Ancient Times With the Iron Age came what

Ancient Times

With the Iron Age came what we now call ancient times:

ancient Egypt,

ancient Greece,

and ancient Rome.

Egypt was first to rise, along the mighty Nile River.

The Egyptians used pictures to write with, called hieroglyphics,

and they made art.

The rulers of Egypt were called pharaohs,

who built enormous pyramids

and other tombs,

where they put their family members after they died.

These became mummies, surrounded by treasures.

In the Fifth Century B. C. (that means, 500 years before Jesus Christ was born),

there were many powerful towns, called city-states,

around the Aegean Sea.

They spoke the Greek language. They were the Greeks.

Athens was the greatest of these city-states.

In Athens three great thinkers taught: Socrates,

who taught Plato,

who taught Aristotle.

Herodotus and Thucydides were the first great men to write down history, or what had happened in Greece.

Euclid taught the world geometry, or all about shapes.

The Greeks made beautiful statues,

and painted figures on pots, like this.

The Greeks had powerful warriors, called hoplites,

and Alexander the Great was a young king

who used hoplites to take over a large part of the world known then.

The Greeks believed in many gods, like Zeus, the king of the gods,

and Athena, the goddess of wisdom (being wise).

The city-state Athens worshipped Athena especially,

so they built a famous temple to Athena called the Parthenon.

You can still see the Parthenon today in Athens!

You can see many other ancient temples all around Greece today.

The Greeks loved the poetry of Homer,

who wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey.

After a few hundred years, another city became powerful: Rome.

Roman soldiers made up an army

and the Roman army was very powerful.

The army of Rome came into Greece and told them what to do. The Romans were invaders.

The Romans invaded many lands,

southern and western Europe, and Egypt and Carthage, in north Africa.

Then Rome was a huge, rich, and famous city.

It was where the Roman Senate ruled,

and where the most famous Roman, Julius Caesar, became army general

and consul, or ruler of all Roman lands.

Cicero was a famous thinker who gave many speeches at the Senate.

After 27 BC, Roman leaders could do whatever they wanted. They were called emperors.

The first Roman emperor was Augustus.

Later, there was a very bad emperor named Nero.

People say Nero “fiddled” while Rome burned (was on fire).

Later, a good emperor, who was also a thinker, was Marcus Aurelius.

At first, Romans had many of their own gods, like Jupiter, the king of the gods,

and Venus, the goddess of love.

But in AD 312, emperor Constantine the Great

became a Christian. Soon the whole Roman Empire became Christian.

North of the Roman Empire, there were people called barbarians,

who were not advanced. They did not write or have high art. They fought.

After a few hundred more years, barbarians invaded,

and we say that Rome fell in AD 476.

That means the Roman emperors no longer ruled Rome, This is Alaric, king of the Visigoths.

and all those Roman lands were split up—they were no longer under one government.

The End