--- title: Ancient Greece: city-states, Athens and Sparta — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Ancient Greece: city-states, Athens and Sparta», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Greece is full of mountains, sea and islands, so instead of one country the Greeks lived in hundreds of separate city-state --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Ancient Greece: city-states, Athens an… # Ancient Greece: city-states, Athens and Sparta Lesson 11 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/0/) — Greece is full of mountains, sea and islands, so instead of one country the Greeks lived in hundreds of separate city-states, each called a polis, with its own government, army and laws. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/1/) — They often quarrelled, like neighbouring schools with their own rules and uniforms, but they shared a language, the same gods and the Olympic Games, and joined together against outside enemies. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/2/) — The two most famous were Athens, a city of traders, sailors, thinkers and artists, and Sparta, a city of soldiers where boys began training at seven. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/3/) — Together they faced the mighty Persian Empire at Marathon and Thermopylae. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/4/) — Some stories about these times, like the wooden horse of Troy, the Minotaur or the film 300, are legend or fantasy, and a good historian says which is which. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/5/) — Greece is full of mountains and islands, so the Greeks lived in many separate city-states rather than one country. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/7/) — On Crete the Minoans built the palace of Knossos with many rooms about 3,700 years ago, and they loved the sea and bull-leaping. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/8/) — The Minotaur is a myth, but bull-leaping was a real sport or ritual of the Minoans. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/9/) — Homer's poems tell of the Greeks besieging Troy for ten years and of the hero Odysseus's long journey home; the wooden horse is a story from legend, not proven history. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/10/) — Athens was a city of traders, sailors, thinkers and artists, with the Parthenon temple to the goddess Athena on its rocky hill, the Acropolis. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/11/) — In Sparta boys left home at seven to train hard as soldiers, and Spartan girls also did sports to be strong. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/12/) — Sparta relied on a huge enslaved people, the helots, to farm for them. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/13/) — Athens loved debate, trade, art and its navy; Sparta loved discipline, obedience and its army. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/14/) — In 490 BC the Athenians beat a Persian army at Marathon; the story of a runner racing to Athens with the news is a legend told much later. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/15/) — In 480 BC King Leonidas with 300 Spartans and several thousand other Greeks held the narrow pass of Thermopylae against a huge Persian army for three days; in so narrow a place only a few enemies could fight at once. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/11-ancient-greece-city-states-athens-and-sparta/16/) — Greeks sailed in triremes, fast warships with three rows of oars, and traded olive oil, wine and pottery. - ← previous: [Ancient China: paper, silk, the Silk Road and Confucius](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/10-ancient-china-paper-silk-the-silk-road-and-confucius/) - next →: [Ancient Greece: democracy, the Olympics, myths and thinkers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/12-ancient-greece-democracy-olympics-myths-and-thinkers/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)