Ancient Greece and RomeTalk Show

Back in the ‘80s there was a popular movie called Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in which two high school guys, Bill and Ted, traveled back in time and brought back famous historical figures for a school report. You are going to do something similar in this activity. You will travel back in time, find one person from ancient Greece and one person from ancient Rome, bring them into the present, and invite them onto a TV talk show. Instead of famous figures, they should be regular, everyday people from these two civilizations.

Imagine that you bring these two people back to your school and take them in front of your classmates to report on what daily life was like in ancient Greece and Rome. One of your loudmouth classmates speaks up: "You guys are all the same - ancient Greece, ancient Rome, no difference!" Your job is to have your two characters convince the loudmouth student, and all other students, that ancient Greece and ancient Rome were not exactly the same but rather had many differences in daily life. Their appearance on the talk show will make these differences clear.

To do this, you will research some aspects of daily life in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome. You’ll take notes on some of the differences that you notice between the two civilizations. Then you’ll write the script for the talk show. You’ll have a person called a moderator who asks the questions, and the characters will answer the questions and speak to each other and to the audience. Remember, you’re looking for differences, not similarities, between ancient Greece and Rome.

1. Use your textbook or another resource to find out the dates of both civilizations. Draw a timeline that shows these dates. Then locate the civilizations on a world map so you know where each one was located.

2. Now answer this question: One civilization borrowed many features of its daily life from the other. Which was the borrower?



(Even though one borrowed from the other, the two civilizations still had many differences which you are going to find out about now).

3. Choose five of the following seven aspects of daily life from the list below to research the differences between Greek and Roman life, or pick other topics for which you can find information for both civilizations (you must use at least four topics in your dialogue).

• recreation
• family life
• education
• economics and work
• clothing
• holidays
• methods of getting water (figure out what types of water systems they used and determine which civilization you think had the greatest influence on our water systems today)

4. Visit the following Web sites to gather information on the two civilizations.

Start with this site:

• Mrs. Donn's Special Sections Daily Life Site Index: http://members.aol.com/Donnclass/indexlife.html

Then visit the following sites:

Greece

• The Ancient Greek World: Daily Life: http://www.museum.upenn.edu/Greek_World/Index.html

• Ancient Greece Unplugged: http://oakview.fcps.edu/~smith/95-96/greece

• Everyday Life in Ancient Greece

• Greek Waterworks: http://www-adm.pdx.edu/user/sinq/greekciv/science/water/water8.html

Rome

• The Forvm Romanvm: http://library.advanced.org/11402/home_intro.html

• Daily Roman Life: http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/life/index.html

• Daily Life in Rome

• Tour Ancient Rome: http://www.kent.wednet.edu/curriculum/soc_studies/rome/Rome.html

• History of Plumbing (Rome): http://www.theplumber.com/eng.html

Greece and Rome

• Comparison of costumes: http://www.firstnethou.com/annam/costhist.html and http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/7631/costume2.html

5. As you’re visiting these sites, take notes in the table provided below or on your own paper. The five topics you’ve chosen should be written in the left column. In the other two columns, write the things you learn about each civilization’s different treatment of these topics.

6. Imagine that you’re going to take the information you’ve gathered and write the script for a TV talk show. The audience will be your classmates (your teacher might even ask you to perform the talk show in front of the class). Every talk show has a moderator (yes, even Jerry Springer is considered a moderator), so write questions that the moderator will ask the two ancient characters. Then write their responses to those questions. They can respond directly to the moderator, or they can turn it into a conversation (or even an argument) between themselves. Use the information concerning differences between the two civilizations that you’ve gathered on the Internet. Your characters need to discuss all five of the topics you’ve researched. Make sure that the questions and answers clearly explain the information that you want your audience to learn about the two cultures. At the end of the dialogue, the reader should have a clear understanding of some of the ways in which daily life in ancient Greece and ancient Rome differed.