Compare And Contrast Greek Art And Roman Art

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The two cultures that I will talk about are the ancient Greeks and the ancient roman cultures. Both great civilizations started off as city-states the geography of both of these places differed while for Greek the geographical fragmentation of Greece encouraged political fragmentation. Communications were poor, which led to more rocky paths than actual roads. In early Greek history, a few kingdoms did develop but with the rugged terrain it prohibited them from growing very big. While in Rome in was located with mountains on the east side and the sea on west side. The winters were rainy and the summers were dry, since Rome was located by the sea they were frequently raided by people from the po river on the north and the Sicily on the south. …show more content…

The main concept for the classic Greek sculptors was to make a more Ideal art form, where Rome was more into realistic portraits mostly for decoration. A lot of the Greek art was mostly made for usefulness rather than to attract people to it while a lot of Rome’s art was seen a lot in households. The Roman conquest of the Hellenistic East resulted in confiscation of many Greek paintings, and a lot of sculptors which were used to adorn many homes, temples, and public places. With the confiscation of these Greek possessions is what led Rome to copy a lot of aspects of their art, while Rome was seen copying their art they used it to make their own art which presented their own values. Romans preferred art form were called busts they portrayed the individuals as wise and respected people. In both great civilizations, there economy was mainly based around agriculture just like most civilizations in this time. The Greeks mostly had small farms that produced wheat but because of their location they had bad luck farming and a lot of small farms couldn’t succeed so that brought bigger estates in to purchase the land and allowed the previous people to still live their but they worked as surfs and worked the lands. While on the other hand Rome had better geographical location and farmed, which was enough …show more content…

The structure of government for both places was based on their city sates. While Rome’s government grew to be a lot bigger than that of Greece because of their geographical location. Rome eventually grew into an empire while Greece essentially stayed into many city states. Both civilizations started out with kings, and then moved into oligarchy. While Greece went to a democracy, Rome went through a period that combined oligarchy, democracy, and monarchy, but eventually led back to just emperors. Just like today where we use democracy where we have two political parties those being republicans and the democrats to where every four years’ members from both parties run for president which they are elected by the people just like in ancient times. Another similarity of these two civilizations is their belief in gods. Most Greek gods are known better but most of the time they shared the same gods they just had different names because Rome used gods borrowed from Greek mythology. Both Greece and Rome architecture were connected because of the similarities of the temples and other vast structures both civilizations have created. Roman architecture was greatly influenced from Greek architecture but the Romans were known for adding their own style. Both places chose between three different styles of columns those columns being Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian styled.

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