Field of Reeds

Ahrweiler said:” Europe is a world of historical references and memories shared by all Europeans who draw sustenance from their teachings.” I think this is maybe an excellent answer why the great heritages of Ancient Greece now still can shape the European world, building up the European Identity.
Historically, European world was occupied by the Rome Empire, at the same time; Romans inherited the legacies of Greece. What's more, the influence of Greece did not end after the collapse of Rome Empire but kept spreading all around Europe. The roots of these treasures were so deep that they appeared several big historical events like the Renaissance and the Enlightment.
Under a comfortable climate, people of ancient Greece gave birth to a great civilization which was very distinguished from other part of world at that time.
Unlike other monarchy countries, Greece, especially in Athens, developed a unique structure of politics. Monarch was abolished, and reforms of Solon established a moderate system of aristocratic government. After that the democracy was established, with power being held by 40,000 free citizens. But, the democracy at that time can not be compared to modern day democracy. The Greek society was a male-dominant one, and women, foreigners, slaves were excluded from power. So, critically, it is not precise to say the engendering of western democracy was due to the practice of ancient Greek democracy but the idea of democracy they discussed.
Not only the democracy was past down, but many advanced ideas, the liberty of human beings, the social harmony of bringing together different people and various ideas and so on all, are also accepted by Europeans.
Another unparallel achievement of ancient Greece was the science which later greatly shaped the way of European thinking, and searching for truth. In Greece, the concept of science was not the one narrowly encompass physics, biology, but a one has a wide range of elements, even the philosophy.
In the eyes of ancient Greeks, the world around them is not chaos but is beautiful and ordered. Nature has its own order and rule to run and everything inside the nature must obey the rule of nature even the Gods. As a human, Greeks proudly convinced that nature can be exploited by human reasoning. Among these people, the most outstanding examples are Plato and Aristotle, although somewhat their concepts were opposite. Plato considered that the universe released by our sense is not the real one but some poor and imperfect imaged of ideas. People must use logical reasoning to get to know the ideas. On contrary, Aristotle suggested using observation and inductive reasoning to arrive at categories and principles based on our sense data. Any way, it is the fact that it is their ideas laid the foundation of western philosophy. What’s more, both of them contributed a lot to the fields like physics and biology, mathematics. For instance, the geocentric view of Aristotle pointed out that the earth is in the centre of universe, although it has already made no sense nowadays, there is no denying that the attempts he made was quite magnificent.
Since the ancient time, European adopted their way of looking and exploiting the world, even today, Europeans schools are still teaching the philosophy of ancient Greece.
Of course, not only the politics and Greek science post a very important role in formation of European Identity, but other parts too.
The cornerstone of European literature is the work from ancient Greece, especially the masterpieces of Iliad and Odyssey, which take the form of epic poetry. And the dramas from Greece now still fascinated 21centry Europeans and people all around the world.
The arts of ancient Greece inspired great number of artist of Europe to follow. It is very easy to find sculptures, statues and wall painting in Greek style. More important, European accept the concept of beauty rooted in ancient Greece.
The creek civilization was such a brilliant and dazzling one whose heritages: freedom of man, liberty, democracy of politics, even the alphabets, arts, architectures and the concepts of beauty, laid the foundation of European Identity and will continue functioning as a strong power for building up the European Identity.