Ancient Rome vs Ancient Greece Comparison: Both Greece and Rome were great empires. Though Rome survived as a powerful empire Greece did not.On a comparison, we observe that both the countries have certain similarities and differences.

Ancient Rome vs Ancient Greece Comparison

The ancient Romans were very different from the ancient Greeks.

1. Geography

Greece and Rome are Mediterranean countries, but the terrain of the two is very different. The ancient Greek city-states were separated from each other by hilly countryside and all were near the water. Rome was inland, on one side of the Tiber River, but the Italic tribes did not have the natural hilly borders to keep them out of Rome.

In Italy, around Naples, Mt. Vesuvius produced fertile land by blanketing the soil with tephra which aged into rich soil. There were also two nearby mountain ranges to the north (Alps) and east (Apennine).

2. Festivals

Another difference between the Greek and the Roman empire was, the fact that the Romans had festivals that represented something for the king or ruler at that time, but in Greece, it was mostly sports festivals and festivals that honored the gods.

Something that the Romans didn’t have but the Greeks did and could brag about was the Olympic games. The Olympic games took session every four years and had five events (the pentathlon), wrestling, running, chariot races, jumping, and the javelin. Today more than twenty events take place that is one way that the ancient Greek life affected ours today.

3. Beliefs

The ancient Romans were realists, not idealists. This can be seen in their statues. The Greeks made statues of perfect people. The Romans created real-life statues.

4. Women

In ancient Greece, except in Sparta, women had no rights. They were the property of their husband. They had to ask their husband’s permission to leave the house or to talk to a neighbor who came visiting. As time went on, rights for women remained the same. However during the 500 years that Rome was an Empire, women gained even more freedom.

Under the Empire, it was legal for women to own land, run businesses, free slaves, make wills, inherit wealth, and get a paid job. In ancient Rome, only free adult men were citizens. Although women were not citizens of ancient Rome, they enjoyed a great deal more freedom than did women in ancient Greece.

There were certain similarities between the Ancients Romans and Greeks.The Romans watched chariot races to entertain them just like the Greeks did, what was so fascinating About the Romans is that they had the biggest arena in the Mediterranean called the Circus Maximus.