2. The geography of the city-state, Sparta included location on the most southern counterpart of the mainland of Greece, Peloponnesus. Sparta’s location also included being in a very fertile plain between the mountains of Peloponnesus and the Aegean and Mediterranean Sea. Sparta’s geography influenced Spartan life in two ways: isolation was caused because of being in the plain between the mountains and the sea, which led to suspicion of outsiders. Because the plain Sparta was located on was so fertile, the plain encouraged Spartans to grow the important crops.

3. The geography of the city-state, Athens included location in central Greece, only four miles from the Aegean Sea, which was why Athens had a port and a huge naval ship fleet. As already written, Athens was very near the Aegean Sea, an estimated four miles. Athens’s location’s effect on ancient Athenian life encouraged Athenians to travel and venture unknown lands across the Aegean and Mediterranean Sea, have a special love for travel (which made use of the Athenian ideas because Athenian ideas and knowledge were usually shared during an adventure), created Athenians to make strong links with many other city-states, and began a great Athenian naval fleet (for the Athenians lived close to the water).

4. The Athenian economy included lots of trade (for Athens’s economy was based on trade with other city-states and foreign lands), huge supermarkets in the city centre called agoras (where people could buy, sell, or barter products), and coins as used as currency (coins were used as currency because coins were portable). Again, Athenian economy was based on trade and barter because Athens’s land-unlike Sparta’s land-was not enough in quantity to satisfy the needs of all the thousands of people in Athens. Also, Athens was almost a perfect place for trade because there was a proficient harbor in the port of Athens and Athens was located almost directly off the Aegean Sea. Athenians traded with Italy for wood products, Egypt for grain products, and other many other foreign lands and city-states for a variety of products.

5. The purpose of education in Athens was to train children to be righteous and good citizens (for Athens had a democracy which absolutely depended on good citizens). Athens’s way for educating boys and girls to be good citizens was to educate the children with the end result being a grown person with a sharp mind and body. Reading, writing, arithmetic, literature, wresting, gymnastics, and the learning of the ancient instrument, the lyre were all the subjects offered throughout the ages 6 to 14.

6. Women’s roles in Sparta included being healthy, strong, and ready to fight for their property and Sparta. Women in Sparta were also required to look after their husband’s property in times of war, guard the property from invaders, and guard the property from slaves during revolts.

ü  Women’s roles in Athens included having a job (a very few women had jobs) such as being a priestess or selling goods at the agora. Still, women made the greatest impression on the household, where women manage the household throughout the day, bring up the children, educate the sons until the sons were six or seven, and educate the daughters until the daughters were fifteen, which was the marriage age. Athenian women would also spin, weave, and supervise the slave(s).

7. The Athenian government included a democracy (established at the year 500 B.C.E) which only considered free men over the age of 18 who had been born in Athens to be citizens and also included of a group called the Council of 500 consisting of 500 randomly picked men at thirty years of age or over thirty years of age, who met each day to propose new laws.  Assemblies consisting of 6,000 citizens were also included in Athens’s government. The citizens voted on proposed laws which they approved and liked and met every ten days.

ü  Sparta’s government differentiated in almost every way from Athens’s government, starting with Sparta’s rulers, oligarchs. While the most important decisions in Sparta’s government were made by the Assembly, the most important decisions in Sparta were made by the Council of Elders, the name almost matching the definition for the Council of Elders, a council of 28 men from noble, wealthy families who were older than sixty years old (there were also two leaders or kings of the group). Although Sparta did have an Assembly, that Assembly was not as important as Athens’s Assembly was-this Assembly only debated issues.

8. The role slavery played in Athens was a very wide variety of sometimes grueling, tough jobs in Athens: running households, male slaves tutored children, craft making as craftsmen, farming, working in factories, clerks, and the most grueling and unlucky of all…WORKING IN SILVER MINESL. Slaves also had to work at any job in which the wealthy family which owned the slaves commanded the slaves to act upon.

ü  The roles of the slaves in Sparta could include farming and being forced to give most of the farmed crop to the Spartans. This contrasted to the role of slaves in Athens because Athenian slaves had a more wide variety of jobs, not just one job. Mostly, the Spartan slaves were the exacted opposite of the Athenian slaves in all the categories in which slaves could be categorized in. If there were any comparisons between the Athenian slaves and the Spartan slaves, the book did not specify the differences. 

9. The relationship between Athens and Sparta for most of their history was bitter rivalry. Both of these city-states were bitter rivals because these city-states differed in almost the most unfamiliar ways, warfare rose and the two city-states fought one another. Hence, the city-states were so different from one another; war was the effect and caused the city-states to be rivals for most of their histories.