5. In Ancient Greece A Group Of People Living Together With The Common Purpose Of Taking Care Of

Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans white?

Steve Theodore gave an excellent answer. I would add that a Roman (or Greek for that matter) would not really have understood this question in the sense that it's asked.There were certainly Roman citizens with fair skin (the sun-deprived residents of Londinium) and there were Roman citizens from Africa with very dark skin. But modern racial categories can't be applied to antiquity. The closest Roman categories would be place of origin (Spain versus Africa, for example) and citizenship versus non-citizenship, with citizenship being the most important category by far. Citizenship or slavery in ancient Rome didn't correspond to racial categories.If you mean to ask the more specific question of "were Romans of unmixed Latin descent 'white' in the modern sense derived from 19th century Scientific racism" then sure, I guess you'd consider them to be part of the Mediterranean race, but they were "white" in the same sense as Israelites, Egyptians, and North Africans. I am pretty sure that the Latin people's of Italy wouldn't have considered themselves to be more closely related to a "white" group like the Celts than to North Africans. They certainly thought of themselves of being West Asian in origin, Aeneas having come over from Troy.As far as genetics, you could perhaps link the Latin Romans to the Haplogroup R1b descent group, which is pretty European/white as far as it goes, but also has strong clusters in Africa and Asia. You could also link them to the Haplogroup J-P209, which looks a lot more West Asian/East African. Of course, I would argue that genetics isn't really a great resource of racial identity, since race is made up.Calling an Roman or Greek "white" is like calling Cato a libertarian. I sort of see what you're going for, but the term just doesn't fit.

Why did independent Greek city-states develop?

If you take a look at the maps of Greece you��ll see that the terrain is extremely difficult. It is full of high mountains, but with the occasional good valley by the sea surrounded by a chain of mountains that’s difficult to move through. There are lots of inlets and peninsulas, and Southern Greece is almost totally divided from Northern by a long channel with only a tiny strip connecting the two. Not an easy country for a conqueror to unite.The Greeks were invaders, and their waves came with centuries between them in time. Each wave found a different protected valley by the sea where they built a city and surrounded it with a protective wall. The main groups were Dorans and Achaeans. The first to come set up Sparta in the Southern part of Greece, enslaving the original inhabitants whom they called the Helots. They developed their own very tough society in which the young of the conquerors were educated in what are still known as ‘Spartan’ conditions.Athens, much later, set up its own city with a far different political culture, but still based on a form of slavery. Each invading group were very proud of the different culture they had developed. But ultimately despite difference in dialect those invaders could understand each other and were held together by the view that they were all civilised but everyone else was a barbarian.Another factor that held these city states together whilst remaining apart was that they all believed in the Father of the Gods, Zeus, and would go to Olympia every four years to honour him. That’s where they held the Olympic Games to honour him, indulging in sporting rivalry and cheering on their own athletes.And although the cities also had their own other gods too, like Poseidon and Athena, and had their own city festivals to honour them, ultimately the Greeks agreed that all those Gods lived much of their time with Zeus on Mount Olympus so they didn’t try to exterminate each other’s temples and favourite gods. There was a sort of Pantheon of Gods accepted. That made for a very different outlook than say Christianity or Judaism versus Islam.