Download Ancient Times

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