What greek city-state would you want to be a citizen of Why?

Then, this:
>Yes, go live in Thebes, famous for the stupidity of its inhabitants and its culture of boy-fucking.
but unironically (And Before Alexander)

Massalia because it's as far away from other greeks as possible.

Naples, I want to get in early on the whole Rome thing

based

Sparta,where women show off their thighs and betas are culled at birth. I'm not supposed to want those things but I do. Or Ephesus,for religious purposes.

>Greek city state

>implying you wouldnt be culled

>implying you wouldn’t be one of those betas

Depends, which one has the least amount of debt to pay?

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Agoge.

I think I'd want to be at Milo- oh... well how about Plate- oh...

Athens during its height sounds like an incredible place to live as a citizen.

Massalia also sounds interesting, honestly doing a tour of all the biggest Greek city states across the Mediterranean and Black seas would be cool.

Have you even killed a helot? Oh wait, of course not, you wouldn't want to kill one of your relatives. Why am I even responding to a little mothax like you.

I have important spartan business to attend to, please don't talk to me unless you're delivering the quota from the harvest.

Greek Libya might be cool.

Attached: AntikeGriechen1.jpg (2836x1616, 1.16M)

Spartans don't talk much, like you imply.

Descendant of Sparta here. We talk plenty, faggot.
And yes, I'd have been culled.

The most isolated and irrelevant one so I don't have to go to war.

Women talk plenty, and true descendants don't disown their own existence.

Remainder that only Plutarch talks about infantacide and he writes from way past Sparta's prime

Remainder that a contemporary, Xenophon, writes that the Spartans encouraged fertility. King Agesilaus II of Sparta, and Xenophon's friend, was born lame.

I'd want to be a Spartan ambassador/military advisor to one of their allies. Imagine how it must feel to walk barefoot into a city and have flower petals fall onto your cloak and hair and people cheer because you are going to help them against the Athenians.

Attached: 6da8207b_b9e8_4467_b74d_61f62fe9c302.jpg (528x622, 73K)

Athens because it's the shitposting capital of the Ancient World.

For me, it's Cyrene

Attached: 220px-Eratosthene.01.png (220x218, 54K)

>my source? Zack Snyder's 300

Attached: 33.png (645x729, 90K)

>Thebes
wink wink

Can anyone give me a rundown on what the different cities were like? I only know about Sparta (and it sucks).

>and it sucks
Athens was unironically worse. Half of what was written on Sparta was propaganda by triggered Athenians.

Could someone please tell me some more about the Black Sea colonies? I don't know much about them and from their location I'd assume they would have to put up with a huge amount of raiding from the steppe tribes.

Syracuse or Sybaris. Obviously both had bad ends, but they seem like great places to live during their heights. Sybaris was so rich that to this day a "sybarite" is someone who over-indulges in luxuries.

Depends on the time, but yeah steppeniggers were an issue. Scythians had a positive relationship overall though, and there were slightly hellenized Scyths nearby that sort of fended the others off, and facilitated a trade of goods and knowledge helpful to both cultures. You have the Bosporan Kingdom at this time, which had some interesting history, with brief Hunnic interlude.

When the Sarmatians showed up, in typical fashion for matriarchal cucks they had no value for art or civilization, and were far more aggressive and anti-hellenic. Very little Greek art is found in Sarmatian graves besides plunder (the Scythians commissioned art from greeks, and were master goldsmiths themselves).

After this period it mostly went to shit. You have the time of Pontic ascendancy, with Mithradates the Great allying with the Caucasians and various tribes of the Black Sea. In the Roman empire/ERE, things were generally peaceful, but the region remained firmly Hellenic instead of Greco-Roman. However, relations with the steppe peoples really never was well.

That sounds very cool user. Are there some books you can recommend to learn more about this subject?

I study Iranic nomads and shit for a living, so that's mostly what I know (just kidding about the Sarmatians being cucks btw, they are easily my favorite nomads ever).
There's a lot of history there m8, but as for the early Black Sea and the Bosphorus Kingdom, honestly Wikipedia has lots of good articles and sources on each one specifically (there's a list of them all). My person favorite is Tmutarakan for it's continued role with the Khazars and Slavs and stuff.

