Viața istorică și modernitatea Atenei

GREECE-

mythology and ancient history

Greece is a country in the southem portion of Europe. Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south.

Mythology

The numerous gods of the ancient greek religion as well as the mythical heroes and events of the ancient Greek epics(The Odyssey and the Iliad) and other pieces of art and literature from the time make up what is nowadays colloquially referred to as Greek mythology. Apart from serving a religious function, the mythology of the ancient greek world also served a cosmological role as it was meant to try to explain how the world was formed and operated.

The principal gods of the ancient Greek religion were the Dodekatheon, or the Twelve Gods, who lived on the top of Mount Olympus. The most important of all ancient Greek gods was Zeus, the king of the gods.

Ancient history

While the area around Attica was inhabited during the Upper Paleolithic period (30000 –10000 BC), archaeological evidence suggests that the small caves around the Acropolis rock and the Klepsythra spring were in use during the Neolithic Period (3000–2800 BC).

Greece was the first area in Europe where advanced early civilizations emerged, beginning with the Cycladic civilization of the Aegean Sea, the Minoan civilization in Crete and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland. Later, various Greek kingdoms and city-state emerged across the Greek peninsula and spread to the shores of the Black Sea, South Italy and Asia Minor, reaching great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science and philosophy, and nurtured in Athens under a democratic environment.

ATHeNS-

an exotic and modern destination

Athens is the capital and the largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world’s, oldest cityes as it’s recorded history spans around 3,400 years.

Classical Athens was a powerfull city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent.

Today a cosmopolitan metropolis, modern Athens is central to economic, financial, industrial, political and cultural life in Greece and it is rated as an Alpha world city.In 2008, Athens was ranked the world's 32nd richest city by purchasing power and the 25th most expensive in a UBS study.

In Ancient Greek,the name of Athens was: Ἀθῆναι, related tο the name of the goddess Athena.An etiological myth explaining how Athens acquired this name was well known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon.

Both Athena and Poseidon requested to be patrons of the city and to give their name to it, so they competed with one another for the honor, offering the city one gift each.

Poseidon produced a salt water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. Athena created the olive tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity.

The city is often referred to as τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ, its nickname in Greek, which means in English the Glorious City.

Climate

Athens has a subtropical Mediterranean climate and receives just enough annual precipitation to avoid Köppen's BSh classification. The dominant feature of Athens climate is alternation between prolonged warm and dry summers and mild, wet winters. With an average of 414.1 millimetres (16.30 in) of yearly precipitation, rainfall occurs largely between the months of October and April. July and August are the driest months, where thunderstorms occur sparsely once or twice a month.