Daily Life In Fifth Century Greece
By Claire Bolto The daily existence of ancient civilisations has been a source of fascination for both historians and archaeologists over the centuries. An abundance of information relating to eating and drinking, clothing, childhood, cosmetics and jewellery survives in the ancient official documents, biographies and plays which have remained in tact. The majority of these however, reflect only the luxurious lives of the rich and those with authority. In the artefacts, paintings, epigraphs and other such structures which archaeologists have uncovered in the last centuries, not only do we learn more about the lives of the wealthy, but also of the lives of the growing population of poorer citizens. There was a considerable difference present in the housing and living conditions of the rich and the poor, for example, Athens roads were narrow, unpaved alleys between flat-topped houses, little more than huts with no sanitation or rubbish disposal.
Ancient Greek housing was most commonly built of relatively inexpensive materials such as stone, wood or clay bricks, painted white to deflect the heat of the sun, and despite the elite architectural standards demonstrated by the Greeks, due to the materials used there were inevitably some flaws in their design. The walls of houses built with sun-dried bricks had a tendency to wash away little by little in the rain which would eventually lead to the complete collapse of the house, burying everything within it?s walls. The ground would then be levelled off and another house would be built on top. With time a mound would grow where several houses had been levelled to the ground and it is due to this method of building that much of the information regarding the living conditions and standards of the ancient Greeks has been discovered by archaeologists. The rich lived in what could have been described as a large town house, conveniently close to all town facilities and consistin! g of a dozen or...
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