Portal:Ancient Greece

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Ancient Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, romanized: Hellás) was an ancient civilization existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 AD), comprising a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and regions, primarily centered in the northeastern area of the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to the Roman period, most of this area was officially unified only once, from 338 to 323 BC under the Kingdom of Macedon. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.

Scholars mark Ancient Greece as beginning with Mycenaean Greece, which declined during the Bronze Age collapse c. 1100 BC. Three centuries later, Greek urban city-states, or poleis, began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and Greek colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the intellectual flourishing of the Classical period of Ancient Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, which included the Golden Age of Athens, the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, the short-lived Spartan and Theban hegemonies, the creation of the Hellenic league led by Philip II of Macedon and the subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by his son Alexander the Great, leading to the spread of Ancient Greek culture: the Hellenistic period, ending c. 30 BC, when the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, centred in Alexandria, was annexed by Rome.

Classical Greek culture, especially Greek philosophy, had a powerful influence on Ancient Rome, which propagated variants of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization, the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art. (Full article...)

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Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives of deities, and heroes and the significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of mythmaking itself.

The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC; eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the Theogony and the Works and Days, contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias. (Full article...)

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Territory of ancient Sparta before 371 BC, with Perioecic cities in blue

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Sparta was a prominent ancient Greek polis in Laconia. In classical antiquity, the state was known as Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων, Lakedaímōn), while Sparta referred to its capital, a group of villages in the valley of the Evrotas River in Laconia, in southeastern Peloponnese. During the 7th century BC, it rose to become the most prominent land military power in the Greek world, a status it retained until its defeat at Leuctra in 371 BC.

In the 6th century BC Sparta founded the Peloponnesian League, establishing its hegemony over most of Peloponnese. During the second Persian invasion of Greece, Sparta was recognised as the leading land force of the Hellenic alliance that also included the rising maritime power of Athens. The Spartan army was crucial in the battles of Thermopylae and Plataea under the leadership of Leonidas and Pausanias respectively. Sparta led the Peloponnesian League against the Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after Lysander's victory at the naval Battle of Aegospotami. A short period of Spartan hegemony followed, when Spartan armies led by Agesilaus II even invaded the western Anatolian satrapies of the Achaemenid empire. However, Epaminondas' victory over Sparta at Leuctra in 371 BC started the Theban hegemony while Messenia was freed from Spartan rule; the loss of the slave labour this region provided sent the city into terminal decline as a military power. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

... that the Greeks did not have a term for "religion" ?

... that Ancient Greek cuisine was characterized by its frugality, reflecting agricultural hardship?

... that the economy of ancient Greece was characterized by the extreme importance of agriculture, all the more so because of the relative poverty of Greece's soil?

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Archimedes Thoughtful (1620)

Archimedes of Syracuse (/ˌɑːrkɪˈmiːdiːz/ AR-kih-MEE-deez; c. 287 – c. 212 BC) was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, based on his surviving work, he is considered one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity, and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove many geometrical theorems, including the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.

Archimedes' other mathematical achievements include deriving an approximation of pi ( $π$ ), defining and investigating the Archimedean spiral, and devising a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. He was also one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, working on statics and hydrostatics. Archimedes' achievements in this area include a proof of the law of the lever, the widespread use of the concept of center of gravity, and the enunciation of the law of buoyancy known as Archimedes' principle. In astronomy, he made measurements of the apparent diameter of the Sun and the size of the universe. He is also said to have built a planetarium device that demonstrated the movements of the known celestial bodies, and may have been a precursor to the Antikythera mechanism. He is also credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Ancient Greece-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Greek hoplite and Persian warrior depicted fighting, on an ancient kylix, 5th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 2Early Athenian coin, depicting the head of Athena on the obverse and her owl on the reverse – 5th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 3Homer, author of the earliest surviving Greek literature (from Archaic Greece)
Image 4Gravestone of a woman with her slave child-attendant, c. 100 BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 5Mosaic from Pompeii depicting Plato's Academy (from Ancient Greece)
Image 6An Ancient Greek pair of terracotta boots. Early geometric period cremation burial of a woman, 900 BC. Ancient Agora Museum in Athens. (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 7Major regions of mainland ancient Greece and adjacent "barbarian" lands (from Ancient Greece)
Image 8The major Hellenistic realms included the Diadochi kingdoms:
  Kingdom of Ptolemy I Soter
  Kingdom of Cassander
  Kingdom of Lysimachus
  Kingdom of Seleucus I Nicator
  Epirus
Also shown on the map:
  Greek colonies
  Carthage (non-Greek)
  Rome (non-Greek)

