What Did the Ancient Greeks Contribute to Modern Civilization? A Lot, It Turns Out.

Most people are aware that the ancient Greeks made a lot of significant contributions to modern civilization, but not everyone knows exactly what they contributed. I cannot possibly hope to list all of the ancient Greek contributions to civilization here, since I could write a whole book on the subject and still not cover everything. Nonetheless, here are just a few of the ancient Greeks’ most famous—and, indeed, most obvious—contributions. These are numbered in no particular order:

#1. Written vowels

The ancient Greek alphabet was the first true alphabet, because it was the first writing system in which every letter represents a specific sound that had letters representing vowels. The Greek alphabet was based on the earlier Phoenician abjad, which only had consonants, but the Greeks repurposed Phoenician letters representing consonant sounds that did not exist in their language as vowels. The Latin alphabet, which is the alphabet used today to write the English language and the alphabet that I am using to write this answer, is derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which is, in turn, derived from the Greek alphabet.

ABOVE: The Greek alphabet, showing Classical Attic pronunciations (image taken from Omniglot)

#2. An early form of democracy

It is widely known that the ancient Greeks invented democracy and this is indeed a fact, but democracy in ancient Greek city-states was nonetheless very different from the form of government we have today. Ancient Greek democracies were direct democracies, meaning the citizens voted directly on all issues rather than electing representatives to vote on them for them.

This was actually problematic, at least in Athens, which was the largest and best-documented of all ancient Greek democratic city-states, because many Athenian citizens do not seem to have really understood all the issues, resulting in many poor decisions. Also, in ancient Athens, only free, adult, male Athenian citizens were allowed to take part in government, which meant that the vast majority of people in the city, including women, foreigners, and slaves, actually had little-to-no say whatsoever in politics.

There were also other major problems with Athenian democracy, including the fact that the Athenian judicial system was also a mess. Anyone could be accused of having committed a crime and be brought to court without any evidence. Convictions and acquittals rarely ever relied on any kind of objective evidence and instead relied on who could deliver the most appealing argument to the jury.

Nonetheless, for all its many faults, Athenian democracy was a starting point for all the democracies that came after it—a necessary first prototype of a system of government in which the people themselves rule themselves. Every democracy in the world today has either directly or indirectly drawn some measure of inspiration from the constitution of ancient Athens.

ABOVE: The Funerary Oration of Pericles, painted by the German history painter Philipp Foltz (lived 1805 – 1877)

#3. The beginnings of what would eventually become western and Middle Eastern philosophy

There had been many thinkers in earlier civilizations before the Greeks whom we might term “philosophers,” but the specific variety of philosophy that has been dominant in the western world for the past roughly 2,500 years or so largely originates with the Greek philosophers Sokrates (lived 470 – 399 BC), Platon (lived c. 424 – c. 347 BC), and Aristoteles of Stageira (lived c. 384 – 322 BC), who have been characterized as the founding fathers of the western philosophical tradition.

During the late Classical and early Hellenistic Periods, many schools of Greek philosophical thought arose, including the Platonists, the Peripatetics, the Cynics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Cyrenaics, and the Pyrrhonists. All of these schools drew at least a few aspects of their teachings from at least one of the three big names I mentioned above. Greek philosophy was tremendously influential on the Romans and, through them, western Europe. It was also tremendously influential on later Byzantine and Middle Eastern philosophers.

ABOVE: The School of Athens, painted 1509 – 1511 by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael (learn more about it in this article I wrote)

#4. A very early form of the empirical philosophy that would eventually become science

In early Greece, it was common to explain natural events using mythological explanations. The first person to attempt to explain the universe naturalistically without resorting to mythical explanations is said to have been the Ionian Greek philosopher Thales of Miletos (lived c. 624 – c. 545 BC). Other pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, including, among many others, Anaximandros of Miletos (lived c. 610 – c. 546 BC) and Pythagoras of Samos (lived c. 570 – c. 495 BC), followed in Thales’s footsteps.

Later post-Socratic Greek philosophers were among the very first to develop the idea that our knowledge about the world should be gathered from empirical evidence and observation. This is now the central idea behind nearly all modern science. Among the earliest proponents of this ideology were the philosophers Aristoteles of Stageira (lived 384 – 322 BC) and Epikouros of Samos (lived 341 – 270 BC). It is probably anachronistic to call these thinkers “scientists” in any meaningful sense, but we might justifiably call them “proto-scientists.”

ABOVE: Aristoteles correctly described the hectocotyl arm on an octopus. Most biologists dismissed it as nonsense until they observed it for themselves in the nineteenth century.