As for books: Cambridge History series is my favorite, but also see "Ancient Art from the Hermitage" for cool art, and Tsetskhladze for a series on Greek colonization in general (which I've only read a little of, but it's very good).

Oh, and check this out:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraces
Diodorus's writings on them are translated online, check it out if you'd like.

Weren't Sarmatians literally cucks, tho? I mean, they let their womenfolk ride horses! You won't find REAL horse nomads who do shit like that.

Kek yeah there's people on Veeky Forums who do think like that.

All eurasian steppe peoples had all their women ride horses, and almost all of them hunted, it's just how it worked. Scytho-Sarmatians seem to be the only ones who had women fight in any sort of capacity (besides defending the village/baggage/children in last stand sort of things). But most nomads held women in comparatively high esteem. Also, they were all pretty much monogamous (besides the Mongols, or the Hephthalites who were....polyandrous? it's weird.)

Scythians it's debatable, but they definitely did have women buried with bows and weaponry. But by most accounts they were relatively Patriarchal. But Sarmatians had a pretty ridiculously high number, at the very least 20% (as high as 35%) of women who likely fought in the typical horse-archer style (though Sarmatians actually had a key innovation - unlike the Scythians they invented horse armor and cataphracts - cotemporal with the Parthians who introduced it to Persia - the women were not buried with this sort of armor, but then again only few of the men were - in any case it's not likely women served as lancers). We know comparatively little about the exact culture of the Sarmatians as the Ossetians are quite divergent (it'd be nice to know how this was reflected in their mythology) - but I guess the point is, for some reason they definitely had a bunch of (at least the nobles) women fighting. Who knows why this happened, but it did. And strangely enough most of the dates of these burials are actually in the early period, when the Sarmatians were roflstomping the Scythians, so it's not like they were desperate.

This practice seems to have died with the Alans, Iazyges, etc. But it did inspire the Greeks in art, so I guess that's the only Sarmatian contribution of art to the world - Greek depictions women with bows and pants.

> But it did inspire the Greeks in art
amazons were in mythology too

Attached: amazon.jpg (162x320, 18K)

sparta bcuz im a tough alpha cool guy and my great grandaddy owned slaves so ill own slaves too XD

Athens at its peak sounds amazing as a male citizen. So that.

Thanks user, I'll check it out.

>XD
>>>/clubpenguin/

Massalia or Syracuse

Thebes for the boipucci

As much as I love Classical Greece, I have to say Alexandria. Just a chance to see the Serapeum would be worth all the riots.
Ammianus Marcellinus:
>The Serapeum, splendid to a point that words would only diminish its beauty, has such spacious rooms flanked by columns, filled with such life-like statues and a multitude of other works of such art, that nothing, except the Capitolium, which attests to Rome's venerable eternity, can be considered as ambitious in the whole world.
Olympia would be my second choice.

>hi i'm your biggest fan

>Biggest you say?
>Biggest *Unzips dick*

How was life in ancient Cyprus like? I know Zeno of Citium was from there, but he was Phoenician.

Plataea, so that I can act like an American to the Athenians.

Attached: My boi.png (336x269, 179K)

Post AD Roman Cyprus had enough Jews living there to genocide all the Romans during Kitos war.

The numbers of the genocide were probably inflated, otherwise Cyprus wouldn't have a Greek-speaking population now

Bronze age crete. Hands down

You know it did have 1000 years of Byzantine rule.

So that's where the Spanish term "Sibarita" comes from huh? You learn something new every day...

Attached: e425de98218d572aaa7d84b8ca2111de.jpg (736x929, 131K)

I would be a cosmopolitan.

>nothing to see here, xenos, these guys like being helots

Thespian.

Not really a good city to reside in the late 4th century on account of it being destroyed by Sparta and having its adult male population put to death and the rest enslaved.

bump

>citizen
sparta
>living in
thebes

Syracuse

Troy. Fucking Helen would be worth it

> Athens didn't have slaves
> Slavery is bad
kek

> Troy
> Greek
Veeky Forums was a mistake.

They basically were

Nope. When they were "Troy", they certainly were in no way Greek.

