total of nine years to complete the building of the Parthenon before common era. The Parthenon generally comes to mind whenever someone hears about Ancient Greek architecture. It is the representation of other Greek achievements, such as the Athenian invention of the government system of democracy. The Athenian legacy obviously still lives on because here in the United States, our government system is democracy. The Parthenon is forty feet high.

Another form of Greek art and architecture was in the Greek sculptures of that time, Greek art was mainly prominent during the hellenistic age led by Alexander the Great in early centuries. Alexander the Great was a conqueror and as he conquered new lands, he spread culture and eventually united the people he conquered under one main culture, Hellenism. Hellenism is the blending of Persian and Greek cultures. This blending of cultures was a form of cultural diffusion because it was the spreading and combination in this case of different cultures from one group to another throughout Alexander the Great's vast and what was then a rapidly expanding empire.

Some of the most popular pieces of artwork during the Hellenistic Age and even before was of sculptures. The Greeks would usually create sculptures of their Greek gods and goddesses to show their worship of them. There would never be a sculpture of Hades, the god of the underworld, in Greece. This was because Hades was feared and no one wanted to worship the most brutal god and the god that watched over the dead.


These Greek sculptures are seen in later time periods, such as the Renaissance. An example of the would be Michaelangelo's David. This was created during the Renaissance and showed aspects of humanism and individualism. Humanism and individualism were seen mainly during the Renaissance and onward, not really in Ancient Greek societies.The Greeks also created other pieces of art for their Greek gods and goddesses, such as foundations or temples. An example of this would be the Parthenon, which I talked about in the beginning of this blog. Even though the Greeks created their art and architecture for mainly religious reasons, it's still interesting to see what the impact the Greeks had on society.