#5. Historiography

There were many writers in ancient civilizations before the Greeks who wrote about past events, but they mainly did so for propagandistic purposes. As far as we know, none of them ever tried to methodically collect and objectively analyze different accounts of past events from different peoples and evaluate them to figure out what really happened. Likewise, as far as we know, none of them ever tried to figure out the causes of the events they were describing.

The very first person ever known to have attempted to do all of these things was the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC). Herodotos is famous for his book The Histories, a monumental, nine-volume work in which he retells various accounts he had heard from different peoples and attempts to analyze them as neutrally and objectively as possible in order to determine the causes behind the events he describes.

Although Herodotos’s Histories are admittedly far from perfect and historiography has undoubtedly come a long way since the fifth century BC, Herodotos made an important first step in direction of a more historiographic approach to writing about past events. He is known today as the “Father of History.”

The Athenian historian Thoukydides (lived c. 460 – c.  400 BC) followed in Herodotos’s footsteps when he wrote his book Histories of the Peloponnesian War, but, while Herodotos had freely included stories of dubious historical accuracy because he felt bound to record everything he heard, regardless of whether or not he believed it, Thoukydides took a more rational, skeptical approach and only included accounts which he believed to be correct. All western historians since then have followed in Herodotos and Thoukydides’s footsteps.

ABOVE: Second-century AD Roman marble copy of a Greek bust of Herodotos of Halikarnassos dating to the early fourth century BC

#6. Some of the greatest surviving works of world literature

A massive number of outstanding works of ancient Greek literature are now widely considered timeless classics and some of the greatest works of literature ever written. Among the earliest of these are the two great Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the poems of Hesiod, Theogonia and Works and Days. These four works are in dactylic hexameter and were probably composed in around the eighth century BC. They form the foundation of the ancient Greek literary tradition.

Of slightly later date are the poems of the early Greek lyric poets, which survive mostly only in fragments. Among the most famous early Greek lyric poets are Sappho of Lesbos (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BC), Alkaios of Mytilene (lived c. 620 – c. 550 BC), Simonides of Keos (lived c. 556 – c. 468 BC), and Pindaros of Thebes (lived c. 522 – c. 443 BC).

The surviving plays of the great Athenian tragic playwrights Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BC), Sophokles (lived c.497 – c. 406 BC), and Euripides (lived c. 480 – c. 406 BC) are considered among the greatest plays ever written, as are the surviving comedies of the Athenian comic playwrights Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BC) and Menandros (lived c. 342 – c. 290 BC).

In around the third century BC, during the Hellenistic Period, the poet Apollonios of Rhodes produced the epic poem The Argonautika. During the second century AD, when Greece was under Roman rule, the Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD) wrote many famous biographies and essays and the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after 180 AD) wrote around eighty satires in Greek that are still hilarious even today. There are plenty of other great works of Greek literature I have not even mentioned here.

ABOVE: The Parnassus, painted in 1511 by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, showing famous poets of all ages

#7. Some of the greatest surviving works of art and architecture

The ancient Greeks produced tons and tons of amazing works of art and architecture. Here are just a few of the most famous examples:

ABOVE: Modern-day ruins of the Parthenon, a temple to the Greek goddess Athena built on the Athenian Akropolis between 447 and 432 BC

ABOVE: Modern-day ruins of the Erechtheion, another building on the Athenian Akropolis

ABOVE: The modern-day ruins of the Theater of Epidauros, one of the best-preserved ancient Greek theaters

ABOVE: Greek bronze statue of a god, probably either Zeus or Poseidon, discovered off the coast of Cape Artemision, dating to the early fifth century BC

ABOVE: Wall painting of a symposion from the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, dating to c. 480 BC

ABOVE: The Ludovisi Aphrodite, a Roman marble copy of the famed Aphrodite of Knidos created by the fourth-century BC Athenian sculptor Praxiteles of Athens

ABOVE: Winged Nike of Samothrace, a Hellenistic Greek sculpture of Nike, the divine personification of victory, produced sometime around c. 200 – c. 190 BC

ABOVE: Laocoön and His Sons, a sculpture group by the Greek sculptors Agesandros, Athenodoros, and Polydoros

#8. Many important discoveries and ideas in mathematics

The ancient Greeks did not “invent” mathematics; mathematics existed as a discipline long before the Greeks and it had already been studied to some extent for practical purposes by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, and other peoples. Nonetheless, the ancient Greeks contributed many significant discoveries and ideas to mathematics. In particular, the Pythagoreans are thought to have probably early pioneers in the field, although, as I explain in this article from almost exactly one year ago, it is unclear whether Pythagoras himself ever had any involvement in mathematics.