The orange areas were often in dispute after 281 BC. The Attalid dynasty occupied some of this area. Not shown: Indo-Greek Kingdom. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 9The Vix Krater, an imported Greek wine-mixing bronze vessel found in the Hallstatt/La Tène grave of the "Lady of Vix", Burgundy, France, c. 500 BC (from Archaic Greece)
Image 10The remains of the Temple of Apollo in Corinth, the first Greek temple to be built in stone. (from Archaic Greece)
Image 11Dipylon Vase of the late Geometric period, or the beginning of the Archaic period, c. 750 BC. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 12Ruins of the Temple of Apollo within the polis of Ancient Corinth, built c. 540 BC, with the Acrocorinth (the city's acropolis) seen in the background (from Archaic Greece)
Image 13Ancient Greek colonies in the archaic period (from Ancient Greece)
Image 14The Temple of Concordia, Valle dei Templi, Magna Graecia, present-day Italy (from Ancient Greece)
Image 15Geometric-style box in the shape of a barn. On display in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens, housed in the Stoa of Attalus. From early geometric cremation burial of a wealthy pregnant woman, 850 BC. (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 16Events of the first phases of the Greco-Persian Wars (from Ancient Greece)
Image 17Inheritance law, part of the Gortyn code, Crete, fragment of the 11th column. Limestone, 5th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 18Greek territories and colonies in the Archaic period (from Archaic Greece)
Image 19Finds from an early Geometric cremation burial of a pregnant wealthy woman, from the N.W. of the Areopagus, about 850 BC, Ancient Agora Museum (Athens); exhibit 14–16: broad gold finger rings; exhibit 17–19: gold finger rings; 20: pair of gold earrings with trapezoid endings (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 20The gymnasium and palaestra at Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic games. The archaic period conventionally dates from the first Olympiad. (from Archaic Greece)
Image 21Alexander Mosaic, National Archaeological Museum, Naples (from Ancient Greece)
Image 22Mount Olympus, home of the Twelve Olympians (from Ancient Greece)
Image 23The Parthenon, a temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 24The Temple of Hera at Selinunte, Sicily (from Ancient Greece)
Image 25The Victorious Youth (c. 310 BC) is a rare, water-preserved bronze sculpture from ancient Greece. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 26The Antikythera mechanism was an analog computer from 150 to 100 BC designed to calculate the positions of astronomical objects. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 27Map of the Late Bronze Age collapse (c. 1200 BC) in the Eastern Mediterranean (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 28The Temple of Concordia, Valle dei Templi, Magna Graecia, in present-day Italy (from Archaic Greece)
Image 29A scene from the Iliad: Hypnos and Thanatos carrying the body of Sarpedon from the battlefield of Troy; detail from an Attic white-ground lekythos, c. 440 BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 30The Delian League immediately before the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 31Marble bust of Pericles with a Corinthian helmet, Roman copy of a Greek original, Museo Chiaramonti, Vatican Museums; Pericles was a key populist political figure in the development of the radical Athenian democracy. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 32The lawgiver Solon reformed the Athenian constitution, which led to significant developments in Greece (from Archaic Greece)
Image 33The carved busts of four ancient Greek philosophers, on display in the British Museum. From left to right: Socrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippus, and Epicurus. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 34The ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, 4th century BC (from Ancient Greece)

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Photo credit: Marsyas

One of the Pitsa panels, the only surviving panel paintings from Archaic Greece. The most respected form of art, according to authors like Pliny or Pausanias, were individual, mobile paintings on wooden boards, technically described as panel paintings.

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