It is interesting to see how much culture varies from one civilization to another across the world and throughout history, but amazingly enough they all have many similarities. By reading these ancient poems and stories, I can relate too many of their cultural traits. I find the Greek culture to be the most interesting, and through the literature such as Aristophanes Lysistrata, I can see many cultural similarities.
From the story Lysistrata, the women of Greece join together to voice their opinion that they should be treated as equals. The Peloponnesian War is taking place during the story and all the women are left at home alone because their husbands are off fighting in the war. The women are tired of their husbands being gone and want the war to end before all of Greece is destroyed. Led by Lysistrata, the women of Greece join together and take over the Akropolis and devise a plan to end the war by withholding sex from the men. From this culture we see that women are presumed to be kind of a slave for the men. Their duties should be the care of the house and the children. Cooking, cleaning, sewing and pleasing the husband were their jobs. Even in our culture today these things are considered to be the woman’s responsibilities. Their opinions did not matter to the men and were better left unsaid, the same as our culture in earlier years. Even today the opinion of a woman does not matter to some men. They are believed to be not as intelligent as the man and should only concern themselves with house hold chores, caring for the children, and pleasing the husband.
The men of this culture were dominant over the women and fought the wars, took care of the finances and headed the government. All of the decisions for Greece and the people of Greece were made by the men. Through Lysistrata, we can clearly see that the woman of Greece are tired of being treated as thought they were inferior, a common problem that we have had throughout our culture and history and probably always will. They believed they should have some influence in the government as well as the household, and that their opinion should be taken into consideration. In order for the women to be taken seriously, they withheld sex from the men and locked themselves in the Akropolis, vowing not to return home until the war had ended and their opinions be heard equally alongside the men. This fight for women’s rights has been seen throughout our cultural history as well and seems, in a way, to still be going on today.
The Greek culture and most of our culture has been dominated by the man. Our country was founded and ran by the men, with the women having many of the same responsibilities as the Greek women did in the story of Lysistrata. The Greek men did not believe the women had the right to have a say in the government or with matters of war, the same as the men throughout our cultural history. The same battle that is being fought by the women in Lysistrata for their rights has been fought by the women of our culture. The Greek men finally learned a lesson. They gave into the women and listened to what they had to say and ended the war, vowing that the women would have a say in things. This is similar to our culture in that, since the fight for women’s rights has begun, they are now allowed to be government officials, hold jobs outside of the home, and even fight in wars.
Another cultural trait of the Greek people was the worship of many Gods. Many of the ancient cultures back then believed in and worshiped more than one God. The people built their lives around these Gods. They lived in fear of these Gods and obeyed all of what they were told. They would have dreams and visions of these Gods or events of the future and believed they would come true since the Gods put it before their eyes. All that they did revolved around the worship of these Gods, even in their battles, they fought the way they believed the Gods wanted. They fought for the Gods with all they had never to do them unjust or have them disgraced. Unlike today where many people in our culture do not even worship a God or either show little in their respect or love for him. Our culture differs from the ancient Greeks, in that we are a monotheistic culture. We only believe in one God where as the Greeks had a dozen or more Gods. While the Greek culture revolved around the Gods, our religious culture, it seems, is slowly dying. You can see the importance of these Gods to the Greek culture by the many different statues and monuments they built to honor them. They made separate statues and monuments to worship each one of these Gods. You can also see the importance of the Gods through their literature. Almost every story or poem that I have read from the ancient Greeks has references to the gods and many are written about the Gods. We do not see this in our culture today since most of our literature contains nothing about our God. Our culture as a whole probably shows less respect or loyalty for our God than the Greeks did even for the least important God they had.
Though many years apart, it is interesting to see how the cultural traits vary from one culture to the next throughout history. It is clearly seen, by reading the ancient poems and stories of the Greeks, how our culture and theirs compare and contrast. Although there are many different beliefs between our present culture and the ones of the past, many of their traits seem to have been carried over and are still present in our culture today.