The later mathematician Eukleides of Alexandria (lived c. 330 – c. 270 BC or thereabouts) wrote the book The Elements, the first mathematics textbook, which was so influential that it was still the standard geometry textbook in many western countries up until around a century and a half ago. The greatest of all Greek mathematicians, though, was probably the brilliant polymath Archimedes of Syracuse (lived c. 287 – c. 212 BC), who even pioneered an early form of calculus nearly 2,000 years before Sir Isaac Newton was even born!

Apollonios of Perga, who was born in the late third century BC, is known for his writings on conic sections. The mathematician Diophantos of Alexandria, who lived in the third century AD, is known for his book Arithmetica, a textbook which pioneered algebra.

ABOVE: The Death of Archimedes, painted in 1815 by the French Neoclassical painter Thomas Degeorge

#9. Many important discoveries and ideas in astronomy

The Greeks were observers of the heavens from the very earliest times. They did not “invent” astronomy, which had already been studied extensively by other ancient peoples, but especially the Babylonians. They did, however, make many major and indispensable contributions to the field.

As I discuss in this article I published in February 2019, by around the end of the fifth century BC, it was common knowledge throughout the Greek world that the Earth is a sphere. We do not know who the first person to argue in favor of the sphericity of the Earth was, but we do know that Platon describes the sphericity of the Earth as common knowledge in his dialogue Phaidon 108a. Platon’s student Aristoteles of Stageira, whose writings were widely studied during the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, argues in favor of the sphericity of the Earth in Book Two of his treatise De Caelo. Nearly all Greek writers thereafter describe the Earth as a sphere.

Not only did the ancient Greeks know that the Earth is a sphere, one ancient Greek even proposed the idea that the Earth might go around the Sun. As I discuss in much greater depth in this article I wrote, the Greek astronomer Aristarchos of Samos (lived c. 310 – c. 230 BC) is the first person who is known to have proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system, which, nearly two millennia later, would eventually be shown to be more-or-less correct.

Unfortunately, we do not know what evidence Aristarchos had to support his heliocentric model of the solar system, but, whatever evidence he had, other scholars do not seem to have found his proposal convincing. Indeed, few people at the time seem to have even taken his heliocentric model seriously. Among those who at least dared to take Aristarchos seriously was Archimedes of Syracuse, who wrote about Aristarchos’s model of the universe in his book The Sand-Reckoner. Archimedes is our principle source of information Aristarchos’s heliocentric model, since Aristarchos’s original writings have all been lost.

ABOVE: Tenth-century Greek manuscript illustration showing Aristarchos of Samos’s calculations of the relative sizes of the sun, earth, and moon

The scholar Eratosthenes of Kyrene (lived 276 – c. 195/194 BC), a head librarian at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, calculated the circumference of the earth and was only off by less than one percent—not bad at all for the second century BC! The later astronomer and mathematician Hipparchos of Rhodes (lived c. 190 – c. 120 BC) is said to have created the first detailed star catalogue of the northern hemisphere and discovered the phenomenon of axial procession. He may have also developed the first reliable method of mathematically predicting solar eclipses.

The Greeks also invented devices for studying the heavens, including the armillary sphere, the plane astrolabe, and even primitive analogue computers for keeping track of the movements of the planets. Portions of one such analogue computer have even survived. It is known as the Antikythera Mechanism and was discovered in 1901 in a Hellenistic shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera.

ABOVE: Photograph of the Antikythera Mechanism

#10. Drama

The ancient Greeks more-or-less invented drama as we know it. Ancient Greek drama arose from choruses sung at festivals in honor of the god Dionysos. Originally, there was only a chorus who sang songs in honor of Dionysos. Then, according to Aristoteles in his treatise Poetics, in around the late sixth century BC, the poet Thespis of Ikaria added an actor, who interacted with the leader of the chorus. For this reason, our word thespian in English means “an actor” or “a person associated with the theater.” No plays by Thespis have survived.

In the fifth century BC, there lived three great Athenian tragic playwrights for whom any complete works have survived under their own names. I mentioned all three of them earlier: Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides. There were many other famous tragic playwrights in Athens at the time, but none of their plays have survived under their own names in anything close to a completed state. Aischylos, the earliest of the three great tragedians, probably wrote around a hundred plays, but only six or seven of them have survived (depending on whether or not Prometheus Bound is indeed written by Aischylos).

Sophokles probably wrote around 150 plays or so, but only seven of them have survived complete. Of these, the most famous of his plays are Antigone, Oidipous the King, and Oidipous at Kolonos. Euripides probably wrote around a hundred plays; nineteen plays attributed to him have survived, but one of these, Rhesos, is probably spurious. His most famous plays include Alkestis, Medeia, The Trojan Women, and The Bacchae.