The romans saw Libya as an unlivable shithole (hot uncultured poor aside from a few rich landowners), and it was seen as the worst possible posting as a magistrate, so much that the proconsuls just abandoned their posting to stay in Crete and left their quaestors there to do everything.
I somehow doubt it was any better in preroman times.

She was so pure for this world.

Knossos for the win!

She was a whore and a bad actress.

>he would like to die for a matriarchal society

They weren't matriarchal.

this.

Yeah, but then I'd get to act Polish to the Athenians.

They were the manginas of the greek states world, while men fought their entire lifes, women just layed around producing offspring and having slaves at their disposal, and also they could inherit all the husband's wealth, some got to the point of being so rich that they influenced politics. Of course Sparta was seen as retarded by everyone else because of this.

>men fought their entire lifes
Yes, and?
>women just layed around producing offspring
Spartan women administered the households and did more than Athenian women, who were near-worthless. Athenian women were the lazy, worthless and dumb ones.
> women in politcs makes you a matriarchy
you don't know what "matriarchy" is, I think.

>Spartan women administered the households
So they just layed around and commanded the slaves, great job

>Athenian women, who were near-worthless.
At least they were treated as such, no voting rights as the slaves

>athenians ritually murdered their own slaves

>So they just layed around and commanded the slaves
I mean it's not intellectual work but administration isn't really any less prestigious than anything the men were doing in Athens. Inb4 philosophy, Spartan men didn't care about that shit either.
> At least they were treated as such
Well obviously, because they were worthless. Spartan women were expected to be useful and responsible, not to mention fit.
Regardless if you feel that women shouldn't be/can't be capable of anything but their roles in Athens, the fact remains, that it was NOT a matriarchy. Men still held the majority of political power, in fact it was a Patriarchy. Women were just treated on a somewhat more equal basis. Call it cucked or whatever, but "matriarchy" is far from true.

My parents did say I was born with an ET head but I'm definitely not a beta.
>Xenophon, writes that the Spartans encouraged fertility
One more reason to love it at any point in time.
If my matriarch was a Spartaness it wouldn't even be bad.

>not to mention fit.
did they have any incentives to be so?

Corinth, to get some of the wimmin uknowwhatimsayin

dude, I literally came here to post this
am I you?

Yeah, they were expected to be, the Men also probably found it attractive. The main reason though was the Spartan idea that weak women would produce unhealthy children or men who would grow to be weak.

Both Spartan men and women were not intellectually-inclined in the same way as some Athenians (but still, it was a Greek, literate society), and (noble)women were expected to be educated as well.

You see this sort of thing in a lot of societies where the men are constantly out at war (though this isn't the only factor) - the women are expected to do more management and are held to higher standards. A good example is the Mongols or the Cumans, whose women managed almost entirely the domestic and clan politics and finances. Still, that's not a matriarchy, it's just a different division of labor.

Good taste my man

Messenia. Be a chill farmer while spartan cucks spend their childhoods being raped, beaten and tortured only to die at 30 in war

Pergamon: Enjoy the loveliness that is Asia Minor and being best buds with Rome.

> best buds with Rome.
Not even close. They were a center of anti-Roman sentiment for a very long time, right until the Romans conquered the area. They were among the people that urged Pontus to take up arms against Rome to preserve the Hellenic world. After the Mithridatic wars, the Romans turned the place into a dump. It was only in the 2nd and 3rd century when it flourished again.

Didnt the king give it to Rome in his will after his death?

> Zeno of Citium was from there, but he was Phoenician.

He wasn't. That's Lebanese we wuzzing.

one of the ionic states in Asia minor. they seem more chill. I'm not Greek and I think that's kinda a big deal on the mainland.

I remember reading Where's Waldo as a kid and it said Athenians were the smart ones and Sparta were the strong ones and since I was a skinny kid I always wished to live in Athens.

Were they wrong?

I don't want to be Greek, so no thanks.

M A S S I L E I A

Yup, but it was quite controversial with the locals (especially the "muh hellenism" ones, as well as Stoics, etc.). Cappadocia and Pontus claimed parts of it, so did Rome, and this is what precipitated about 50 years of war between these two, as well as with Rome. By most accounts, the local Greeks' attitude towards Romans just got even worse in these years, culminating with the wars with Pontus and all that.