ABOVE: Bust of Euripides, the Athenian tragic playwright for whom the most plays have survived complete

Comedy developed as a genre later than tragedy. Comedy seems to have emerged in around the middle of the fifth century BC. The comic playwright Aristophanes is the earliest comedic playwright for whom any works have survived. Of Aristophanes’s approximately forty plays that he wrote over the course of his life, only eleven have survived to the present day complete, while the others have survived only in fragmentary form or not at all.

Aristophanes wrote in the early form of comedy that thrived in the late fifth century BC and is now called “Old Comedy,” which was characterized by ribaldry, the import role of the chorus, political and social satire, and comic absurdity. He is the only playwright of Old Comedy for whom any plays have survived to the present day in their complete form.

The later Athenian playwright Menandros (lived c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) wrote in the genre known today as “New Comedy,” which emerged from Old Comedy in the early fourth century BC. Two of Menandros’s plays—The Grumpy Old Man and The Girl from Samos—have survived nearly complete, along with a large number of plays which have survived in significant portions. He is the only playwright of New Comedy for whom any plays have survived to the present day in their nearly complete form.

Menandros’s New Comedy is a far cry from Aristophanes’s Old Comedy. The ribaldry is toned way down. The chorus has been reduced to nonexistent. Political satire and comic absurdity of any kind are both virtually absent. Instead, the humor relies heavily on stereotypes, stock characters, situations, and dramatic irony. The genre is less much more refined. Likewise, while Old Comedy made use of deliberately farcical story lines and conflicts that are resolved early in the production in a humorous anti-climax, in the New Comedy, the plots are often very elaborate.

ABOVE: Roman marble copy of a Greek fourth-century BC original portrait bust of Menandros, the only writer of New Comedy for whom any plays have survived in a near-completed state

In addition to comedy and tragedy, the Greeks also had a third genre of drama: so-called “satyr plays,” which were bawdy productions performed after a trilogy of tragedies to lighten the mood. These were characterized by the fact that their choruses were made up of satyrs, rowdy male mythological nature spirits with the tails and ears of horses and permanent erections. These plays were known for their rowdy nature, but they are not as widely studied today as tragedy or comedy because only one satyr play—Kyklops by Euripides—has survived complete. One other satyr play, The Trackers by Sophokles, survives in substantial portions.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix from Etruria, dating to c. 520 – c. 500 BC, depicting a satyr with an erection holding an aulos, a kind of ancient Greek flute

#11. A whole bunch of words in English

The ancient Greeks have also contributed a lot of words to our language. In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is estimated that approximately 6% of all words in the English language from Ancient Greek. These include words ranging from simple ones we use every day, such as paper, problem, music, story, history, phone, school, idea, place, and system, to highly technical terms used only in specific disciplines. We have also received phrases and expressions from Ancient Greek, such as kalos kagathos, hoi polloi, hapax legomen, and kudos.

ABOVE: Pie chart showing the approximate percentages of words in English derived from various languages (taken from Wikimedia Commons, based on information from the Oxford English Dictionary)

Conclusion

In this article, I have barely even started on the countless ways the ancient Greeks have influenced our culture and our daily lives. The Greeks also made contributions in music, geography, medicine, linguistics, mechanics, engineering, warfare, and so many other areas. Again, I cannot stress enough that I have not even scratched the surface here. If you wish to learn more, I encourage you to read more about the ancient Greeks and their accomplishments on your own.

Nonetheless, we must always remain careful not to idealize the Greeks and we must remember at all times that most ancient Greeks were not great literary authors, sculptors, inventors, mathematicians, or astronomers; they were just ordinary people. A very large number of them were just illiterate farmers. We must also note that, despite the many innovative thinkers it produced, Greek society on the whole was actually not very encouraging of innovation. On the contrary, Greek culture was generally quite conservative and opposed to new ideas.

Furthermore, we must not get caught up in everything they accomplished and forget the obvious societal problems that plagued ancient Greek society. I hardly need to remind everyone that their society was openly accepting of slavery. Many ancient Greek people were deeply xenophobic. Wars between city-states, and later Hellenistic kingdoms, were virtually constant. Blatant misogyny was also the norm; women were, with a few exceptions, generally expected to remain in the home and serve their husbands and were rarely even permitted to leave the house.

The Greeks also accomplished a lot, but they were far from unique in this and we must not forget about the other civilizations that also produced many significant accomplishments and contributions to modern civilization, including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Israelites, Judahites, Phoenicians, Persians, Carthaginians, Etruscans, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, and so many others.

While all of these are things we must remember and keep in mind when writing about ancient Greece, however, they still do not diminish the importance or the significance of ancient Greek contributions to civilization.